Miraculous Apparition
Miraculous apparitions are all the rage these days, and I finally got one of my own. Some people get Jesus, others the Virgin Mary or the name of Allah. Phil Plait got Vladimir Lenin. I got…
Two-Bit Git Pitches Shit-Fit
BillD has recovered from the vapors, and posted the expected press release about PZ being mean to a piece of bread and a couple of books.
Of course, being a devout follower of the teachings of Jesus Christ, Donohue turned the other cheek and blessed PZ.
Ha! Whom am I kidding? Apparently the worst he could do, since it’s no longer legal to burn people alive for stabbing bits of bread, was to contact the University of Minnesota and demand that they investigate “a bias incident” that he committed on his own time, and not while on university business.
Ecce douchebag.
The Further Canonization of Saint Ronny
The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project wants to
put St. Ronny’s face
on the $10 bill. Either that, or half of all dimes.
I suppose it makes sense to put it on a small denomination, given the
amount that actually trickled down, but I have a better idea: if
people want to put Reagan’s name on money, let’s have the Ronald
Reagan Memorial National Debt. After all, he did more to increase it
than the 39 presidents who came before him, combined. Three times
more, in fact.
CNN has
a poll
(usual disclaimers, yadda yadda) about which denomination should be
consecrated this way. At the moment, “None” is leading, with 54%.
L10n 2.0
If you write a software package, and want it to be usable by as many people as possible, it’s important to translate it into other languages. But like documentation, localization (l10n) is one of those chores that programmers don’t want to do. But if it’s a web app, why not ask the users to contribute translations?
W < 1 FU
It just occurred to me that the Bush presidency will officially end in roughly one Friedman Unit. Whee!
Poe’s Law Strikes Again
I’m going to perform a magic trick for you. Think of a card, any card. Got it? Okay, now click on the awesome magic hat of awesome magic stupendousness:
Ta-da! I told you I was going to do a magic trick, but I gave you two for the price of one: not only did the hat turn into your card, I also made your card look just like the hat! Isn’t that amazing?!
“No,” I hear you mutter, “what would be amazing would be if someone with a double-digit age actually fell for that.”
It’s Not a Timeline, It’s a “Time Horizon”
George Bush has long been opposed to timetables for withdrawal from Iraq. So when prime minister Nouri al-Maliki started pointedly looking at the clock and asking whether American troops didn’t have a plane to catch, obviously Bush couldn’t just set a timetable for withdrawal. However,
President Bush and Iraq’s prime minister have agreed to set a “general time horizon” for bringing more U.S. troops home from the war, a dramatic shift from the administration’s once-ironclad unwillingness to talk about any kind of deadline or timetable.
Of course, the thing about a horizon is that no matter how long you walk toward it, it never gets any closer.
Plucky Documentary Plans Comeback
According to Fox News
and
Variety,
(… ← help yourself to a grain of salt) Yoko Ono has lost
her suit against the makers of
Expelled: No Intelligence Involved Allowed
for the unauthorized use of John Lennon’s Imagine. The
movie will be rereleased in theaters.
In related news, Expelled has gone from 9% on the
tomatometer
to 8%, which puts it in the same Outback as
Kangaroo Jack.
Hysteria Marks Donohue and His Ilk
Bill (rhymes with “shrill”) Donohue has another
press release,
this one possibly even sillier than the previous ones.
MYERS STILL WANTS TO ABUSE EUCHARIST; SHOWS DEFERENCE TO ISLAM
“The biology professor made it clear that he would never disrespect Islam the way he does Catholicism. When asked about those who abuse the Koran, for example, he said such an act was analogous to desecrating a graveyard. ‘That’s completely different,’ he said. ‘I don’t favor [that idea].’ But when it comes to the Body of Christ, he opines, ‘The cracker is completely different.’
Apparently Bill can’t use teh Googles well enough to find posts like
this one,
in which PZ muses on how best to desecrate a Koran.
Charges Filed in Crackergate
Basically, Webster Cook, the U. Central Florida student who
precipitated this whole mess, is filing charges against the church,
because the university’s rules on hazing prohibit the “forced
consumption of any food”. I’m sure that’s not what the rule was
intended for, but hey.
Just in passing, I think one thing bears repeating: as far as I know,
at no point in this whole sordid affair has the Catholic church, or
anyone else, presented what ought to be the most obvious defense of
their actions: that there’s evidence supporting their
assertion that a piece of bread is a god.
Until such evidence is presented, the assertion that a wafer of bread
turns into a god is just unsupported opinion. Which means that Bill
Donohue and his fellow subpontibians are going apeshit because someone
doesn’t agree with them, and has the unmitigated gall to say so
(granted, rather rudely, in PZ’s case, but still).
Recall the recent Texas Supreme Court case that ruled that freedom of
religion means it’s okay to subject an unwilling victim to an
exorcism, the church used all sorts of lines of defense, but never
once tried to establish that the victim was actually possessed, or
even that there is such a thing as possession.
I suspect that at some level, people who claim to hold these sorts of
nutty religious beliefs don’t actually believe them. Well, okay, maybe
the rank and file do, as evidenced by the people who were up in arms
about Cook holding their god hostage, or the ones who threatened his
and PZ Myers’s life (and you thought we’d left the “crime” of host
desecration behind with the middle ages? Ha!). But by the time it
percolates up the hierarchy, when it comes time to actually put up or
shut up in open court, suddenly they’re very quiet.