"Destruction to the Red-haired Hag!"

I'm off on two weeks' leave today, and I fervently hope to be nowhere near a computer for anything more than a few rounds of Caesar III during that time.
So I'm leaving you with Happy Lughnasadh thoughts.
Lughnasadh is celebrated by some of the Wiccans on the 1st or 2nd of February in this hemisphere, but O/C ex-pagans like Warren and myself will be burning the corn on the astronomically accurate date of 3rd Feb this year.
Lugh dedicated this festival to his foster-mother, Tailtiu, the last queen of the Fir Bolg, who died from exhaustion after clearing a great forest so that the land could be cultivated. When the men of Ireland gathered at her death-bed, she told them to hold funeral games in her honor. As long as they were held, she prophesied Ireland would not be without song. Tailtiu’s name is from Old Celtic Talantiu, "The Great One of the Earth," suggesting she may originally have been a personification of the land itself, like so many Irish goddesses. In fact, Lughnasadh has an older name, Brón Trogain, which refers to the painful labor of childbirth. For at this time of year, the earth gives birth to her first fruits so that her children might live.
This was also an occasion for handfasting, or trial marriages. Young men and women lined up on either side of a wooden gate in a high wall, in which a hole was carved, large enough for a hand. One by one, girl and boy would grasp a hand in the hole, without being able to see who was on the other side. They were now married, and could live together for year and day to see if it worked out. If not, the couple returned to next year’s gathering and officially separated by standing back to back and walking away from each other.
In later times, the festival of Lughnasadh was christianized as Lammas, from the Anglo-Saxon, hlaf-mas, "Loaf-Mass," but in rural areas, it was often remembered as "Bilberry Sunday," for this was the day to climb the nearest "Lughnasadh Hill" and gather the earth’s freely-given gifts of the little black berries, which they might wear as special garlands or gather in baskets to take home for jam.
I'll also be making my famous, artery-clogging Colcannon, even though I have no known Irish antecedants.

Colcannon 6 servings: 1 medium cabbage, quartered and core removed 2 lb potatoes, scrubbed and sliced with skins left on 2 medium leeks, thoroughly washed and sliced 1 cup milk 1/2 teaspoons each mace, salt, pepper 2 garlic cloves 8 tablespoons unsalted butter Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and boil the cabbage until tender, about 12-15 minutes. Drain off the water and chop the cabbage. Set aside. Bring another pot of water to a boil and boil the potatoes until tender. Drain off the water and set aside. Put the leeks in a saucepan, cover with the milk, bring close to boiling and then turn down to a simmer until tender. Set aside. Add the mace, salt and pepper, and garlic to the pot with the potatoes and mash well with a hand masher. Now add the leeks and their milk and mix in with the potatoes, taking care not to break down the leeks too much. Add a little more milk if necessary to make it smooth. Now mash in the cabbage and lastly the butter. The texture that you want to achieve is smooth-buttery-potato with interesting pieces of leek and cabbage well distributed in it. Transfer the whole mixture to an ovenproof dish, make a pattern on the surface and place under the broiler to brown. After the first mouthful, Irish families might call out, "Destruction to the Red-haired Hag!" The red-haired hag is a personification of hunger.

Columbia Astronauts See Odd Phenomenon

A new atmospheric phenomenon was caught on video by the crew of the space shuttle Columbia just days before the shuttle broke apart, new findings suggest.

The Israeli scientists working with the video material are gathering around the meteor explanation or just possibly an unusual form of lightning. In any case, a natural occurance. But it's not enough for many folks to have such things explained naturally.Seems some conspiracy theorists were at it in April last year already, as witness these spelling-award candidates on “Above Top Secret”
Even better is this bozo ("One Who Knows") who seems to think that the Russians and the Americans are involved in a very complicated, not to mention illogical, conspiracy to hide the Enterprise shuttle and rename it Columbia.
What is it about the human race which needs must find the creepiest, least parsimonious answer to questions?
Is it a need to fill a boredom vacuum in our lives?
Is the universe not bloody magnificent enough already without having to invoke spirits, demons, angels, gods and little green men? Or World Government/Illuminati Conspiracies for chrissakes.
Says Yoav Yair of the Open University in Ra'anana:

...the observation of the TIGER adds to the scientific discoveries of the mission, honouring the lives of the lost astronauts. "Of course, it's no consolation. But it shows the astronauts didn't die for nothing - some science was achieved,"

Precisely.And that ought to be enough, godsdammit.

