Have to Check That

Reality check, bitches.

• So the head writer of the first Fullmetal Alchemist anime, and the guy who hijacked the plot for his own unlettered screeds about the Iraq War, was Aikawa Shô—who is also widely considered the reason that the infamous Angel Cop was an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. I guess he's updated with the times, since now he's a 9/11 Troofer and he restricts his tirades to anti-Zionism. Totally different. As everyone knows, it's completely possible to believe that every action a nation takes is evil and motivated purely by malice, without being bigoted against the people who make up that nation.
  
  No, wait, no it isn't.


• In the interests of an equal distribution of criticism, Jews have a ridiculous view of history. Not only, for instance, do they insist that the Rhineland massacres during the First Crusade were a major feature of the enterprise (they were a side-effect, much like that idiot here in Arizona who killed a Sikh over 9/11; they involved no actual Crusaders; and in fact it was actual Crusaders who put down the mobs responsible), but I have seen Jewish writers describe the slaughter as "unimaginable".
  
  I think you mean "unremarkable", son, the massacres only happened in a few places, notably Worms and Triers—most of the region's Jews were saved by the monasteries and bishops. Indeed the Christian peasantry of the Rhineland, some of the few non-serf farmers in early High Medieval Europe, probably suffered worse, since the massacres were largely born of the resentments of the unattached rabble following Peter the Hermit. It is doubtful if more than a few thousand Jews died.
  
  And since we're on the subject of riot and massacre, shall we discuss the death toll when Jewish rioters wiped out the Greek colonies of Cyprus and Cyrenaica, during the Kitos War?


• Shifting the focus of my ire, why don't Catholics know their own religion's teachings? You'll frequently get—completely faithful, mind—Catholics claiming that some state or party's support, or use, of the death penalty is "contrary to Church teachings".
  
  I'm sorry, little boy, do you even know what the First Vatican Council was about? It defined what is, and isn't, a Church teaching, and how you know. Some Church leaders oppose the death penalty, based on the assertion (never backed up with evidence) that "as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm...the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity 'are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.'"
  
  Leaving to one side that I'm sure that's some comfort to a guy who gets shanked by the Aryan Brotherhood—while in those prisons that have allegedly rendered them "incapable of doing harm"—that is a matter of facts, statistics, the sciences of criminology and corrections. Not, in other words, faith and morals—therefore, the Catholic Church not only has, but can have, absolutely no definitive teaching on the application of the death penalty.
  
  Here's a hint, genius, go look up "prudential judgment". Also, tear up your voter card.


• Much is being made of some results from CERN that look like they might indicate that some neutrinos are tachyons, but we'd actually had some results in that direction in the early 2000s, I remember reading about it while doing preliminary research for my book.
  
  Of course, though it's got huge theoretical implications, this actually has absolutely no technological application. Why? Because neutrinos are virtually incapable of interacting with other matter. Besides which, even if they do turn out to have imaginary rest-mass, there's no indication, whatsoever, of why they do, or how we'd go 'bout giving such a rest-mass to something else. Hey, photons have zero rest-mass: how much closer are we to going at light-speed?


• Dude, what's with people who think Tolkien's elves are all sunshine and daisies (leaving to one side that they're nocturnal)? Has anyone even read the Silmarillion? The Noldor are a bunch of madmen, especially Feänor and his sons; practically the only ones who weren't homicidal maniacs are Turgon, Gil-Galad, and Galadriel. And Turgon was some kind of Sonnô Jôi isolationist whose nephew betrayed Gondolin to Melkor just so he could get with his first cousin.
  
  Seriously, if the thing didn't have the name "Tolkien" on the cover, all the idiot reviewers would be praising it for turning Tolkien's noble elves on their heads. It's always funny to me how "democrats" are far more likely to exaggerate the moral implications of "nobility" than Tory Radicals like Tolkien.