On 4-1-2014 11:32, Stephen wrote:
> On 03/01/2014 6:43 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Fri, 03 Jan 2014 06:09:07 +0000, Stephen wrote:
>>
>>> On 03/01/2014 12:20 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 02 Jan 2014 20:47:00 +0100, andrel wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RDlUlTR1xXc/UYBH7JMnrxI/AAAAAAAACFA/
>>>> mEZ4NH6UbYg/s1600/tumblr_mm2mx0hnmy1qzjmo0o1_1280.jpg
>>>>>
>>>>> orange dressed in blue.
>>>>
>>>> I'm not understanding the reference...
>>>>
>>> She is of the House of Orange. The same way our Queen is of the House of
>>> Windsor. Previously the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
>>
>> Ah, I see.  I don't tend to notice stuff like that. :)
>>

<sorry guys, been not so much on-line lately because some physician was 
trying to modify my nose>
> No reason that you should.

It is the same house that also gave rise to the orangemen, so I though 
that it might be clear from context.

> I have worked with the Lowlanders quite a bit recently and it shows a
> certain awareness to know who your co-workers monarch is. I would sell
> our lot for a mess of pottage but not everyone is like that.
> BTW Did you know that Belgium has a new king?

I did, but Belgium is very near. I might be wrong but I think our 
succession was much better prepared and orchestrated. (And we had the 
better dress for the Queen).



-- 
Everytime the IT department forbids something that a researcher deems
necessary for her work there will be another hole in the firewall.

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On 1/5/2014 2:39 AM, Warp wrote:
> Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> A campus is not the rest of the world, and the statistics "do" differ
>> between there and other places. That tends to happen, when you cram a
>> lot of people, in a specific age group, many of which seem to presume
>> that one purpose of college is to party and get laid, in one place. And,
>> I never said "all", advice was bad advice. What I objected to was most
>> of the stuff you came up with as "advice".
>
> Firstly, if such a study shows that actions can be taken to reduce the
> risk of rape in one community, and that they have a significant effect,
> then it's not unreasonable to deduce that actions can be taken in other
> communities as well. Or do you have actual credible sources that say
> otherwise?
>
And.. if this was true in all cases, there would, I presume, be a) other 
studies, and/or b) it wouldn't contradict prior facts?

You are correct that I don't have a study I can quote. The problem is 
that one study, by itself, may as well be annecdotal, for all its worth 
until properly replicated, there are at least some psychologist who are 
putting such studies under fire **precisely** because so much of them 
tend to be done on campuses, in the same environment, and often using 
subjects who "volunteer", which they can't say for certain isn't already 
a biased group, and finally, you can't explain away decades of 
statistics, which suggest that some behaviors seem to have no impact, at 
all, on such cases, based on one study, of things in one specialized 
environment.

> Secondly, I didn't say "they should do this or that". What I said was
> that it's a good thing to try to figure out what could be done to reduce
> the risks, and listed some things that could be studied to see if there
> is some correlation.
>
> What really irks me is when someone comes up and calls the act of actually
> trying to do something with names like "slut shaming".  Trying to *help*
> prevent rapes is not victim blaming. Insulting people who do so is
> disgusting.
>
Using the same arguments for what they "should have done", or "didn't 
do", or how, "next time you can be more careful by doing these things, 
so is partly your fault it happened", however **is**, and that is 
precisely what you see, in every news report, every blog post, every 
discussion by arm chair experts on what someone did wrong, even if they 
don't have the facts, and for all they know, did every single thing on 
the list. Its not about what ***you*** intended, or tried to do, its 
about how the that "advice" get missed used, the moment someone actually 
becomes victim, and how, maybe, some of it isn't a sound as one study 
might imply.

I don't think that is wrong to try to help. I wasn't calling the attempt 
slut shaming, or victim blaming, things like clothing choice, and the 
like ***are*** used for both, all the damn time, which makes binging 
them up, as part of a list of options, problematic, even if, in some 
specific cases, and/or ways, they may be meaningful. The problem being 
precisely that a) they are not specific, b) they may differ, greatly, 
depending on the community and its own standards, and c) may not be 
meaningful at all, in other contexts.

