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Underemployment could be a society-side solution to class disparity caused by systemic unemployment. Think about mechanization especially: a single factory may have had 100x as many workers before robots, but all the remaining workers are still working full hours. Perhaps instead of concentrating that wealth in the investors, we could keep more like 1/2 of the workers earning the same wages for fewer hours. That way we could maintain a wider income distribution while improving overall quality of life. But there is a fundamental problem that may be intractable: human greed. The investors want the maximum return on investment for the robots they bought, whether or not that return comes at somebody else's expense. And the individual worker, with the opportunity to work 30 hrs/week for the same wage as their former 40 hrs/week, would usually rather keep their hours and earn 33% more.

While there's a lot more written in this discussion thread, I'll stop with that.

There's this idea that work is broken. We're working too much, paid too little, and employers are fat cats leeching off our work. So we're going to force everyone to work less so that these employers have to pay us more. There's a certain sense to it. Lowering the hours worked per week constrains the supply of labor and hence, in a vacuum would raise to some degree the price of labor.

But then we start getting into the many, many problems. The most obvious is simply that work does things and makes stuff. The less we work, then the less things we do and the less stuff we make. This is a problem in a variety of ways.

It means we're doing considerably less overall - the virtues of that level of underemployment aren't enough to compensate for the drawbacks. And I doubt it's a great idea to slow down the rate of progress just for some labor policy. For example, I'd much rather we at least get the developing world up to developed world status and some major progress on human longevity done before we dial back.

That output of work also pays for our labor. The less we do, then the less output there is to pay for our labor.

We also have large fixed costs per worker in the developed world. The less labor per worker the more these costs dominate. That means yet another way employers end up employing less people.

Moving on, another key observation here is that work (not effort!) and employment are not fixed. We can always find more stuff to do, we can find ways to do that stuff better, we can start new businesses, or change existing ones. This leads to another observation. Why curb supply of labor when we can increase demand for labor? Well, that would require throwing bones to employers such as reduced minimum wage; easier employment termination; lower thresholds to business creation, growth, and shrinkage; lower taxes; and reduced mandatory benefits.

One notices a striking component of these work reduction proposals. The employer is the enemy often labeled as "human greed" (as in meustrus's comment) or as the impersonal "investor". Somehow it's not human greed to pass laws to force employers to pay you the same for less work (on top of all the other wealth extraction ploys out there) even though you're pursuing your own benefit at the expense of the employer and threatening the viability of the whole system. But it is human greed just to be an employer. So of course, throwing bones to employers is unthinkable and we are left with this dysfunctional spiral.

Who's more important? A horde of underemployed workers who can't do stuff for themselves? Or the relatively few employers who keep everything going? Sure, you need workers, but when you're in an underemployed situation, there are too many of them and not enough employers.

And of course, the idea of forcing this change on everyone, the unspoken iron fist in this discussion, is completely ignored. In a free society, we certainly should have the choice to work harder to better ourselves and circumstances.

So here's my take on the whole matter. Breaking work further will not make it better, particularly in a world which already has attractive substitute goods for your labor: developing world labor and automation. The perverse and stilted ideology behind this proposal will not consider the obvious alternative, making employing people more attractive.

The proposed benefits of labor reduction are laughable such as income equality (devaluing labor hurts the poor far more than the rich making income inequality worse), inflation prevention (making stuff that people pay money for is deflationary so forcing people to make less stuff is inflationary), better quality of life (why do I need to work less to make your life better? Perhaps, you ought to unilaterally work less? I'm not holding you back), and of course fighting the good fight against human greed (human greed has always been with us, why is it suddenly more of a problem now than the past?).

So how about we fix what actually is broken or do something positive rather than entertain proposals that aren't even pointed in the right direction to fix anything or help anyone?

The FBI could not review all of the Hillary Clinton emails under investigation because: The Clintons’ Apple personal server used for Hillary Clinton work email could not be located for the FBI to examine.

• An Apple MacBook laptop and thumb drive that contained Hillary Clinton email archives were lost, and the FBI couldn’t examine them.
• 2 BlackBerry devices provided to FBI didn’t have their SIM or SD data cards.
• 13 Hillary Clinton personal mobile devices were lost, discarded or destroyed. Therefore, the FBI couldn’t examine them.
• Various server backups were deleted over time, so the FBI couldn’t examine them.
• After State Dept. notified Hillary Clinton her records would be sought by House Benghazi Committee, copies of her email on the laptops of her attorneys Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson were wiped with BleachBit, and the FBI couldn’t review them.
• After her emails were subpoenaed, Hillary Clinton’s email archive was also permanently deleted from her then-server “PRN” with BleachBit, and the FBI couldn’t review it.
• Also after the subpoena, backups of the PRN server were manually deleted.

Notice the "after the subpoena" stuff at the end of the list. That's destruction of evidence which is likely yet another felony for whoever did that. After that, the report lists all classified information that was discovered from what emails the FBI investigators were able to reconstruct; a list of Clinton players involved in the scandal; and a timeline. The timeline repeatedly lists concerns raised about the email setup, security training for Clinton and her staff, events like destruction of evidence, and hacking attempts, some which were successful, into State Department affairs and personal email accounts of State Department officials and Clinton associates.

