The songs of the ancestors

My grandmother was born in Wind Ridge, Pennsylvania, a little village in the Allegheny hill country in the southwestern corner of the state.  It's a beautiful region, whose first European settlers came in the eighteenth century from Scotland and Northern Ireland, with some later influxes from Germany and eastern Europe.

It's also got more than its fair share of poverty.  The soil is rocky and poor, and farming was never really going to work for more than the barest subsistence.  Until the coal boom of the 1880s, and then the discovery of natural gas there in the 1920s, a lot of people -- my grandmother's family included -- did little more than scrape by.  Despite her hardscrabble roots, and far more than their fair share of troubles, my grandma was always proud of the people she'd come from.  I remember spending many hours as a child listening to her stories of growing up there, and how proud she was of her Scottish ancestry.

One constant thread for her, and one I've inherited, was music.  She knew scores of old ballads, which I now know were carried across the Atlantic Ocean from Scotland and Northern England by my grandmother's ancestors and others like them -- "Annie Laurie," "Ye Banks and Braes," "Barbara Allen," "The Four Marys," and "Lord Randall" amongst them, all songs I still love not only for their nostalgia but because they're honestly beautiful.  A study by British historian and musicologist Cecil Sharp found that many songs and tunes that still persist both in the Appalachians and in the Scottish lowlands have actually changed less in their western versions; put another way, the Appalachian musical tradition preserves virtually unchanged the musical culture from its English and Scottish roots three centuries ago.

As fascinating as this is (and however important for my own personal family history), this is far from the most astonishing example of persistence in musical tradition despite distance, time, and hardship.  In fact, the reason this comes up is an article last week in Smithsonian Magazine that was sent to me by a friend and long-time loyal reader of Skeptophilia about a song still sung in Sierra Leone that was preserved close to perfectly in the Gullah Geechee culture of the Sea Islands in Georgia.

Here are the bare bones of the story -- but you really should read the entire account at the link above, because it's amazing.

In 1933, a Black linguist and anthropologist named Lorenzo Dow Turner was studying the Gullah language of coastal Georgia and South Carolina.  Gullah is a creole -- a language formed by the mixture of other languages, sometimes beginning so that people of different languages could communicate with each other for purposes of trade, but eventually solidifying into a true complex language with its own syntax, morphology, and lexicon.  In the case of Gullah, its roots come from various West African languages and English, but due to the remoteness (and difficulty of travel) of the region where it's spoken, it's had a couple of hundred years to go its own way.

Yoruba musicians [Image licensed under the Creative Commons 4toscenethesis, Mirror Children, CC BY-SA 4.0]

Anyhow, Turner was doing a linguistic analysis of Gullah, and came across a native speaker who knew a song she said had been passed down to her by her grandmother and great-grandmother.  It wasn't in Gullah; only a few words were clearly from that language.  The woman herself didn't know what the lyrics meant, only that she was singing it as her great-grandmother had.

Well, a Sierra Leonean student of Turner's recognized the lyrics as being in the Mende language -- spoken by about a third of the citizens of modern Sierra Leone, and which is related to other West African languages such as Mandinka, Bambara, and Susu.  It wasn't until much, much later that Yale University anthropologist Joseph Opala came across Turner's account, and together with ethnomusicologist Cynthia Schmidt and Sierra Leonean linguist Tazieff Koroma set out to see if they could find the song's roots...

... and they found, in the remote village of Senehun Ngola, Sierra Leone, a woman who sang an almost identical version of the song.

Here are the lyrics in Mende:

A wa ka, mu mone; kambei ya le’i; lii i lei tambee
A wa ka, mu mone; kambei ya le’i; lii i lei ka
Haa so wolingoh sia kpande wilei
Haa so wolingoh, ndohoh lii, nde kee
Haa so wolingoh sia kuhama ndee yia

 And the English translation:

Everyone come together, let us struggle; the grave is not yet finished; let his heart be perfectly at peace.
Everyone come together, let us struggle; the grave is not yet finished; let his heart be very much at peace.
Sudden death commands everyone’s attention like a firing gun.
Sudden death commands everyone’s attention, oh elders, oh heads of the family.
Sudden death commands everyone’s attention like a distant drumbeat.

I don't know about you, but my reaction was... wow.

That not only a song, but a song that powerful, was preserved for over two hundred years on both sides of the Atlantic is truly extraordinary.  And in the Sea Islands, without even knowing what the words meant.  Gullah and Mende have some shared vocabulary, but not nearly enough that they're mutually intelligible -- making the song's persistence in coastal Georgia even more astonishing.  And you have to wonder if that little village in Sierra Leone is the place from which the Gullah singer's ancestors were kidnapped and transported by the horrific Atlantic slave trade.

Music is one of the things that is common to the human experience, and the songs of a people are part of their cultural memory.  I'll never cease being grateful to my my grandma for instilling in me early the love of music, and for her teaching me the songs she'd grown up with.  It's a tie to my ancestors a long way back.  Our cultural roots are as much a part of our lineage as our DNA -- something British singer Rose Betts celebrates in her lovely song "Irish Eyes," which you should all put on your playlists:

It's essential that we sing -- new songs and old, the ones written yesterday and the songs of the ancestors first sung centuries ago.  The music is the important thing, whatever it is.

Whatever you choose to sing, just keep singing.

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The fall of the Guidestones

Ten years ago I wrote a piece here at Skeptophilia about the mysterious Georgia Guidestones, a granite monument that since 1980 has stood on a hill in Elbert County, Georgia.  People have called it "America's Stonehenge," which in my opinion gives it more gravitas than it deserves.  It's got a set of ten inscriptions that seem to fall into two categories: (1) not bad ideas but impossible to achieve (such as "Unite humanity with a living new language") and (2) vague pronouncements that seem to be attempting profundity but don't quite get there (such as "Prize truth -- beauty -- love -- seeking harmony with the infinite"). 

The building of the monument was funded by one "R. C. Christian," almost certainly a pseudonym.  But a pseudonym for whom?  No one knows for sure, but there's some speculation it it's either Ted Turner or a white supremacist doctor from Fort Dodge, Iowa named Herbert Kirsten.  The mystery adds to the site's appeal, and it became quite a tourist attraction, attracting thousands of visitors per year.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Quentin Melson, Georgia Guidestones in Elbert County, GA, CC BY-SA 4.0]

Unfortunately, it also attracted the attention of conspiracy theorists and evangelical wingnuts, who promptly proclaimed it as (respectively) an icon of the Evil New World Order and a manifesto from Satan himself.  Both of these impressions were enhanced by one of the inscriptions, which recommends keeping the human population at five hundred million "in perpetual balance with nature," a move that would probably be highly unpopular with the other seven billion humans on the planet. 

