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The 2016 Hugo convention
(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.
Backpacker stabbed to death at Australian hostel
Backpacker Mia Ayliffe-Chung stabbed to death at Australian hostel
A 21-year-old British woman has died after she was stabbed during an attack at a backpackers' hostel in Australia. The victim has been named as Mia Ayliffe-Chung, from Derbyshire. A 30-year-old British man - named locally as Tom Jackson from Cheshire - was severely injured in the attack in Home Hill, Queensland, and is in a critical condition.
A French suspect, 29, who allegedly said the Arabic phrase "Allahu akbar" during the attack, was arrested. Police are treating the incident as a murder case, not a terror attack. They are investigating a number of possible motivations, including drugs misuse, mental health issues and extremism.
Homeless woman proves Social Security owes her $100k
Homeless on D.C. streets for 17 years, woman proves Social Security owes her $100,000
She remained homeless, bedding down on the concrete in a sleeping bag. She kept a tower of three suitcases, containing her Social Security paperwork, next to her.
In 2015 social worker Julie Turner listened. Instead of dismissing Witter as crazy, Turner patiently waded through her documents and verified her story.
"She had all the paperwork there, neatly organized, in order. She was right all along. They did owe her all that money," Turner said.
The Strange Teachings of Muhammad
The Strange Teachings of Muhammad: necrophilia, incest, homosexuality, slavery and menstrual blood fetish
The Strange Teachings of MuhammadBy: 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/
I Have a Contract
I've been tasked to modify some Mac OS X printing software. The client says "There is some cruft that has built up so don't be surprised if you find some code that's not used."
I figured it was going to be a rat's nest but it all looks quite reasonable.
It's not going to be a big job. Possibly I'll be able to buy a MacBook Pro when I'm done, but I'm not sure it's even that big a job.
Really what I want is a happy client, someone who can provide a positive reference to other potential clients.
Transgender prisoners in Florida
Stories about two different Florida prisoners published within 24 hours of each other, as seen on Google News:
Transgender Prisoner Sues Florida to Get Hormone Treatments
Transgender inmate challenging Florida prison laws found dead in cell
Minecraft on Oculus Rift
Minecraft for Oculus Rift is out today
Megahit Minecraft arrives on Facebook's Oculus Rift VR headset
If you play VRcraft for longer than 4 hours, you could suffer from Minecraft persisting perception disorder and see pixelated blocks FOREVER.
The Thousand Year War
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/imperialism/notes/islamchron.html
There isn't a lot of detail in the timeline, being just a timeline. But, it is chock full of hundreds of years of warfare between Europe and Islam. A lot of things that I've read of, but forgot, as well as a lot of things that I never did read about.
I'll wager that few of our members know more than a fraction of this history. The antipathy between Christians and Muslims is founded on history. Europe has reason to fear the current invasion of military aged male Muslims. History points out pretty clearly why Muslims communities in Europe are a bad, bad, BAD idea.
Soylent's Fiction: The Naked Truth
Mayor Waldo was eating his salad as he waited for the main course when he was summoned to Dome Hall for an emergency. His secretary insisted that he couldn't talk about it in public or on the phone.
He paid for the meal, told the serverbot to keep his food warm when it was finished cooking, and returned to Dome Hall, muttering under his breath. He asked Willie Clark, his secretary, what was going on that was so important it would interrupt his lunch hour.
“A body was found outside the dome, sir. We suspect murder.”
Murder? There had been a lot of death in Mars’ hundred years of colonization, but until now there hadn’t been a single murder, at least that anyone had known about. There were no homicides on the planet’s surface, at least; in space the pirates would kill you the first chance they got. In space, only the Green-Osbourne Transportation Company’s security fleet kept things relatively calm.
“Why do you suspect murder? There’s never been a murder on Mars.”
“Until now. The body was found outside the dome and wasn’t wearing a suit.”
“Maybe he was drunk and stumbled through the wrong door. I should talk to council members about assigning guards to the airlocks.”
“No, sir. Impossible. The body was found a half kilometer from the nearest lock. If he’d simply walked through the airlock...”
“Hmm, yes. He’d have died before he went two steps and probably would have died inside the lock. Who do you have investigating?”
