ho says there are no good jobs anywhere?
I just stumbled upon this help wanted ad for an investigative reporter in Sarasota, Florida. Who wouldn’t want to work for this guy? The passion and purpose leaping from this call-to-journalistic-arms is almost enough to persuade anyone to forget the humidity and the snakes in the Governor’s mansion and fly into the hurricane. Almost…
Investigators in Germany are concerned that the “church” of Scientology has orchestrated a targeted campaign to recruit children and teens. Unlike the situation in the United States, where it has “religion” status, Scientology in Germany is considered to be a money-making cult and a “threat to democracy,” ranked right alongside “Islamic extremism” and “Organized crime.”
Scientology and its front groups have been using platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and their German equivalents StudiVZ and SchülerVZ to post videos with titles such as “Youth for human rights,” and “Say no to drugs, say yes to life.”
Young people searching online for information on drugs or human rights quickly land on Scientology sites, which provide a glossy presentation of the organization without revealing exactly what it is.
Viewers are then encouraged to sign up for its online groups, which provides Scientology leaders with a means of direct contact to spread their message.
| Posted by Leo Ryokan on April 5, 2011 at 7:55 PM |
Paranormal research and investigation has become a very fact based and evidence driven field, with a main focus on either debunking or providing solid proof that paranormal phenomena exists. With this being true, many wonder why more teams do not use psychics, sensitives, or mediums to help point investigators in the right direction, and provide helpful insights and information. I’d like to go over some of the reasons teams choose to not use psychics. Which I’ve discovered much of the scientific paranormal community are hesitant to express openly, not wanting to offend anyone. As a medium involved in paranormal investigating for years, I am a strong advocate for finding a technical and spiritual balance in this field. But the many concerns regarding this subject are valid, and should be addressed.
One of the biggest concerns scientific researchers have is finding a psychic who is able to contribute in a way to help obtain evidence. For example, go into any paranormal chat room and ask “Who here is a sensitive?” Or just log on to Facebook and search psychics. The amount of people claiming to have abilities is enormous, with various and sometimes confusing titles describing what they can do. I believe psychic abilities are inherit in all people, but the skills and caliber of performance can vary greatly. It would also be very naive to think that some are not charlatans or exaggerate their abilities. So how can scientific investigators sort through the seemingly endless list of individuals, to find a psychic who can be of service to them? To try out every claimed psychic would be very time consuming and could also compromise an investigation and the teams reputation. So simply put, it’s a chance not all teams are willing to take.
I got a laugh from this, not necessarily due to the stunt itself, but in the reaction from certain “good Christian” quarters. Don’t they understand that the Bible is full of porn itself? It’s certainly easy to understand. Back in the “good old days” of the Bible, people didn’t really do much else except try to scrounge out a living, procreate and kill each other. Kind of like today (without the Internet.)
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“The Atheist Agenda does this solely for this purpose: To get under the skin of Christians and to provoke an angry response so they can point at screaming Christians and say to their peers: ‘See they are angry, self-righteous, judgmental people.’”
In a stunt designed to infuriate Christians, a student atheist group at the University of Texas at San Antionio is offering to give free pornography to any student who wants to turn in their Bible.
The organization, called the “Atheist Agenda,” calls its campaign “Smut for Smut,” according to reporter Marcia Segelstein.
Members sit at a table in the lobby of the school’s humanities building with a sign that reads, “Trade in Holy Texts 4 Porn,” ready to hand over a pornographic magazine in return for a Bible.
This isn’t the first time they’ve done this.
“They first did this back in December 2005,” reports Segelstein. “At that time, a group member explained to the school newspaper, the Independent, the reasons behind the controversial, in-your-face initiative:
“The idea is that religious texts are so appalling. They are so full of genocide, misogyny and ludicrous ideas that far overshadow any banal common-sense platitudes like loving thy neighbor, that you are better off having porn, which isn’t nearly as smutty.”
There has been a bit of talk lately about the Psychic Kids program on A&E (or was on A&E, it was canceled I hope. )
I haven’t actually watched an episode of Psychic Kids, I’ve certainly read a lot about it and I have seen bits of the show on YouTube. On the surface it strikes me as just another Paranormal-a-rama reality show where they cue the spooky music, drag out “psychic-guy and pretend to scare each other with lousy video.