Thus, we have strong evidence for gross negligence, which is a felony even if it is not intentional, evidence of coverup of something, and a presidential candidate with a remarkable disregard for the responsibilities of her duties.

Since the Great British Public voted by a narrow margin to show its un-wiped bare backsides to our closest, friendliest, most valuable trading partners (Brexit) in order to pursue potential trade deals with the economic powerhouse that is Australia, and to make TTIP easier to get done, I've had much less time and inclination to be interested in technology, unfortunately. Instead, I've been incubating a nervous breakdown playing at slapping the Kipper on the web sites of some national newspapers. My country (the UK) may be on the brink of disintegrating, after all.

We've suffered from simplistic right-wing ideology in government, and our social care systems and National Health Service (you know, that filthy commie thing we have where we pay money to have a free-at-the-point-of-use medical service for the benefit of us plebs and everyone else with no profit motive for corporations and the aristocracy) are. perhaps deliberately, being allowed to atrophy due to mismanagement and under-investment, so that they can be turned over to for-profit companies...

So here's my paranoid-delusional discourse. It applies to PHBs as well, so is relevant to the technology sector.

You have to think like a Tory (Conservative or UKIP) to understand the predicament the NHS and social care organisations are in.

To a Tory, the only thing with value is material wealth and anything that distracts from the maximisation of realising wealth is at best frivolous and at worst evil.

Little People (those not wealthy enough to live off their capital) are a danger to that if they are not work-producing units operating at maximum efficiency. So we have the phenomenon of the Useless Eaters. IDS, Gove and Osborne did their level best to reduce the number of Useless Eaters to protect the wealth.

However, sociopathic the Tory may be, he or she is not entirely stupid. They realise that amongst the population there are bleeding hearts and wooly-minded liberals who have an intrinsic irrepressible compulsion to value their fellow human being for no "rational" (wealth-related) reason.

Two things are implied here. The Tory realises that the "lefty" has a vote and influence on the political process and direction of society and, in order to maintain power, must pay lip-service to this. Hence, the NHS and welfare state is not quite dead yet, and is given almost enough money to limp along.

Secondly, the Tory knows that the "lefty" values the Useless Eater above wealth and so is intrinsically motivated (no money necessary) to provide assistance to said Useless Eater. Therefore the Tory knows that funding can be cut continually because the "lefty" will work itself to death out of this empathy for the Useless Eater.

Your PHB and its superiors may frequently say things like, "You're all professionals, so I know you'll be on board with this. We have to tighten our belts and redouble our efforts. We have to be grown-up about this. The market may be going through some difficulties, but we have to look after our investors." The PHB knows that your Little Person brain that feels intrinsic responsibility to your fellow human being can be used to produce more wealth for Righty with less expense.

Two cheeks of the same behind, as it were.

I don't fit in here. In fact, I don't fit in anywhere. Life's more fun that way. Wouldn't it be boring if we were all god-fearing, gun-toting "free-market" corporate lackey Libertarians?

Something amusing has turned up in my messages today. Someone called Coniptor has made me his/her/its foe. It's quite a list.

Let the games begin.

Let me walk you through the basics of Frustration and Mortification, ehem, I mean Fan and Mortar Geysers. These two erupt together and when active, the intervals typically fall every 3-7 days. Here's a labeled photo for reference.

Normally, Fan goes through cycles in which its vents turn on in a certain order. After a quiet period (during which Mortar may splash lightly from Bottom or Lower), River Vent turns on. River actually erupts horizontally, away from your perspective in the photo above - so figuring out when River is on either involves using heavy steam as a proxy or walking 100 meters up the path to the bridge where you can get a clear view of it. High and Gold begin to splash and are considered on when the splashing becomes nearly constant. Finally, Angle turns on with a swishing sound. The cycle ends when River turns off again - a single cycle can be anywhere from 20 to 70 minutes, typically.

Every once and a while, an event cycle occurs, simply meaning something different happens. Here's where things get complicated. Main Vent is not a friend to Fan's other vents, and splashing in Main Vent often leads to pauses in activity from the other event. Here's a timeline for what we might consider an "ideal" event cycle:

Main Vent splashing.....River Vent on.....River Vent pause.....River Vent on.....River Vent pause.....River Vent on.....no more Main Vent splashing.....High/Gold Vents on.....Angle Vent on

The final component needed for an eruption is called lock. In lock, High Vent erupts steadily to a height of 1.5-2 meters (5-6 feet), and Gold/Angle Vents splash continuously. An eruption may be initiated from East or Main Vent, or in Upper Mortar. Soon all the vents take off. Upper Mortar reaches 23 meters (80 feet), Main Vent hits over 30 meters (100 feet), and East Vent shows off an impressive horizontal throw that will absolutely get you wet. The following photos are from a particularly strong eruption on August 12th, 2014. Note the drenched people and the beautiful jets from Upper Mortar.

Anyway, back to my story. I came as an event cycle petered out and say on a bench. About 9am after watching nearby Riverside go off, we noticed a pause with almost all activity, particularly that of the River Vent on Fan Geyser, going quiet. One of my cowatchers stated that the pause was rather long, meaning it might just lead to an eruption later that day. He advised I stick around. Despite getting hungry, I decided to heed his advice. Just before 10am, one of the observers saw a bit of water splash in the Main Vent. I was thinking, dude, it was just a little splash. About 15 minutes later it did it again.

