30 Days of Burning Man – Day 18, Burning Man in the News

This year there is a possibility that there will be a much higher percentage of newbies heading to the desert so I thought I’d spend the 30 days before the gates open throwing out some information, some images and a little bit of wisdom, advice and snark about the place I love so much. These posts will be generally directed at Burning Man virgins but hopefully some of you old dogs out there will contribute through comments or get some enjoyment out of them as well. So here we go.  .  I’ll include at least one photo from Burning Man each day and once a week I’ll do nothing but photos.  I hope the posts are sometimes helpful and also enjoyable, enjoy ~ ZD Blue

Burning Man in the news and a quick ticket update, tonight links to recent Burning Man news items, enjoy ~ ZD Blue

Did a quick ticket scan tonight, first for tickets on Craigslist in Sacramento over 20 posts with tickets ranging from trade to $200 to $500 so some over selling but lots of available fair priced tickets.

Ebay is less attractive about 55 auctions a few that at the moment would be great deals but most are overpriced.

The best and safest process is through eplaya and there are a ton of tickets there http://eplaya.burningman.com/viewforum.php?f=291&sid=5386ebeebf0616ad7ee4a3a299034fe3

Finally massive number of tickets available on Craigslist in the SF Bay area across the price spectrum but happily a lot of really reasonably priced tickets.

Rancher Cleared in burning of Burning Man Ship http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/12/4719161/rancher-cleared-in-torching-of.html

A story about a Burning Man project, the Dream Boxhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/xaque-gruber/the-dreambox_b_1741895.html

Finding Jesus at Burning Man, a piece from Christianity Today and an interesting read http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/july-august/finding-jesus-at-burning-man.html?start=1

A piece interviewing a restaurateur from NYC about Burning Man, a beautiful illustration of how horrible most of the main stream media cover Burning Man, either we’re all drunk and stoned or this is a dusty happy camping trip where you can “hop on a rolling Tiki Bar to go wherever you want”  enjoy. http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/travel/dont-miss-the-tiki-bar-at-burning-man.html

Gay Marriage, Don’t be on the Wrong Side of History

Gay Marriage, Don’t be on the Wrong Side of History

Today, North Carolina became the 30^th state in the supposedly most exceptional and most free country in the world to ban marriage for same-sex partners.

The fact is that America has been here before; in the early 1960’s 41 states had laws banning marriage between races.  In 1967, 16 states still had these laws on the books.  I’m sure that the people in those former 41 states truly believed they were right and that God was on their side in prohibiting inter-racial marriage.  That in fact they were protecting traditional marriage as it was intended to be, that marriage should only be between two people of the same race as it would be unnatural for marriage to occur between races. 

Today, except for an attempt by a church in KY recently, people generally see the stupidity of the idea that two people of different races shouldn’t be allowed to be married.  Oh, I’m sure some racist bastards out there still believe this, but generally society has come to realize this prohibition was absurd.  Like people often say, hindsight is 20/20. 

My hope for you today is for you to realize that five, or ten, or twenty years from now people will think the same damn thing about the opposition to same-sex marriage and the ridiculous argument that gay marriage somehow threatens the validity of a marriage for heterosexual couples anywhere.  That somehow allowing same-sex couples to marry will lead to people marrying animals or inanimate objects, this is just ridiculous.  I don’t want you to have to lie in the future when your grandkids ask you what side of this issue you were on.  I want you to proudly look at them and say I supported gay marriage because it was the right thing to do, because two people who love each other should always have had that right.

I leave you with the words of Mildred Loving, the wife in the case that helped eradicate the idiocy, the injustice of the ban against interracial marriage.

“My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry.”

“Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the ‘wrong kind of person’ for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.”

“I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.”

Mildred Loving died in May of 2008.

