Quickies

Skepchick Quickies 11.27

Amanda

Amanda works in healthcare, is a loudmouthed feminist, and proud supporter of the Oxford comma.

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  1. I have also been watching the V series, and when I saw the bit about vaccines it was a serious *facepalm*. As my wife, a nurse, pointed out “Great! Like we don’t have enough problems already getting people to vaccinate?”

  2. Side hug? Could only handle a few seconds of that. Painfully bad rapping.

    Church lying about lying? Known about that all my life. When I was involved (heavily during the 70’s), we were taught how to lie in order to get converts.

    V? Don’t get me started. I’ve watched up until the last and don’t think I’ll watch anymore. The one thing that irritated me from the start about this is where are the human scientists? Where are the human doctors? This show just plays into all the worst of the conspiracy theories.

  3. “Christian side hugs”?!?

    My mind boggles. Do they fear getting aroused if they should give someone a proper hug?

  4. @Rei Malebario: yes. yes, they do. Because arousal is automatically bad, and because you should be denied the ability to figure out what you like in a sexual partner until you have irrevocably committed yourself to someone else.

    At which point, you just have to sort of hope for sexual compatibility.

    This is, of course, completely healthy. I “mentally reserved” the sarcastic addition of the word “NOT”, so it’s not a lie.

  5. T-t-that was the worst video I’ve ever seen. Seriously, if I had a time machine the first thing I would do is go back in time five minutes and stop myself from watching that video.

  6. Okay, I get the mechanics of a Christian Side Hug. What I *don’t* get is WHY?? Could it be chalked up to a quote from the web comic “Jesus and Mo” – “Thank you for not provoking my uncontrollable lust.”?

    As for the lying thing, if you leave something out intentionally it’s still lying by omission. AKA Liar, liar frock on fire.

  7. @autotroph: Man, I thought the southern baptists I stayed with in California back in the way back were pretty nutty, but at least they had no reservations about full frontal hugging. And these were people who claimed to know that the Earth was only about 6000 years old.

  8. @FledgelingSkeptic: Autotroph’s got it, I think. It’s all about controlling desires. God will take care of the sexual compatibility later. But since a “good” Christian would never ever talk about sex, they will go on thinking that whatever kind of sex they are having must be the best sex in the universe.

  9. I know I don’t contribute much in the way of comments. But srsly. Does anyone else here get a tiny bit of raaaaage when they see that comments are disabled on videos like that? It makes me wanna track down the people who post the video and give them an IRL earful and beating with nerf sticks.

    I mean, can’t you tell that D’AWWWWW ocelots!

    wut?

  10. When I first read about the Ana/Obama comparrisons before V debuted I hoped that the show would prove to be a satire. I wasn’t sure how this was possible, given the supposed story-line arc, but I hoped anyway. With each episode, however, that seems less and less likely.

  11. I didn’t see the vaccine thing in V as causing paranoia…the Vs were tainting the otherwise beneficial vaccine. Do you think people (other than the Jenny McCarthys of the world) will see that and think that there’s a vaccine conspiracy? My husband had the same reaction as you, he thinks it’ll scare people out of getting vaccines, but in my opinion we’re just more sensitive to these things because we’re aware of these skeptical issues. I don’t see the average viewer thinking anything of the vaccine thing, but I could be wrong. I guess we’ll see how the story develops in future episodes, it could cause more problems. I just don’t think it’s that much of an issue (but am willing to be corrected).

    Maybe it’s just because I like the show!

  12. The very first episode of V turned me off when they said univeral health care was one of their plots. Haven’t watched since, and I don’t think i’m missing out.

  13. Gunshots? The “Christian side-hug” video begins with gunshots? Because shooting is good Christian behavior, but hugging is sinful…

  14. @LinzeeBinzee

    I don’t think it’ll add much fuel to the Jenny McCarthys of the world. I see it more fueling the Alex Joneses who’ve been saying all along that H1N1 is a fabricationbof the government to get us to take the vaccination that they’ve slipped some sort of mind control agent into.