I mostly ignore this junk. Really it’s not very interesting. None of these clowns come even close to using scientific methodology in their quest to find ghosts, prove ghosts are real or whatever the hell they are doing (I honestly don’t know.) All they seem to be doing is putting on a show, a pretty boring one at that as I suspect people will soon be seeing. Ghost hunting I think is little more than a passing fad.
But this Psychic Kids thing is another kettle of fish altogether, and a pretty stinky one. Psychic Kids explores kids who think they have super powers being validated by “famous” cold readers and illusionists like Chip Coffey.
James Randie and a number of other people call this child abuse. They maintain that it’s wrong to encourage vulnerable kids to believe in a bunch of unsubstantiated nonsense. Psychics and paranormalists claim that these are crystal children. A possible next step in our evolution.
Now, I try to maintain an open mind about this. A lot of people seem to think that I’m just a ‘psycho skeptic” and I’m out to destroy the paranormal as a field. Some say that I want to wipe out paranormal abilities by attacking children with those abilities. That’s just stupid, fearful, barking moonbat talk. I don’t want to wipe out the paranormal fields, I want YOU people (who make the wild claims) to start producing real evidence. I want you to and stop hand waving and screaming. I want you people to succeed, but succeed honestly and truthfully. Not with lies and deception!
Is that wrong? Yes it is, to the people telling the lies, it’s VERY wrong and I should shut up about that.
I don’t want to join this pile-on against Mr. Chip Coffey. While I don’t think he’s any more “psychic” than I am. I do think he’s a shrewd entertainer, a self promoter and a show person. He does a kind of magic show where he pretends to “read” the minds of gullible people using age-old “magic” tricks and probably Facebook.
I don’t have as much of a problem with this as you might think. It’s no more deceptive than say a gambling casino, a church or a bingo hall. If you are an adult and you want to believe in tripe, knock yourself out. You have a right to be foolish and gullible. Who am I to say you can’t do that.
Children however hit a particular hot button in me. I don’t like seeing kids getting religion, racism, bigotry or any number of other deranged “traditions” that some adults subscribe to, drummed into their heads. That really irritates me and what I see on Psychic Kids really irritates me in the same way that I find “Jesus Camp” irritating.
Look at it from this perspective, some people that I have had displeasure of dealing with in the paranormal biz are NOT normal IMO. Some of them are are mean, spiteful, they make up and falsify nearly every aspect of their lives beginning with statements like “I have been a psychic since the age of three…”
No you were not! You were learning to WALK and how to use the bathroom at the age of three. Imagine a heart surgeon telling you that “I have been a doctor since the age of three.” I mean – what the hell did you practice on at that age? Of course, aptitudes ARE discovered in people very early. But doctors also go through almost a decade of med school while a “psychic counselor” just declares their so-called “abilities” and goes into business.
And all these three-year-old psychics were encouraged to believe they were magic- mind readers since they were children. NONE of these people show even a glimmer of any “abilities” outside of normal intuition or empathy (and most of these people seem to have little or zero empathy too.) Many of them can’t hold jobs, drive a car or even figure out which end of a lawyer to throw at people (hint, it’s the front end, the rear end is what YOU get to look at.)
From another perspective, let’s say you lived next door to a family of skinhead-neo-Nazis. One day you discover that they are training kids to hate just like they do. Perhaps showing them old German propaganda films and playacting the burning of Jewish people in the backyard barbecue grill. I’d feel like calling somebody about that and I think any reasonable person would. (I really don’t force religion on my kids. )
The prevailing “Catholic- light” faiths in my neck of the woods do not have clean hands either and I would not dream of installing “good Christian values” into my kids, they can read Leviticus for themselves when they are old enough.
Where am I going with this? Simple, people like Chip Coffee have no business indoctrinating kids into playing hopscotch let alone HIS business of deceiving people. If Chip were more like James Randi, who does exactly the same magic tricks but first tells his audience, “my magic tricks meant to deceive you- as a form of entertainment.” I’d have a modicum of respect for Mr. Coffey. But since he has chosen to lie to people about how he does his magic tricks, I don’t think very much of him.