“Nobody yet, sir. The police chief called us right before we called you, looking for guidance. The coroner is examining the body and we expect her report in a week or two. The corpse had been out there a couple of days at least. Of course there was no decay, but the body was completely desiccated, freeze-dried, as would be expected.”
“Do we know the cause of death? Was a dead body taken outside, or a live one out there to die?”
“The coroner is still doing the examination, sir. We’ll let you know as soon as we know.”
“Thanks, Willie. Have the police start an investigation, and have them get in touch with an Earthian police detective who has experience in solving homicides, and have our people get advice from him or her.”
“Should we keep this secret? At least until we know more? The Chief thinks so.”
“No, you’re not working for Wilcox any more, and I’m not anything like Wilcox was. That’s why we won in a landslide, people hated his secrecy. Set up a press conference for tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, sir.”
He went back and finished his lunch.
Albert Morton was the electrician who had discovered the body. It had been the most horrible thing he had ever seen in his life, and it ate at him that there had been nothing about it on the news. Who had done this, and why? He decided to contact a newspaper the next morning. Tonight he was going to get drunk; he’d never seen anything so gruesome, and couldn’t get the awful scene out of his head.
“Say, Ed, how’s being Mayor treating you? Lager?”
“Hi, John. Yeah, and a shot, I don’t care what. Scotch, I guess. My job’s sure not very fun today, we’re almost certain that we have a murder on our hands.”
“Murder? On Mars? Really?”
“We can’t see how it could be anything else. He was found half a kilometer from the airlock without an environment suit.”
“What killed him?”
“We won’t know until the coroner’s report comes in. But it has to be murder, nothing else makes sense. How’s business?”
“I just got mail from Dewey this morning. We captured five pirate vessels last week and got a nice big finder’s fee from the boats’ rightful owners. He and Charles are looking at some new propulsion systems that might be a lot more efficient than the ion engines we’re using now. That will both lower the shipper’s cost and increase our profits, maybe even more than when we went from fission generators to fusions. And there’s a lot more shipping since they found all those rare earths on Ceres.”
“Your bar doesn’t seem to be doing all that good.”
John snorted. “You know this is just a hobby, but still, it is turning a small profit. It doesn’t usually get too busy until later at night. My brewery is doing almost too good. It’s hard to grow enough ingredients to brew enough of it to supply the demand. I may have to buy another building to grow more hops and barley and other ingredients.”
A man walked in. “Hi, Al,” the bartender said. “The usual?”
“Not today, John. Really bad day, I’ll have nightmares tonight. A lager and a shot of that white lightning you make. God damn, I ran across a dead body at work today outside the dome, and it was someone I’d met a few times. The poor guy didn’t have a suit on. Not just no suit, he wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing.”
“Yeah, Ed here was telling me about it.”
The mayor said “I hadn’t heard that. They only said he had no suit.”
The electrician asked “Ed, why isn’t this in the news?”
“Beats me, but I’m holding a press conference about it tomorrow. Wilcox would have tried to keep it secret, but that’s why he lost the election. Was it gruesome?”
Al downed his shot, took a sip of beer, and said “You wouldn’t have wanted to be there. John, another shot, please. Make it a double.
Sam Woodside was a reporter for the Martian Times, one of several dozen such newspapers in Mars’ many domes. Al Morton called him the next morning, a day after the discovery, with news of the dead body that he had found. The reporter asked the electrician “Who was he and how did he die?”
“I don’t know, His first name was Bob, but I don’t know what his last name was. He was an electrician, too, but he usually worked the other side of the dome from me and I didn’t know him very well, I only met him a few times. His shop was short staffed so they assigned me on that side temporarily. You’ll have to ask the cops his full name and how he died. I talked to the mayor last night at Hooker’s, and they don’t know much yet.”
“Hookers?”
“Hooker’s Tavern, named after a musician who lived in the nineteen hundreds. John Knolls is a good friend of mine and owns the place.”
They spoke for another fifteen minutes without Sam learning much.
As he was beginning to dial the mayor’s office to get more information, another call came in. It was from his boss, who assigned him to a press conference the mayor had scheduled for the morning.
Typical. He really wanted to write about the murder and here he had to attend a meaningless press conference. He wondered what it was about. “Probably something nobody would want to read about,” he thought.