Now, you might ask yourself, what's the draw in watching a pile of rock emit steam and water for three hours? Even when the geysers aren't doing the real thing, there's a lot of interplay and activity. It's always doing something. Fan is the main performer here with six major vents running in a line across its mound. River Vent faces the Firehole River, of course, and provides the main indicator of the "event cycle" described above. The three vents across the top, Top, Gold, and Angle Vent all spurt steaming water and often rob power from one another. Then opposite the river are Main and finally East Vent which are the main soakers of the audience when a major eruption happens.

Meanwhile Mortar Geyser groans and hisses ominously. You could always tell when the Upper Mortar Vent was steaming because of the deep growl it emitted while nearby Bottom Mortar Vent would near continuously hiss even during the quiet periods.

So there was always something going on. After 10am, the Fan Geyser vents on the top (Top, Gold, and Angle) resumed activity and soon, we spotted the second singular splash in Fan's Main. That was faithfully radioed in at 10:15am. By this time, I noticed that we were building up a small crowd. Soon after, Top started erupting continually indicating considerable activity. But the other two by it, Gold and Angle would only erupt fitfully with Angle having very little activity. As noted above, we were now looking for "lock" all three vents going simultaneously and continually. The crowd kept building up to I'd guess around 100 people.

Some point after 10:30am, we got a key escalation with water splashing out of the Upper Mortar cone. Shortly after that, lock happened. That's about when the build up of the video above started. You can see Mortar Geyser on the left side with sporadic splashing and the mound of Fan Geyser behind and to the right with steam shooting into the river from the River Vent and the three vents on top steadily erupting to a few feet (the "lock" of course). Then there are larger spurts from the Upper Mortar Vent which shortly cascade into a full-blown eruption from every vent in the video (at 10:48). I was between the spot of the video and the main brunt of the East Fan Vent so I got wet, but didn't get a face full of water. People cleared out of that space quickly.

In addition to my parka, I also wore a hat. That turned out to be a great idea since I would have gotten completely soaked otherwise. The eruptions are hard to video because they generate a huge cloud of steam (and silica rich spray too, hard on lens!) quickly, hiding the details. But moving around, I could see the vents and where the water eventually fell.

Just as with the build up, there was some weird dynamics with power shifting between the two geysers. One geyser would surge with its vents and the other fade a little, back and forth.

I think the build up and eruptive dynamics make this one of the most spectacular geysers in the world though you have to be very lucky to see it erupt, if you don't have the time to sit around to wait on it. The local Old Faithful Visitors Center would have information on recent Fan and Mortar activity and they would be good to consult, if you're just traveling through.

After about ten minutes, the eruption stopped and the geysers entered a heavy steam phase. At that point, I headed off to bed.

Related: check out this awesome video.

By request, these are our top resident wiseasses, clowns, and wit smiths:

By count: Nick Funny Mods %Funny wonkey_monkey60635% aristarchus59625% c0lo58522% Ethanol-fueled43113% VLM3809% bob_super35624% maxwell demon35520% Tork29720% frojack2574% Bot25337%

By percent: Nick Funny Mods %Funny Anne Nonymous16960% Buck Feta19755% Bot25337% DECbot12137% skullz10137% Gaaark21536% wonkey_monkey60635% JeanCroix9232% jimshatt9530% davester66624129%

A tip of the hat to @wonkey_monkey: and @Bot: for being the only ones to make both lists. Their asses are indeed wise.

Looks like I'm going to have to up my game if I want to make the list next time.

Here we go again. AC is excluded of course because he cheats by having tens of thousands of people do his posting for him.

By count: Nick Trolls %Troll Ethanol-fueled56517% Runaway19563097% jmorris23712% The Mighty Buzzard21910% aristarchus2179% frojack1503% Hairyfeet1499% zugedneb9025% khallow876% VLM802% By percent: Nick Trolls %Troll zugedneb9025% Ethanol-fueled56517% Khyber2015% jmorris23712% The Mighty Buzzard21910% jasassin3010% aristarchus2179% Hairyfeet1499% TLA148% Runaway19563097%

A tip of the hat to the returning champions and a hearty welcome aboard to the newcomers.

