Türkmenbashi Saves The Planet!

by hilzoy

Everyone's favorite appalling megalomaniacal dictator, Saparmurat Niyazov (aka Türkmenbashi), is back in the news. A few days ago he banned lip-synching:

"Unfortunately, one can see on television old voiceless singers lip-synching their old songs," Niyazov told a Cabinet meeting in comments broadcast on state TV on Tuesday. "Don't kill talents by using lip synching… Create our new culture."

(I guess Milli Vanilli won't be stopping in Ashgabat on their next world tour. Türkmens everywhere must be crushed.)

Today comes word of an even greater service to humanity:

"Turkmenistan's idiosyncratic President, Saparmurat Niyazov, has found an unusual way to spread his message - by sending his writings into space. Part One of the Ruhnama was blasted off on a Russian Dnepr booster rocket from Kazakhstan's Baykonur launch site on Wednesday, local media said. (...)

"The book that conquered the hearts of millions on Earth is now conquering space," said an article in the official Neitralny Turkmenistan newspaper."

You might be inclined to think of this as just another one of Türkmenbashi's pointless grandiose gestures. But I think it's actually the beginning of a new and extremely significant move towards protecting the planet from alien invasions. -- I have a friend (who sometimes reads this blog -- hi, Steve!) who once had a jacket of a peculiar purply color, which he claimed was bulletproof: according to him, any bullets in his vicinity would take one look at the color of his jacket, start to giggle uncontrollably, and fall harmlessly to the ground. Obviously, bullets can't either see or giggle. But space aliens can! If they intercept the Kazakh rocket and start leafing through Part One of the Ruhnama, they'll find passages like this:

"In "Ruhnama" the Türkmen people's historical consciousness, matured over thousands of years, and their moral power and strength are drawn together.

"Ruhnama" is a ship. This ship is chartered to bear the news of the past to the future over the vast sea of Türkmen history.

Ruhnama is a courier. This courier transmits the past's secret and necessary news to the future.

Therefore, I say: If the spirit of Türkmen is the universe then "Ruhnama" cannot replace or fully represent it. At least this is impossible in terms of its breadth.

Nevertheless, "Ruhnama" must be the centre of this universe. In this universe, all the current and the future cosmic matters should go on spinning, in Ruhnama's attraction, centripetal force and orbits."

They'll look at each other and say: No kidding, a book cannot "replace or fully represent" the universe "in terms of its breadth". That would have to be one really broad book! They'll start to giggle: But hey: at least everything else in the universe can be explained in terms of "Ruhnama's attraction, centripetal force and orbits." Maybe one of them will try running round and round the Ruhnama, trying to see whether he can feel its attraction, and another will say: Silly alien, you're obviously not spinning fast enough! And eventually, they'll be laughing so hard that their spaceships will careen out of control and smash into the asteroid belt, and humanity will be saved!

And all thanks to the magnanimous heart and gracious spirit of Türkmenbashi! (Don't laugh: it's a lot more plausible than SDI.)

Comments

[xanax]

A thoughtful gesture... shipping off a little reading material for the Intelligent Designer. So few books in space!

[Gary Farber]

Good catches. If anyone's interested in more reading on the Glories of Türkmenbashi, see here, here, and the further links in those posts. If only Türkmenbashi could rule the world!

[Anarch]

If only Türkmenbashi could rule the world!

If only? But he does, Gary. He does. In our hearts.

[Gary Farber]

"...a little reading material for the Intelligent Designer."

He's tired, you know, after making all the Creation Lizards.

[xanax]

That's a great post, Gary. I especially liked the notion that for them, The Flintstones is a documentary. Coffee -> Nose.

[CaseyL]

The Flintstones as Documentary is priceless! My memories of the cartoon are very dim at this point, but I don't remember any episode featuring carnosaurs rampaging through Bedrock.

That, to me, is one of the funniest things about the Young Earth dingbats: if humans and dinosaurs co-existed, don't you think the Bible would've mentioned thunder lizards once or twice?

Many years ago, some fundie tried to tell me that the Bible does so mention dinosaurs. When I asked "Where?", he said something about a line that goes "There were giants in the world," or something like that.

Now, you tell me. If, back in antedeluvian times, a brachiosaur flattened a village, or a herd of velociraptors devoured entire herds and families and maybe a high priest or two, don't you think the Bible would have something more to say on the matter than "There were giants in the world"?

Don't you think the people who wrote the Bible would've interrupted their list of begats long enough to say, maybe, "And God was mightily wroth against the people of Tel-Splot and verily, He did send a vast herd of Those Giant Things with Three Horns and Those Other Giant Things with Huge Teeth and Tiny Arms; and, yea, the Giant Things did blot out Splot from the face of the Earth; and lo, thus does God punish sinners"?

But no. All we get is "There were giants in the world."

Riiiight.

[xanax]

Re: dinos in the Bible - see this (sorry, haven't learned the linky thing yet):

http://www.clarifyingchristianity.com/dinos.shtml

tanniyn - 28 Bible mentions
also Leviathan & behemoth

[Gary Farber]

Well, there is that verse about the prophet Bam-Bam and his concubine Pebbles.