Basic logic would imply, to use "clothing choice" as the best example of 
this problem, that if dressing "provocatively" was the issue, not the 
perception, locally to the rape case, of what the hell that even means, 
then the prevalence of bikinis and European nude beaches would "both" 
show some sort of drastic increases, due to the "provocative" nature of 
the dress, or lack there of, compared to "normal" clothing. You might 
even find a "statistical connection", by doing your "study" at a bunch 
of beaches during Spring Break. After all, its where you can find a huge 
number of people in both states, even in the US, and.. well, the 
specific conditions, context and environment can't possibly be a factor, 
right?

That is precisely why, that specific "advice" is itself possibly way 
less useful that it seems. Its purely arbitrary to the local conditions. 
Provocative, in Iran, vs. 50 years ago in the US, vs. 99% of the beaches 
today, vs. a nudist colony, are **all different**. Are campuses, never 
mind communities, supposed to post big signs everyplace, which say, 
"This will keep you safe from the nuts, while this other picture will 
get you attacked"? Are they supposed to just "know", or do you set some 
arbitrary standard of "safe", and tell them all to stick to that, while 
calling all the ones that get raped anyway, "anomalous statistics".

That is the problem with some of the "advice". Its only meaningful, if 
at all, in context, and even then, no one has a damn clue what the 
context is in any given place. Even when the context is, "Women can only 
be protected by wearing a sack, which doesn't even let you see their 
eyes.", it happens anyway, too often, and, if anything, the excuses for 
why they did something wrong, and the men didn't, just get worse and 
worse, the closer you get to that.

It also doesn't help when you have polar opposite statistics - like the 
one person posting on one of those blogs, or maybe someplace else where 
the subject came up, who stated that they had been to many parties, 
gotten drunk enough to pass out at a few of them, but never been raped, 
**ever** despite horrible choices, over drinking, and doing every single 
thing wrong, but she knew a guy who had been raped (the definition here 
being without consent, or even, in his case, awareness), several times, 
by woman, at some of the same parties, because *he* passed out on the couch.

No, what gives women the idea that they are helpless victims is doing 
everything "right" according to these lists, not being believed, having 
people try to claim that they made it up, having the cops treat them 
like shit, then their friends, and other people around them, then, if 
they do get to court, going through it all over again, and, all the 
time, being asked, "Did you say no?", "Who where you with?", "What did 
you do?", "How long was your dress?", "What else where you wearing?", 
and on, and on.

By all means, give advice. But, make sure its advice that actually means 
something. As am sure I said in the prior post, your "intent" isn't as 
important as whether or not it was good advice. And.. there are 
thousands of victims, decades of statistics, whole websites dedicated to 
the facts, and myths, or rape and what, if anything, increases, and 
decreases the risks, and you have... one study, done on a campus, a 
practice even psychologists are questioning the value of, as something 
you can extrapolate real data, about any other environment, from.

If I somehow unintentionally implied that you where either slut shaming, 
or victim blaming.. then, I definitely apologize for the former, but.. 
the latter can be done "accidentally" by simply failing to recognize 
that what is "advice" to someone trying to "help", is victim blaming to 
people who are only hearing, "Well, here goes the usual list 'advice' 
everyone gives, after the fact.", or even an attempt at making excuses 
for the perpetrator, if its, in fact, given in the context of someone 
who "has" had it happen to them.

Given that this is precisely how it gets used.. out of the context of 
saying, "Such and such study says...", and still risking getting ripped 
to shreds by women who have heard it all before, and have good reason to 
think its bull, isn't it just "possibly" detrimental to give advice that 
the victims themselves are likely to turn around and say, "Great, yet 
another one that has no clue what they are talking about!"?

I really suggest you actually read the accounts of the people that have 
gone through it, what they got told, what they did, or didn't do, what 
advice did, or didn't work, and what they, not some study, think the 
problem(s) really are. That would be a good way to do something useful. 
Using one single study, whose advice is practically a bumper sticker for 
everything people say anyway, and never helps... *that*, I tend to 
suspect, is way less helpful that you hope.

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On 1/4/2014 8:13 PM, Tim Cook wrote:
> On 2014-01-04 17:28, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> You have no clue a) how uncommon that really is, and b) how much shit
>> women go through, even when it is legitimate, which might result in them
>> "wanting" to recant it, even if it did happen. So.. Don't go there. I
>> refer you to the same thing I posted in the other comment:
>
> While it is important to understand the significance of item b), it's
> also important to understand that
>
>> http://skepchick.org  [snip]
>
> is in fact a particular subset of the larger population of women.
> Despite the overall message of some of the posts on that site, not every
> moment of every woman's life is a living hell, forever, even if you're a
> non-white transgendered woman.
>
> Not saying that life doesn't suck, but...if it sucked /that/ much?
> People would be killing themselves a /lot more often/ than they are.
>
> (Though I will say that, for myself, the greatest gift I can give my
> hypothetical children is to never have them, because The World.)

