Category: Comment


It’s a question of irony.

Filed under: Comment, Featured, Religion, Sarcasm — 7 Comments
June 9, 2011

I'm right... everybody else is wrong.

I have found, to my profound surprise that religious people in general know very little about their own religion . They don’t know of the horrors endorsed by it and they don’t know about the idiocy it supports. Or perhaps, somewhere deep down they do know but they do their holy best to ignore it or, even worse, perhaps (or looking at the picture above, sometimes) they do not care… Unsurprisingly, I’ve found they know even less about other religions.

So I ask you, how is it possible for the religious to have the abject arrogance to, from this position of consummate ignorance, tell the rest of us that they are right and everybody else is wrong when they have no idea what we are wrong about or, indeed, what they are supposed to be right about.

So Christian (or insert a suitable  religious label here) … Ever read the Book of Mormon? The Bible? All the versions of the Bible? The Quran? The Bhagavad Gita? No? Then what gives you the impression that you should even be allowed to express an opinion in relation to what is true or not about any religion? If you’ve read none of those books… What do you know about religion?

It’s a question of irony really.

Some more amusing questions to entertain yourself with:

  • Do babies, toddlers and children go to heaven even though they have not accepted Jesus as their personal saviour?
  • If that is the case, why not kill your child and guarantee them entrance to heaven? And why are you so sad when a child dies?
  • If a religious mother’s atheist son goes to hell, does she know he’s being tortured for eternity? Can she hear his wailing and the gnashing of his teeth? Is this not a torture in its self? Is going to heaven torture?
  • Why do mass murderers, rapists, child molesters, fraudsters, thieves, pimps and slavers who accept Jesus as their ‘lord and saviour’ go to heaven but fundamentally good people who do not go to hell to be tortured for eternity?
  • Why do no modern civilisations allow the torture of anybody yet the authority, the alleged yard stick for morality, the apparent ultimate good in the universe not only invented the worst kind of torture imaginable but is going to happily impose it on the vast majority of people who have ever existed, trillions of people?
  • How does it happen that a perfectly good, perfectly loving being (God) create the ultimate evil (hell)? How does a perfectly good being even conceive of such an evil?
  • Do people who were devoutly religious their entire lives and believe in Jesus go to heaven or hell if they, after accidental brain trauma, stop believing in God? What if they become really bad ass and deny the holy spirit repeatedly and swear at Jesus?
  • Do all of the people on the planet who lived between the time of Jesus’s crucifixion and the time when it was possible for everybody on earth to have heard of him go to hell? All the Chinese, Japanese, Russians, Australians, Inca’s, Africans, American Indians, Pacific Islanders, who had no chance of knowing about The Almighty Creator of the Universe?
  • Why could the Almighty Creator of The Universe not let everybody on earth learn about Jesus at the same time anyway?
  • Why is the ultimate creator of everything unable to put a reasonably plausible story together? I believe most of On The Origin of Species, why can’t I believe a book written by the alleged creator of the universe?
  • Do mentally handicapped people who never accept Jesus as their ‘personal lord and saviour’ go to hell to be tortured for eternity?
  • Are people who were mentally handicapped from birth also mentally handicapped in heaven?
  • If a person goes to heaven, do they keep all their memories? Even people who go to heaven after Alzheimer’s? Do they get their memories back?
  • If a person with a degenerative brain disorder goes to heaven, do they go as their young brilliant self or their old broken self?
  • If a person who was a good and nice person but changed into a complete asshole due to a brain injury goes to heaven, does he go as the good person or the asshole?
  • If a person who was an asshole but changed into a good and nice person due to a brain injury goes to heaven, does he go as the good person or the asshole?
  • Why does God refuse to give me the information I need to be saved from eternal torture in a way that is believable? Isn’t that evil? He did after all make me a skeptic who prefers empirical evidence.
  • Can you point to the relevant passages in the Bible where these questions are answered?
  • If the Bible doesn’t answer these questions, where should one get the answers from?

I’d love to hear the answers to all of those questions, or, at the very least, what one can do to answer those questions. Let me tell you why I’m pretty sure they can’t be answered: because Bronze Age creation myths are entirely too simplistic, crude and ignorant to take into account the gigantic, virtually unimaginable complexity of reality. There is a very good reason for our modern laws to fill entire libraries with their complicated language defining every last thing in excruciating detail. Because life is complicated and if you want justice you have to define thing in excruciating detail. Could real life be governed by a mere 10 rules, 4 of which mean the same thing? No, which is why we don’t try to. (Ha, more irony, Christians can’t even agree on exactly which lines make up the first ’4′ commandments. I’m serious, see the Catholic Church vs. virtually all other denominations). Sure, I agree, 5 of them make sense and are generally good principles to apply to life but no religion has a monopoly on them, every civilisation has come up with similar ideas.