[Gary Farber]

"Re: dinos in the Bible - see this (sorry, haven't learned the linky thing yet):"

Maybe one of the blogowners could possible post this in the sidebar, so maybe I won't have to post it every day? Please?

Scroll down to "Link Something" for the format; feel free to ask any questions you have.

[xanax]

OK?
yay.

[Gary Farber]

Wait, there's more!

California creationist nutbars, that is, not HTML guides.

[Tad Brennan]

It's striking how many savage totalitarian thugs have pretensions to be great Artistes. (Not to mention the converse).

Saddam Hussein published bodice-ripper novels. Kim Jong Il by all accounts is much more interested in movies than in running a country. In fact, I have always suspected that he would be willing to give up his entire nuclear program in exchange for a five-picture deal with a major Hollywood studio, provided that he had complete artistic control to direct, write, cast, and star in his wonderful works.

(And I mean, honestly, how much could we lose by making him the offer? Plus, if we let in a few media moguls, it might increase the competence of our negotiating team. "Okay, you give up all the technology, plus turn over all of your scientists to testify against A.Q. Khan, and in exchange you get first billing." "First billing? I want my name above the title!")

Now we get a new savage thug, who thinks that just because he has a bunch of witless speculations to spout, the world wants to hear them. And so he publishes books, and fires them off in rockets. (Well, I'm just as glad he has one fewer rockets now).

Here's what I don't get: if he is an utter nut-job laboring under the delusion that he has some vast, earthshaking wisdom to impart to the world, why isn't he writing on blogs like the rest of us?

Somebody should set him up with TypePad: if enough people link to it, NiyazovBlog could be the center of the blogging universe, anyhow.

[Gary Farber]

"Now we get a new savage thug...."

"New," as in "been absolute dictator for 14 years."

I've been writing about him for at least 10 years now. So have lots of people.

[JP]

Now we get a new savage thug, who thinks that just because he has a bunch of witless speculations to spout, the world wants to hear them.

Not sure if Gaddhafi quite measures up to the standards of "totalitarian," but this here is pretty funny. I especially like the chapter on women:

It is an undisputed fact that both man and woman are human beings. It follows, as a self-evident fact, that woman and man are equal as human beings. Discrimination against woman by man is a flagrant act of oppression without justification for woman eats and drinks as man eats and drinks; woman loves and hates as man loves and hates; woman thinks, learns and comprehends as man thinks, learns and comprehends. Woman, like man, needs shelter, clothing, and transportation; woman feels hunger and thirst as man feels hunger and thirst; woman lives and dies as man lives and dies.

But why are there men and women? Human society is composed neither of men alone nor of women alone. It is made up naturally of men and women. Why were not only men created? Why were not only women created? After all, what is the difference between men and women or man and woman? Why was it necessary to create men and women? There must be a natural necessity for the existence of man and woman, rather than man only or woman only. It follows that neither of them is exactly like the other, and the fact that a natural difference exists between men and women is proved by the created existence of men and women. This necessarily means that there is a role for each one of them corresponding to the difference between them. Accordingly, there must be different prevailing conditions for each one in order that they perform their naturally different roles. To comprehend these roles, we must understand the difference in the created nature of man and woman, that is, the natural difference between the two.

And it goes on...

[Jackmormon]

I love Tad's idea for outside-the-box diplomacy. But I am afraid of the precedent that making such concessions to aspiring artists would set. They are desperate and creative, mind you, and their numbers are legion! ;)

[rilkefan]

Hey Gary, do you have a work-around for the NYT link generator's recalcitrance?

[Tad Brennan]

Jackmormon--

you're right. I was incredibly short-sighted, and I apologize for it.

It's just the law of unintended consequences all over again. If we used this sort of appeasement with Kim Jong Il, then every washed-up actor in LA would be trying to acquire nukes in order to get back in front of a camera. First Stallone would trade some fissionable material for a shot at making Rocky XII, then Bruce Willis would buy up a bunch of centrifuges in order to barter for some role with a full head of hair. And Hollywood has enough bombs already....

No, I'm sorry--I just wasn't thinking things through.

[Tad Brennan]

Oh--you said *creative* artists.

Never mind.

[Gary Farber]

"Hey Gary, do you have a work-around for the NYT link generator's recalcitrance?"

I wish. Other than searching the web via Google to see if someone reprinted the article in full -- I assume you're referring to stuff they've not saved, which seems to be a relatively small proportion at this time, after their crash, not particularly, no, alas.

Other than paying for access to their archive, of course.

[rilkefan]

I meant, can I make a permanent link to an article in this week's Science section?

Kevin Drum still manages to make links to (maybe just current) NYT articles.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"Here's what I don't get: if he is an utter nut-job laboring under the delusion that he has some vast, earthshaking wisdom to impart to the world, why isn't he writing on blogs like the rest of us?"

That's easy. He doesn't want to deal with criticism via trackback and isn't smart enough to turn the function off.

(I presume of course that comments won't be enabled.)

[Gary Farber]

"I meant, can I make a permanent link to an article in this week's Science section?"

Maybe. Usually they're not available during the first few hours the article is up, but if they're not available by 12 hours later, they're not going to be. I keep the little "nyt link" applet in my browser toolbar, for ease of use, myself.