The fact that he passes on his bullcrap onto little kids fills me with dread. Children do not need an adult to teach them how to lie.
I don’t care about him or the people he bilks so much, they can make their own choices, but children are dependent on us as adults. They depend on us not to lie to them. They depend on us to teach them to be truthful to themselves and others. They depend on us to not lead them astray.
We are responsible into making our children into productive, happy adults. Not sad, paranoid, delusional folk who think they have special powers as they pay for groceries with their welfare cards. If you think I’m making this up, look around you. I know several people like that, far better than I’d like to.
For every successful charlatan there are a thousand failures. Remember and mark that because it is SO true.
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The Odd Emperor
To get badly filmed? I mean really! Why is it that NO film of the big hairy fellow is crisp and sharp enough to tell if it’s a suit or not? Is this written down in some cryptologist manual? “All films of Bigfoot must be nearly too crappy to see clearly. Isi Bigfoot just camera shy? Or (whisper this) perhaps Bigfoot is just a shambling pile of crap?
That’s got to be it!
<<<>>>
Standing 7ft tall and waving his hairy arms in the air, this is supposedly the latest sighting of the mythical creature known as ‘Bigfoot’.
In a grainy film shot by a passer-by the 300lbs creature growls and dashes across the road to try and find cover in the woods.
The clip lasts five seconds but the blurry figure is clearly visible making his way unsteadily across the tarmac – on two legs.
Scroll down for video
Captured: Is this big foot? A still from a new video alleging to show the mythical beast
I’ve not been around much. Most of this week has been about makig changes on the Odd Empire wiki pages and tightening security (we have a spambot problem.)
I was looking at the stats and found this little tidbit. I thought it might be interesting.
http://oddempire.org
Most viewed pages
Main Page 14,088
Moonbat 10,369
Paranormal and Ghost Society 2,360
Lord Rick 1,931
Empire of the Odd:Community portal 744
The Wisemen 684
Empire of the Odd:General disclaimer 683
Theatrical Clowns 651
Empire of the Odd:About 619
Moonbat’s Demands 581
Written by Leslie Valentin
We live in a world where the general public is caught up by Paparazzi moments due to celebrities dating or breaking up, acting bizarre and fighting addictions amongst other issues. We also live in a time where the facts are not the key points but rather speculation, rumors and innuendos are. The world of reporting on people who are “in the spotlight” has purportedly assassinated the character of many, caused heartbreak for others, and yet for some, a major boost in ratings and popularity. The paranormal world of television or its “stars” are not immune from this.
This nation and probably much of the free viewing world has viewed recent behaviors by actor, Charlie Sheen. His grandiose scheme of raging has not only lost him credibility, but also his contract with a television network as well as his job.
What is appalling is when persons such as Charlie Sheen and Mel Gibson are held accountable for their words and actions while others who throw hissy fits and tantrums are not.
I do not hate Chip Coffey nor do I dislike his misguided fans.
Some of his fans have written to me expressing concern about Mr. Coffey’s true intentions and in my opinion he intends to silence those who speak out against him.
According to sources, (yes sources) Chip Coffey is attempting to rallying his dwindling paranormal affiliations and bring an insubstantial lawsuit against scifake for having an opinion. Sources close to Chip tell us that Chiparoo would like to shut down scifake for what he is describing libelous and slanderous accusations against him.
Really Mr. Coffey? Then we will have the right to challenge your inability to read minds and speak to the dead in a court of law! After all, you’re raping the weak of their hard earned money with your ambiguous talent and you’re trying desperately to silence the truth with you abstruse threats. In my opinion, you’re a defunct magician who is about to be exposed and you’re desperately up against the eleventh hour.
Regardless if we are agree (or disagree), everyone should have the right to express an opinion and Chip Coffey is hoping to silence the dissent. Why? It’s my observation (and opinion) because he feels his livelihood of swindling people is coming to an end and people are beginning to see him for what he really is …a fake psychic and a phony medium! If not then I would challenge Mr. Coffey to prove me (and the rest) wrong.
