Schmawy was a friend I never met. He suggested it when I lived back east – said if we each drove a few hundred kilometres we could meet in the middle, somewhere in Vermont or like that. We never tried that expedition, probably because I didn't try hard enough, and eventually I moved west, and in emails we still sometimes mentioned the possibility of meeting. I thought we had decades in which to meet and that one day, very naturally, we would. No more.

As I wrote elsewhere, I didn't know that I would have a heavy heart over the loss of somebody I never saw in real life. Much as Dag said, I liked knowing the world had Schmawy in it. He was put there, it seemed to me, to balance out a great many who were indecent and unwise and dull – put there as if by a law of nature. You can see why I thought he'd be around for a long time.

I gather Schmawy wasn't much for talk of the afterlife, but he is one of the people I like to think I may see there. If I do, I'm sure we'll ride motorcycles, just as we would have done, could have done. Goodbye my friend. It's hard to believe you're gone.

Indecency is as much a ludicrous taboo as mountain-blasphemy.

Disobeying the demands of a bunch of superstitious tribals isn't ignorance; it's moral, cultural and frankly genetic superiority.

About the tourist/earthquake thing, Bill is completely wrong here.

The tourists weren't detained for causing an earthquake. They were spoiled assholes who wouldn't listen to their guide and stripped off in a place that was sacred to the local people. They're being detained for indecent exposure.

The earthquake thing was some local elders who said they should be charged with causing an earthquake, but the authorities have basically ignored that. But "tourists arrested for being ignorant muppets" isn't nearly as good a story as "tourists arrested for angering earthquake spirits", despite the fact that the latter is a complete misrepresentation of the facts.

Just so it's clear, if a dude scanned his junk and sent it to people he'd probably be arrested too. Article 175 of the Japanese legal code prohibits the distribution of "indecent" materials which has traditionally been interpreted to mean "porn" and that's probably how the police are viewing this case--as porn distribution.

Also, those penis parades are fertility festivals and they have vagina counterparts. Do a Google image search for "Hime no miya matsuri" and prepare to have your mind blown at the complete lack of hang-ups Japanese people have about genitalia.

Therefore, it's basically a legal issue, not a cultural one. Because Japan's constitution technically does not allow censorship (Article 21) this lady might have a case if she can convince the courts that she's engaged in art and not commerce. Then again, the courts here are total crap shoots and I sometimes think you'd have a better chance of finding justice in some 3rd world kangaroo court than the Japanese court system.

.

I'd guess he tried to flick it over the defender and himself and run onto it. As the ball was behind him he had to improvise and such a flick wouldn't especially outlandish - I've done it - but it's certainly easy to get it wrong and over-do it.

@Sagemind, it was behind him. The guy who scored, the ball was behind him - it's downright indecent to score that. If I gave you a thousand goes to do the same, you probably couldn't get the ball to go 5 yards in front of you - never mind get it to sail 40 yards over a goalkeeper's head and under the crossbar.

With that in mind here's a list of people that make me variously: scared, uncomfortable, upset and sometimes outright angry. I find it deeply unpleasant and sometimes disturbing to have to deal with them and I think life would be a lot better if we just locked them away.

Police
Politicians
Pro-lifers
Anyone who watches X-factor
Anyone who doesn't think the British royal family are murderous tyrants.
People who play music on their phone speakers on the bus/walking down the street.
People that use the term "free country" without irony.
The unregulated hyper rich over class.
Rugby players on a night out drinking.
People that advocate the death penalty.
Hyper nationalists.
Xenophobes, Racists and Homophobes.
The priesthood of amen/the brotherhood of shadow.
Young people in tracksuits/hoodies.
Anyone that uses the word "party" as a verb.
Practising Christians, Muslims and Jews (doubly so if they are raising their children religiously).
Hyper-Atheists.
Chimpanzees! (seriously, fuck the chimps they scare the shit out of me)
People that use the phrase "I just don't give a fuck" and actually mean it.
The Chinese scientists developing the "death robots" (you might laugh now....)

