A holiday sign sighting in Byron Bay:

Well, you were only going to smoke it anyway.

Unable to stand the shame any longer I promptly joined the queue nearby to have my car recycled into wind chimes. I now drive a fridge.

Meanwhile in Canada…
UPDATE: the link to the story in that post is dead, here it is on another site.

(hat tip Catallaxy Files)

The following exerpt is from “10 Questions with Dr Rachael Kohn”, which appeared in the May 26 issue of Australian Jewish News. Dr Kohn, who has been described as “the David Suzuki of the soul”, is the author of “The New Believers: Re-imagining God” and a presenter on “The Spirit of Things” program on Radio National. You can hear the program at 6pm on Sundays. She has also produced several documentaries for the ABC and is a PhD in Religious Studies. Dr Kohn was interviewed by Mark Franklin, Thanks to Mark for allowing me to reproduce parts of his interview here.

Is science loosening religion’s grip of its claim on truth?

I think a living thriving religion has very little problem with science. It absorbs many of the discoveries and the truths of science. I think its biggest problem is popular culture that is materialist, hedonist and self-centered. And unfortunately, that culture is driven by a very big consumerist imperative and it deals very big challenges to the religiously-informed life.

What do ‘new-age’ approaches to spirituality offer that religion does not?

New age spirituality offers the possibility of constantly changing fashion. It’s open-ended, it’s eclectic, it’s totally self-centered so that any individual can create and pull together their own view of the world. That’s why it’s so attractive. It also ends up being very vacuous and I think most people eventually end up drifting back into something organized.

What are the dangers of spiritual beliefs that are simply absorbed with self?

I think the most frightening thing is that they’re politically and morally very naive. There is no interest in history, and history sadly has had a lot to teach us in the last century about the costs of being naive and blind. History has taught us that we can’t afford to live in a sort of cushy utopian world and not see around us the harsh political realities and identify ideological fanaticism.

Could humanity ever outgrow religion?

No. Never. Because we will always sense that there is more to life than our material needs and desires. And in order to gain an ethical and moral perspective in life you have to step outside that material world and see human existence from a wholly other perspective. I think it’s essential in recognising a kind of fundamental humility of the human condition - that we come from dust, as it were, and we leave as dust. Faith in God is essential for me. It’s the only way that I think life makes sense.

And a few more words from Dr Kohn that I totally agree with:

I hope the new believers do not become fanatical zealots but genuinely reflect on the challenges of spiritual living. We can become too politically correct and not critique other religions. It is important that people of different faiths engage one another and the problems we all face.

(via Tim Blair)

Rainbows leave paths of damage in forest

July 8, 2006

Now that the Rainbow Family is wrapping up its annual return to nature, the U.S. Forest Service is examining what it will take to return their campsite to its natural state.

Forest Service spokeswoman Denise Ottaviano said aerial photography of the countercultural campers’ 4-square-mile settlement in the Hahns Peak/Bears Ears Ranger District of Routt National Forest revealed “40 to 50 miles” of newly improvised trails requiring restoration in the visitors’ wake.

“It’s shocking,” Ottaviano said. “Now there’s just this enormous trail system” in a previously pristine area.

At its peak, the Rainbow gathering, which officially ran July 1 through Friday, drew an estimated 15,000 free spirits from across the country.

The attendance figure, released by the Forest Service, is based in part on the estimated 3,100 cars, plus numerous vans and buses parked at the campers’ settlement.

By Friday, their presence was down by about half, with the expectation that their numbers would continue to rapidly dwindle this weekend and beyond.

But, Ottaviano said, it will be weeks - at least - before the Rainbows are gone completely.

..

The Rainbow participants were never granted a special-use permit by the Forest Service due to concerns relating to high fire danger and safety questions stemming from the limited access to their chosen gathering site.

As a result, law enforcement issued more than 600 violation notices, including at least 298 for illegal occupancy and use, and at least 181 for drug-related offenses.

Another legacy of the gathering, according to Ottaviano, will be cars and dogs. She said the Forest Service is anticipating a number of broken-down or stolen vehicles will be left behind, and said that 20 to 30 lost or abandoned dogs have been rounded up.

Eric Cartman, Routt County needs your services.

What a surprise. It turns out the morally vain generation is… well, just plain vain. And that hippies are hippicrites.

From “Child of the sixties? Then it’s fab to fib”:

Academics at Salford University discovered that people who grew up in the 1960s are far more likely to be showing off by exaggerating or lying about their youthful experiences.

Their study found that around 390,000 people claim to have been present at Wembley when England won the World Cup in 1966 - which is four times the capacity of the stadium.

Around one in ten surveyed admitted that they had also lied about being in the audience at legendary sixties music concerts when they had really only watched them on TV.

An even higher proportion, one in five, admitted telling tall tales about the drugs they had taken in their youth.

Meanwhile, nine per cent owned up to bragging that they had been invited to a “love in” when they had only read about them in newspapers.

The research was led by Britain’s first Professor of Pop, Sheila Whiteley, from Salford University, and has uncovered the new phenomenon of “generational gazumping”. This is described as the practice of exaggerating your experiences in the decade of your youth to gain kudos with family and younger generations and is rife with those who grew up in the sixties.

Her study found that those who grew up in the Sixties are three times more likely to lie about their youthful experiences than those who were raised in the Seventies or Eighties.

The Guardian has some more shocking details in “Flower power, love-ins - and lies”:

Although a quarter of respondents admitted boasting that they had been “too stoned to remember the sixties”, only 8% had actually taken cannabis and fewer than 1% acid or LSD.

..

The survey questioned 3,000 adults including control groups who were teenagers in the 1970s and 80s, and whose flair for invention was notably more controlled. They were on average a third less likely to come up with whoppers comparable to “The 1966 World Cup Final - I was there” or “Sure I was at the Isle of Wight rock concert, and I took off all my clothes.”

..

A quarter of the total admitted that their flexibility with the truth was prompted by wanting “to appear cool to my children and gain the respect of friends and family”.

Never trust a hippie.