This is how it came to the attention of one Kandiss Taylor, unsuccessful candidate for governor of Georgia, whose motto "Jesus Guns Babies" made her the target of hundreds of posts on social media such as the following:

She was also brutally lampooned by the inimitable John Oliver in one of the funniest segments he's ever done.  You should take seventeen minutes right now to watch this, but do not, I repeat, do not attempt to drink anything while doing so.  You have been warned.

Anyhow, Taylor, who apparently gets most of her exercise doing sit-ups underneath parked cars, said that the Guidestones are satanic in origin, and that if she became governor, her first action would be to have them destroyed.  She received immediate support from loony Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, because of course she did, who said that the Guidestones "revealed a world genocide plot," if you can apply the word "plot" to a message engraved in enormous letters on a giant rock on top of a hill outside of Atlanta.

But all of this is just a lead-up to what happened this week.  On Wednesday, an unknown person blew up one of the Guidestones and did enough damage to the others that they had to be demolished.  A car was captured on surveillance footage leaving the scene right after the bomb went off, but so far, no suspects have been identified.

This, of course, prompted conspiracy types to stop chewing on the straps of their straitjackets long enough to engage in some triumphant, and long-overdue, "I told you so"s.  Kandiss Taylor tweeted, "God is God all by Himself. He can do ANYTHING He wants to do.  That includes striking down Satanic Guidestones."

Apparently, though, sometimes The Almighty needs help from a random wacko with dynamite and some county workers with bulldozers, and "ANYTHING" doesn't include putting Kandiss Taylor in office, given that she lost the Republican gubernatorial primary to Brian Kemp after receiving only 3.4% of the popular vote.  Even with that poor showing, however, Taylor has refused to concede, claiming that she actually won but was cheated out of the election by voter fraud.

Because of course she did.

After reading all this, I've come to the conclusion that one of the two following conclusions has to be true:

1. The aliens who are running the computer simulation we've all been trapped in for the last six years have gotten bored and/or drunk, and now they're just fucking with us.
2. A significant percentage of Americans are absolutely batshit insane.

What's most striking about the Guidestones, though, is that things in this country are crazy enough that a story which can be summarized as "Unknown bomber destroys weird monument that far-right nutcake politician thinks is a message from Satan" hardly creates a blip on the radar.  Are things this bad elsewhere?  Or is my assessment correct, that somehow the United States has cornered the market on whackjobbery?  It's getting to the point that I'm concerned my readers from other countries are judging me just because I'm American.  I'm going to be taking a trip out of the country next month, and I'm wondering what I should tell people.

Maybe I could pass for Canadian.  Although I wonder if I have the capacity for sustaining that level of niceness.  I suspect I'd tolerate stuff for a while, then something would make me say, "Are you fucking kidding me right now?", and the people nearby would slowly turn to stare at me, in the fashion of the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but instead of pointing and shrieking, they'd point and yell, "AMERICAN!!!!!"

Anyhow, if option one was correct, I'd like the aliens just to give it a rest for a while.  I'm not sure how much more of this I can take.  Maybe I'm looking at the past through rose-colored glasses, and things have always been this weird, but even so, I'm undergoing lunacy fatigue.  So let's just have some normal news, of the kind Walter Cronkite used to deliver, for the next few weeks.  Thanks ever so.

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Acting on absurdities

In C. S. Lewis's wonderful fantasy story The Magician's Nephew, he says, "The trouble about making yourself stupider than you really are is you very often succeed."  In the story, Uncle Andrew (the magician of the title) has convinced himself so completely that what he is seeing isn't real that in the end, he actually becomes unable to see it.

It's not so far off from what happens with conspiracy theorists.  When you have accustomed yourself to accepting an idea even if it has no evidence to support it -- or, in some cases, because it has no evidence to support it -- you're likely to fall for any damn fool claim that comes along.  And, if you'll allow me another quote, this one from Voltaire: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

We got an object lesson in these two principles last week when two men from Georgia, Michael Mancil and James Dryden, were arrested for plotting to go to Alaska with piles of weapons, with the intent of blowing up HAARP.  You probably know that HAARP -- the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Project -- has been blamed for everything from creating hurricanes to triggering earthquakes, when in reality all it does is study the ionosphere for the purposes of improving communication and navigation systems.  To be sure, it looks kind of creepy; a field of antennae sprouting up from the Alaskan tundra.

So the conspiracy theorists just love HAARP, and their fears were not assuaged a bit when the U. S. Air Force, which ran HAARP, basically turned it over last year to the University of Alaska - Fairbanks.  You'd think that people would say, "Okay, if HAARP really could be used as an ultra-powerful weather modification device, capable of spawning tornadoes on the other side of the planet, the Air Force would definitely not release their interest in it."

But that is not how the minds of conspiracy theorists work.  Of course HAARP is still being run by the government, and is still causing lightning strikes in Dakar, Senegal.  We couldn't be that far wrong, could we?

Of course not.

But as I pointed out before, people who (1) don't care about evidence and (2) are convinced that the government is in a huge conspiracy to wipe out the entire human race are very likely to do stupid stuff.  Witness Mancil and Dryden, who according to the Coffee County Sheriff's Department had amassed "[a] massive amount of arsenal seized [that] looked like something out of a movie, one where a small army was headed to war."

Apparently, besides HAARP's role in modifying the weather, Mancil and Dryden also thought that it was being used to "trap people's souls."  What the U. S. government would do with a bunch of souls, I have no idea.  Maybe they figured that there were some members of congress who could use a replacement, I dunno.  Be that as it may, Mancil and Dryden were apparently "told by god" that they were to go to Alaska, kidnap a scientist and steal his ID badge, and use that to gain access to the facility, after which they would blow it up and "release the trapped souls."

So here we have yet another example of why it's important for people to start paying more attention to facts, and less attention to crazy claims made by random wingnuts.  (Following this dictum would put Alex Jones out of business, which would be a step in the right direction.)  In any case, I'm glad the whole thing ended happily.  The would-be terrorists never made it out of their home county and are cooling their heels in jail, and the scientific facility is safe, at least for the time being.  So now we can turn our attention to worrying about other things, such as the outcome of next week's presidential election, which may well leave me wishing that HAARP could wipe out humanity.