The news conference lasted a long time, even though little was yet known about the murder. The only clue had been the corpse itself, and it hadn’t yet yielded any answers. They would have to wait for the coroner, who had possession of the case’s only clue that had turned up so far.
The mayor issued an executive order that all airlocks be guarded, and that no one would be allowed outside the dome alone. Martians had to be extra cautious about everything, since the environment outside the domes was so deadly. Safety was drilled into native-born Martians from birth.
The mayor had of course been in contact with Dome Council members, all of whom were going to present a bill making the guards and the “nobody goes out alone” rule law. All had urged him to make the executive order, which would last until the council next met.
Sam wrote the story, which was on the front page with an extra large headline: “GRUESOME MURDER OUTSIDE THE DOME” and in smaller type, “Police Have Few Clues, No Suspects”. Sam took what little information he had about the murder and skillfully stretched it to two full columns, most of which was the accounts of the electrician’s grieving friends and family, and some of it slightly redundant.
The dome’s police contacted a homicide investigator on Earth, who chided the Martian for doing so little investigating. “Come on, man, get a warrant and search the victim’s home and workplace. It may have been for robbery, but there are a lot of things that cause murder. Find out who he associated with, if he was having any love affairs, who saw him last. Don’t wait for the coroner! What did the crime scene look like?”
“Like there was a dust storm between when he was killed and when the body was found. If there were any footprints or wheel tracks or any other such evidence they were gone.”
It seemed the newspaper had done more investigating than the police. The Martian took the Earthian policeman’s advice, but still came up with little, at least at first.
“Hi, George, I was wondering if you were sick or something and didn’t go to work today, you always drop by for a beer on your way home.” John poured an ale for him.
“I ran really late tonight, somebody stole my tools. At first I thought somebody might have grabbed my tool box by mistake, but I’m pretty sure they were stolen. Anyway, I had to fill out a ton of paperwork for the insurance.”
“Sorry to hear that, the tools must be expensive.”
“Yeah, they are. Brand new tools, state of the art stuff. I was working on two panels around a corner from each other, and I had my tool chest by one panel when I was working on the other one. I closed that panel up and went to finish the side where my tools were, and they were gone.
“Like I was saying, at first I thought someone must have picked the tools up by mistake, but I noticed boot prints going away from the dome from where my tools had been. So when I got back in the dome and out of my suit I called the cops. I didn’t think anyone picked them up by mistake after seeing footprints leading away from the dome. The cops said it was possible that were taken by mistake, but I don’t think so. Talking to the cops took another hour.”
A man in a policeman’s uniform came in, sat down, and ordered a shot of Bourbon and a wheat beer. “Rough week,” he told the bartender. “Murder a few days ago, probable theft today.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
The policeman looked at George. “Say, you’re the fellow whose tools are missing, aren’t you?”
George answered in the affirmative and ordered another beer. Obviously a little distraught, he had drank the first one far faster than usual.
The officer said “those boot prints you saw led to wheel tracks. We followed them for ten kilometers, and it looked like a space craft had landed and taken off. We think pirates have your tools.”
George shook his head sadly. “Damned pirates, the tools are insured but it’ll take three weeks to get them replaced, and I won’t be able to work.”
“That sucks, George. Need to run a tab until your new tools come?” the bartender asked.
“Thanks, John, but I have enough cash and credit to make it until I can get new tools delivered.”
The police officer finished his beer and shot and walked home, just as Mayor Waldo came in. “Hi, John. We had a theft today, give me the usual.”
“Hi, Ed. Yeah, I heard,” he said, pouring the mayor a beer and the thirsty electrician a third beer.
Ed sighed. “News travels fast.”
John laughed. “Where would you go if your tools were stolen and you couldn’t work for weeks? You know George, don’t you?”
“Yeah, hi George. Those were your tools?”
“Yeah, it really sucks.”
“Anything I can do? Or the dome can do?”
George laughed. “Yeah, get a better football team, the Australians and Europeans always kick our asses!”
Talk drifted off to sports for a while, and a thought came to John. “Ed,” he said, “Could the pirates have committed that murder?”
