Doing it for charidee, mate!
I got an email today from David Head, asking me to take part in his latest charity fund-raising venture. After checking out his blog - Mencap : 1,001 Generous People - I thought it was such a good idea that I followed the Donation Page link and signed up straightaway.
If you want to get involved, it’ll only cost you £5 (about $10) - although if you can afford it, I’m sure that David and Mencap will be very grateful if you give more - and you’ll be helping one of the UK’s longest established charities in the invaluable work that they do. If you’re a UK resident, remember to click the option that allows your donation to qualify for Gift Aid - that way, the Chancellor adds 28% to the amount you give; get something back for all that tax you pay!
So I say “Good Luck” to David and hope that he has to re-name his blog to Mencap : 10,001 Generous People.
This blog’s reading level
I love the comic Dork Tower and I also read the associated blog Muskrat Ramblings. The other day, I noticed a “Blog Reading Level” badge on one of the posts that I had not seen on anyone’s blog before. Intrigued, I clicked it.
What you get is this page, where you enter your blog URL and it tells you what reading level is needed to understand the blog. Muskrat gets a High School level, but The Wolf’s Howl gets a College (Undergrad) level; either you don’t have to be very intelligent to be a undergrad these days or my blog is better written than I thought it was. (Or maybe it’s worse than I thought it was, which is why you need a higher level of education to understand it).
Why not try it for yourself and see what you get. (And if you want to put the badge on your page, you might want to edit the HTML to take out what appears to be a hidden link).
Update: this post has apparently dragged me down - I now only get a High School level!
Stupid prosecution of the week
I couldn’t believe it - for all sorts of reasons - when I read this story on the BBC website. A Scottish man has been put on probation, and placed on the Sex Offenders Register, for having sex with his bicycle.
Quite how you have sex with a bike I’m not too sure, and even if you explain it to me I’m not sure I really want to know, but that’s between him and his Raleigh. What worries me about this case is that the man has been placed on the Sex Offenders Register (the same Register that all the convicted rapists, paedophiles, etc get put on) because he was “caught in the act” by two cleaning staff at the hostel where he was staying. The reason why this worries me is because he was behind a closed, locked door on his own with an inanimate object. He was not involving anyone else in his recreation, no animals, children or other adults were being harmed in any way, yet he has still been tarred with the same brush as people like Ian Huntley.
If the genders had been reversed and two male cleaners had walked into a room where a woman had been “entertaining” herself with some inanimate object, would this case have even been reported? I’m not so sure.
Another viewpoint
As you may or may not know, this blog is mirrored at Blogspot (http://wolfiebhowl.blogspot.com if you’re interested - there are occasional articles that don’t appear here) and my last post about Jehovah’s Witnesses and blood transfusions got a comment over there that I think is worth reproducing over here:
This WatchTower Society requirement that Jehovah’s Witnesses must refuse to accept any blood transfusions dates back only to 1945. Misinterpreting the Old Testament prohibition against eating animal blood as a routine food item, the WatchTower Society began teaching in 1945 that receiving a blood transfusion was “eating human blood”. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that receiving an infusion of human blood into their body’s circulatory system is scientifically the exact same thing as eating or ingesting blood into their body’s digestive system.
“A patient in the hospital maybe fed through the mouth, through the nose, or through the veins. When sugar solutions are given intravenously it is called intravenous feeding. So the hospital’s own terminology recognizes as feeding the process of putting nutrition into one’s system via the veins. Hence the attendant administering the transfusion is feeding the patient through the veins, and the patient receiving it is eating through his veins.” — The WATCHTOWER magazine, July 1, 1951.
Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to acknowledge that when human blood is transfused into their body’s circulatory system that the transfused human blood remains to be human blood and continues to function as human blood. Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to acknowledge that if blood is eaten, then the ingested blood enters the body’s digestive system, where the blood would be treated by the body exactly the same as it would treat a hotdog, a potato chip, or any other food item. Ingested blood would be completely digested and broken down into proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and waste; which are then either assimilated or excreted by the body.