Whilst some are clearly more serious than others, all of the above represent things/traits which deeply concern me. Many of the people on that list I'd label as outright insane and/or seriously dangerous to my health and well being.

Some, were I to be confronted by them unexpectedly, would outright terrify me, much more so than that lady. There's a good chance that by simply responding with concern and a lack of antagonism she could have been talked down, but certainly pulling an incredulous expression and calling her a crazy lady is not likely to diffuse the situation one iota.

As I said before maybe she is a genuine danger to herself and others, such people do exist and there are systems in place to try and deal with it.

The issue here is that your not even remotely in a position to make that diagnosis, nor are any of us here. We don't know how serious her condition is or how likely she is to respond to various forms of treatment. Speculating based only on video's made during episodes (i.e. at her worst) with no context of her medical history just fuels the kind of knee jerk "lock them away" mindset that contributes heavily to these poor bastards getting the way they are in the 1st place.

For all you know a bit of in the community C.B.T. and mentoring might be all she needs/needed. Not everyone displaying psychotic symptoms benefits from or warrants full on institutional incarceration, it often makes things much worse.
She clearly needs/needed further investigation and perhaps having the benefit of her medical history and first hand interaction it might be reasonable to conclude that some form of isolation is needed. But I'd rather leave that down to those who are professionally qualified to make that judgement than bystanders who merely witnessed a few isolated psychotic episodes and know sweet F.A. about her as a person.

It's you that's failing to see the bigger picture here. You want to put her in a neat little box marked "crazy" so you don't have to face the implication that in some fundamental sense you are the same thing. The crazy person sits next to you on the bus and you think "I don't deserve to have to put up with this inconvenience. How dare they make me feel uncomfortable".......

....Do you have the remotest idea of the kind of deep lasting damage that does to a person when virtually everyone they ever meet thinks and behaves that way? How it feels for someone to just condemn you to be locked away without even attempting to understand what your all about?

It's only about 50 years ago that it was standard practice to basically label everything as just various forms of "madness" and lock them all away in the same building. While we've come along way there's still very much a ways to go and the public perception of acute psychotic illnesses is by far the most backwards.

If you'd said maybe she might need institutional treatment, or that you had concerns that the behaviour she displays could escalate to a violent incident (both legitimate concerns) then I wouldn't have reacted with such hostility.
But you didn't do that, you outright declared she that must be forcibly segregated and treated and moreover that she is definitely a danger to herself and others. No grey area, isolation is the only alternative!

I don't want this to descend into a personal attack, you might after all be a really nice person and this is a deeply rooted prejudice common to most people I come across. Much like many peoples homophobia isn't especially malicious it's just an unchallenged social convention (one fortunately that is changing).
But malicious or not the damage done is the same, for crazies, ethnic minorities and homosexuals alike. And I don't think its unfair to say that the "crazies" are the more vulnerable group by quite some margin.

You don't begrudge offering a little time and understanding for say a disabled person holding you up in a door way, why is taking a little step back when confronted with a "crazy" person so different? That postie clearly recognised she wasn't occupying the same reality as himself very quickly, but his response is to pull a face that says "what the fuck is your problem?" and just dismisses her as crazy. She might have calmed down and gone away peacefully in the space of a few mins if he'd tried to diffuse it, but he didn't, he escalated immediately. (because he's mentally ill too, just in a different way)
That's basically like someone getting in your way, you realizing its because they are in a wheel chair and then treating them like an arsehole because they had the indecency to be out in public and get in the way of the able bodied people! Those bloody cripples, they should be taken away for their own protection! (the fact the rest of us don't have to worry about dealing with them any more is just a bonus naturally )

Now obviously this is a somewhat flawed analogy as people with mobility impairments don't have heightened rates/likelihood of violent outbursts (though I'm sure there are plenty twats who just happen to be in wheelchairs). But the fundamental point I'm trying to make about how people treat the extravertly mentally ill stands. If your being directly threatened with no provocation is one thing, but this guy isn't he's just antagonising someone in a clear state of paranoia and delusion/misunderstanding (which he recognises within seconds). He doesn't even attempt to address that he just closes off and becomes passively hostile.
As I said before its understandable, but only in the same way as being frightened of homosexuality, alien cultures, physical disfigurement etc.. It's just cultural isolation, get to know a few people from any of those groups and it quickly starts to sublime into respect and understanding.

