When Chemists Attack

To keep me from having to manage two different blog sites, I’ve merged my old “Signs Point to Stupidity” photoblog into the main shrimpandgrits blog. You can find the “Signs Point to Stupidity” content on this blog, under the category:

The Stupidity Photoblog

What can you find in this category? A collection of strange signs, posters, and flyers – most with an (unintentionally) funny message. Enjoy!

There’s an article on the BBC site featuring Al Gore discussing the US’s obsession with advertising. It’s worth a read.

Gore mainly discusses television ads (because we Americans spend a frightful amount of time glued to our televisions), but he said one thing that should bring back memories for those of us in South Carolina.

Now you sometimes see, in extreme cases, advertising created before the product, and then the product is based on what looks as if it’s going to succeed.

How many of y’all remember Outhouse Springs Water, the “product” offered by Adams Outdoor Advertising?

Outhouse Springs … originally in cans, now in bottles

Outhouse Springs, “America’s first recycled water”, was a fictional product advertised in the eastern part of South Carolina to make a point about the effectiveness of outdoor advertising. The point was most certainly made. People wanted Outhouse Springs badly enough that Adams started selling it, at least for a time.

Welcome to the twenty-first century … where ads are reality.

Here’s another public service announcement from your friendly hosts here at Shrimp and Grits.

When you see this coming …

…get off the beach!

This concludes the public service announcement.

(This storm, which occured during the July 4^th week at Myrtle Beach, spawned at least one waterspout and lit up the place with lightning – including several impressive bolts over the ocean.)

Saw this little guy/gal in the yard a few days ago:

No, unfortunately, it’s not a new video game.

Via Sadly, No!, here is a series of articles called UFOs and the Gospel of Christ, by Ralph C. Barker: Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here.

If you scroll way, way down past the bazillion ads on the Part 1 link, you’ll get to the meat of the article – Seems Barker saw UFOs as a kid:

The only thing I do know is that the objects I saw violated every known law of physics. They flew at very high altitudes and performed almost instant, high speed, ninety-degree turns. Nothing flying, then or now, with the exception of Superman, can do this.

… to which I would simply say that as a kid he might not have been that familiar with every known law of physics. (Who is?)

The interesting thing about this article is that Barker’s point is to attack “New Agers” and/or UFO believers – not necessarily because they are spreading what most folks consider fanciful nonsense, but because

a very strong, obvious, and evil connection does exist between UFOs and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Barker asserts that people who claim to have contacted aliens report that:

The aliens don’t seem to be threatened by Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or any other ism. They focus their attacks on Christianity. Could this be because Christianity is the only true religion? This would be my bet.

… or is it more likely that Christianity is simply the dominant religious belief here in the USA? After all, if you’re brought up in the Christian tradition and are going to dream that you were abducted by aliens, it’s not likely that the alien races you make up in your head are going to suddenly give you a lecture on Buddhism.

Now the question is who inhabits the UFOs. Are they aliens? Are they extra terrestrials? Are they from our future? Who or what are they?

I bet you want to know what Barker concludes about the aliens in Part 2, don’t you?

DON’T YOU?

In my youth I held to the idea that they were truly alien visitors. Today, I still think they are alien visitors but not visitors from another planet. I am convinced they are visitors from another dimension, a spiritual dimension. I believe they are demons.

[Emphasis mine]

Now color me crazy, but I do not see how this is any less loony than the whole alien abduction thing.

What disturbs me more than the looniness above, though, is a little later on in the article. Barker bemoans the supposed lack of religiosity in the US (which is unsurprising from a fundamentalist):

Most of us are well aware that there has been a shift in worldviews in America since the 1950s. The biblical worldview that established America and sustained it for so long is losing its place in American society. Humanism, paganism, and other isms are taking center stage.

Barker then points out that many alien monster movies “prior to the 1960s” showed aliens as hostile towards humanity, wanting to destroy or conquer the world, and so forth. He complains that

… movies began to change their perspective as humanism began to permeate our society. Aliens began to be portrayed more often as not as good guys.

Given that science fiction is often social commentary about current events, I don’t find it surprising at all that there were more “aliens as good guys” stories in the 60s and continuing afterwards. It seems to me that a big message of many of these movies was that people who are different than us in some way aren’t always that bad. And, frankly, what in the heck is wrong with that idea? I was not aware that racial tolerance – what quite a few of these “good alien” movies are promoting – was un-Christian!

Enjoy s scene from South Carolina.

Santee sunset: Click to enlarge.

This post is about Kansas education. No, it’s not evolution this time, though – it’s sex ed that’s under the gun this time.

School districts in Kansas must get parents’ written permission before teaching their children sex education

So … special permission is required to teach sex ed now. One wonders if this will increase the teen pregnancy rate in Kansas, snce it’s likely to reduce the number of kids getting sex ed classes. (Of course, if they were “abstinence only” classes, it might not make much of a difference.) Perhaps for an encore, the Kansas school board can require parental consent before teaching evolution in biology class or atomic theory in chemistry – both as controversial as sex ed is with some religious folks.

“It’s about empowering parents. That’s the bottom line,” said board chairman Steve Abrams.

No, it’s about making it more of a chore to have sex ed classes – so more kide won’t have them. After all, if we don’t teach kids what sex is, there is just no way for them to find out what it is on their own. (Oops – I just blew another sarcasm meter there.)

I look at it this way – do you want your kids to learn about sex from you and a curriculum at school that you have access to, or do you want them to learn it “on their own” from the seedier side of the internet?

One board member wants the new policy to go further and require abstinence-only courses. “We need to send the correct message,” Kathy Martin said.

Under her proposal, a school could lose its state accreditation if it did not offer nine weeks of instruction on “abstinence until marriage” at least once in grades 6-9.

The “correct message” being that they want teenaged boys and girls to get sexually transmitted diseases? Because that abstinence instruction isn’t going to magically turn off the hormones. It may make it more likely that those hormone-filled teens won’t use any protection, though.

(… and I fail to see how an “abstinence only” message would require nine weeks of instruction. Here, I’ll give it in one sentence. “Not having sex is the only 100% effective way to avoid pregnancy. So don’t have sex.”)