Why Fox News and conservatives think women are stupid and lazy

The logic of conservatives forces them to think women are less intelligent and lazier than men

Recently a piece in CNN by Nina Easton of Fortune magazine puts forward all too common refrain of conservatives and their network Fox News.  This is the idea that people who are upset about the wealth gap in America and the greed of the 1% are just jealous, whiney, losers.  You see from their perspective, the reason people are rich is that they are smarter and better than the rest of us and just plain work harder.  You see to conservatives the idea that they are not better than others and morally superior is unfathomable.  There is no luck involved, where you start out in life is irrelevant, they can’t conceive that America might actually be a country that does more to support and maintain the wealthy than to support the basic living standards of the poor or provide opportunities to the poor and middle class.

See considering that America might not be the most perfect nation ever created or conceived of violates another core conservative principle, that of American Exceptionalism.  You see according to conservatives there is something uniquely and inherently special about the United States of America.  This is fact is actually code for America is God’s chosen nation and that of course would be a Christian Protestant God.

However, these underlying principles of conservatism deny many very real facts about America.  I think the biggest one involves healthcare.  If America as conservatives claim has the greatest medical system on earth, if Americans are so special, than why do we have such a horrible infant mortality rate in this country?  We have the 28^th lowest infant mortality rate and that is behind countries like:  South Korea, France, Japan, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom and even Cuba.  That’s right the United States ranks behind, non-Christian countries, socialist leaning countries, countries with socialized medicine and even communist Cuba.

Back to Nina Easton’s article, if the reason the rich make more money than the rest of us is that they are smarter and work harder, how do conservatives explain that women make 77% of what men make?  Well, let’s use typical conservative logic, since you make more if you work harder and are smarter, I guess that conservatives must believe that compared to men, women are lazy and less intelligent.  Can’t imagine why the GOP struggles to get a majority of the women’s vote.

 

A reason why I love Burning Man

Ok, so almost 15 years ago I saw a magazine cover in Tennessee that said, all of these people are going to hell and a picture of some people around a fire.  The article then proceeded to talk about all of the horrors of Burning Man, so of course, I had to go.  I’ve been in the desert for 5 burns since then and found a really amazing place and part of my life.  Today on Twitter one of my friends posted a link to the following article which is so utterly ridiculous that it’s actually comical and is the type of things burners have a lot of fun with, hope you enjoy it:

http://christwire.org/2011/06/is-burning-man-to-blame-for-the-increase-in-american-teen-std-cases/

For those who don’t know anything about Burning Man, you can start with www.burningman.com and then move on to this piece I wrote after last years burn and the significance of the temple at Burning Man: http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2010/10/02/269/

Or you can read any of the other posts in my Burning Man category at the left of the page, enjoy.

Terry Jones, a burning Koran in Florida, Karzai’s gambit and Death in Afghanistan

This is not the first time I’ve written about Pastor Terry Jones in Florida, a man who calls himself a Christian Pastor but is in fact nothing but a hate monger and a media whore, my last post was so entitled and the link is below:

http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2010/09/08/pastor-terry-jones-is-nothing-but-a-christian-media-whore/

Recently Mr. Jones put the Koran on trial, judged it guilty and burned it in his church in front of his massive 30 person ministry.  You can read more about the sickening details below:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/under-god/post/un-workers-killed-during-protest-of-terry-jones-koran-burning/2011/04/01/AFLOqKIC_blog.html

Happily, as you will notice by the date of the piece I linked to, the US media basically ignored this act, finally treating Jones with the level of disdain he deserved.  In fact I had also planned on ignoring him in this blog as well.  However, and unfortunately, this past week in retaliation to this blatant act of disrespect, Mullahs in Afghanistan fired up their congregations and in fact violence and deaths ensued.  The news however was not ignored by the media in fact it has been a lead story everywhere.  In condemnation of what Jones did, the media became an equal criminal by playing up how Muslims took to the streets and in an attempt to kills Americans instead attacked and killed UN workers.