High school baptism

I am sick unto death of public school employees proselytizing their students.

And I don't care what exactly you're proselytizing -- a political stance, a religious worldview, an opinion on gay rights or abortion or the legalization of marijuana.  Now, understand what I'm saying here; it is all right to discuss any of those things, as long as it makes sense in the context of the curriculum.

It is not all right to push one specific viewpoint on students.

Public school students are (1) young, and (2) a captive audience.  Furthermore, it is not a venue in which kids are generally taught to stand up to the adults and say, "I disagree with you, and here's why."  So at best the students who hold opposing viewpoints are generally going to be cowed into silence; at worst, they are held up to ridicule or punishment for going against both the authority figure and the majority.

Which is why what happened at a Georgia high school a couple of weeks ago is inexcusable.  Earlier in September Katie Beth Carter, a student at Heritage High School in Ringgold, Georgia, had been killed in an automobile accident.  The varsity football coach, E. K. Slaughter, decided to honor Katie's memory...

... by holding a ceremony and baptizing the entire football team.

Lest you think this was just a non-religious dunk in a water tank -- akin to the "Ice Bucket Challenge" that went around a couple of years ago to raise money for ALS research -- Slaughter's own words to the team should clarify:

Thanks for having the courage to take this step.  We talked the other day — for those who weren’t in our team meeting — I was just sharing with them, you don’t realize characteristics that certain people have until you don’t have them anymore.  And just reflecting over the last week with KB [Katie Beth] and just how loving she was and how servient [sic] she was… This is about you and this is about your relationship with Christ and nothing else, ‘K? It’s a big step for you.

And Katie's brother Jacob, a practicing minister, took the players one at a time and dunked them after saying, "In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit..."

Baptism by Klavdiy Vasilievich Lebedev (ca. 1890) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Some religious folks are lauding the coach for taking this step.  If you're one of them, then stop and ask yourself: would you be feeling the same way if the coach had used his position of authority to read to the kids from the Qu'ran or The God Delusion?  Or to lecture them about how important it was to stump for Hillary Clinton?  Or how they needed to write to their congresspersons in support of LGBT marriage rights?

If any of those made you cringe, then don't stand there and claim that you don't understand why proselytizing of any kind needs to be kept out of schools.

And it's not that I want school employees to encourage atheism.  That, too, is proselytizing.  What I'm saying is that none of it has any place in public schools.  There are plenty of venues where kids can be instructed in what to believe about religion, politics, and social issues.  Why are home and church not sufficient?  Why do we need to turn schools into indoctrination camps, and (inevitably) leave some kids feeling as if they're being excluded or demeaned because of their own beliefs?

Put simply: separation of church and state isn't there to protect nonbelievers; it's there to protect everyone.

Fortunately, the Freedom From Religion Foundation has gotten involved, and almost certainly there will be a lawsuit. "Losing a beloved recent graduate is a terrible tragedy and we understand the district community must cope and grieve together," said Liz Cavell, staff attorney for the FFRF.  "But this can and should be done in a way that does not give the clear impression that the school district endorses religion or a particular religion."

Which is it exactly.  Opponents have characterized the FFRF as promoting a secular viewpoint in schools, but that's inaccurate; it is opposed to promoting any viewpoint, secular or religious, to public school students.  Christians would rightly object to their children being told what they should believe, or that their own beliefs are wrong; adherents of other religions, and young people with no religious beliefs at all, should be accorded the same right.

In fact, isn't there something in the bible about "do unto others as you would have them do unto you?"  I seem to remember that part was pretty important.  Maybe Coach Slaughter and his supporters should re-read that part.

The bunny trail

Tomorrow is Easter, the most important celebration of the Christian calendar, a time when believers are reminded about such things as eternal life and redemption and salvation.  Also, therefore, time for the wacko fringe element to remind everybody that they better not get their kids chocolate bunnies, because this will cause children to hippety-hop right to hell.

[image courtesy of photographer Josef Türk Jun and the Wikimedia Commons]

At least, this is the claim of "Shirlee" of the site Real Bible Stories, in her post "Easter Bunny Brings Satan's Communion."  And I'd like to be able to tell you that this is a parody site, but "Shirlee" appears to be entirely sincere.  Here's what she has to say:

Easter. For many, it conjures images of a basket-toting rabbit bearing chocolate bunnies. The White House hosts an Easter Egg hunt, as do many churches.  What’s wrong with that?  It’s a celebration of spring, and fertility, and...  Yes, fertility. I’ll bet you didn’t know Jesus was a fertility god, did you? 

What’s that you say? He’s not? 

Then why are you worshiping rabbits — an unclean animal, consumption of which is abomination to God — and hunting for colored eggs on the celebration of His Resurrection?

Yes, well, in Leviticus 11:6 the bible also says that rabbits "chew the cud," which they don't.  But don't let that stop you from taking the whole thing as the literal truth.

And wait until you hear who is responsible for this perversion... you'll never guess.

It's... the Catholics:

Yes, Catholics. The inheritors of the Babylonian religion, who have perverted every aspect of Christianity with the ways of Nimrod and Semiramis (Ishtar)! 

Satan has found a very clever way of perverting Christianity...  He used the Catholic cult to inject his own rituals — those directed at any number of false gods, and even a false Savior — into Christian worship!  Think about it...  Whenever you idolize the Easter bunny, or trade eggs, or even fast at Lent, you are worshipping Satan!

Huh.  I was raised Catholic, and even back then, I was always in it for the chocolate.  But I suppose that's only to be expected from a former cult member who made it worse by giving up religion entirely.

"Shirlee" then goes into a long diatribe on the origins of Easter and how the "Catholic cult" (her words) has twisted the whole thing into a fast-track into hell.  She also more than once uses the phrase "Bunnies of Satan," which I think would be a great name for an all-girl metal band.

She ends with a scary question:

Will your kids be chomping on chocolate eggs and rabbits tomorrow, taking the Devil’s Communion?

In all seriousness, I find it hard to imagine living my life in such perpetual fear.  The idea that there's this evil guy who is constantly trying to find ways to grab you, and that even something like a Russell Stover Chocolate Bunny Rabbit could provide him ingress, is so horrid that if I believed it, I wouldn't want to leave my house.  Ever.