(Version with photos is at My web log)
        I had more fun this weekend than I have in years! Patty and I attended this year’s World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City.
        Patty had said that she would be at my mom’s house in Belleville around one, and I got there a little before.
        She got caught in construction work traffic in Indiana, and we didn’t get on the road until three. Traffic was terrible, not just through St Louis but all the way there. We decided to go straight to the convention; we could check in to the hotel later.
        We got parked (finally), and went in through the light rain, which would be a hard rain later, and cold wind. There inside the building sat Dr. Who’s Tardis! There was a door handle, and Patty decided to see if it would open. She walked up to it, and it moved away!
        That was the first really cool thing we saw, but not the coolest by far.
        We got to the place to get our badges, and oops: I forgot the magic numbers: the membership and PIN numbers. All I could do was hope we could get in, anyway -- I had the emails from worldcon on my phone.
        It turned in not to be a problem, as they had us in their computer systems. Patty’s name tag said “Patty McGrew”, mine said simply “mcgrew”. A helpful lady in a scooter gave us the lowdown on everything. I asked where the nearest drinking fountain was, and she said that bottled water, soda, and snacks were free in the exhibit hall.
        I got a bottle of water and Patty got a soda. We wandered around and came across a life sized cardboard cutout of an astronaut, and someone said a real astronaut was there. There was a fellow in a business suit, the first business suit I’d seen and asked him if he were the astronaut.
        “No, she is,” he said, gesturing towards a trim, fit, attractive black woman in a green dress.
        I’ve never been one to be starstruck. I’d met dozens, probably hundreds of celebrities while pumping gas for Disney World between 1980 and 1985 – major league baseball, basketball, and football players; professional golfers, more than one who became irate because I didn’t recognize them, despite the fact that I’ve hated that sport since my first job at age sixteen, working as a groundskeeper (“If anybody has to work that damned hard for me to play a silly game, I’m done with golf”); Rock and pop stars (one of whom, Cris Cross, was a complete and total jerk, but most were pleasant enough)...
        And Movie stars. My favorite movie star was Buddy Hackett, a really nice guy. Knowing he had done Disney movies, I told him if he were an employee I could give him a discount. He said he had before and may be again. “Yes,” I said, “I recognized you” and told him my favorite movie was Mad Mad World. He grimaced.
        “I hated that movie,” he said. “It was hot, half the actors were not very nice and Mickey Rooney was an asshole and Jim Backus...” (the actor who played the rich guy in Gilligan’s Island) “...was always flubbing his lines because he was always drunk.
        “My favorite movie was The Love bug,” he said. “we had SO much fun making that movie!” He had quite a few tales about that movie.
        He said he was there to talk to the brass about an upcoming movie, which he didn’t name but was The Little Mermaid, where he played... I’ve forgotten, I took my kids when they were little.
        It was a very pleasant conversation. He gave me his credit card, I ran it through the machine, the old-fashioned kind with carbon paper, returned his card, thanked him, and he drove off. I mentioned to my co-workers, who all were star-struck, who I had just served. They didn’t believe me, so I showed them the card receipt and they all went ape-shit.
        John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd stopped by and the star-struck dummies I worked with kept pestering them and they kept repeating that they’d never heard of those guys. “Guys, if they say they’re not John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd
  they’re not!”
        As they were leaving, one of them winked and thanked me. The morons I worked with seemed not to realize that the only difference between them and us was that they had better jobs.
        And then I met NASA engineer and astronaut Jeanette J. Epps at Worldcon, and for the first time in my life I WAS star-struck. This woman had been in outer space (or rather, will be in 2018)! I had a very pleasant conversation with her. She asked if I wrote science fiction, and I told her “yeah, but I read more of it than I write.” It seems she was as impressed by meeting a science fiction writer as I was by meeting an astronaut! At her questioning I told her Sputnik launched when I was six, I watched Armstrong land on the moon, and while living in Florida I saw every shuttle launch before the Challenger accident... and the look on her face told me no astronaut likes to think of that.
        She said she was envious, to see all that history with my own eyes. I told her I was envious of folks Patty’s age. “Now, only a select, elite few ever make it to space but by the time Patty is my age, space will be open to everyone.”
        By then, the word “astronaut” would be as disused as the word “Aviator” is now, as everyone would be able to visit space. After all, there was no such thing as an airplane when my grandmother was born, the first airplane flight being six months later, and she flew on several planes and saw men in space land on the moon. Yuri Gagarin flew into space twenty sic years before Patty was born.
        We talked of America’s inability to send people to space (I got the idea that she didn’t like Russian rockets) and I countered that at least we could launch cargo, and would soon have our own capsule. “Three of them,” she said. I took Patty’s picture with her and shook her hand. She indicated she wanted to see us again the next day (today; the awards are presented tonight; I’m typing a draft in the hotel and will finish when we get home) and I assured her we’d be back. I intend to give her a copy of Nobots if I see her today.
        As Patty and I walked off, I realized that for the first time in my life I was star-struck. This woman was not only an engineer (all the astronauts are, if I’m not mistaken, scientists and engineers) but an astronaut! “That alone was worth the price of admission,” I told Patty with a huge smile on my face, and she was as impressed as I was.
        Dr. Epps was one of the few black people I saw there. There were more Chinese alone, and Japanese, than black people. I saw more blacks in my hotel than in the teeming masses at the convention. I met one black fellow later, an overweight gentleman who said he was an actor from New York. For all I know, he was in Hamilton.
        S/N ran a piece last week about “racism in SF” and I can tell you that there are few black SF writers because black SF fans are almost nonexistent.
        The crowd was almost as Caucasian as a Donald Trump rally.
        Most of the night was that good. I took Patty’s picture as she sat on the throne from Game of Thrones, she took my picture with some alien Japanese monster. However, the weather got to me – it got cold outside, and with the huge building’s air conditioning it was cold inside and my arthritis started aching terribly. But the pain didn’t stop me from having a great time.
        There was a very short man in a Jedi robe, a woman with a robotic baby dragon, and lots of booths put up by cities hoping to host a worldcon. Dublin wants it in 2019, and God if it’s there I want to go! Ireland’s on my bucket list, anyway.
        They were raffling stuff off, some of it really expensive stuff, so we each got a ticket.
        We didn’t win anything.
        After the raffle we drove to the hotel, checked in, and went to our rooms.