I posted that site because its the one I could remember how to find an 
article on. Its not the **only** place I have read the same things from. 
And.. you are seriously suggesting that only a certain "sort" of women 
post there, or in the comment threads, and that somehow their experience 
is therefore atypical of what goes on? Based on what exactly?

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On 1/5/2014 3:24 AM, Nekar Xenos wrote:
> On Sun, 05 Jan 2014 01:28:13 +0200, Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom>
> wrote:
>
>> On 1/3/2014 1:55 PM, Nekar Xenos wrote:
>>> Another problem concerning this is fake rape claims where a girl claims
>>> some-one has raped them only later to recant and say they just didn't
>>> like his attitude or something or wanted to pat him back for something
>>> silly.
>>
>> You have no clue a) how uncommon that really is,
> I do. I just thought it was worth mentioning since I haven't seen it
> mentioned in this post.
>
> and b) how much shit
>> women go through, even when it is legitimate, which might result in
>> them "wanting" to recant it, even if it did happen. So.. Don't go
>> there. I refer you to the same thing I posted in the other comment:
>>
>
> True. I should have mentioned that as well.
>
Ah, well. Sorry then. Its almost par for the course in such discussions 
that when someone says, "Oh, and then there are the ones making it up.", 
it ends up devolving, at some point, into them trying to claim "all of 
them" make it up. Heck, its practically a urban myth, truism, and 
"obvious fact" in the minds of some parts of the population, especially 
among men younger than, maybe 30, that it *is* an undisputed fact, and 
way too many of the ones older than that.

When a presenter can't even have a couple of drinks at the hotel bar, 
after speaking, and gets followed into the elevator, and propositioned 
by some idiot that won't take no for an answer, but thankfully didn't go 
farther than that, and a) the convention showed near disbelief, and a 
lack of intent to do anything about it, and b) it got tagged "elevator 
gate" by a stupid number of people.. its kind of obvious there is a 
bigger problem, and maybe how she was dressing, or where she was, or how 
many beers she had, etc... wasn't the issue. There are whole "women 
only" conferences that have cropped up due to this BS, in the last 2-3 
years, because the real ones went, "Well, I am sure there is a slight 
problem, but.. we just can't quite see it right now, and don't see any 
point in making people 'uncomfortable' by adding unnecessary rules, or 
taking reports seriously." Extrapolate from that sort of harrassment in 
supposed "professional" situations, and the cases where sexual assaults 
have even happened, not just verbal, or being propositioned, to the rest 
of the world, which **isn't** professional.. and, the picture starts 
looking damned ugly.

Some places a women "could" walk down the street, naked, and not be 
harassed (well not much more than just walking down the street, which 
isn't exact right either, really), but, here in the US, you can't even 
be a speaker at a convention, trying to get back to your room, without 
worrying about some ass assaulting you, when female. And.. forget "not 
going alone to your room", at least one of the full on rapes that I have 
read about was "by" the supposed escort, who promised to keep them from 
being attacked by some other person.

One of them called the whole mess, "Schrodinger's Rapist", its 
impossible to know which, if any, man might do it, until it either 
happens, or doesn't happen. Its that bad, sometimes, and.. what do they 
get, "Don't go alone, dress the wrong way, drink, have a social life, or 
do anything that might let the cat out of the box." Everyone, for some 
reason, always thinks they have "never" heard any of that advice, or 
thought about the absurd lengths you would have to go to follow it, and 
have it actually work, given the mental state, the privilege, and the 
sense of entitlement that always seems, on some level to exist in the 
heads of the people that do this sort thing. None of which is, since 
even the sane guys often joke about it, visible on the surface.

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On 1/2/2014 4:38 AM, Warp wrote:> John VanSickle 
<evi### [at] kosherhotmailcom> wrote:
 >> Well as a Christian I can tell you that the reason that I do not kill
 >> witches or homosexuals or Sabbath-breakers is not because I have let the
 >> commandments be trumped, but rather because those commandments were not
 >> given to me in he first place.
 >
 > I know that excuse, but it misses the point.
 >
 > It doesn't matter if God gave those commandments to everybody or only
 > to the hebrews, and it doesn't matter if the judiciary system to enact
 > those commandments is nowadays in place or not. The point is that God
 > did give those commandments, which means that God thinks they are good
 > and just.