It does make you wonder what's appealing about this world view.  Once you've bought in, though, it's clear why people stay.  If you have let yourself become convinced that everything is a threat, and the only way to avoid burning in agony forever is to follow the bible word-for-word, it's unsurprising that it's difficult to cut free.

Unsurprising, too, that people like this get their knickers in a twist over anything that's different.  Which is why an elementary school in Kennesaw, Georgia has cancelled a yoga program designed for  alleviating student stress because parents thought it was "sorcery."  Kids and staff are now forbidden from saying "namasté" to each other.  One parent wrote:

Now we can’t pray in our schools or practice Christianity but they are allowing this Far East mystical religion with crystals and chants to be practiced under the guise of stress release meditation.  This is very scary.

Yes indeedy.  We don't want students de-stressed.  We want them scared.  We want them to be aware, 24/7, that anything they do, any tiny misstep, could potentially lead to their spending eternity in hellfire.

The administrators, of course, caved; no way could they push back against the people who raised the stink, because then you'd have Fox News blathering on for weeks about the War on Christianity even though Christians make up 55% of the population of Kennesaw.

So anyway.  Me, I'm just looking forward to next week, when all of the remaining Bunnies of Satan are gonna be on sale.  It may be the Devil's Communion, but it sure as hell is tasty.

A fight over decals

One of my guiding principles in life is "Don't be a dick."

I don't mind taking on battles when I need to, or when I think the outcome is sufficiently important; but I truly don't understand people who do choose to do things solely to piss others off.  What are they getting out of this?  At the end of the day, I do not judge how good a day I had, or how happy I am, based on the number of total strangers whose cages I rattled.

But to me, that seems like the only possible reason for the recent rash of police and fire departments slapping decals with crosses and "In God We Trust" all over their vehicles.  It's happened in Baytown, Texas; Youngsville, Louisiana; Covington, Louisiana; Cedartown, Georgia; Bay County, Florida; and Stone County, Missouri.

And those are only the ones in the last couple of months.  It's spreading like wildfire, and has generated more than one lawsuit by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the most recent in Brewster County, Texas.

Most of the arguments you hear against the practice are that the decals imply two things.  First, that the decals are a sly way of hinting that anyone who is an agnostic or atheist (or a practitioner of another faith; no one's in any doubt about which god the slogan's referring to) is liable not to receive the same police protection as Christians do.  The second is to ask how non-Christian police officers might feel about having to ride around in a squad car with a Christian religious slogan on the side.  These are government-owned vehicles, and therefore paid for by taxpayers, Christian and non-Christian alike.  The idea that these vehicles are emblazoned with a decal promoting religion -- worse, one particular religion -- is an unfortunate reminder about policies regarding inclusion, tolerance, and equality.

[image from the Hutchinson County, Texas Sheriff's Department Facebook page]

And I certainly agree with all of that.  But the question no one seems to ask is why these decals should be on the vehicles in the first place.  What is the argument for why they're necessary?  If you claim that without the decal, god wouldn't protect the cops in the car, then all I can say is that you have a pretty odd conception of how a benevolent deity might be expected to behave.  If it's patriotism, there are many other patriotic slogans you could choose.  So what purpose do they serve?

What purpose, in fact, does "one nation, under god" in the Pledge of Allegiance serve?  Or "In God We Trust" printed on our money?  No one's saying you can't paint bible quotes on the roof of your privately-owned house if you want.  Or, like a farmer who lives near me, post signs with cheerful slogans like "The Wages Of Sin Are Death" along the highway.  But these are government-sponsored, government-endorsed declarations of religion.  Why do the religious feel compelled to promote religion on the sides of police cars and fire engines -- and on our money?  Why is it moral to require students in every public school in America to recite a Pledge every morning that forces non-Christian students either to refuse to say it (sometimes at the cost of punishment and humiliation), or to lie publicly about their beliefs?

The only good answer I've been able to come up with to this question is: the Christian majority, i.e. the people who make the laws in this country, do it simply because they can.  If it pisses people off -- well, that's just too bad.  In fact, some of the most vocal proponents of the religious decals on police cars seem to be happy that they're making people mad.  Take, for example, Police Chief Adrian Garcia of Childress, Texas, who was told he risked a lawsuit from the FFRF for his decision to put big decals saying "In God We Trust" on the backs of his squad cars.

"They can go fly a kite," Garcia said.

So it boils down to people who really don't care if what they do excludes, devalues, or angers other American citizens, doing something because they're in a position of power so formidable that no one can stop them.  Further evidence that the much-talked-about-on-Fox-News "war on Christianity" in the United States is complete horseshit.

But it's a position I really don't get.  Like anything, political correctness can get out of hand, and there will always be people who will get their knickers in a twist over nothing.  But deliberately setting out to marginalize a significant percentage of Americans for no good reason, at the public expense?

That is called "being a dick."

Getting into the spirit

So it's Black Friday, in which we Americans follow up a day set aside to give thanks for everything we have, with a day set aside to trample each other to death trying to save money on overhyped garbage we really don't need.

Me, I stay right the hell away from stores on Black Friday.  I hate shopping in any case, and the rabid crowds only make it worse.  Plus, today marks the first day of the Little Drummer Boy Challenge, a yearly contest in which participants see how long they can make it into the Christmas season without hearing "The Little Drummer Boy," which ranks right up there with "Frosty the Snowman" as the most annoying Christmas carol ever written.   I've participated in this contest for three years, and haven't made it to Christmas Day undefeated yet.  Last year, I was taken out of the competition by a clerk in a hardware store who didn't even know all of the freakin' words, and kept having to la-la bits of it:

Come they LA LA pah-rum-puh-pum-pum
A newborn LA LA LA pah-rum-puh-pum-pum
Our LA LA gifts we bring pah-rum-puh-pum-pum
LA LA before the king pah-rum-puh-pum-pum, rum-puh-pum-pum, rum-puh-pum-pum

And so on and so forth.  He was singing it with hearty good cheer, so I felt kind of guilty when I realized that he'd knocked me out of the game and blurted out, "Are you fucking kidding me?" a little louder than I intended, eliciting a shocked look from the clerk and a significant diminishment in the general Christmas spirit amongst those around me.