There is a direct correlation between the level of education and lack of religious beliefs which stem from the fact that, on average, the more educated a person is the better that person knows which questions religion simply cannot address and which of religions answers are flat-out wrong. A bit of education (usually…) also inevitably helps one understand that there are no questions that we need religion to address.

So, what, do, you, know? Virtually nothing. How can you know more? Science. There is, literally, no other way to reliably (or at all) get to know more. Why does religion try to push science out of the classroom these days? Because the more you know, the less bullshit you believe.

The irony is, the people who claim to have the answers, know the least… and yet are believed by the most.

Enjoy some George Carlin awesomely explaining the 10 commandments

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Pray for Christchurch, it’s the least you can do. Literally.

Filed under: Comment, Furiousity, Religion — Leave a comment
February 23, 2011

I’m a bit torn up over the tragedy in Christchurch. It’s a horrible thing that’s happening to mostly good people and it makes me sad. On a whole, the New Zealand response to this disaster makes me proud to live here and reminds me why I am here. To see a country, so organised, so ready to respond, pulling together in a crisis is a wonderful thing to behold.

There is one thing that annoys me to no end though: the brainless god utterances.

As with any disaster, the faithful inevitably excrete idiocies centred around the pious bullshit they believe. That may sound a bit harsh but it should, I am a bit angry.

“Pray for Christchuch”, “I’m praying for everybody in Christchurch” and “We should all pray for Christchurch” is fundamentally stupid. If the deity you are now going to pray to needs to be told about what just happened he isn’t omniscient and therefore is not a god. If he knew about it and caused it, this god you pray to is an evil mass murdering bastard. If he knew about it and he was able to stop it but didn’t, he’s criminally negligent. If he wasn’t able to stop it, he’s not a god. Why, exactly, are you praying?

And seriously, you think the evil bastard who just killed 65 (at the current count) people or at the very least let them die is going to give a crap now, after the fact, just because YOU happen to be asking? You think the deity who is currently listening to several hundred people dying under rubble is magically going to lift the concrete to let them out because YOU are piously telling people to ‘pray for Christchurch’? Hubris.  Pious idiocy.

Thankfully, there is no god. Thankfully, because if there was, he should be locked up for crimes against humanity. Thankfully, because the people of New Zealand are equipped just fine to deal with this themselves without the empty promise of a sky fairy to give them false security.

Praying. Praying is something you do so that you can feel like (and look like) you’ve done something without actually having to do anything. Praying is like wanking. Essentially, it’s only good for the person stroking his own dick. Sure, some other people get off on seeing somebody wank in public and some people get off on telling other people to wank in public but in the end it’s only the wanker that benefits.

That is why I am angry. Watching people tell other people to ‘pray for Christchurch’ is like watching one wanker, furiously whacking away, telling a bunch of other wankers to join him.

I, personally, prefer to not have to watch other people wank.

If you feel like doing something more productive than hopeful wishing, this is probably a good place to start: http://www.redcross.org.nz/donations

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Got quoted!

Filed under: Comment — Leave a comment
October 22, 2010

I got quoted on, what looks like an actual, legitimate website. Who would have thought. Check it out:

http://www.journalism.org/index_report/social_media_debate_mortgage_mess_science_and_religion

Yes, ok, I understand it’s purely because I quoted Jerry Coyne in my post, but still. I dig it.

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I hate religion but I love God

Filed under: Comment, Featured — 2 Comments
October 15, 2010

How progressive, how insightful.

I would like to start this post by quoting from a salient Christian Facebook page:

religion |riˈlijən| noun
The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power (Dictionary.com)

Following Christ is not about being controlled, it’s about knowing we’re now friends of God, in a loving relationship because of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.

Religion seeks to control man through legalism BUT where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is FREEDOM!

This is a page open to people to share their thoughts about Religion… How it has hurt people, manipulated people, controlled people, punished people. That is not the heart of God – God loves His people!

Let’s disregard, for a moment, the happy-clappy, feel-good statements around how following the big J is freedom…

Clearly, these people are very progressive. They can see how ‘religion’ is a bad thing! Happy days! Secularism seems to be making some progress…. surely?!?

Luckily (for us and them, presumably), they follow Christ and that’s about freedom and it’s all good (and warm and fuzzy). They’re Christians, there are more than a billion of them and they worship Christ as their infallible deity.

