"Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults." - Thomas Szasz

Random Playlist Song: The Cambridge Singers Collection: Sing A Song Of Sixpence

Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye;
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened,
They all began to sing.
Now, wasn't that a dainty dish
To set before the King?

The King was in his countinghouse,
Counting out his money;
The Queen was in the parlor
Eating bread and honey.

The maid was in the garden,
Hanging out the clothes.
Along there came a big black bird
And snipped off her nose!

Snopes: Lost Legends (A Pocket Full of Wry)

"Many of us fondly recall the rhyming ditties we learned as children, such as "Jack Be Nimble" and "The Farmer in the Dell." But how many of us realize that several of our most fondly-recalled nursery rhymes (e.g., "A Tisket, A Tasket" and "Little Jack Horner") were not mere nonsense songs, but actually originated as coded references to such dark events as plagues and religious persecution? Such was the case with another childhood favorite, "Sing a Song of Sixpence"...

The surprising truth is that this innocent little rhyme, which dates from the early 1700s, actually represents a coded message used to recruit crew members for pirate vessels!"

***

Synaesthesia: Seeing Sounds, Tasting Shapes - "Synaesthesia, the blending of the senses, once thought to be a mere curiosity, provides important clues to understanding the organization and functions of the brain. Why do some people have a certain sensation of color when they hear or see the shape of a number or letter?... Look at this test designed by Wolfgang Köhler. Which one of these figures bears the name 'booba' and which one is called 'kiki'?"

THE DECLINE OF REDEMPTIVE TRUTH AND THE RISE OF LITERARY CULTURE - "To be sure, there are still numerous religious intellectuals, and even more philosophical ones. But bookish youngsters in search of redemption nowadays look first to novels, plays, and poems. The sort of books which the eighteenth century thought of as marginal have become central. The authors of Rasselas and of Candide helped bring about, but could hardly have foreseen, a culture in which the most revered writers neither write nor read either sermons, or treatises on the nature of man and the universe."
I should get a job summarising people like Rorty. Or reorganising, restructuring and/or rewriting rambly, confusing and opaque essays such as this. And I actually think the other essay was easier to understand.

Was Hitler A 'British' Agent? - "Hallett says Hitler spent February to November 1912 being brainwashed and trained at the British Military Psych-Ops War School at Tavistock in Devon and in Ireland. "War machines need war and [that means they need] funded, trained and supported double agents to be their patsies, their puppets and their puppet enemies," Hallett writes... "Hitler was a British Agent" is useful as an alternative paradigm. (Usually we cannot recognize truth because we have the wrong paradigm, i.e. our "education.") When Hallett says "British", he means Illuminati, the Masonic cult of super rich bankers who control an interlocking network of megacartels. This cult is based in the City of London but uses England and most nations and ideologies, as sock puppets in a the Punch and Judy show called modern history."
This beats Chick tracts.

Fed up with Jamie? So try roadkill - rat or badger - "This man is a connoisseur of roadkill flesh and among the dishes likely to be served in his kitchen are casseroles made from squashed badger, hedgehog, otter, rat, rabbit or pheasant. His recipes may in future garner a wider following because he is writing a roadkill cookery book"

Supernatural selection - "Dennett opens his book by comparing religion to a parasite. The lancet fluke is a microorganism that, as part of its unlikely life cycle, lodges in the brain of an ant, turning it into a sort of ant zombie that every night crawls to the top of a blade of grass and waits to get eaten by a grazing cow or sheep, in whose liver the lancet fluke can propagate. Dennett is being provocative, but he is also making a point: Certain religious behaviors-abstinence, for example, or martyrdom, or ritually sacrificing livestock in the middle of a famine-can look decidedly, almost inexplicably, irrational both to nonbelievers and behavioral scientists, so much so that it might be worth asking who or what is actually benefiting from them."

Diary: Richard Dawkins - "One of my TV locations was a London school that follows the (American) Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) syllabus. The day after watching my show, three colleagues told me they had interviewed, for a place at university, a young woman who had been taught (not at the same school) using ACE. She turned out to be the worst candidate they had ever encountered. She had no idea that thinking was even an option: her job was either to know or guess the "right" answer. Worse, she had no clue how bad she was, having always scored at least 95 per cent in exams - the National Christian Schools Certificate (NCSC). Should my colleagues write to Ofsted about ACE and NCSC? Unfortunately, Ofsted is the organisation that gave a rave review to Tony Blair's pet city academy in Gateshead: a Christian school whose head of science thinks the entire universe began after the domestication of the dog."

100 Signs that you’re a fundamentalist Christian - This is even better than the Top 10 list. I tried to pick out my favourite 10 but there were too many.

Fear of Girls - True Love is but a +2 Broadsword away. - "Society has always scorned the truly unique, but that's a burden you choose to bear when you can bend the very walls of reality with the power of your imagination. That's a gift to be respected... It's like we're waging an epic battle"