Thomas Couture, The Drummer Boy (1857) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

And of course, the Christmas season wouldn't be complete without the hyperreligious types ramping up the whole imaginary War on Christmas thing.  We atheists have allegedly been waging this war for what, now... six years?  Seven?  And yet if you'll look around you, just like the Grinch's attempt at banishing Christmas from Whoville, the holiday season still goes right on, pretty much exactly as it did before.

Oops!  Shouldn't say "holiday," because that's part of the War on Christmas, too, even though the word "holiday" comes from "holy day" and therefore is also religious.  Some people feel really strongly about this even so, including Harris County (Georgia) Sheriff Mike Jolley, who is so determined to bash everyone over the head with Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward Men that he posted a sign at the border of Harris County that says:

Welcome to Harris County, Georgia!  WARNING: Harris County is politically incorrect.  We say: Merry Christmas, God Bless America and In God We Trust; we salute our troops and our flag.  If this offends you…LEAVE!

Because nothing communicates god's love like telling everyone who is different than you are to bugger off.

What is wryly amusing about all of this, at least in my local community, is that I'm known to be one of the more outspoken atheists in the area, and in December I tell people "Merry Christmas" at least as often as I say "Happy Holidays."  Basically, if someone says "Merry Christmas" to me, I say it back to them; if they say, "Happy Holidays," I say that.  Likewise "Happy Hanukkah," "Blessed Solstice," "Merry Festivus," or "Have A Nice Day."

You know why?  If people speak kindly to me, I reciprocate, because I may be an atheist, but I am not an asshole.  So I guess that's three ways in which I am different from Sheriff Mike Jolley of Harris County, Georgia.

Basically, be nice to me, I'll be nice to you.  Unless you're singing "The Little Drummer Boy."  I'm sorry, but my tolerance does have its limits.

In any case, mostly what I plan to do today is to sit around home, recovering from the food-and-wine-induced coma in which I spent most of yesterday evening.  So however you choose to observe the day and the season, I hope you enjoy it, whether you get into the spirit of it or pretty much ignore the whole thing.

Pah-rum-puh-pum-pum.

The devil went down to Georgia

In a move that many are characterizing as the latest end-run past anti-discrimination laws by the extremely religious, Georgia's Senate has passed Bill 129, the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act," by a vote of 37-15.

The legislation would "prevent the government from intruding or abridging faith-based beliefs," stating explicitly that "laws neutral toward religion may burden religious exercise as surely as laws intended to interfere with religious exercise."

Opponents of the bill were well aware of its hidden agenda.

Senator Curt Thomas, who voted against the bill, said that he believed that the measure was a direct response to the spread of marriage equality laws in the United States.  "There’s no way anyone’s going to convince me that that’s not what’s happening now," Thomas said.   He made reference to similar measures that have been instituted in Alabama, where the state Supreme Court just ordered judges to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. "We don’t want to be the next Alabama and be the next circus that they are becoming."

He was not the only one who recognized the law's subtext.  Marty Rouse, National Field Director of the Human Rights Campaign, was even more blunt than Thomas.  "This bill is a reprehensible attack on LGBT people and their families in Georgia," Rouse said, in a statement released last Thursday. "It does not address any legitimate problem with current law and creates harmful consequences for businesses throughout the state.  It threatens not just the LGBT community, but women, members of minority faiths and other minority classes.  All Georgians deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and we need all fair-minded people in the state to help stop this bill."

It now goes to the Georgia House of Representatives, where it is expected to pass, and then be signed into law by Governor Nathan Deal.

The whole thing has LGBT advocates seething, for understandable reasons.  Religious rights have been cited more than once in the past few months as reasonable justification for denial of services to LGBT individuals, and the RFRA is expected to give the anti-LGBT crowd legal standing in doing so.  But given the wide support the bill has in the Georgia legislature, what can be done?

Just ask the Aquarian Tabernacle Wiccan Church.

In a statement that should go down in the Annals of the History of Bluff-Calling, the Aquarian Tabernacle Church thanked the Georgia policymakers for their "forward-thinking... dedication to religious freedom."  They then outlined their practices that would be protected under the RFRA, citing which lines of the legislation covered each of them.  These practices included:

• Polyamory.  "Marriage is a religious institution," the statement reads.  "A uniting of souls before the almighty...  Many Wiccans live in multi-partner households, and until now have been unable to realize their religious right to marry the partners they are in love with.  Many of these partnerships have children from multiple partners all living under the same roof.  SB 129 has now opened the way for those children to all be under family insurance/health plans, as outlined in lines [22-23].  And if lines [34-35] hold true to their intent, then the least restrictive means of enforcing this change, is a simple revision to existing policy."

• Ingestion of psychotropic plants.  "With the passing of GRFRA," says the statement, "the ATC will be informing all Wiccans within the state of GA that there are no longer restrictions on which plants they may grow, own, harvest, ingest, distribute, or refine into compounds that the practitioner finds need to use within their religious practice, so long as no other laws besides substance abuse are broken...  As Government's definition also includes lines [82-83] “authorities; [...] or other person acting under color of law” it should be a matter of course to inform all officials to begin their refrain from detaining the practitioners for, and impeding the lawful use of said plants and animal parts.  This includes, but is no way limited to this non-comprehensive list, all plants currently residing upon any list of banned substances, plus any and all animal parts that may be found on the property or in the possession of anyone practicing the faith of Wicca within Georgia State limits."

• Drug screening by employers, and other restrictions based on "bodily sanctity."  "[The RFRA] means that all Wiccans are to be free to choose to be exempt, at the individual’s discretion regarding the sanctity of their essence, with no repercussions from Government bodies [77-83] upon an employer adhering to these inalienable religious rights, from urinalysis, blood tests, hair follicle tests, breathalyzers, tattooing, rfid chipping, or anything else that adds to or removes parts of our essence."

To which I have only one thing to say:  BA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA *falls off chair*

Man.  This should be good.  How many times do the clowns in elected office have to be shown that "freedom of religion" doesn't mean "freedom for the majority religion to do whatever it damn well pleases, and to hell with everyone else?"  Perhaps this will finally get it through their thick skulls that religious freedom (1) doesn't trump anti-discrimination laws, and (2) works best when the government just keeps its grimy paws off of religion entirely.  People should be free to practice whatever religion they want, in whatever way they want, unless such practice contravenes existing federal or state laws.  And that includes laws against discrimination.

How hard is that?

