Magic Statistics

Yesterday was the first day of the Muslim feast of Eid ul-Adha, when observant Muslims slaughter cows or other animals and share the meat with family, neighbours, and the poor.

Hiring a butcher for the ritual slaughter can be a costly business, so many elect to knife the animal themselves.  Bad idea.  An inexperienced butcher and a nervous animal make a hazardous combination.

Over a thousand Turks spent the first day of the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha in emergency wards on Sunday after stabbing themselves or suffering other injuries while sacrificing startled animals.

At least 1,413 people – referred to as “amateur butchers” by the Turkish media – were treated at hospitals across the country, most suffering cuts to their hands and legs, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Four people were severely injured, crushed under the weight of large animals that fell on top of them, the agency reported. Another person was hurt when a crane used to lift an animal tumbled onto him, the agency said.
. . .
Turkish authorities have introduced fines for those who slaughter animals outside facilities set up by local municipalities, but many Turks ignored the rules and sacrificed animals in their backyards or on roadsides.

That’s another reason to use the new virtual sacrifice service offered by some enterprising Pakistani Muslims.  You can buy an animal and watch it being slaughtered over the internet.  There’s no risk of injuring yourself, unless your laptop accidentally falls on your toe.

h/t: Big News Network.com – Breaking Religious News

Previous related post: Online oblation: Muslims can sacrifice animals over the internet

South Korea must be the last country on the face of the earth to figure that out.

South Korea has described its northern neighbour as a "serious threat", in the wake of its nuclear test in October.

Previous related post: Where’s the UN’s North Korea envoy?

Ken Kesey was, for many, the godfather of the hippies.  Born in 1935, he wrote one fantastically popular, but now very badly dated, novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1962.  At the time, he was heavily influenced by his volunteer work as a psychoactive-drug guinea pig in the CIA-financed Project MKULTRA.

When he had to travel from his Oregon home to New York in connection with the 1964 publication of his second—far superior (IMHO) but not nearly as popular—novel Sometimes A Great Notion, he and a bunch of friends who dubbed themselves "The Merry Pranksters" drove across the country in a 1939 DayGlo-coloured International Harvester school bus, guzzling LSD-laced kool-aid all the way.  The antics of the Merry Pranksters and the first psychedelic bus were immortalised in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, a classic of 1960s American sociology.

I read Wolfe’s book back in ‘68 and found it a perversely fascinating laugh riot.  Kesey and the Pranksters were the quintessential self-indulgent, self-centred, overgrown-adolescent boomers.  Their entire goal in life was to get stoned out of their gourds and let their fancy flow.

Kesey died of liver cancer in 2001 but he still has his admirers.  His son and daughter-in-law hoped to cash in on his memory by restoring his old bus, but they’re having trouble making it road-worthy.  No one is willing to finance the vehicle’s resurrection.

The Kesey family is looking for a new sponsor to finance restoration work and a TV documentary after breaking things off with Hollywood restaurant owner David Houston, who had hoped to raise $100,000 to restore the bus made famous in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

Stephanie Kesey, who is married to the late author's son Zane, and overseeing the project, said the bus has been cleaned up a bit, and singer Willie Nelson has offered to put in a biodiesel engine, but they don't want to do any major work until they have a restoration expert and a documentary deal lined up.

Willie Nelson.  Who else?

Over fifteen years ago, Kesey took the original bus off the road and consigned it to a swamp on his farm.

After being approached by Houston with the restoration plan, Zane Kesey and some of the Pranksters towed it out of the swamp last year.

That prompted some choice raving from one aging hippy.

“This is an icon of America,” said Ken Babbs, a writer, Prankster and close friend of Ken Kesey.

An icon of America had to be towed out of a swamp.  OK.  The photo at right shows the bus in 2005.  Doesn't look like any icon I've ever seen.

“It would be nice to see it back out on the road again to bring the reality of the '60s into the 21st century.”

That sounds like a threat.

“It's like a lot of projects. There is an initial enthusiasm. Then it becomes apparent how much work is involved … and unless you are truly committed you back off.”

Work—That always turned the hippies right off.  Bummer, man.

Previous related post: Boomers elevated individualism above common good

The collect for today, the Circumcision of Christ, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty God, who madest thy blessed Son to be circumcised, and obedient to the law for man; Grant us the true Circumcision of the Spirit; that, our hearts, and all our members, being mortified from all worldly and carnal lusts, we may in all things obey thy blessed will; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 4:8-14
The Gospel: St Luke 2:15-21

Stained glass: St Mary the Virgin, Stratfield Mortimer, Berkshire, Diocese of Oxford.