Day Two:
        I’d gotten to bed about two, and since I can’t seem to sleep when it’s light I got up about seven. There was a strange small coffeemaker, two packets that said they were coffee, but no basket.
        So I took the elevator down to the lobby, hoping to find coffee. Coffeeless, I pushed the wrong button on the elevator and it stopped on the second floor, and there were two computers for guests. I decided to write when I was awake enough; the previous night I had regretted bringing a computer.
        Not only was there coffee, there was breakfast. I got a cup of coffee and went back up to my room to read and watch the news. Back down for more coffee and a thumb drive, and on the way back up I stopped on the second floor to write.
        No such luck, there were two young teens at the two computers. So I went back up to read some more. Patty was sleeping and wouldn’t wake up. It was her rental car, and I considered taking a cab to the convention center, but didn’t.
        While reading, I heard strange sounds outside the window, three stories down. Looking out through the screen, I saw the Kids on skateboards. Good, I could write!
        My coffee was empty after writing for a half hour or so, so I went back downstairs to fill my cup, and back to my room, again considering a cab. It was eight-thirty, so I called Patty’s phone again. This time she answered, and I informed her that she had twenty minutes to get breakfast.
        She came back up after breakfast and said she needed to lay down a little while and would be half an hour or so. She said she wasn’t feeling well, which was understandable since she’d driven from Cincinnati to Kansas City the day before, and we’d been at the convention until after midnight.
        Oddly, despite only sleeping five hours the night before, I was fine, wide awake.
        We got to the convention about eleven-thirty or so, too late to meet Dr. Epps again. But we discovered that the daytime was a lot more busy and had a lot more to see – and buy. I bought three tee shirts, and so many books I won’t be at the library for months. One was Star Prince Charlie, co-written by Poul Anderson and Gordon Dickson, signed by its editor. At least, I think it’s the editor’s signature. There was all sorts of cool stuff, like the bridge of the Enterprise and a huge sculpture of the part of the Death Star that Luke Skywalker blew up, made from Legos and including Luke’s and another pilot’s craft.
        The illustration here is from one of the tee shirts I bought. The title of the book the robot is reading is “Tomorrow is Now”, which makes me wonder if the artist has read Yesterday’s Tomorrows. If so, I’m flattered.
        Then I met David Gerrold, who has been writing and selling science fiction since he was twelve, which is an interesting story in itself. He had written a screenplay called The Trouble with Tribbles and sent it, unsolicited, to Paramount. Paramount, like all film studios, return unsolicited manuscripts unopened.
        However, they had no script for the next Star Trek episode and were becoming panicked. They read, then after several rewrites, filmed the script. He’s been making a living at it ever since. The September issue of S&SF is dedicated to him, and he signed a copy of it and I bought it from him.
        There were more nerds than I’d ever seen at once, far more. And every one of them was smiling. I had pleasant conversations with several people, including a gentleman from the Kansas City library.
        Carrying around what felt like fifty pounds of books and short on sleep, I decided to get the car keys from Patty and put the swag in the trunk.
        I must have walked around for miles carrying that load trying to find the car. Hot and tired I was stumbling like a drunk, and when I fell down I decided it was time to surrender, and staggered back to the convention center, still hauling my load.
        I ran across the librarian, who grinned and said, as has been written in so many science fiction stories and comic books, “So – We meet again!”
        I stumbled back in and got a bottle of water and sat on a couch towards the back of the hall; my back was killing me. I tried to call Patty, but she wasn’t answering. I was starting to worry, as my phone battery was getting low, and she had my battery charging battery in her purse. Ten minutes later, my water empty, I decided to get a beer. I tried calling again – no luck. I sat back down on the couch again as my phone rang; it was Patty. I told her where I was and she couldn’t find me.
        “Do you know where that big screen is?” she asked. I answered “Yes, I can see it from here.”
        “Stand under it!” I did, and she found me. We sat at a table by the screen and I plugged my phone into the charging battery. There was a heavy black man in a polo shirt, one of the incredibly few black people there. There was an engineering company logo on his shirt.
        “So,” I asked, “Are you an engineer?”
        “No, but I play one on television.”
        Patty had gone for snacks and I had a pleasant conversation with the actor, about SF in general and the convention in general.
        Patty came back with some veggies; raw broccoli and cherry tomatoes and cheese. We ate it and walked around some more.
        There were a couple dozen people in various science fiction costumes. One was a very short man in a Jedi outfit that I mentioned earlier. I could swear I’ve seen the guy on-screen somewhere.
        We decided we’d seen everything there was to see there by three, so went back to the tables by the screen. It had been beaming some sort of thing that was going on in the auditorium the night before, but only a static photo now. We had a conversation with a couple of folks who looked about my age, two men and a woman. The woman and one man and I talked about science fiction and art, the other man, who was with the woman, was largely silent. Patty had gone to the restroom.
        I decided to get a slice of pizza and a beer at the Papa Johns booth, which looked like a permanent part of the place. A very small four piece pizza was eight bucks, and a pint can of Budweiser was six, twice what a Guinness was in any bar at home. But I was having too much fun to worry about my bank balance or credit card bills.
        I ate one slice, and nobody else wanted any. The three left, and a while later we made our way to the auditorium to watch the Hugos be presented. “Too bad we got here too late to see Dr. Epps again,” I said.
        “I saw her when you were looking for the car,” she said, “but she was with people looking busy so I didn’t bother her.”
        We got pretty good seats toward the front, but it was still forty five minutes before the ceremonies started. I used the rest room and got another beer, this time a Corona; beer choices were pretty limited.
        Finally it started. The Master of Ceremonies was Pat Cadigan, a woman who had won a hugo decades ago, and she would have made a pretty good stand-up comedian.
        She came on stage holding a bull whip and after telling everyone to silence their phones, admonished us “Don’t make me use this!” Her whip was the center of many jokes by many people on stage.
        I’d been disappointed since 2012 when I read The Martian that it hadn’t gotten the Hugo it deserved, and apparently I wasn’t alone, because Andy Wier got two of them this year. One was “best new writer”, probably since it was years too late to award it for the book, and one for Best Long Version Photoplay for the movie version, that even beat Star Wars!
        Mr. Wier wasn’t there. An astronaut in his astronaut uniform accepted the award in his place for “best new writer”.
        When “ Best Long Version Photoplay” came around, another astronaut in uniform accepted it for him: None other than Dr. Epps! I gave her a standing ovation, but no one else did.
        I haven’t had that much fun in years! I spent a fortune, but it was worth every penny.