I certainly hope that the Aquarian Tabernacle Church pushes this as far as they can.  They seem to have done their homework, and although I can't say I buy their worldview, I applaud what they're doing, here.  And I don't know about you, but I'm really looking forward to seeing the legislators in Georgia backpedaling like mad to undo what they've done once they realize its implications.

A glowing report from Georgia

It may sound biased of me, but I think one thing should be an ironclad requirement for holding public office: an adequate understanding of science.

Yes, I know that politics doesn't always connect directly to science.  But I would respectfully submit that science as a means of knowledge, as a way of sorting fact from fiction, is such a critical capacity that no leader should be deficient in it.  Science teaches you a protocol for understanding evidence-based inference, which then can be applied to any area you like.

Add that to the fact that there are realms of policymaking that require an explicit understanding of science -- environmental, medical, and educational policy come to mind -- and this gives us a powerful reason to expect that our elected officials understand not only how science is done, but to have a basic grasp of its fundamental rules.

Instead, we have people like Georgia State RepresentativeTom Kirby (R-Loganville).

Kirby just introduced a bill into the Georgia House of Representatives that is specifically to prevent anyone from creating a glow-in-the-dark human/jellyfish hybrid.  Because evidently that's a thing that they do, down there in Georgia.  And not only do they do it, they do it often enough that Representative Kirby wants a law passed to put an end to the practice.

"We in Georgia are taking the lead on this issue," Kirby states on his website.  "Human life at all stages is precious including as an embryo.  We need to get out in front of the science and technology, before it becomes something no one wants.  The mixing of Human Embryos with Jellyfish cells to create a glow in the dark human, we say not in Georgia.  This bill is about protecting Human Life while maintaining good, valid research that does not destroy life."

What could have precipitated this?

My guess is that someone told Representative Kirby that researchers had experimented with inserting a gene for a jellyfish fluorescence protein into the embryos of cats, creating kittens with phosphorescent skin.

Glow kitties [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Then, Kirby asked one of his aides, "But... could they do this with human embryos?"  And the aide said, "It's possible."  And Kirby said, "We've got to put a stop to this!"

What bugs me about this is that not only does Representative Kirby apparently have little understanding of how the process works (it has nothing to do with "mixing embryos with jellyfish cells"), he doesn't understand the point of making the glow cats in the first place.  It wasn't just to create demonic-looking cats (can you imagine waking up at night to see one of those staring at you?).  It also wasn't because scientists were thinking, "Ha ha!  Now we can create an army of Glowing Humans that will take over the world!"

The reason this research was done was primarily medical.  The problem with genetic modification is getting an inserted gene to express at the right time and place; so learning how to control the process, generating an animal that not only expressed the glowing protein, but expressed it in sufficient quantities and in one tissue only (the skin), showed that we can potentially do analogous procedures in humans.

Note that I say "analogous," not "identical."  This kind of targeted gene therapy could eliminate protein-deficiency genetic disorders such as cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs disease, SCID (severe combined immunodeficiency), and hemophilia.  It works on the same principle; insert the gene into human cells, along with a robust tissue-specific promoter that allows the gene to turn on in the right tissue type.  If all goes well, we could see life-threatening genetic disorders not simply treated, but eliminated.

Of course, I doubt that Representative Kirby understands that.  Anyone who is at the "human-jellyfish hybrid" stage of science comprehension is light years away from getting even the basics of how genetic research works.  

And Kirby himself admitted he didn't know what the hell he was talking about.  "I've had people tell me it is [possible], but I haven't verified that for sure," he told reporters.  "It's time we either get in front of it, or we're going to be chasing our tails."

Can I just ask you one question, Representative Kirby?  Why the fuck would you propose a bill regarding something you "haven't verified" and clearly don't have sufficient IQ to understand?

But members of Congress seldom let those sorts of considerations stand in their way.  So now we have a bill on the floor of congress in Georgia to prevent scientists from creating something that (1) they didn't intend to create anyhow, and (2) is impossible to do in the way the bill describes.  Good use of our policymakers' time and taxpayer dollars, isn't it?

I know it must be hard to be an elected official.  It's not only a job I would never want, but one for which I am clearly not qualified.  But I do have one thing going for me; when I don't know what I'm talking about, I generally shut the hell up.  

Not so, apparently, if you're in politics.  In politics, you're allowed to have an opinion about everything, whether or not you understand it.  And then you can use that opinion to craft legislation.  Once more convincing me of the necessity of demanding, as a nation, that our leaders have at least a basic comprehension of science before they start interfering with laws that govern how it's done.

The guiding stones

(The last of a series of reposts, for your enjoyment while I'm on vacation.  First posted in September 2011.  I'll be back in the saddle on Monday!)

*****************************************

It is virtually self-evident that belief in an odd idea can propel you to do odd things.

Of the many odd things I've run into, however, the Georgia Guidestones definitely come near the top of the list.  Built of polished granite and standing sixteen feet tall, the Guidestones are arranged on the top of a treeless hill in Elbert County, Georgia.  They are so imposing (and so mysterious) that they've been compared to Stonehenge, or to the weird black monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

(photo courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons) 

Not the least mystery about them is who commissioned them, and why.  They were erected, under mysterious circumstances, in June of 1979.  The land on which they stand is owned by Elbert County, and was deeded to them by a "Robert C. Christian," who had purchased the land from a Wayne Mullenix.  I put "Robert C. Christian" in quotes because this almost certainly is a pseudonym -- curious researchers have tried, unsuccessfully, to identify who he is (or was).  (There is apparently persuasive, if circumstantial, evidence that R. C. Christian is Ted Turner.)

The message on the Guidestones is a series of (if you will) Ten Commandments, evidently intended to help the survivors create a better society once the apocalypse knocks off the rest of us.  These pronouncements are presented in twelve different languages -- English, Chinese, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Swahili, Hindi, Spanish, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Babylonian Cuneiform, and Egyptian Hieroglyphics.  These last four, I suppose, are there in case the apocalypse spares some (for example) Ancient Sumerians.

The Guidestones themselves have various notches and holes cut into them, apparently in an effort to make them line up with the position of the sun, moon, and stars at various times of year.  The overall effect is to deepen the mystery, and perhaps heighten perception of the structure as resembling Stonehenge. 