The WatchTower Society uses scriptures which speak about the blood of slaughtered animals to teach Jehovah’s Witnesses that blood is “sacred” because blood is the “symbol of life”. Then, the WatchTower Society turns around and requires Jehovah’s Witnesses to sacrifice their own “life” to maintain the alleged “sacredness” of a “symbol” of the very thing they are sacrificing — their life. Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to acknowledge that the WatchTower doctrine on blood moronically places a higher value on the SYMBOL than it does on the THING SYMBOLIZED.
In fact, the Old Testament scriptures permitted the eating of unbled animal meat, which the Bible treats exactly the same as eating animal blood itself. In isolated occasions, when humans needed to eat unbled meat in order to sustain their own human life, the Mosaic Law permitted such, but then required the eaters to fulfill the requirements of being “unclean” for a few days. Thus, the Bible recognized that the sustaining of human life was more “sacred” than maintaining the sacredness of animal blood. To do otherwise would be doing exactly what the moronic WatchTower Society does. It would make the SYMBOL more SACRED than the THING SYMBOLIZED.
In fact, the WatchTower Society is leading Jehovah’s Witnesses to disobey GOD and violate the Holy Scriptures in one of the most serious ways possible. Because humans were created in GOD’s image, GOD considers human life sacred. A Jehovah’s Witness who sacrifices their SACRED LIFE in order to maintain the sacredness of a SYMBOL of that SACRED LIFE varies little from those who profane life by committing suicide. Those Jehovah’s Witness Elders who teach and police this moronic doctrine vary little from common accessories to murder. The Bible is fairly clear in how GOD views murder, and how He deals with Murderers.
This moronic twisting of scripture would be laughable if not for the fact that it has lead to the pointless deaths of numerous Jehovah’s Witnesses in the past, and it will continue to lead to the pointless deaths of many more Jehovah’s Witnesses in the future.
SUMMARIES OF 300 JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES LAWSUITS & COURT CASES
The following website summarizes over 315 U.S. court cases and lawsuits affecting children of Jehovah’s Witness Parents, including 200+ cases where the JW Parents refused to consent to life-saving blood transfusions for their dying children:
DIVORCE, BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS, AND OTHER LEGAL ISSUES AFFECTING CHILDREN OF JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES
http://jwdivorces.bravehost.com
Whether you’re like the goldfish and believe in God (”There must be a God; who else changes the water?”) or whether you’re like me and everyone I know who went to a Church school and don’t believe in God, can you explain why a family would let a young mother die? Belief in God is ordained by God; religion is created by man. Let’s remember the difference and not let things like this happen again.
“All I said was, that piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah”
I need to ask a question that has been raised by two related news articles I’ve just read (here and here).
A young woman has died after giving birth to healthy twins when her faith as a Jehovah’s Witness forbade her from having a blood transfusion. There is some speculation that she may still have died even if she’d had it, but no-one is 100% sure. Apparently, because of this verse in the Bible, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that blood transfusions are a sin:
“And any man from the house of Israel, or from the aliens who sojourn among them, who eats any blood, I will set My face against that person who eats blood, and will cut him off from among his people.” Leviticus 17:10
I’m sorry but I don’t see the connection; a blood transfusion is not “eating” blood. OK, you accept the blood of another into your body and maybe you can stretch the definition and call that eating, but it is a stretch. And let’s remember it is blood that has been freely given, without suffering on the part of the giver, for the greater good of all.
Maybe I could be swayed by the argument if it was just a question of semantics, or if it was just on a par with not eating fish on a Friday, but it’s not. You look at cases like this one and you have to ask: why? Why would you, as a mother-to-be, risk your life for a religious idea rather than hold to the physical certainty of the two children you’ve just given birth to? Why would your family allow you to do this? It’s obvious why the hospital allows it - they’d get sued to pieces if they intervened - but I can’t understand why, or how, the family could just stand by and let it happen. What are they going to tell that little boy and little girl as they grow up and wonder where their Mummy is?
Wolfs Stuff
Wolfs Helpers