She didn't walk up to him screaming she walked up and firmly presented an accusation that the postman knew could not possibly have been true. She became aggressive/shouty only after he became dismissive, before that she was only restless and paranoid. And even then she didn't make any aggressive physical moves we can see. Postie doesn't look at all in fear for his safety to me, he turns his back on her several times and barely maintains eye contact, not the behaviour of someone that feels physically threatened!

How might she have reacted if postie had looked genuinely scared? Maybe she'd have backed off? Changed her attitude? And yeh maybe she'd have got even more threatening or attacked him with a stick too.

We don't know what she'd have done because we don't know her or anything about her other than a few paranoid videos on the internet. Leave the judgements to the people that have done the research, interviews etc. and know know what the fuck they are talking about with regards to this lady's condition and best treatment.

Speculation is one thing, outright declarations of fact is quite another. People are not guilty before you can prove their innocence...

@alcom

I hear you shinyblurry, but I feel that your argument meanders back to the original appeal to authority that most believers resort to when justifying their positions. I also find that the related video links provided by TheGenk provide a valid refutation of the idea that God is The One who put values of good and evil inside each of us.

There is always an appeal to authority, either to God or to men. There are either objective moral values which are imposed by God, or morality is relative and determined by men. If morality is relative then there is no good or evil, and what is considered good today may be evil tomorrow. If it isn't absolutely wrong to murder indiscriminately, for instance, then if enough people agreed that it was right, it would be. Yet, this does not cohere with reality because we all know that murdering indiscriminately is absolutely wrong. The true test of a worldview is its coherence to reality and atheism is incoherent with our experience, whereas Christian theism describes it perfectly.

If you feel the videos provide a valid refutation, could you articulate the argument that they are using so we can discuss them here?

In my mind, Zacharias' incoherence with the atheist's ability to love and live morally is influenced by his own understanding of the source of moral truth. Because he defines the origin of pure love as Jesus' sacrifice on behalf of mankind, it is unfathomable to him that love could be found as a result of human survival/selection based of traits of cooperation, peace and mutual benefits of our social structure. His logic is therefore coloured and his mind is closed to certain ideas and possibilities.

The idea of agape love is a Christian idea, and agape love is unconditional love. You do not get agape love out of natural selection because it is sacrificial and sacrificing your well being or your life has a very negative impact on your chance to survive and pass on your genes. However, Christ provided the perfect example of agape love by sacrificing His life not only for His friends and family, but for people who hate and despise Him. In the natural sense, since Jesus failed to pass on His genes His traits should be selected out of the gene pool. Christ demonstrated a higher love that transcends the worldly idea of love. Often when the world speaks of love, it is speaking of eros love, which is love based on physical attraction, or philial love, which is brotherly love. The world knows very little of agape love outside of Christ. Christ taught agape love as the universal duty of men towards God:

Luke 6:27 "But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
Luke 6:28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
Luke 6:29 To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.
Luke 6:30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.
Luke 6:31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
Luke 6:32 "If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.
Luke 6:33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.
Luke 6:34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount.
Luke 6:35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.
Luke 6:36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

Indeed, moral foundations can and must change with the times. As our understanding of empathy, personal freedoms and the greater good of mankind develops with our societal and cultural evolution, so too must our standards of morality. This is most evident when concepts such as slavery and revenge (an eye for an eye) are seen as commonplace and acceptable throughout old scripture where modern society has evolved a greater understanding of the need for equality and basic human rights and policing and corrections as a measure of deterrence and rehabilitation for those individuals that stray from the path of greatest utility.

This is why slavery is no more, why racism is in decline and why eventually gay rights and green thought will be universal and our struggle to stifle the rights of gays and exploit the planet's resources to the point of our own self-extinction simply will be seen by future historians as sheer ignorance. Leviticus still pops up when people try to brand gays as deviant, even though most it is itself incoherent by today's standards. Remember that "defecating within the camp was unacceptable lest God step in it while walking in the evening." Well, today we just call that sewage management.