“No, they would have taken him to their ship so they wouldn’t harm the suit. Everyone knows how valuable a suit is. They would have just dumped the body in space.”
“You ought to dump those footballers in space,” George said dourly.
The mayor and bartender laughed, and talk went back to sports as more people started trickling in.
The next day the Chief of Police called the mayor with news of clues: the dead man’s tools and environment suit were missing. Did someone murder him for his suit and tools? It looked like that was the motive, although police were still investigating the victim’s associates. If they found that suit and those tools, they would likely find the murderer.
Things seemed to be looking up. He usually only stopped by John’s bar when he’d had a bad day or a seemingly insoluble problem, but he decided to make an exception this time since his old friend Charlie Onehorse would be there. Charlie was the mayor of Dome Australia Two, about twenty kilometers from his dome. Old Charlie had been visiting on a trade mission.
When he got off work, John’s bar was already filling up. “Ed!” came a voice from the gloom, as his eyes hadn’t yet adjusted, but he knew that voice.
“Hey, Charlie! How did your deal go?”
“Ace, even though those blokes aren’t drongos, but the deals always go well. Almost all of them, anyway. I heard your dome had a homicide?”
“Yeah, it sure looks like the poor guy was murdered. Had some thefts, too, but one of them looks like pirates.”
“Maybe it was pirates that killed that bloke,” Charlie said.
“That’s what John said, but like I told him, they would have just carried him and his suit away and dumped the body in space.”
“Yeah, you’re right, they would have. Damned pirates, I hope they leave my dome alone. Hey, John, get a grog for Ed, would you?” Just then a robot rolled up with Mayor Waldo’s beer.
At the other end of the bar, John was talking to Al. Al had been telling him of the nightmarishly horrible discovery and how it was affecting him for the last few days, which he had mostly spent in the bar getting very drunk. “Al, I want you to meet a friend of mine,” John said as an attractive woman walked up. “Al, meet Tammy Winters.”
“Hello, Ms. Winters.”
“It’s doctor, but call me Tammy. John tells me you’re having some problems.”
Al glared at John angrily. Tammy said “Look, Al, your reaction to what you’ve gone through is normal. Look, I have a friend who needs some new patients, could you help him out?” and handed him her colleague’s business card.
“Well, I don’t know,” Al said, looking at the card. “What will it cost?”
“Nothing, the government pays for it.”
“Thanks, I will!”
Tammy replied “John, are you going to pour me a beer or what?”
Several days later the coroner's report came back, right before the mayor was due to go home, and Mayor Waldo was puzzled. The report said the victim had a stroke; a blood vessel in his brain had burst and he’d died instantly. But why was he out there naked?
He decided to talk to John. John always had an answer when things got crazy.
“Holy crap,” Sam said when he got the news. “Damn, the most sensational news in my career and it wasn’t. How can I spin this? The boss wants more papers sold!”
He decided to focus on the mystery of the naked corpse.
“And your cops can’t figure it out, either?” John asked.
“No,” said Ed. “It’s still a mystery.”
“Christ, Ed, it’s as plain as the nose on your face! Look, only a few days later George’s tools were stolen, and the police say it was pirates. It’s simple, Ed. They were waiting for a chance to steal the poor guy’s expensive tools and he collapsed. So they not only stole his tools, but his environment suit and clothing as well. Why didn’t you guys see that?”
Ed scratched his head. “I don’t know, but it makes sense. I’ll talk to the police chief about it tomorrow.” Just then George entered.
“John!” he yelled. “Drinks for everybody! WOO HOO!”
“What happened?” Ed asked.
“John’s army!”
“John’s army?”
“It isn’t my army,” John said. “More Dewey’s than anyone’s, I only hold maybe fifteen percent of Green-Osbourne.”
George said “I can’t thank you enough, John.”
“George, I didn’t do anything, there wasn’t anything I could do,” John replied. “We capture pirates all the time. It earns us a lot of cash and makes shipping easier for everybody, including our competition. You just got lucky.”
“I don’t care, I’m still grateful. They said I’d have my tools back the day after tomorrow.
“Oh, and Ed—they found Bob’s suit and tools when they found my tools.”
John grinned. “See?”
After the Mayor’s press conference the next morning, Sam cursed. How could he spin this one without looking like a damned fool?
