Harold Camping, the latest in a long line of men in suits (previously robes and togas) wielding Bibles telling us the end is nigh. They have been doing this for 2000 years. By the look of things, the end is nigh for Harold. He just can't bear the thought that the World will happily continue without him.

Friday Morning EDT/

Friday Evening Japan Time

End of the World Update

"But of that day and [that] hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." Mark 13:32

"But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." - Mathew 6:6

"How many times has the end of the world been predicted? The same number of times, the prediction has proved false." - Hugh Downs

"Such things have often happened and still happen, and how can these be signs of the end of the world?" -Julian, Emperor of Rome 361-363

Judgement Day is tomorrow according to Harold Camping and his Family Radio Worldwide conglomerate. I notice his home page still has two buttons that allow contributors to make secure donations. 

I actually have been listening to the station this morning and Harold was taking calls. A distraught gentleman asked him if Judgement Day here in America could come on May 20 if it is May 21 somewhere else in the world.

Hal's short answer was yes. 

My guess is that Hal will explain the absence of Judgement Day with the argument that his warnings created so much prayer that God's mercy was invoked and we were spared.

As I write Family Radio is playing lots of sacred music which invokes the god Morpheus. 

I suppose Hal is taking a break for prayer or counting his money. 

But listen! 

Hark! Is it a trumpet? 

No. 

Here is an important announcement. 

Family Radio is still begging its listeners for money.

I enter into a closet and recite my prayer:

Please God take away from this planet and heal all of those sad and crazy people who can never be happy in your wonderful creation. 


"Christians are like a council of frogs in a marsh or a synod of worms on a dung-hill croaking and squeaking 'for our sakes was the world created.'"-Julian, Emperor of Rome 361-363

"He is a born again christian. The trouble is, he suffered brain damage during rebirth." -Lenny Bruce

This gray gloomy spring has made many cranky in the Northeast. I might welcome the end of the world if the cloud and rains and mist do not soon dissipate.

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review, 

Twain was mistakenly attributing the quote to Disraeli instead of the more generally accepted Leonard Henry Courtney, Baron Courtney of Penwith (1832–1918)

The Catholic Church is blaming the sixties for the sudden rash of pedophile priests that has flourished under its protection for  the past several centuries.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned an independent "landmark" study by John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York titled The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010. 


In a nutshell, the study blames the liberality of the sixties for the influx of hippie pervert priest bad apples into the Holy Mother Church. They present charts showing peaks indicating the hippie priests of the sixties were the culprits. But 23.4% of the accused priests were ordained in the 50's, while 27.3% were ordained in the 60's. This is not a huge difference in a smallish sample cobbled together years later.

The Bishops' numbers also look a little skewed because their chart of "Decade of Ordination of Diocesan Priests  Later Accused of Sexual Abuse of Minors" shows a total of 2,832 priests charged with abuse through 2002. That number seems to represent gross under reporting which contradicts an earlier 2004 John Jay Report  which recorded 4,392 priests accused of engaging in sexual abuse of a minor between 1950 and 2002 alone.

I would propose, in contrast to the Church's conclusions, that the new openness of the sixties enabled many victims to finally come to terms with the fact that the priests who raped them were criminals. The freedom of the sixties gave them the courage to overcome the fear and shame conditioning of the Church to report the holy fiends and go public. This was not possible previously when the the Church could intimidate the victim, when police and government authorities seemed to think it was more necessary to protect the Church from the consequences of its own profound corruption than to enforce the law.

I suspect this study will be used as another justification for Pope Benedict to jettison the reforms of Vatican II. "The sixties" is often code for Vatican II in the lexicon of the reactionaries now running the Catholic Church.
This long study also reminds us that other religions and the Boy Scouts also have had their problems so why don't you just shut up about this already?

The Church is in the habit of playing the blame game for their pedophile predilection. Last year Giacomo Babini, 81, the emeritus bishop of Grosseto, blamed, you guessed it, the Zionists for the Pope getting so criticized for his minions' love of prepubescent lads.  He believed a “Zionist attack” was behind the criticism of the church, considering how “powerful and refined” the criticism was.

Sure, only the Jews could be crafty enough to make the Church look bad.

“They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers.” -Giacomo Babini
After taking heat he backed away from his statements saying: 
"Statements I have never made about our Jewish brothers have been attributed to me."
Giacomo was quoted  by the Catholic Pontifex website which stood by the quotes, claiming recordings of the interview.

The default setting of Europe and the Church is to hate Jews.

"Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and paedophilia but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and paedophilia. This pathology is one that touches all categories of people, and priests to a lesser degree in percentage terms. The behaviour of the priests in this case, the negative behaviour, is very serious, is scandalous."-Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, April 2010

"We decree and order that from now on, AND FOR ALL TIME, Christians shall not eat or drink with Jews; nor admit them to feasts, nor cohabit with them, nor bathe with them. Christians shall not allow Jews to hold civil honors over Christians, or to exercise public office in the State. Jews cannot be merchants, Tax Collectors, or agents in the buying and selling of the produce and goods of Christians, nor their Procurators, Computers or Lawyers in matrimonial matters, nor Obstetricians; nor can they have association or partnership with Christians. No Christian can leave or bequeath anything in his last Will and testament to Jews or their congregations. Jews are prohibited from erecting new synogogues. They are obliged to pay annually a tenth part of their goods and holdings. Against them Christians can testify, but the testimony of Jews against Christians in no case is of any value. All and every single Jew, of whatever sex and age, must everywhere wear the distinct dress and known marks by which they can be evidently distinguished from Christians. They cannot live among Christians, but in a certain street, separated and segregated from Christians, and outside which they cannot under any pretext have houses"
-Pope Eugenius IV, A.D. 1442, Bull. Rom. Pont., V.67


In the Fukushima prefect we learn again that many livestock are being left to starve. Some farmers are making the heroic journey to evacuated areas to feed and water their stock, but it is difficult to determine if they can even market the meat.
Shingo Ito of AFP writes:

Katsurao, 25 kilometres (16 miles) northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, is among the communities newly designated as no-go zones, meaning no one will be allowed in from as early as late May.
More than 10,000 cows -- prized for their marbled beef and rich milk -- have already been left behind in the scramble to escape Fukushima prefecture, many of them locked in sheds where they starved to death, farmers have said.
As the no-go zone spreads, ever more farmers are being forced to make agonising decisions over whether to move their livestock to safe areas and incur huge costs, slaughter their animals or -- perhaps the most unacceptable option -- leave them to their fate.

Accurate information about radiation levels remains are rare as a dragon's tooth.