Right, fair enough, they purport that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Saviour and God and I personally know several people who hold this position openly and proudly and I do think they might actually believe this.

I’ll take it at face value. They’ve said it is so, and so it must be.

Exhibit A – From the infallible divine word of the almighty creator of the universe (New Testament, the bit that contains Jesus and isn’t marred by too much genocide):

“For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:18-19 RSV)

Just to be sure, here is a second opinion, from the King James Version:

“For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:18-19 KJV)

So, Jesus Christ said, unequivocally, that if you do not follow all of the Mosaic laws in the Old Testament, in full, until the very end, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. For the life of me I cannot pinpoint the exact place where Jesus Christ once mentions dropping the old, hard, difficult laws in favour of something easier.

Ah, “out of context” the True Christian may mutter, not so I think. The bit before is interesting:

“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” (Matthew 5:17 KJV)

And no, fulfil doesn’t miraculously now mean: to discard all of the old laws and institute a new one, since then it wouldn’t be followed by an explicit:  ”…Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” regardless of how desperately one may want it to.

And the bit after is just as fitting:

“For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgement: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.” (Matthew 5:20-22 KJV)

I believe the context says: obey the Mosaic laws or you burn.

The one person who does say differently in the Bible is Paul (who used to be Saul) whose sum total of interaction with Jesus Christ Superstar was something that can more accurately be described as a seizure, on the road to Damascus. He believed his job was to sell this new religion and decided to make it easier to sell since, to be fair, being a perfect Jew is nigh on impossible…

Now, the last time I checked people were not calling themselves Paulistians, were they? Nobody I know claims to follow a dude named Paul; JC is the man. Always JC.

How is it then, that a billion freaking people happily proclaim loudly that they follow Jesus Christ and then in the same breath say: “but FUCKED if I’m going to do as my God says, it’s too hard. I prefer Paul’s easy, instant, from the comfort of my couch version. Let’s go with that, deity’s commands be damned.”.

That statement sums Christianity up perfectly: ignore the hard bits, keeps the warm cuddly bits and blindly believe it’s going to be alright even if you don’t do a damn thing your God tells you.

People who call themselves Christians and do not live EXACTLY like Hasidic Jews are:

- Full of crap and wildly deluded
- Filthy liars
- Lazy, stupid and ignorant

What else could you possibly classify people who go and outright ignore the commands of their God, the almighty creator of the universe, as?

Here is a short list of some of the 613 things one is, as a good Christian following the words of Jesus Christ himself, obligated to (or not to) do (randomly chosen):

  • To love other Jews Lev. 19:18
  • To love converts Deut. 10:19
  • Not to hate fellow Jews Lev. 19:17
  • Not to speak derogatorily of others Lev. 19:16
  • Not to take revenge Lev. 19:18
  • Not to bear a grudge Lev. 19:18
  • To honor those who teach and know Torah Lev. 19:32
  • Not to follow the whims of your heart or what your eyes see Num. 15:39
  • Not to make human forms even for decorative purposes Ex. 20:20
  • Not to erect a column in a public place of worship Deut. 16:22
  • Not to plant a tree in the Temple courtyard Deut. 16:21
  • Not to engage in astrology Lev. 19:26
  • Not to attempt to contact the dead Deut. 18:11
  • Not to perform acts of magic Deut. 18:10
  • Men must not shave the hair off the sides of their head Lev. 19:27
  • Men must not shave their beards with a razor Lev. 19:27
  • Men must not wear women’s clothing Deut. 22:5
  • Women must not wear men’s clothing Deut. 22:5
  • Not to tattoo the skin Lev. 19:28
  • Not to eat meat and milk cooked together Ex. 23:19
  • Not to cook meat and milk together Ex. 34:26
  • Not to work the land during the seventh year Lev. 25:4

There’s another 590 just like these…

Right, so, Jesus Christ, Lord, Savior and God, EXPLICITLY tells ‘Christians’ (in quotes because he was technically speaking to his Jewish followers…) to do something (613 things actually) and they explicitly disobey him, yet continue to claim that they are Christians.

Seriously, do none of them see a problem with this? Personally, I find it fucking disturbing. Then again, in hind sight, I bet a great amount of sophistry and self-imposed stupidity has gone into rationalizing disobeying the Son Of Man himself.

Christianity: The easy consumer religion… but only if you explicitly ignore the deity you claim to worship.

Nicely done ‘Christians’, nicely done.

(And that’s not even beginning to dig into the ludicrous amount of contradictions, errors and flat-out lies in the New Testament alone)

Happy Friday.

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Help James get to Serbia – Seriously!

