We give thanks to mighty Ceres,This won't win me any points with the choir marm, but she's not really my target audience.
with her shredded wheat and Cheeri-
o's that make our bowels so clear. You
know that's good enough for me.
Webster Cook says he smuggled a Eucharist, a small bread wafer that to Catholics symbolic of the Body of Christ after a priest blesses it, out of mass, didn't eat it as he was supposed to do, but instead walked with it.And wouldn't you know it, Bill Donohue got in on the act (it's been a while since Bill was last outraged, so it's good to have him back!)
***
Catholics worldwide became furious.
Look at the bible as a pastiche, a collection of mutually and often internally inconsistent fragments slapped together for crude reasons of politics and art and priestly self-promotion and sometimes beauty and a lot of chest-thumping tribalism, and through that lens, it makes a lot of sense. It does tell us something important…about us, not some fantastic mythological being. It tells us that we are fractious, arrogant, scrappy people who sometimes accomplish great things and more often cause grief and pain to one another. We want to be special in a universe that is uncaring and cold, and in which the nature of our existence is a transient flicker, so we invent these strange stories of grand beginnings, like every orphan dreaming that they are the children of kings who will one day ride up on a white horse and take them away to a beautiful palace and a rich and healthy family that will love them forever. We are not princes of the earth, we are the descendants of worms, and any nobility must be earned.
[A]nother Pasco County substitute teacher's job is on the line, but this time it's because of a magic trick.I guess I'll have to stop removing my thumb to entertain kids, lest I be branded a minion of the Dark One or something.
The charge from the school district — Wizardry!
Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears.
But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land 'O Lakes, Piculas said his job did a disappearing act of its own.
"I get a call the middle of the day from the supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, 'Jim, we have a huge issue. You can't take any more assignments. You need to come in right away,'" he said.
When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a spell that went much farther than he'd hoped.
"I said, 'Well Pat, can you explain this to me?' 'You've been accused of wizardry,' [he said]. Wizardry?" he asked.
I believe that we were put on this earth to take care of dogs. I believe our reward for that is that we get to take care of dogs.
My hubby was on a message board the other day where someone was telling him that when an atheist says “Goddammit,” it implies at least some vague belief in God.I find that notion somewhat nutty, and perhaps a bit self-contradictory. Truth is, though, that a good hearty G/D is sometimes the most effective way, on the spur of the moment, to express one's true feelings. She offers some alternatives to the old standards, of which the following are my favorites:
“Holy Curie’s Isotopes!”One commenter recommends dropping into another language (vaffanculo!), which can be both effective and amusingly confusing to your listener. I will admit to dropping some ordinary German and Russian exclamations (Scheisse! Жаль.), but my favorite came from a Spanish-speaking friend back in college. Just try saying it:
“Mother of Galileo!”
“Great Merciful Hawking!”
¡Hijo de la fregada!Babelfish translates it as "Son of the mopped one," but I've also been told it means "Son of that which bothers me." What it shows, though, is that in this crazy, technological, postmodern world, there are more than enough cursewords to go around, in just about any language. Try using a completely innocuous, yet reasonably uncommon, foreign word as a swear, and see how soon it starts to sound a little inappropriate in polite company. Imagine you just swung a hammer straight into your thumb, and then recite the following words:
ShishkebabSee what I mean?
Portobello
Melange
Ensalada
Lieblingsfarber
Humuhumunukunukuapua'a
ID is "creation science" is "creationism" is "God dun it." Teaching that as something provable beyond faith in a science curriculum is a big reason future Nobel winners will pour out of China and India, and not Kansas.I have many, many thoughts on this whole matter, but it really boils down to a single question, which is this: What will be the state of science, medicine, technology, and our whole freakin' infrastructure in America in a generation if the ID crowd has their way?
[T]his reminds me of the day I disproved God with calculus, in calculus class, at a Catholic high school. Let me see if I remember it...I really don't remember my high school calculus class too well--I'm one of those people who can honestly say I won't ever need calculus for my job. I get about as far as n = ∞, so 1/n becomes infinitely small, and then I get lost.
Let {C} be the set of all possible truth claims that might fill a particular gap in our knowledge. If we have no reason whatsoever to choose one possible claim over another, the probability of each claim being true is 1/n (where n is the number of truth claims).
The believer makes the mistake of assuming that n = 2 (i.e. "Jesus" and "Something Else"). But the elements of a set must be discrete: "Something Else," unlike "Jesus," is not a discrete claim. "Something Else" is itself a set of discrete possibilities, all of which must be counted individually among the truth claims of {C}.
If the believer cannot introduce any reasons (i.e. arguments) to narrow the set of possible claims, then the membership of {C} is limited only by our imagination. As Vishnu piles upon Odin, as telepathic koalas who control the weather bump into the invisible leprechauns who tuned the Universal constants, n quickly approaches infinity — and the limit of 1/n, the probability of any one claim being true, falls to zero.
Q.E.D. ......?