  15. I admit I had a twitch when V went the tampered vaccine route, along the lines of “ah hell, more Google searches that will land near Jenny McCarthy,” but I think when it comes to conspiracy theories in fiction, us skeptical types need to relax sometimes. This isn’t Oliver Stone’s JFK- we haven’t crossed past fiction into lies, and a person that doesn’t get a vaccine because a show about lizard people made them nervous isn’t exactly someone we could reach anyways. I could even see this as a benefit- when the anti-vaxxers flip out, people can now go “wait, these people think V is real? Hell with them!” Even fictional conspiracies theories that masquerade as carrying more fact than they do- the da Vinci Code, for instance, can be useful skeptical tools- the fact that the Prior is a known hoax can be explained in five minutes, but all the same the person has been exposed to the fundamental notion that all in Christianity is not as clean as it seems. And let us not forget at the conclusion of the episode our intrepid heroes have thwarted the plot and rendered the world’s vaccines safe.

    The mental reservation article may get points for being the most stunning example of religious doublethink I have ever seen. Let’s not admit that priests can lie, and sometimes those are little white lies and sometimes they are unacceptable breaches of confidence- let’s instead create a structure where they cannot lie under any circumstances and leave them this titanic opening where they have apparently only engaged in a sin of omission if they can think up an addendum to their words that makes them true.

    “I don’t rape little boys and girls (because by little I mean fetal.)”

  16. Re: Christian Side Hug..

    there isn’t a font big enough to express the magnitude of the WTF I just wrote. I don’t even know what they’re talking about. Do they even do the side hug? How is acting like a thuggish buffooon better than a hug? I thought Jesus was against people being “rough riders”.

    And finally, why in the name of Bob do they sample the Darth Vader/Dark Side theme from Star Wars?

    Thank you for the ocelot.

  17. I heard that in S. America they have a problem of people buying baby ocelots as pets and then being surprised when it starts trashing their house and attacking them.

    Because something that cute could never ever be unsuitable as a pet.

  18. Do they say, “I’m a Rough Rider filled up with Christ’s Love?”

    Isn’t Rough Rider a condom brand?
    Uh?

  19. Its wasn’t hugging that was dirty; it was the boner you got when a girls breasts pressed into you that was dirty, because by being sexually aroused by a woman you weren’t married to you were giving her something that was rightly your wife’s same is if you had an affair.

  20. Wait… maybe my skeptic sensors are broken. Is the side hug thing a parody, or not? I hope it’s just an unfunny parody.
    I saw the episode of V that discussed the vaccines. Immediately, I began to worry. Do we need another Eli Stone-type episode that, while fictional, furthers the “vaccines are icky and should be avoided” mindset?
    Then I realized that Aristothenes has a point. If we can’t convince someone that the lizard people aren’t in charge, then there truly is no hope for them. Although I must admit, lizard people would be pretty cool.

  21. “Dear congregation, do you want to send your kids come help the church after hours?”.

    And they mentally reserve the “to fuck like there was no tomorrow”, so it was consensual.

  22. “Christian Side Hug”? Painful to watch. But proof that christianity will eventually die out since the proponents are all afraid of any body contact.

    It may take a while for me to shake the image of those boys rapping on the joys of being straight, chaste and filled with the love of Jesus. TOO MANY WRONG THINGS to process.
    I may need to watch some porn just to feel clean again

  23. It’s a sort of green eggs and ham approach to lying. “Did you rape them?” “I did not rape them [in a jeep].” “Would you, could you with a sheep?” “I would not, could not, with a sheep [today].” I do not like them, Benedict-I-am. I do not like young boys and rams [at the same time, though God knows I’ve TRIED].

    Alternately, it’s more waynes world. “I’m totally innocent! [NOT!].”

  24. FWIW, I grew up in Assembly of God churches (i.e. Pentecostal, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, etc.) in the southeast (Tennessee and Florida), and I don’t remember there ever being any issues with frontal hugs. Of course, they still made it very clear that sexual activity was to be reserved for marriage – but that’s not really news.

  25. I didn’t even know they remade V.
    I have the original series on DVD (2 seasons I think).
    It’s been a while since I saw it, but I think the vaccine plot shows up in that one too.

    I think the reptilians essentially tried all the varied ways a secret invader could attempt to sway/brainwash the general public, and all of their plans got twarthed by the brave underground conspiracy resistance fighters (or at least disarmed and exposed for what they really were, leaving the plan unable to have much if any effect). Often with the classic trope of “we’ve won this battle, or did we?” when the reptilians were expecting defeat all along and were actually trying to further some other secret plan.

    I’d say it’s harmless entertainment. Anyone who thinks crazy farfetched sci-fi stuff like that is happening for real is going to get laughed at. Seriously.

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