Filed under: Comment — 1 Comment
July 1, 2010

I have a New Zealand friend whose kid, James, literally kicks ass. He’s one of Kiwi Land’s best kick boxers in his age group and he’s been picked to compete in Serbia for New Zealand.

Getting to Serbia is a little pricey so if you are able to help with a couple of bucks, click on the link below to go to his free site and leave a couple of dollars for the boy.

http://jamestoserbia.freewebsitehosting.com/

You know you want to.

Also, go to Sumo Salad in Takapuna, their food is great and they try to make you eat healthy…

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In the top 12 people, I have made it!

Filed under: Comment, Featured, Woo Fighting — 5 Comments
June 1, 2010

I have, recently, received the greatest honour from… somebody. Looks to be Christopher Maloney but who actually knows. Or cares, really.

I have been promoted to “The Dirty Dozen”, a minion, nay, a TOP minion of PZ Myers. You see, PZ Myers literally has MILLIONS of minions and for somebody (even a quack like Christopher Maloney, or even a stranger quack purporting to be Christopher Maloney) to recognise me as one of the TOP 12 minions is a singular honour.

I just want to take this time to thank my parents, without whom I would never have been able to achieve this honour. And I would like to thank my team and especially the crowd from #pharyngula who have made all of this possible. I would like to thank my lovely wife, whose support and assistance during this time has made all of this possible. And thank you all, for your loyal support. And last, but not least, I would like to thank Dr. PZ Myers. Without his inspiration and mentoring, I would surely never have been able to win this award.  Thank you.

I must say, I really do appreciate the traffic Chris, since I have a small blog, even a couple extra views make a lot of difference. Thank you very much for the honourable mention.

Now, since I’m a top 12 minion, if only I could manage to convince The Right Honourable PZ Myers Baron Pharyngula to link to my blog. He is after all a hard master to please.

The post proclaiming the honour can be found here: http://maloneynd.tripod.com/pharyngulites/id138.html

The post that started it all: http://withoutapologyinmaine.wordpress.com/2010/02/17/ftsos-fiasco/

The post that The Right Honourable PZ Myers Baron Pharyngula wrote: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/christopher_maloney_is_a_quack.php

The epic post that won my inclusion in the top 12 minions:  http://onefuriousllama.com/2010/02/18/christopher-maloney-is-a-quack-for-shame-wordpress-epic-fail/

It’s little awards like these that make me want to blog.

RAmen.

Options for feeding llamas are quite wide. The llama owner has a wide variety of commercial and farm based food products to choose from for llamas.

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Sunday Video #7 – Jesus and the Interpreter. A modern-day christian helps Jesus get started.

Filed under: Comment, Religion, Video — Leave a comment
May 23, 2010

And right there is my second biggest issue with Christianity. Number one obviously being the complete lack of a deity, number two being how modern Christians pick, choose and conveniently forget from the words of the almighty creator of the universe.

Which Christians? All of them.

Camels, rich men and Benny Hinn? The old laws? When last did YOU burn an animal, stone an adulterer or an unruly child?

Yea, didn’t think so.

Happy Sunday!

Rember to check out NonStampCollector’s other, very awesome videos at: http://www.youtube.com/user/NonStampCollector

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Mohammed, Muslims and the picture of barbarism

Filed under: Atheism, Comment, Furiousity, Religion — Leave a comment
May 23, 2010

Muslims get upset when people draw pictures of Mohammed even though Muslims have been drawing pictures of him forever and the Quran does not forbid it.

They threaten those who do with violence. For drawing a stick man. With death even.

Only fools and barbarians are so insecure and primitive that violence is the only answer (or even AN answer) to a fictitious insult to ones sensibilities. Even actual insults don’t ever warrant a violent response.

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” – Isaac Asimov

The true tragedy is that the fools threatening violence are too simple to comprehend that quote.

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The hypocrisy that comes with religion

Filed under: Atheism, Comment, Sarcasm — Leave a comment
April 18, 2010

A little back story: while my wife and I are atheists, our respective families, well, they are not atheists to put it mildly. I don’t actually know the full extent of the religiosity of my entire extended family but suffice to say, most of them go to church most Sundays and they pray before they eat. Typical white, middle class, suburban Christian people you could say. We live in South Africa where, due to too many reasons to explain or debate, unskilled labour is performed mainly by black African’s who have their own culture and (from my perspective) their own peculiar set of beliefs.