However, this morning on CNN and also in several news outlets I found there was much more to the story.  In fact, this was not Muslims running wild and being unreasonable and violent as many people and much of the media want to portray it.  In fact, what fired up the Mullahs in Afghanistan was a speech by President Hamid Karzai in which he called for Terry Jones’ arrest, which in fact Karzai knew could not happen under American Law.   A political gambit by President Karzai that has back fired as Taliban elements in Afghanistan incited the violence that led to 20 deaths.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/263719/karzais-incitement-andrew-stuttaford

So at the end of the day, Jones, Karzai, the Taliban and the American media are all to blame for the misrepresentations of Islam and the deaths of innocent people.

BS Moment of Silence Part 2: Arizona Legislature off the rails and the most hateful Christians in America

 I want to start this post by introducing you to the equivalent of radical Islam living right here in the United States.  The world appropriately looks down on Al Qaeda and radical clerics because they take a beautiful peaceful religion and turn it into a brutal, hateful mechanism of pain.  I have heard people who denigrate Muslims paint the entire religion of Islam with a broad brush due to the actions of this minority.  I wonder if those same folks paint Christianity the same way when they hear about the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.  These are the people who proclaim in the name of the lord to hate homosexuals and to show their hate, they picket the funerals of homosexuals or any funeral or event they can somehow link to homosexuality.   Here is a link to the Wikipedia site about the group:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church

This group is nuts but also in my opinion wholly insincere, what this group is really about is getting attention for this group.  They regularly picket that bastion of homosexual lifestyle, Kansas City Chiefs home games, the NFL is a lot of things positive and negative but a big gay pride festival it is not.  This group claims to have an annual travel budget of $200,000 and that money must come from donations and I say shame on anyone contributing to this hate group.

So the Westboro Baptist Church has announced it will protest at the funeral of the nine-year old girl who was shot in Tucson earlier this week that targeted Congresswoman Giffords.  In watching CNN today the network appropriately reached out to the church to get a statement from them, it is fair to hear both sides of the story.  In full character the church responded with a hateful rant including accusations about everyone including the little girl.  I think the Westboro Baptist Church is a collection of the most hateful Christians in America and if there is a Christian God, I’m quite sure he has a one-way ticket to Hell punched for these cretins. 

As someone with a Libertarian bent, and a strong believer in the freedom the constitution guarantees, I will wait and see what the Supreme Court says this spring about whether or not this type of speech can be banned.  It worries me on some level to ban any speech that does not cause direct physical injury, the cliché screaming fire in a crowded theater.  The infliction of emotional harm is a much stickier issue and the one that the Supreme Court is facing and it will be interesting to see what they say.  Regardless, you are scum if you picket the funeral of a nine-year old girl for any reason!

Happily, the people of Arizona are fighting back against the nut jobs like people have done on many other occasions.  People have conducted anti-protests against the Westboro church ever since the Matthew Shepard funeral in Wyoming in 1998.  The way they do this is to wear giant angel wings and use these to block the view of the protestors by the mourners.  The image below comes from the Portland Independent Media Center at:

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/10/326599.shtml

Counter-protest Angels

Finally today I have a huge problem with what the nuts of the Arizona legislature are doing now.  They are rushing to pass a bill today to keep the protestors at some set distance away from any funeral.  They are waiving rules and are setting records in getting this law done and signed in one day.  Let’s be clear, their intent is to be commended, as I’ve said picketing a little girl’s funeral is despicable.  However, this church has been picketing military funerals for years and so once again today I ask the question why is congress so special?  Does the Arizona legislature only care about the mourning of families if they get killed standing nearby a congresswoman but not if they were killed in the line of duty in the military?  Or is it that they only care about their citizens when the media is watching?  I think the government of Arizona has shown in the last two years that it is completely off the rails.

Halloween, the Devil’s Holiday?

