Wednesday, July 13, 2016

pasta and rabbit holes

Disclaimer - Does it surprise you that this post has nothing to do with actual pasta or a rabbit hole? I didn’t think so.

The pasta refers to Pastafarians. While the rabbit hole is taken from an expression taken from my corporate days, “we don’t need to go down that rabbit hole.”


My Church of the Donut is referenced below

In tribute to Lewis Carroll, I’ll explain the rabbit hole expression first. Now some of you may have used this expression but I’m not sure it is very common. I have often heard it used during business meetings. The moderator/leader would use it to close off discussion on subjects not pertinent to the meeting. It’s not unusual that slightly related ideas/problems will distract from the main purpose of the meeting. Lewis Carroll’s Alice followed a rabbit down its hole and didn’t return for a long confusing time. Now my post is not a tutorial on how to have productive meetings, so let’s move on.

Have you heard about The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?


Taken from FSM site

I have heard of them but honestly forgot about them until a recent local news story (you might also forget about them after this post). The members of this church are called Pastafarians. According to the religion, the Flying Spaghetti Monster resembling a floating clump of tangled spaghetti and meatballs created the universe with "His Noodly Appendages".

The Flying Spaghetti Monster was first described by hammock enthusiast, Bobby Henderson, in a 2005 open letter to the Kansas School Board protesting the teaching of intelligent design. ( ding dong the witch is dead - oddly the wizard and his city of Oz are also related to Kansas)


report from Chicago Tribune site

The local news story -
Decision to ban colander from driver's license photo strains belief
(I enjoyed the headline before I even started reading the article by Eric Zorn)

This past June a young lady in Illinois requested to be allowed to wear a metal colander on her head for her official drivers license photo. Now this has been done successfully in other states and countries. I found a few examples on the FSM web site. (oh, I would have hated to be held up behind her in line as they debated the colander)

Even though the state employees said no at first, as you can see in the picture above this young lady was very insistent and got her way. Well that is, until the higher-ups in the head office found out. They told her that her license will be revoked at the end of July unless she gets a new photo sans head ornament. (hey it’s an ongoing story - future post material?)

My opinion on the photo ID -
I agree with the state. A legal photo ID should not have full freedom of speech rights. I think she has the right to wear her head strainer anywhere she likes just like political people can wear their Trump, Hillary, Bernie hats and shirts. But I don't think we should allow hats with any message we want on them in a legal photo ID.

Now the rabbit holes -
Many rabbit holes available in this story. There is freedom of speech, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, evolution, definition of religion, definition of a myth, science,
intelligent design, respect for others religion, and ones that you could think of that I missed. Important topics but NOT ones I wish to discuss here in this post. Don't lead me down a rabbit hole in the comments.

This story reminded me a post I did back in 2013 when the conclave of Cardinals had elected a new pope and I did a post about all the papal stuff in the news. Later I came across a picture (same one as the first one above) and thought it would be great to start the Church of the Donut. Here’s that post.

Now I would love to have a conclave of donuts (with good coffee) and get this church idea going. However, I would not encourage or expect to see followers holding donuts while their photo ID is taken.

Oh one last thing -
When I perused the FSM site I read this in their Q&A section:
"Let me make this clear: we are not anti-religion, we are anti- crazy nonsense done in the name of religion. There is a difference."
I understand the difference and agree with their view on that part.

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