He gave them in order to accomplish a number of purposes which He 
regards as good and just.  However, now that those purposes have been 
served, the commandments are no longer good and just; therefore they are 
no longer in effect.

 > And if you are completely honest (as you should be, if you
 > are a Christian), then you would agree that you do *not* think those
 > commandments are good and just.

I am glad that the commandments were not given to me, but whether 
something is right or wrong does not depend on how I feel about it.

 > The very fact that you would never
 > stone someone to death in any circumstance (much less for such a
 > "heinous" crime as breaking the sabbath or being rude to your parents)
 > shows that you do not think it's just punishment. If you are honest
 > to yourself, you will agree with this.

"Any circumstance"?  Sir, you do not know me.  There are some crimes for 
which I regard stoning as too merciful a punishment.  But in this era 
God has reserved those things for the secular authorities.

 > In other words, you disagree with your God.

I certainly do disagree with God (and as a result have wronged Him on 
numerous occasions).  There are a number of commandments, which apply to 
me, that I would have left out if I had written the Bible, and it is 
only with careful consideration that I recognize that they really are 
better than what I would have come up with on my own.  And thus I 
recognize that my disagreement with God is proof of a flaw in me and not 
in God.

Regards,
John

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On 12/19/2013 4:13 PM, Warp wrote:
> I'm really wondering if Hollywood screenwriters have to sign a contract
> where they make an oath that in any story where there are multiple
> characters, if one of them is wounded, sick or otherwise not completely
> right, they always, and I mean always, have to hide it from the others,
> even in situations where there's literally zero reasons to do that, it
> makes absolutely no sense, it has no purpose whatsoever, and it only
> makes things worse for everybody, and even if telling the others would
> actually be beneficial.
>
> I'm sick of seeing this again and again and again. It's like a holy rule
> of screenwriting. It has been seen in like a million movies, and there's
> no sign of it ever stopping.
>

I think people IRL do this, hoping someone will notice and make a movie 
about them. ;)

-- 
http://isometricland.net

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John VanSickle <evi### [at] kosherhotmailcom> wrote:
> He gave them in order to accomplish a number of purposes which He 
> regards as good and just.  However, now that those purposes have been 
> served, the commandments are no longer good and just; therefore they are 
> no longer in effect.

"They are no longer in effect" if you pick&choose verses as you like,
and ignore others that indicate that they are very much still in effect.
Of course other branches of Christianity pick&choose in a different
manner and think that they *are* still in effect (but come up with
excuses as to why they cannot be enacted.) And I'm not making this up
because I know of such denominations.

Anyway, from that, and from this:

> I am glad that the commandments were not given to me, but whether 
> something is right or wrong does not depend on how I feel about it.

it's relatively clear that you do not think that many of those
commandments are good and moral because they clash with your own
concept of morality.

>  > The very fact that you would never
>  > stone someone to death in any circumstance (much less for such a
>  > "heinous" crime as breaking the sabbath or being rude to your parents)
>  > shows that you do not think it's just punishment. If you are honest
>  > to yourself, you will agree with this.

> "Any circumstance"?  Sir, you do not know me.  There are some crimes for 
> which I regard stoning as too merciful a punishment.

You would honestly kill someone by stoning? You will have to excuse me
but I don't believe you. You don't sound like the kind of person that
would ever do that, no matter what that someone did.

>  But in this era 
> God has reserved those things for the secular authorities.

I suppose you could find a really contrived interpretation of some
passages to support that. Or perhaps not.

>  > In other words, you disagree with your God.

> I certainly do disagree with God (and as a result have wronged Him on 
> numerous occasions).  There are a number of commandments, which apply to 
> me, that I would have left out if I had written the Bible, and it is 
> only with careful consideration that I recognize that they really are 
> better than what I would have come up with on my own.  And thus I 
> recognize that my disagreement with God is proof of a flaw in me and not 
> in God.