Now several years ago working at a college I won’t name I had several of my Christian student raise a stink over the fact that we were celebrating Halloween by decorating the office.  Their main objection was that we were celebrating a Satanic Holiday.  I disallowed their complaint and did a quick history lesson with them about Halloween.  So here in a little more detail with a few links are, as best as I can figure out, the origins of Halloween.

First the date is essentially another co-opted Celtic Pagan holiday that Christians took over.  Early Christians very smartly incorporated their traditions onto Pagan holiday dates, also often incorporating some of the traditions as well as a way to more easily gain Christian converts.  It worked, there are a lot more Christians than Pagans running around these days.  The holiday the Christians stole was Samhain which was a harvest festival that was also rumored to be a time when the past, the spirit world and the present often co-mingled.  A link to the history of Samhain is below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain

There is an even tighter connection to Christianity and Halloween thanks to early Christians, most religions and cultures have a day where they celebrate the dead.  Another Pagan festival Lemuria a time in which the Pagans drove the unwanted spirits from their homes occurred on May 13 which the Christians co-opted it in the 7^th century to  be All Saints Day, you can read more about Lemuria below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_the_Lemures

Then to try to drain the strength out of the Samhain holiday the church moved All Saints Day to November 1^st and it became known as All Hallows Day, thus turning the evening of Samhain into All Hallows Evening and eventually shortened to Halloween.  So this is the origin of the name of Halloween and how the holiday kept it’s connection to the dead.  Priests also asked the faithful to pray for souls in Purgatory during this time, so on Halloween, poor children would beg door to door for soul cakes, and in return they would pray for souls in Purgatory.  Sounds a lot like trick or treat.

So where do our iconic Halloween images come from?  Witches are an easy one as this comes from the witch scares, particularly in the 1600s.  The things associated with their homes make up the cliché witch, the hat was what a country woman’s hat looked like in 17^th century Europe, cauldron’s were fireplace cook pots and brooms of course were part of the household.  Finally cats, well heck, single outcast women living alone always have cats, even today.

The rowdy and masked elements of the holiday most likely come from rowdy All Hallows Eve beggars who drank ale as they went door to door and as the night wore on got more demanding and caused trouble, masks helped retain their anonymity.  Guy Fawkes lent some help to the mask bit as his November 5^th attempt to blow up parliament was celebrated each year with masks and fires.

As immigrants came to the new world they brought snippets of their individual traditions around this holiday to the new world and they were incorporated into Halloween celebrations.  At the time of the Civil War, the massive amount of death as well as people lost, not knowing if they were dead or alive led to many ghost stories related to the missing and dead from the war.  Add into this mix the Bogey, brought by Scots from their lore and legend and now we get the Bogey or Boogeyman.  The Jack O’Lantern mythology comes from Europe as well and transforms from kids hollowing out turnips in Europe and uses what was more at hand in the US, pumpkins which are harvested the same time of year.  A link to some of the legends and history of the Jack O’Lantern is below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack-o’-lantern

Additionally Scots and Irish immigrants also brought the begging and rowdy prank filled Halloween celebrations of the old country with them.

The turn of the twentieth century saw artists starting to use the images of fear, ghosts, skeletons, witches and devils.  All which drew from the images of death, ghosts wrapped in their death shroud, pumpkins carved to resemble the rigor mortis smile and triangle nose area of a corpse.  This really finalized the look of Halloween that we still have today.

Halloween has also at times gotten out of hand with pranks that derailed street cars, release livestock, and as most of us aware even continues to this day in places like Detroit where hundreds of fires often occur over the three night period referred to as devil’s night, a link covering the history of devil’s night is below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil’s_Night

As a response to the vandalism and rowdiness of Halloween cities began looking for ways to distract and engage kids on Halloween.  So up came Halloween parties, costume contests, parades and bobbing for apples lots of the Halloween standards we all know.  Finally, in the early 20th century people began doing open houses where they gave away treats to keep from getting pranked on Halloween and thus the phrase and the tradition of “Trick or Treat” was born.