Given the time and effort someone put into all of this, and how seriously he seems to take himself (I'm assuming that R. C. Christian is a man, given the male pseudonym), I find it a little disappointing how generally inane the Guidestones' "Ten Commandments" are.  Some of them aren't bad ideas, but are hardly earthshattering ("Protect People And Nations With Fair Laws And Just Courts"), while others seem a little pie-in-the-sky ("Unite Humanity With A Living New Language.")  I have to admit to some disappointment upon reading what they said.  Given all of the mystery, and all the expense someone obviously went to, I was expecting something a little more profound.  (You can read the entire message on the Guidestones here.) 

What I find even more baffling about this whole thing is how people have responded to them.  New Age types mostly think they're great.  Yoko Ono, for example, says they are "a stirring call to rational thinking."  Some prominent Christian thinkers, predictably, disagree, one Evangelical minister calling them "The Ten Commandments of the Antichrist."  An Atlanta psychic, Naunie Batchelder, predicted as far back as 1981 that they were of alien origin, and their purpose would be revealed "within thirty years."  (The aliens had better get on that, as they've only got three and a half months left.)  

Conspiracy theorists, of course, think they're just the bee's knees.  Mark Dice, whose favorite topics are the Illuminati and the New World Order, believes that they are of "deep Satanic origin," and has demanded that they be "smashed into a million pieces."  Dice thinks that somehow the Bilderburg Group were involved with the funding and construction of the Guidestones.  A researcher named Van Smith has done some numerological analysis of the Guidestones and claims that they are somehow connected to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest building -- and believes that the dimensions of the Guidestones, when properly manipulated, predicted the date of death of Dubai's emir, Sheik Maktoum bin Rashid al Maktoum.  Noted wingnut Alex Jones thinks the Rosicrucians are responsible. 

All we need is to somehow get the Knights Templar involved, and we'll have a full house of bizarre explanations.

And, of course, all of these folks have followers, and those followers are happy to take action, when they're not picking at the straps of their straitjackets with their teeth.  Chickens have more than once been sacrificed in front of the Guidestones.  They are a frequent meeting site for a coven of Wiccans from Atlanta.  The Guidestones themselves have been repeatedly defaced, most recently by spray-painted graffiti stating "Death to the New World Order" and "Jesus will beat u satanist."  There has been more than one attempt to topple the Guidestones, but given that each of the stone blocks weighs twenty tons, those efforts have been thus far unsuccessful.

So, that's today's little dose of weirdness.  Next time I'm in Georgia, I'm going to make an effort to go see these things.  Not that I particularly think their message is all that profound -- but just to have had a chance to see, first-hand, what all the fuss is about.  And since one of the Guidestones' rules says, "Rule Passion - Faith - Tradition - And All Things With Tempered Reason," I figure I owe them at least that much.

It was the best of times...

If there is a group of people I hate arguing with even more than I hate arguing with young-earth creationists, it's the conspiracy theorists.

At least the young-earth creationists just think I'm working for Satan, a charge that I can understand, considering their view of things.  Sure, we don't accept the same ground rules for proof (evidence versus revelation); sure, we have different conclusions regarding where you can apply the laws of scientific inference (damn near everywhere versus only places where it doesn't conflict with Holy Writ).

But at least we can talk.  The conspiracy theorists, you can't even have a civil discussion with.  They accuse you of either being stupid or else working for evil humans, both of which are in my opinion worse than working for Satan because stupidity and evil humans actually exist.  The worst part, though, is that they pretend to accept the principles of rational argument, but then when it comes down to the point, they don't, really.  You can bring out the best-researched study about the efficacy and safety of vaccines, the most convincing argument that 9/11 and Sandy Hook were not "inside jobs" or "false flags," the most persuasive evidence out there that HAARP has nothing to do with raising tsunamis or causing earthquakes.

And where does it get you?  They just write you off as a dupe or a shill.  It's the ultimate example of the False Dilemma Fallacy; if you don't agree with us, you're one of.... Them.

The problem in this country has gotten so bad that Kurt Eichenwald did a big piece in Vanity Fair on the topic this week, and you all should read it.  In fact, everyone in the civilized world should read it, because it's brilliant, even though it's depressing.  I'll give you a brief passage from it, but then I want you to go to the link and read the whole thing:

(W)e have become scientific and political illiterates, and no nation can survive on a bedrock of such delusional stupidity.  Of course, the 26 percent (or more) won’t believe me, if they manage to read this.  I’ll just be deemed an “elitist” for daring to suggest that demon science and data, rather than ridiculous conspiracy theories, should be used to judge reality.  So, it may be a losing battle, but we should all try.  I don’t want to be forced, someday, to stand by as the rest of the world renames our nation “America the Ignorant.”

It's a bit of a coincidence that I should come across this when I did, because it came on the heels of another article, one sent to me by a loyal reader of Skeptophilia, that details one of the most pervasive and bizarre conspiracy theories out there: that the US government in general, and FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) in particular, are laying plans to kill us all.

Apparently, the whole thing is supposed to be carried out via guillotine, which is at least creative, if messy.

And here, we find out what they have in store for us:

Code ICD 9 E 978 Makes Execution by Guillotine Legal Under Obamacare.  The specific code sent to me will make any American’s hair stand up on the back of their neck.  The code is ICD 9 E 978.  After reading this code I decided that it was my duty to investigate further and get to the bottom of why we have a medical code in the United States for “Legal Execution.”  The Jesuits are behind most conspiracies and this one is no different...  Execution by Guillotine is painless.

And I'm thinking: what the fuck does Obamacare have to do with this?  Was that just something extra to throw in, along with the Jesuits for some reason, the way that the anti-GMO crowd will throw in the name "Monsanto" as a stand-in for Hitler?

At least they tossed us the cheerful tidbit that getting your head sliced off is painless.  I'm relieved, actually, considering what other methods they could have chosen.

And any good news at all is reassuring, considering what's been going on:

Not too long ago, I received word that the information I received regarding the guillotines was not only accurate, it was actually being lobbied in Washington DC to get them legalized for governmental use!  The states I mentioned on my “current events” page a few years back was [sic] in fact GEORGIA & MONTANA as the recipients of these guillotines.  The information I had received was that 15,000 or 30,000 guillotines had been shipped to Georgia as well as Montana for safe keeping until such a time as they are needed.