Found It

Mostly for my own satisfaction, as battling it out with Stats SA Online is not my idea of fun.(Not content with being statistically inept, they find they have to have one of the slowest, most cumbersome web presences in the land). Lookee here (thanks for reminding me Nurtle):

· 53 percent belong to mainstream Christian churches · 24 percent are atheists · 14 percent are members of African Independent Churches · 3 percent of joburgers are Muslim · 1 percent practice Judaism · 1 percent follow Hinduism

You know how annoying the Jewish population can be in some suburbs? And the bloody Hindus as well? Well, we're 24 times their size! So let's get a little ubiquitous ourselves!

And Now for the Good News

Windhoek - The Namibian state broadcaster has suspended all religious programming from television and radio.

Surprisingly, Sam Njoma has something positive to add:

In 2001 he labelled Christianity a "foreign philosophy"

ah, but it was getting too good to be true, so here’s the catch:

and suggested that Namibians go back to their ancestral worship of the cattle god, known as Kalunga ya Nangombe.

Satan Sheets

(Not , unfortunatly, my title.But I steal a good one where I can) A HOTEL bed which belonged to devil-worshipper Aleister Crowley is to be exorcised The owner, who apparently purchased the place from that Page character of Led Zeppelin (who used to own the Crowley estate) seems to be a little unhinged:

Now Andy, 40, has called in Kevin Carlyon, High Priest of White Witches, to conduct a 'cleansing ceremony'

If you were not aware of Kev the Fruitcake, take a good look over his website. He’s an embarrassment to the Pagans, and you can imagine how far round the bend he actually has to be to accomplish that little trick.

He said: 'It is almost like trying to exorcise Satan himself. Crowley has such a reputation that it will be the ultimate battle between good and evil.'

I don’t know that Crowley would ever have been described as simplistically as ‘devil worshipper’, except by the braindead Christian crowd. Oh, and some of the braindead Pagans, OK. Sure, he was nuts.But I wasn’t aware of any actual devil worshiping going on at Boleskine. , which location I really like the look of, by the way. Perhaps that means I’m the reincarnation of old Aleister. You atheists had better watch out, lest I start sacrificing you.

Ask GMS

Here they come-out of the woodwork. The psychics and related conmen who claimed to have predicted the recent natural devastation. As a follow-on to the Turtle's blog about Madame-I'm-so-psychic-I'm-holy, I picked up the outlines of this character on The Skeptic's Dictionary Gordon-Michael Scallion (no I didn't put the hyphen between his names-it's supposed to make him appear more mystical I guess) seems to have resorted to writing in to his own web page in order to create the illusion that he forsaw it all. You've got to look at his Future Map of the World, available from his website at a price of course to see how accurate he was. In fact, most of that land hasn't been lost at all, as he claims. Most psychics and mystics have a very poor grasp of science, not to mention logic. This ought to make us feel relieved. However, most of their marks-that's a large percentage of the human population-share their handicaps. I've been there myself and should understand that you can't make them consider things rationally if they don't want to.But perhaps still, some of us have got to try. After all, someone managed to get through to me eventually. Or would that be some community?

Physicist Sucks Up To Religious Freaks

To keep the calendar in synchronisation with the seasons, Henry inserted an extra week - which is not part of any month - every five or six years. He named the addition "Newton Week" in honour of his favourite physicist, Isaac Newton. "If I had my way, everyone would get Newton Week off as a paid vacation and could spend the time doing physics, or other activities of their choice," he says.

He says previous calendar reform efforts have "crashed" because they disturbed the seven-day week considered sacrosanct by religious groups.