This started innocently enough... I was looking for a picture of a caterpillar I found on my tomato plantand found the same one here at a site called "Write on Their Hearts". How cute. Here's the pic of the little devil:
Apparently this is a tobacco hornworm caterpillar. The white things attached to him are the cocoons of a particular kind of wasp - costesia congregata. The wasp is a parasite, laying its eggs inside the caterpillar which then has to eat for everyone -
hence the lack of tomato plant I just discovered in only one day - until the larvae hatch, fly away, and leave the caterpillar for dead. Nice huh. If the caterpillar is left to its own devices it could grow into this, a moth the manduca sexta - or Carolina Sphinx Moth - almost 4" inches across:
Now this person was extolling how this tomato/backyard event was a great example of homeschooling form - learning about nature right there. Fine.
But then I decided to read some of this person's other "blog" entries on homeschool. This is where homeschooling goes right down the toilet as utter lies and bullshit:
Our family has begun the journey into American history and has started with Christopher Columbus. Although Columbus day is still a month away, we are excited about learning who Christopher Columbus is, the impact that he had on America becoming who it is today, and how God used him to set His plans in motion. [...]
Um, yeah. Right. God directed Chris in his masterful plan and THAT's the important story here. Um, no. So I posted this response on the caterpillar page (since it's moderated you can bet it'll never make it there):
This is creepy, selectively edited, and painfully lacking in the reality of what propelled Columbus here. Hope you told your kids about Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand and how they wanted to basically rape the New World of its resources? Oh, and did you include that little “show” she dreamt up, what was it called? Oh yeah THE SPANISH INQUISITION with its 45,000 cases and almost a thousand executions. Or did you leave that part out…. Home skuling iz gud fer kidz.
OK, so it's a little heavy handed but JEEZUH!. But why this creeps me out even more was because earlier today I was watching TV (and basic reduced cable affords less choice and certainly more density of religious crap channels, BTN, CBN etc.) and saw Pat Robertson's CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network) and their "news" segment was on. Think FOX, but then add just about every evangelistic turn on it you could imagine and you have their 'news' segment. The anchor was just finishing a segment about the Islamic Faith Center being planned in Manhattan (which is NO WHERE NEAR 'ground zero' you morons) touting that more than 70% of Americans don't want it there. First of all: tough shit (that goes for the Anti-Defamation League's misguided propaganda on this and anyone else who doesn't like it. The "they should be sensitive" is just a bullshit, anti-Muslim ruse. Period). When the piece was finished Robertson when on to say to his cohost (who nodded approvingly) that
"Well, you know, the President's second name IS _Hussein_ ... there is some "lineage" there",
HOLY SHIT. I mean, literally, holy, smoking, reeking pile of BULLSHIT.
and then he went on to say (I am paraphrasing but this is damn close):
Um, yeah. Right. God directed Chris in his masterful plan and THAT's the important story here. Um, no. So I posted this response on the caterpillar page (since it's moderated you can bet it'll never make it there):
This is creepy, selectively edited, and painfully lacking in the reality of what propelled Columbus here. Hope you told your kids about Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand and how they wanted to basically rape the New World of its resources? Oh, and did you include that little “show” she dreamt up, what was it called? Oh yeah THE SPANISH INQUISITION with its 45,000 cases and almost a thousand executions. Or did you leave that part out…. Home skuling iz gud fer kidz.
OK, so it's a little heavy handed but JEEZUH!. But why this creeps me out even more was because earlier today I was watching TV (and basic reduced cable affords less choice and certainly more density of religious crap channels, BTN, CBN etc.) and saw Pat Robertson's CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network) and their "news" segment was on. Think FOX, but then add just about every evangelistic turn on it you could imagine and you have their 'news' segment. The anchor was just finishing a segment about the Islamic Faith Center being planned in Manhattan (which is NO WHERE NEAR 'ground zero' you morons) touting that more than 70% of Americans don't want it there. First of all: tough shit (that goes for the Anti-Defamation League's misguided propaganda on this and anyone else who doesn't like it. The "they should be sensitive" is just a bullshit, anti-Muslim ruse. Period). When the piece was finished Robertson when on to say to his cohost (who nodded approvingly) that
"Well, you know, the President's second name IS _Hussein_ ... there is some "lineage" there",
HOLY SHIT. I mean, literally, holy, smoking, reeking pile of BULLSHIT.
and then he went on to say (I am paraphrasing but this is damn close):
"Islam is a system not only of religion but also political and economic power!"
Right. And Christianity NEVER did anything in the name of Commerce. Yeah, how 'bout this gem from the American ENTERPRISE Institute: "Religion and the American Future"
So back to our "Christopher Columbus was doing God's work home skooling mother in buttf**k nowhere, square state, U.S. of A."... Look, Pat Robertson and her are one in the same. They hock stories of saccharine sweet Christianity while eviscerating the reality of the damage its extracted along the way. Need I say two words: Pope + Children. Today Robertson blathered on about the mosque being built being a "Cordoba" symbolic of Muslim domination in Spain. And this "homeschooling" savant is saying Christopher Columbus was directed by God's purpose - which, under Queen Isabella meant expelling the Muslims from... guess where... Cordoba. These psychopaths are of the same ilk. And all the while they live in these imagined spaces in their heads about THEIR purpose in directing the lives of OTHERS.
Right. And Christianity NEVER did anything in the name of Commerce. Yeah, how 'bout this gem from the American ENTERPRISE Institute: "Religion and the American Future"
So back to our "Christopher Columbus was doing God's work home skooling mother in buttf**k nowhere, square state, U.S. of A."... Look, Pat Robertson and her are one in the same. They hock stories of saccharine sweet Christianity while eviscerating the reality of the damage its extracted along the way. Need I say two words: Pope + Children. Today Robertson blathered on about the mosque being built being a "Cordoba" symbolic of Muslim domination in Spain. And this "homeschooling" savant is saying Christopher Columbus was directed by God's purpose - which, under Queen Isabella meant expelling the Muslims from... guess where... Cordoba. These psychopaths are of the same ilk. And all the while they live in these imagined spaces in their heads about THEIR purpose in directing the lives of OTHERS.
And like Robertson, who bullshits about Christian tolerance while spewing hateful bigotry, my home skooler decided that the most effective way to "teach" her children was to leave the caterpillar in a sealed jar, allow the wasps to hatch, and watch it suffer. Maybe this was "God's Plan"? I don't think so. And she knew the caterpillar was in pain. She even filmed it and talks about its discomfort of being "bothered" by being encased in glass surrounded by all these wasps that just escaped their cocoons. I don't recall "God" putting mortal enemies into cages to watch them "bother" each other as part of "learning".
And its the self-righteousness of both this woman and Pat Robertson that bind them together. They are both purveyors of lies while they prosthelytize that they are some how agents of the "good" God, of wholesome Christian goodness. But those wasps ARE going to escape. And when they do they will sting you idiots back into reality - a plague upon you all, you moralists, you selfish, self-centered and insular morons. Now that's some "schooling" I want to watch. In the meantime I'm letting my caterpillar eat all my plant, grow as strong as he can and perhaps he'll/she'll make it through the birth of the wasps, and they'll fly free. After all, isn't that the 'christian' (purposefully small 'c') thing to do?