The Strange Teachings of Muhammad: necrophilia, incest, homosexuality, slavery and menstrual blood fetish
  The Strange Teachings of Muhammad

By: FrontPage Magazine

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Coptic priest Fr. Zakaria Botros, who al Qaeda has called “one of the most wanted infidels in the world,” issuing a 60 million dollar bounty on his head. Popular Arabic magazines also call him “Islam’s public enemy #1“. He hosts a television program, “Truth Talk,” on Life TV. His two sites are Islam-Christianity.net andFatherZakaria.net. He was recently awarded the Daniel of the Year award.

FP: Fr. Zakaria Botros, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Botros: Thank you for inviting me.

FP: Let’s begin with your own personal story, in terms of Islam and Christianity.

Botros: I am a Copt. In my early 20s, I became a priest. Of course, in predominantly Muslim Egypt, Christians—priests or otherwise—do not talk about religion with Muslims. My older brother, a passionate Christian learned that lesson too late: after preaching to Muslims, he was eventually ambushed by Muslims who cut out his tongue and murdered him. Far from being deterred or hating Muslims, I eventually felt more compelled to share the Good News with them. Naturally, this created many problems: I was constantly harassed, threatened, and eventually imprisoned and tortured for one year, simply for preaching to Muslims. Egyptian officials charged me with abetting “apostasy,” that is, for being responsible for the conversion of Muslims to Christianity. Another time I was arrested while boarding a plane out of Egypt. Eventually, however, I managed to flee my native country and resided for a time in Australia and England. Anyway, my life-story with Christianity and Islam is very long and complicated. In fact, an entire book about it was recently published.

FP: I apologize for asking this, but what were some of the tortures you endured when you were imprisoned?

Botros: Due to my preaching the Gospel, Egyptian soldiers broke into my home putting their guns to my head. Without telling me why, they arrested me and placed me in an extremely small prison cell (1.8×1.5×1.8 meters, which was further problematic, since I am 1.83 meters tall), with other inmates, and in well over 100 degree temperatures, with little ventilation, no windows, and no light. No beds of course, we slept on the floor—in shifts, as there was not enough room for all of us to lie down. Due to the lack of oxygen, we used to also take shifts lying with our noses under the crack of the cell door to get air. As a result, I developed a kidney infection (receiving, of course, no medical attention). Mosquitoes plagued us. Food was delivered in buckets; we rarely even knew what the gruel was. The prison guards would often spit in the bucket in front of us, as well as fling their nose pickings in it.

FP: My heart goes out to you in terms of this terrible suffering you endured.

What is your primary purpose in what you do?

Botros: Simple: the salvation of souls. As I always say, inasmuch as I may reject Islam, I love Muslims. Thus, to save the latter, I have no choice but to expose the former for the false religion it is. Christ commanded us to spread the Good News. There is no rule that says Christians should proselytize the world—except for Muslims! Of course, trying to convert the latter is more dangerous. But we cannot forsake them. This is more important considering that many Muslims are “religious” and truly seek to please God; yet are they misdirected. So I want to take their sincerity and piety and direct it to the True Light.

FP: In what way can you summarize for us why you think that Islam is a “false” religion?

Botros: Theologically, as I am a Christian priest, I believe that only Christianity offers the truth. Based on my faith in Christ, I reject all other religious systems as man-made and thus not reflective of divine truths. Moreover, one of the greatest crimes committed by Muhammad—a crime which he shall surely never be forgiven for—is that he denied the grace and mercy that Christ brought, and took humanity back to the age of the law.

