Fundies: Toymaker Mattel in Allah's back pocket.....

[marmar]

Just when you think they can't get any more barking-at-cars crazy..... :crazy: :crazy:



from the American Family Assn.'s OneNewsNow, sort of an AP for Fundies:



Toy giant promoting Islam?
Chad Groening - OneNewsNow - 10/24/2008 4:00:00 AM


Some concerned parents have contacted the Mattel toy company with allegations that one of its dolls utters words which promote Islam.

The Little Mommy Cuddle 'n Coo dolls are manufactured by Fisher-Price, which is part of the Mattel toy empire. However, a number of parents contacted the company when they heard the doll say these words: "Islam is the light."

While the doll appears to utter "Islam is the light," the company denies that is actually what it is programmed to say. Mattel insists that Little Mommy Cuddle 'n Coo features realistic baby sounds, including cooing, giggling, and baby babble, with no real sentence structure. The toy company claims the only scripted word the doll says is "mama."

Mattel also contends that because the original sound track is compressed into a file that can be played through an inexpensive toy speaker, actual sounds may be imprecise or distorted. Jan Markell, founder and director of Olive Tree Ministries, is skeptical about Mattel's explanation.

"It does seem to be saying, 'Islam is the light.' I don't think too many people would argue with that, so I think they're being a little disingenuous," Markell points out. "And this is not a healthy thing to be putting out in the marketplace when we're in a war on terror, and little children are so susceptible to the messages they hear -- even from a doll -- then to take them into the school and talk about them. So yeah, this is a serious thing."

Mattel admits the doll makes a sound that may resemble the words "night," right," or "light." To avoid any potential misinterpretation, they have eliminated that segment of the sound file from future production.


http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=296382 (if Rick-rolled by the AFA's sanity filter, you can find the story in the OneNewsNow area of the AFA homepage www.afa.net )

[VWolf]

1. Anyone remember "I buried Paul" ???

People hear what they want to hear.

[gollygee]

2. Oh please

The crazy things people come up with. These are the types of people who see the Virgin Mary in a slice of toast.

[Winterblues]

3. "And this is not a healthy thing to be putting out in the marketplace when we're in a war on terror,

So in other words Terror and Islam are one and the same?? These people need to be called on this religious bigotry or expect another holocaust only instead of the religion being Jews it will be Muslims..This is Hate Speach

[Ian David]

4. Audio Pareidolia: Speech perception without traditional speech cues

When People Talk Backwards

Skeptoid #105
June 17, 2008
Podcast transcript

Listen: http://skeptoid.com/audio/skeptoid-4105.mp3
Subscribe: http://skeptoid.com/subscribe.php


<snip>

This phenomenon is called pareidolia, which we talked about not too long ago when we discussed the face on Mars. Pareidolia is the perceptual phenomenon by which we perceive familiar patterns in disorder. It is the brain's incredible computing power that lets us recognize people, understand language, and read handwriting. For the brain to have this capability, it necessarily results in the ability to perceive patterns where none in fact exists. Most of us can say "Hey, that tree bark looks like Ernest Borgnine," without actually concluding that Ernest Borgnine has somehow become a tree. Our intelligence allows us to not make that mistake. But sometimes a horse might see a garden hose on the ground; its pareidolia tells it that it's a snake, but it lacks sufficient intelligence to overcome the instinctive recognition. I'm not saying that reverse speech believers lack intelligence, only that they lack critical thinking skills; because there is a genuine gray area where it's hard to tell if a pattern is accidental or deliberate. But speech is a deliberate speaking action, so the reverse speech advocates do have a point they can make. It's not an accident of nature like the tree bark, speech is the deliberate result of a speaker's brain communicating. What the reverse speech advocates are missing is that the well-known, well-understood, and well-evidenced phenomenon of pareidolia is a much more reasonable, simple, and probable explanation for why we can often perceive patterns in meaningless noise, in this case reverse speech.

<snip>

Recordings of alleged ghost voices, usually called Electronic Voice Phenomena, fall into three categories: First, hoaxes; second, undetermined; and third and most commonly, audio pareidoliac cases of mistaken identification. You hear some random anomalous sound on the tape, and your brain does its best to make sense of it, often turning it into speech. If the words that the ghost hunters claim are spoken are at all indistinct or ambiguous, there is a very probable explanation for them that's not "a ghost". You're hearing some sound, and unless you were present throughout the tape's entire history (which you probably weren't), it's some sound of unknown origin that, to your brain, sounds vaguely like speech, and isn't it interesting that it's always in the ghost hunter's own language and dialect? Here's a really good illustration of that. Listen to this song, it sounds like it's from India but really I have no idea. I won't even remotely guess what language it's in, I don't speak it and it's meaningless to my brain; but to me, it sounds quite clearly like someone saying:


<snip>

The words I heard are a little different from what someone else heard, as you can see from this subtitled video posted to YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA1NoOOoaNw

YouTube is full of similar examples (here's another good one that's too racy for Skeptoid).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRUGGy9RVrM

The human brain is hardwired to hear its own language in otherwise meaningless noise. If it wasn't, you'd never be able to recognize your own name when someone calls out to you in a noisy room full of people.

Whether that noise is human speech played backwards, music played backwards, traffic sounds, random noises in a graveyard or haunted house, or the musings of the great Indian poet Benny Lava, your human brain will process it and find intelligible speech. It's the way your brain works, it's not evidence of ghosts, Satanic messages, and certainly not of something as childish as reverse speech.

More:
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4105


See prior thread:

Some think doll says "Islam is the light" - oy vey
Topic started by timeforarevolution on Oct-14-08 12:23 PM (20 replies)
Last modified by IAmJacksSmirkingReve on Oct-15-08 10:55 AM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=4235157

[noonwitch]

5. They haven't come out with a Burka Barbie yet, so I don't think there's much to worry about

And, really, if Mattel cared what muslims or fundamentalist christians thought, Barbie would have a very different figure and wardrobe.