No. You disagree with your god because you are more moral than your god.
You *know* that many of those commandments are immoral, inhumane and
unjust. You are glad that you don't have to enact them or see them
enacted, and you come up with some rationalizations as to why they
do not apply today, but were somehow good in the past. You try to
convince yourself that "surely God had a good reason for these, even
if I don't understand them."

If you were completely honest to yourself, you would admit this.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 2014-01-06 23:26, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> I posted that site because its the one I could remember how to find an
> article on. Its not the **only** place I have read the same things from.
> And.. you are seriously suggesting that only a certain "sort" of women
> post there, or in the comment threads, and that somehow their experience
> is therefore atypical of what goes on? Based on what exactly?

Well, it's a site that caters specifically to people that are skeptics, 
and shows preference for female-identifying individuals.  That, I'm 
afraid, is in fact a certain 'sort', not representative of the overall 
population.

Others likely post there, but /the most common/ (as entirely distinct 
from 'only', but with the net effect of carrying more weight) are by 
those for whom the site is built.  Their experience may or may not be 
atypical of what goes on, but it *is* a subset, and therefore has the 
*ability* to be skewed relative to the global set.

--
T. Cook

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On 1/8/2014 8:33 PM, Tim Cook wrote:
> On 2014-01-06 23:26, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> I posted that site because its the one I could remember how to find an
>> article on. Its not the **only** place I have read the same things from.
>> And.. you are seriously suggesting that only a certain "sort" of women
>> post there, or in the comment threads, and that somehow their experience
>> is therefore atypical of what goes on? Based on what exactly?
>
> Well, it's a site that caters specifically to people that are skeptics,
> and shows preference for female-identifying individuals.  That, I'm
> afraid, is in fact a certain 'sort', not representative of the overall
> population.
>
Well... The problems I have with that as an argument for questioning 
their views on the subject is.. 1) While it does certainly cater to 
such, not everyone on it started out as a skeptic, or had their 
experiences "while" skeptics, 2) Skeptics would, one would think, be 
better people to ask about biases based on the sort of false positives 
and presumptions of causality that, frankly, even people doing studies 
fall into (which is one major reason why you want replication of 
results, not jumping on a study, or even more than one, from the same 
environment), as a basis of reaching a conclusion, 3) it presumes, 
without good reason, that their experience in this matter "is" different 
somehow, and finally, not everyone that posts there "are" women.

Well, that and, one of the major points I am trying to get across is 
that the "male centric" view that sits over top of our culture already 
biases *everything*, including, historically, the interpretations of 
data, and/or even the collection of it, in such studies. That view as 
what kept bird experts from even seeing the evidence that most birds are 
non-monogamous, instead of just asserting they where. Its the same bias 
that caused Masters and Johnson so many headaches when the real data 
about human sexuality kept failing to match their expectations of what 
constituted "normal". Its the same bias that has called into question, 
recently, conclusions about behavior, especially involving sex, 
relationships, and even violence, among primitive tribes. Its a bias 
that is so pervasive that the *automatic* reaction of nearly everyone, 
male and female, when an assault happens, is to either joke about what 
"she" might have done, or question it, but not what the guy did. There 
is a built in bias, where you are almost not even taken seriously at 
all, if you report something, regardless of whether you are, presumably, 
some sort of science geek, which seems to be the assumption about people 
on that network, or the stereotypical blond bimbo. In fact, they might 
even take the later "less" seriously, because they are all body, and not 
so much brains, and the "script" says that such woman are easier, less 
likely to say no, and thus, more likely to be lying, just out of spite.

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On 1/7/2014 11:29 PM, John VanSickle wrote:
> He gave them in order to accomplish a number of purposes which He
> regards as good and just.  However, now that those purposes have been
> served, the commandments are no longer good and just; therefore they are
> no longer in effect.
>
No, people created them, for specific purposes, most of which involved 
trying to control other people. The irony being, they never seemed to 
grasp that, sometimes, trying to forbid something stupid, created an 
even worse evil as a consequence. There is a comment in one of the Disc 
world novels, to the effect, "Its too bad that gods only ever seem to 
come across shepherds, instead of goat herders, because sheep have to be 
driven, while goats can only be *led*."