Doesn't 30,000 guillotines seem a little like... overkill?  *rimshot*

But yes, they say, FEMA is "stockpiling guillotines," a phrase that I find to be funny in a gruesome sort of fashion.  Why would they need a "stockpile?"  It's not like you can only use them once, or anything.  During the French Revolution, Robespierre and his Band of Merry Men seemed to do quite well with only a few, running pretty much round the clock.

But the level of pretzel logic crosses some kind of line into "really scary" later in the article, wherein we read:

When the Democratic Underground reports that retired FBI agent Ted Gunderson tells a gathering of antigovernment “Patriots” that the federal government has set up 1,000 internment camps across the country and is storing 30,000 guillotines and a half-million caskets in Atlanta.  They’re there for the day the government finally declares martial law and moves in to round up or kill American dissenters, he says. “They’re going to keep track of all of us, folks,” Gunderson warns.

And that plays a nice little glissando on our fear-harp, doesn't it?  "They" will keep track of us.  The "dissenters" will be rounded up and done away with.  Using secret guillotines.  And our bodies will end up in secret caskets.  And worst of all, this will be done by the people who are supposed to be on our side.

Now, I hasten to add that I'm reasonably certain that none of it is true.  I'd be willing to lay money on the fact that there are no guillotines, no caskets, and that FEMA is your usual rather inept, bumbling excuse for a government agency, with no particular ill intent.  But as I said earlier; you can't convince the conspiracy theorists of that.  The fear is too high for them to admit that they could be wrong; it would require such a drastic revision of their entire worldview, their whole raison d'être, that even the thought must be painful.

Better to continue considering me a dupe, or worse, a pawn in the disinformation network.

It's tempting, sometimes, to give up trying to convince them.  The odds of overcoming such galloping paranoia seem slim.  But I agree with Eichenwald; and it seems fitting to end with another quote from him.

So, should you listen to me?  Of course not.  I’m not a scientist either.  But there is plenty of valid research, easily accessible through Google, that lays out the trends and issues surrounding the safety of vaccines and the changes in climate we experience.  But Americans, based on the PPP poll, would rather listen to celebrities.  Bottom line here is that American ignorance isn’t always just funny—it can be downright dangerous.

The guiding stones

It is virtually self-evident that belief in an odd idea can propel you to do odd things.

Of the many odd things I've run into, however, the Georgia Guidestones definitely come near the top of the list.  Built of polished granite and standing sixteen feet tall, the Guidestones are arranged on the top of a treeless hill in Elbert County, Georgia.  They are so imposing (and so mysterious) that they've been compared to Stonehenge, or to the weird black monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

(photo courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons)


Not the least mystery about them is who commissioned them, and why.  They were erected, under mysterious circumstances, in June of 1979.  The land on which they stand is owned by Elbert County, and was deeded to them by a "Robert C. Christian," who had purchased the land from a Wayne Mullenix.  I put "Robert C. Christian" in quotes because this almost certainly is a pseudonym -- curious researchers have tried, unsuccessfully, to identify who he is (or was).  (There is apparently persuasive, if circumstantial, evidence that R. C. Christian is Ted Turner.)

The message on the Guidestones is a series of (if you will) Ten Commandments, evidently intended to help the survivors create a better society once the apocalypse knocks off the rest of us.  These pronouncements are presented in twelve different languages -- English, Chinese, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Swahili, Hindi, Spanish, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Babylonian Cuneiform, and Egyptian Hieroglyphics.  These last four, I suppose, are there in case the apocalypse spares some (for example) Ancient Sumerians.

The Guidestones themselves have various notches and holes cut into them, apparently in an effort to make them line up with the position of the sun, moon, and stars at various times of year.  The overall effect is to deepen the mystery, and perhaps heighten perception of the structure as resembling Stonehenge.

Given the time and effort someone put into all of this, and how seriously he seems to take himself (I'm assuming that R. C. Christian is a man, given the male pseudonym), I find it a little disappointing how generally inane the Guidestones' "Ten Commandments" are.  Some of them aren't bad ideas, but are hardly earthshattering ("Protect People And Nations With Fair Laws And Just Courts"), while others seem a little pie-in-the-sky ("Unite Humanity With A Living New Language.")  I have to admit to some disappointment upon reading what they said.  Given all of the mystery, and all the expense someone obviously went to, I was expecting something a little more profound.  (You can read the entire message on the Guidestones here.)

What I find even more baffling about this whole thing is how people have responded to them.  New Age types mostly think they're great.  Yoko Ono, for example, says they are "a stirring call to rational thinking."  Some prominent Christian thinkers, predictably, disagree, one Evangelical minister calling them "The Ten Commandments of the Antichrist."  An Atlanta psychic, Naunie Batchelder, predicted as far back as 1981 that they were of alien origin, and their purpose would be revealed "within thirty years."  (The aliens had better get on that, as they've only got three and a half months left.) 

Conspiracy theorists, of course, think they're just the bee's knees.  Mark Dice, whose favorite topics are the Illuminati and the New World Order, believes that they are of "deep Satanic origin," and has demanded that they be "smashed into a million pieces."  Dice thinks that somehow the Bilderburg Group were involved with the funding and construction of the Guidestones.  A researcher named Van Smith has done some numerological analysis of the Guidestones and claims that they are somehow connected to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest building -- and believes that the dimensions of the Guidestones, when properly manipulated, predicted the date of death of Dubai's emir, Sheik Maktoum bin Rashid al Maktoum.  Noted wingnut Alex Jones thinks the Rosicrucians are responsible.

All we need is to somehow get the Knights Templar involved, and we'll have a full house of bizarre explanations.

And, of course, all of these folks have followers, and those followers are happy to take action, when they're not picking at the straps of their straitjackets with their teeth.  Chickens have more than once been sacrificed in front of the Guidestones.  They are a frequent meeting site for a coven of Wiccans from Atlanta.  The Guidestones themselves have been repeatedly defaced, most recently by spray-painted graffiti stating "Death to the New World Order" and "Jesus will beat u satanist."  There has been more than one attempt to topple the Guidestones, but given that each of the stone blocks weighs twenty tons, those efforts have been thus far unsuccessful.

So, that's today's little dose of weirdness.  Next time I'm in Georgia, I'm going to make an effort to go see these things.  Not that I particularly think their message is all that profound -- but just to have had a chance to see, first-hand, what all the fuss is about.  And since one of the Guidestones' rules says, "Rule Passion - Faith - Tradition - And All Things With Tempered Reason," I figure I owe them at least that much.