But faith aside, common sense alone makes it clear that, of all the world’s major religions, Islam is most certainly false. After all, while I may not believe in, say, Buddhism, still, it obviously offers a good philosophical system and people follow it apparently for its own intrinsic worth. The same cannot be said about Islam. Of all the religions it is the only one that has to threaten its adherents with death if they try to break away; that, from its inception, in order to “buy” followers, has been dedicated to fulfilling some of the worst impulses of man—for conquest, sex, plunder, pride. History alone demonstrates all this: while Christianity was spread far and wide by Christians who altruistically gave up their lives, simply because they believed in Christ, Islam spread by force, by the edge of the sword, by fear, threats, and lurid enticements to the basest desires of man. Islam is by far the falsest religion—an assertion that is at once theologically, philosophically, and historically demonstrable.

FP: You always document your discussions with Islamic sources. Why do Muslim clerics and imams have such a difficulty discussing what Islam itself teaches and instead just attack you personally?

Botros: I think the answer is obvious. The Islamic sources, the texts, speak for themselves. Muslims have no greater enemy than their own scriptures—particularly the Hadith and Sira—which constantly scandalize and embarrass Muslims. To date, I have done well over 500 different episodes dedicated to various topics regarding Islam. And for every one of these episodes, all my material comes directly from Islam’s textual sources, particularly usul al-fiqh—the Koran, hadith, and ijma of the ulema as found in their tafsirs.

So what can the sheikhs of Islam do? If they try to address the issue I raise based on Islam’s texts and sharia, they will have no choice but to agree—for instance that concubinage is legal, or that drinking camel urine is advocated. The only strategy left them, then, is to ignore all that I present and attack my person, instead.

And when well-meaning Muslims ask their leaders to respond to these charges, one of their favorite responses is to quote the Koran, where it says “Do not ask questions of things that will hurt you.”

FP: So what does it say about a religion whose religious teachers and members have to ignore their own theological texts because they cannot endure what those texts really say? What sense does any of this make?

Botros: Again, this is a reflection of the fact that Islam is less a faith, more a vehicle for empowerment. As you say, what is the point for a person to closely guard and follow a religion that he himself has to rationalize, ignore, minimize, constantly reinterpret, dissemble over, and so forth? The fact is, most Muslims do not know what is in their own texts; at best, they know, and here and there try to follow, the Five Pillars. This is why the issues I broach often traumatize Muslims—like a freshening slap across the face: a short, sharp, shock. The stubborn, who take it as an attack of “us versus them,” irrespective of truths, just fume and plot to kill me; the other, more reasonable Muslims, who are really searching for the truth, end up waking up to the biggest hoax perpetrated on the human race in 1400 years, and many come to the ultimate Truth.

A better question is why do the ulema hide these issues from both infidel scrutiny as well as the eyes of the average Muslim? One would think that if anyone is dedicated to the truth it would be the ulema; yet their deceptive tactics reveal the opposite. For instance, it is often the case that, after I quote problematic passages from certain Islamic books, they have a strange tendency of disappearing from the book shelves of the Arabic world.

The bottom line is, many Muslims think of Islam less as a spiritual system dedicated to ascertaining and putting one on the course of the truth, and more a way of life—first and foremost not to be questioned—that if followed closely, will result, not only in future paradise, but earthly success, honor, and power.

FP: You have pointed to a hadith that instructs women to breastfeed men. What exactly is going on here and what do the ulema (prominent Muslim theologians past and present) have to say?

Botros: This is a perfect example of what I just said. After I made popular the Islamic notion of rida‘ al-kabir—wherein women must “breastfeed” strange men in order to be in their presence—instead of confronting their own hadiths which documented this, the ulema attacked me. Why? Because they have no answer. Much easier to turn it around and slander me, instead of simply addressing their own texts.

Past and present, the ulema have by and large supported this shameful practice—including Ibn Taymiyya, “sheikh al-Islam.” Moreover, sometime after I publicly documented rida‘ al-kabir, a top Islamic scholar in al-Azhar—the most authoritative institution in Sunni Islam—actually issued a fatwa authorizing Muslim women to “breastfeed” strange men, to which the Egyptian populace (happily) revolted. Yet when I alone mentioned it earlier, I was accused of “distorting” Islam.

FP: So Islamic texts command that women must breastfeed strange men. Ok, so who would create such an instruction? For what purpose? Who even wrote this down and thought of it? Le’s even say that I am being open-minded and am ready to accept this as an understandable teaching. What’s the rationale here? Yes, women should breastfeed strange men because. . . .?

Botros: Because Muhammad—“Allah’s prayers and blessings be upon him”—said so. Period. Who created such a practice? Muhammad. Why? Who knows; the texts say he laughed after commanding the woman to breastfeed that man. Maybe he was joking around, trying to see how far people will believe in him as a prophet? The top hadith compilers wrote it down, preserving it for later generations. As for what purpose does it serve, one can ask that question about any number of things Muhammad said: what purpose does drinking camel urine serve? What purpose does commanding men to wear only silver as opposed to gold serve? What purpose does banning music serve? What purpose does anathematizing dogs serve? What purpose does commanding people to eat only with their right hands, never their left, serve? What purpose does commanding Muslims to lick all their fingers after eating serve? Simple: sharia law’s totalitarian approach serves to brainwash Muslims, making them automatons that never question their religion, or, in the words of their own Koran, “Do not ask questions that may prove harmful to them.”