Some people, like Richard Dawkins, see infanticide as being the greatest utility. Some believe that to save the planet around 70 percent of the population must be exterminated. Green thought is to value the health of the planet above individual lives; to basically say that human lives are expendable to preserve the collective. This is why abortion is not questionable to many who hold these ideals; because human life isn't that valuable to them. I see many who have green thoughts contrast human beings to cattle or cockroaches. Utility is an insufficient moral standard because it is in the eye of the beholder.

In regards to the Levitical laws, those were given to the Jews and not the world, and for that time and place. God made a covenant with the Jewish people which they agreed to follow. The covenant God made with the world through Christ is different than the Mosaic law, and it makes those older laws irrelevant. If you would like to understand why God would give laws regarding slavery, or homosexuality, I can elucidate further.

In regards to your paraphrasing of Deuteronomy 23:13-14, this is really a classic example of how the scripture can be made to look like it is saying one thing, when it is actually saying something completely different. Did you read this scripture? It does not say that:

Deuteronomy 23:13 And you shall have a trowel with your tools, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig a hole with it and turn back and cover up your excrement.

Deuteronomy 23:14 Because the LORD your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and to give up your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you.

Gods home on Earth was in the tabernacle, and because God dwelled with His people, He exorted them to keep the camp holy out of reverence for Him.

The rules that God gave for cleanliness were 2500 years ahead of their time:

"In the Bible greater stress was placed upon prevention of disease than was given to the treatment of bodily ailments, and in this no race of people, before or since, has left us such a wealth of LAWS RELATIVE TO HYGIENE AND SANITATION as the Hebrews. These important laws, coming down through the ages, are still used to a marked degree in every country in the world sufficiently enlightened to observe them. One has but to read the book of Leviticus carefully and thoughtfully to conclude that the admonitions of Moses contained therein are, in fact, the groundwork of most of today's sanitary laws. As one closes the book, he must, regardless of his spiritual leanings, feel that the wisdom therein expressed regarding the rules to protect health are superior to any which then existed in the world and that to this day they have been little improved upon" (Magic, Myth and Medicine, Atkinson, p. 20). Dr. D. T. Atkinson

What's interesting about that is that Moses was trained in the knowledge of the Egyptians, the most advanced civilization in the world at that time. Yet you will not find even a shred of it in the bible. Their understanding of medicine at that time led to them doing things like rubbing feces into wounds; ie, it was completely primitive in comparison to the commands that God gave to Moses about cleanliness. Moses didn't know about germs but God did.

Paedophilia will never emerge as acceptable because it violates our basic understanding of human rights and the acceptable age of sexual consent. I know this is a common warning about the "slippery slope of a Godless definition of morality," but it's really a red herring. Do you honestly think society would someday deem that it carries a benefit to society? I just can't see it happening.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_Ancient_Greece

It's on at 11:30pm, on broadcast TV, on one of the major networks. Regulations are pretty vague, but likely would not prohibit 'asshole' at that time of night.

In the case of bleeping things out on the Late Show, it's probably just that it is a hugely popular show, and they want to avoid complaints from people with delicate ears.

*howto get away clean. Works for public indecency like it does in a jewelry heist!

3 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

>> ^arekin:

I ave to wonder what constitutes indecency in San Fran.

Not a whole lot-The worst indecency suffered at my hand there came from an irate drunk who was washed awake with a 5-gallon bucket o' water-He had passed out on the building's entry in his own stink, and his alarm clock was loud and wet!

Curious if there's any public nudity and/or "indecency" laws in the city of SF.

Or perhaps they just got a permit or something for the day.

I ave to wonder what constitutes indecency in San Fran.

This ad was made by the same super PAC that had Sarah Silverman don a bikini and scissor the ugliest dog in the world . . . in support of Obama. I must say I like their style.

http://videosift.com/video/An-Indecent-Proposal-from-Sarah-Silverman