| singing |
[Feb. 25th, 2009|09:03 am] |
I was on the train going to class yesterday and this guy got on, loudly said, "attention," and then started singing from a Christian hymn book. As I was watching him I started thinking, what is it about religion that make people feel compelled to bother other people about it? You'd never see someone running through a subway car singing the praises of Coke over Pepsi. Not even the most rabid fan passes out flyers about how awesome the Jonas Brothers are. But yet something about religion moves people so much that they just have to tell other people about it. There are lots of things I like a lot, but I can't think of anything I'd be willing to sing on the subway about. Maybe I'm just not thinking about this the right way. The only similar phenomena I know if is people who just won't shut the hell up about their kids. But at least they confine their yammering to friends and coworkers, they don't bother strangers about it. I'm not saying religion is good or bad, I'm just really interested to know why people feel the need to proselytize about it, and not about stuff like the Jonas Brothers.
On what seems like a similar note, but is really entirely different, here's a video of cluster bombs Israel was shooting at Gaza a few weeks ago. Its a boring video, but you can really see how the cluster bombs work in action, and see how they indiscriminately knock out whole city blocks. if you watch the video, try to remember that each of those bombs is probably killing a child in one of the houses below. In addition, note the use of the white phosphorous 'flares'. White phosphorous is legal to use in warfare as long as what you are using it for is to light up an area. But that's not what the Israelis are doing here. In this case, they are setting off the flares low so that they hit the ground. That causes fires and chemical burns, probably to the children below who were not killed by the cluster bombs. In case you were wondering, yes, using incendiary weapons on civilian targets is a war crime (under the Geneva Treaty of 1980).
White Phosphorous video. |
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