FP: Tell us a bit about Muhammed’s sex life as documented by Islamic sources.

Botros: This is a very embarrassing topic for me to discuss; and I only do so out of my love for Muslims—though I know it is painful for them to hear. Yet such is how healing begins, through initial pain and suffering. In short, according to Islam’s scriptures, Muhammad was, well, a pervert: he used to suck on the tongues of young boys and girls; he dressed in women’s clothing (and received “revelations” in this state); he had at least 66 “wives”; Allah supposedly sent him special “revelations” allowing him to have sex with his step-daughter-in-law, Zainab, and to have more wives than the rest of Muslims; he constantly dwelt and obsessed over sex—his first question to a “talking donkey” was if the latter “liked sex”—and he painted a very lurid and lusty picture of paradise, where, according to some top Muslim interpreters, Muslims will be “busy deflowering virgins” all day; and he had sex with a dead woman. There is more, but why dwell on such shameful things? Again, I stress, it is not I who maintains this but rather Islam’s own books—much, of course, not known to non-Arabic readers, as they have never been translated (except, as I understand, by some heroes at a website called Jihad Watch).

FP: Yes, that’s our friend Robert Spencer’s website.

But wait, here’s the key. Many people right now will point at you and make accusations against you for saying these supposedly horrible things. But again, the issue is not that you are making these allegations. The issue is that Islamic scriptures themselves say it. So if Muslims are offended or shocked by these realities then they must confront their own scriptures and deal with them. They need to confront who wrote them and why, and either accept them or categorically reject them as lies, etc.

For the record, pinpoint some Islamic scriptures for us that detail these ingredients of Muhammad’s sex life so that, once again, we crystallize that the issue is not you making accusations, but simply revealing what Islamic scriptures themselves say.

Botros: Where does one start? According to the Koran alone (33:37), Allah made it legitimate for Muhammad to marry his own daughter-in-law, whom he lusted after. A few verses later (33:50), Allah made it legitimate for Muhammad to have sex with any woman who “offered” herself to him—a privilege which was allowed for Muhammad alone. Indeed, these “revelations” which granted Muhammad all his sexual desires were so frequent that his child-wife, Aisha, would often say to Muhammad, “My, your Lord is always quick to fulfill your desires!” And to his faithful followers, Muhammad permitted all the infidel woman that they could capture, as concubines (Koran 4:3). All this is from the Koran alone; it would take several hours just to go over the hadiths and sira accounts dealing with the sexual perversions of Muhammad. In fact, I have devoted numerous episodes dealing specifically with Muhammad’s sexual depravities—including his sleeping with a dead woman, have a fetish for the smell of menstruation blood, dressing in women’s clothing, and so forth. (Jihad Watch has translated many of these.)

FP: One of your more popular videos is your Ten Demands.

What has the impact been of your ministry?

Botros: It has been glorious—praise be to God alone, whose instrument I am. Haya TV (“Life TV”) and I receive daily countless e-mails from Muslim converts to Christianity. Our programs reach millions of Arabic speaking viewers around the world. It is even banned in certain countries, such as Saudi Arabia, even though people from there still manage to access our programs.

FP: How about the feedback you receive?

Botros: Mostly positive; mostly from those who have, as I call it, “crossed over,” that is, converts to Christianity. And of course some are angry and full of hate. But like I said, it is not feedback—positive or negative—that motivates me, but rather unconditional love for those sincere souls living in bondage.

FP: You’ve obviously been instrumental in Muslims coming to Christ, yes?

Botros: That’s what they tell me. In fact, many of them tell me I am like a father to them, which I am honored to be called, though I remind all we have but One Father. For instance, one man recently contacted me, in tears, telling me how, when he was a Muslim, he wanted to kill me—to cut off my head! He spent much time and effort plotting how he can find me so he can kill me (and “please” Allah and his prophet). So he kept watching my shows, hoping somehow to find a clue that would help him locate me. Instead, a miracle occurred: over time, he realized I wasn’t making things up, that everything I said was in fact in Islam’s books. He stopped hating me. And in time, he came to Christ. It is stories like these that keep me going.

FP: In your view, who was Muhammad?

Botros: Well, I have received the answer from Islam’s own books. Ironically, Ibn Taymiyya, who happens to be the hero of the modern mujahid movement, explained the prerequisites of prophet-hood very well. One of the things he stressed is that, in order to know if a prophet is in fact from God, we must study his sira, or his biography, much like the Christ’s statement that “You shall know them from their fruits.” So, taking Ibn Taymiyya’s advice, I recently devoted a number of episodes analyzing the biography of Muhammad, which unequivocally proves that he was not a prophet, that his only “fruits” were death, destruction, and lust. Indeed, he himself confessed and believed that he was being visited and tormented by a “jinn,” or basically a demon, until his wife Khadija convinced him that it was the angel Gabriel—which, of course is ironic, since Muhammad himself later went on to say that the testimony of a woman is half that of a man: maybe over time he realized she was wrong, and that his first assumption was right.

FP: Fr. Botros, thank you for visiting us today.

Botros: Thank you, and may the true God richly bless you.

http://boinnk.nl/101408/the-strange-teachings-of-muhammad-necrophilia-incest-homosexuality-slavery-and-menstrual-blood-fetish/