>  > And if you are completely honest (as you should be, if you
>  > are a Christian), then you would agree that you do *not* think those
>  > commandments are good and just.
>
> I am glad that the commandments were not given to me, but whether
> something is right or wrong does not depend on how I feel about it.
>
It has everything to do with how you feel about it. Heck, if I was going 
to rewrite one of the silly "the devils greatest trick" statements, it 
would be either, "The devils greatest trick was convincing man that he 
wasn't also god.", or maybe, "The devils greatest trick was teaching man 
to believe in sin." Good is what causes the least pain, to the most 
people, or, preferably, any. But, its also a dream. A thing to be 
striven towards, to be believed in, and when necessary, revised, not 
because its *real* but because its what makes all of us feel better, in 
the long run, and you can't create a thing that doesn't exist, until you 
believe in it enough to try to make it real. The mistake religion makes 
is in not just claiming that it is real, but that they know what it is, 
refusing to abandon it, until forced (and there has never been a time 
that the church has not changed "because" the world did, instead of 
changing the world, where the outcome has not been terror and pain, for 
someone). Or, as someone else put it, religion claims to know the 
unknowable.

If you didn't "feel" that the things you believe where good, or had 
value, or could achieve something worth the effort, you wouldn't believe 
in what you do, any more than the list of things that, as Warp points 
out, other similar people have opted to believe in, but you now reject. 
That both you and them hold on to things that... I, and others, find 
absurd, irrational, and/or even dangerous, and are horrified that people 
still believe them... well, we are trying to build a better world. You.. 
are trying to crib together a dead one, so you can justify keeping the 
carpets.

> "Any circumstance"?  Sir, you do not know me.  There are some crimes for
> which I regard stoning as too merciful a punishment.  But in this era
> God has reserved those things for the secular authorities.
>
>  > In other words, you disagree with your God.
>
> I certainly do disagree with God (and as a result have wronged Him on
> numerous occasions).  There are a number of commandments, which apply to
> me, that I would have left out if I had written the Bible, and it is
> only with careful consideration that I recognize that they really are
> better than what I would have come up with on my own.  And thus I
> recognize that my disagreement with God is proof of a flaw in me and not
> in God.
>
Not to mention a whole lot that, I somehow predict, you "think" can be 
somehow justified by the Bible, or are in there, if you quint just 
right, or should be, yet, somehow never quite got written into it, in 
nice clear, hard to confuse of misinterpret, language. You, I suspect, 
would find the silly, "A fetus is a bit like a wad of chewing gum, so 
the god of the Koran told us about embryology!", nonsense, as, well... 
nonsense, yet, there is so much that is claimed, by Christians, who 
reject all the old, "no longer applicable" bits of the Bible, which are 
just as absurdly justified, by stretching the language of what is in the 
Bible so badly you can read whole libraries through it (i.e., nothing of 
the original meaning being retained in the process).

This doesn't impress people who look at the way people actually lived 
when it was written, the conflicts they had with their neighbors, the 
way religions actually worked back then, or note funny little 
absurdities, like how Jehovah was, at one time, one of three brothers, 
under the God El, and a war monger (The other two where Chemosh and 
Baal, one a god of farming, and the other one of commerce, and slave 
trading. Did Jehovah, later one, decide to bang his own sword into a 
hammer, and take up carpentry? lol), and the Jewish version fairly 
explicitly hinted at there being more than one god.

You don't get around those annoying little inconsistencies with the 
"core" idea behind a religion, any more than you can ignore 20 lines out 
of a passage listing everything from what sort of socks you should wear, 
to how many stone to throw at your son, if he calls you names, just so 
you can, for example, do what the right wing self-claimed "literalists" 
do, and insist that gays are evil, because of one single line in the 
same bunch of idiocies. (And, yeah, I know there is nothing about socks 
in the Bible, but.. are some of the other things in that passage any 
less silly?)

Your god is a variation on Terry Pratchett's Nuggan - an endless list of 
new things declared abominations, by one priest or the other, until, at 
some point, even children, rocks, and the color blue, get declared, 
"Evil in the sight of god." But, at least Nuggan filled in the pages of 
absurd declarations himself (until he died, and it kept filling itself 
with, instead, all the fears and anxieties of people that he once godded 
over), a page at a time, magically, instead of relying on something as 
unreliable as people to decide which new things to claim are bad, which 
ones suddenly became OK, and to tell everyone, "But, this isn't just my 
*opinion*. Its not like I say these things are true because I merely 
feel they are!", just like the other 20,000 contradictory versions, all 
of them disagreeing with each other, on almost every single thing that 
is, or isn't, bad, or is or isn't still in effect, or is, or isn't 
merely allegorical.

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