To get on with the story: my wife and I attended a family gathering several months back where a cousin of mine was telling a story about some events that occurred where he works. He told of how a watch was stolen from the locker of one of the supervisors. The supervisor and my cousin came up with a cunning plan to convince the thief to return the stolen goods. They loudly proclaimed, well within earshot of a number of the workers that they were going to bring an African witch doctor (a sangoma) to the office the following day, to perform black magic and curse the thief who had stolen from the supervisor. Presumably this would end in a very unpleasant way for the would be thief. Obviously hearing of this plan and fearful for what was to come next, the thief returned the watch to the locker where it was found the next day, negating the need for the witch doctor.

The story was told to the gathered family with much mirth and laughter aimed at the simple thief who would fall for such a ridiculous ploy. A witch doctor and black magic indeed; some people will believe just any old thing.

Now, there are two things about this story that I found interesting. The first is that clearly there are still many simple people who are willing to believe basically anything, magic and witchcraft included, in this day and age which is a little disturbing but not altogether surprising.

As interesting and disturbing as the belief in witchcraft is, the story in general is a great illustration for how the minds of the pious religious work. I would venture to replace ‘religious’ with ‘humanity in general’, since everybody is prone to this, but I’ll leave it for the sake of illustration.

My family, cousins, aunts, parents, had absolutely no problem with laughing at the simple believers in ‘witchcraft’. Believing in ‘witchcraft’ is ridiculous, only primitive people believe in it, obviously? Right?

They had absolutely no problem following that conversation with one about the local minister at the church involved in something or other. They could not see that were laughing at people for believing in something with no evidence while at the same time believing the exact same thing in a different package.

Clearly, Christianity is not as ridiculous as believing in magic? Surely not! Christianity has… well, IT HAS A BOOK! Yes, those primitives who believe in the dark arts, well, all they have is an oral history stretching ten thousand years further back than Moses, no cold, hard, indisputable evidence like ‘the good book’.

I would now like to take this opportunity to quote a passage from ‘the good book’, Matthew 7:3-5:

7:3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
7:4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
7:5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

Truer words were never spoken. Possibly, these words were never spoken in the first place either, but you get my point.

Let me recap this for you: Christians (or Muslims, or Hindus, or Jehovah’s witnesses) who laugh at people of other belief systems are hypocrites. Christians believe in magic and so they don’t get to laugh at other people who also believe in magic, albeit in a slightly different kind.

“A lie is a lie even if everyone believes it. The truth is the truth even if nobody believes it.”
- David Stevens

In South America llamas are still used as beasts of burden, as well as for the production of fiber and meat.

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Don’t want me to pirate your stuff?

Filed under: Amazon, Comment, Kindle, Online — Leave a comment
April 16, 2010

You’re a media producer, music say, and you don’t want people to pirate your stuff, you want them to pay for it. You’re an author, you want people to buy your book so you can make money from the ‘fruits of your labour’. Fair enough, I get it, I understand and I agree with you. I also want to be paid for my work.

However, if you are the RIAA, MPAA or Macmillan books, for example, it’s time that you wake up and face reality. The internet is here, it’s not going away and there is nothing you can do about it.

This post by Naveet Alang : http://www.techi.com/2010/04/the-riaa-and-mpaa-have-failed-to-understand-a-cultural-shift/ lays it out nicely.

What I have to add to that, is this: If you want me to buy your stuff, you have got to make sure that:

  1. It’s easier and more convenient to get it from you than to pirate or download it.
  2. Paying your price must feel like a better deal than the effort I need to go through to pirate it. Most people (including me) don’t have the inclination to spend time searching for a pirate version of your stuff in the first place.

Books are a good example; Apple and authors, pay attention. I have a Kindle and I buy 3 or 4 books a month. I buy them because Amazon has made it REALLY simple for me to get the books and they have made them a REALLY good price. At $5 to $9 for a book it’s not worth the effort of pirating those books and I prefer not to pirate things in the first place.

Apple and some publishers on the other hand, feel that this is too cheap for a digital book with absolutely no distribution overhead. Let me put it to you simply, I will not pay $15 or $20 for that book, I will pirate it. Accept that fact now and move on, it is not going to change anytime soon. You cannot control the internet so why spend the time and money to try to get control over something you can not and fight what is obviously right?

Another thing, authors: if your book is not available digitally, easily, I will not buy it. There may be few like me right now, but soon we will be many. If I cannot find your book on my Kindle, I am not going to buy it. If I find your book on my Kindle and it is a ridiculous price, I will not buy it but I will read it anyway, it’s really your choice how I go about it.

As far as I can tell, Amazon has done their part of the deal, they have made it very, very easy for me to buy your stuff so now all you need to do is make it the right price.

If you want people to pay for your stuff, make it the most convenient way for them to get your stuff, people pay for convenience, all, the, time.

If a llama is agitated, it will lay its ears back.

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