Beware of cheap supervillains

Greetings.

Jewish date: 14 Nisan 5769.

Today’s holidays: Pesaḥ Sheni, Friday of the Fourth Week of Easter.

Today’s quasi-holidays: No Socks Day, World Red Cross & Red Crescent Day.

Worthy causes of the day: “Keep Obama's Military Budgets Clean!” and “Protect the Grand Canyon from Uranium Mining!”

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions:

1. “Women remove veils following govt pressure”: The government of Egypt is violating separation of church and state by pushing for (Muslim) women to stop veiling themselves. (Whether Islam holds it obligatory or not for women to veil themselves will be left to scholars of Islam.) However, the reasoning of one of the people in opposition to this move leaves something to be desired. Thus is it written:
   

   “What’s happening in Egypt is the law of American city hall,” conservative Islamic scholar Sheikh Youssef al-Badry told Abu Dhabi’s The National newspaper. “It’s being translated and enforced on all aspects of life, the niqab is a must. They don’t want the niqab because they want to spread prostitution and illicit desires so that society will be disrupted.” [Boldface mine, not his.]

   What makes Al-Badry think the government of Egypt or the United States are trying to spread prostitution or “illicit desires”? Who would want to do such a thing and why? Has any politician ever claimed such a thing? Are there secret government documents attesting this claim?
2. “The Vatican's continuing Jewish problem”: Alan Dershowitz has a point: It is not consistent for the Vatican to try to have good relations with Jews while allowing anti-Semites to have high positions within the Roman Catholic Church.
3. “Nashville Scientologists Turn Fascist Against Protesters”
4. “Jihad 2009”
5. “Texas is only 6000 years old!”: It does not matter what politicians agree on. The age of the Universe cannot be decided by a vote, as the Universe will not abide by any decision made by politicians.
6. “Hawaii lawmakers back the creation of 'Islam Day'”: Um, isn’t this a violation of separation of church and state? Or are they going to honor all the other religions on the planet as well?
7. “In rare ceremony, Jews redeem donkey in Australia”: Yes, we Jews do tend to do all manner of strange things commanded in the Torah, even deliberately creating conditions to do so.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “UN Bias (2004)”
  
• “Mother's Day, Hamas Style”
  
• “The Final Frontier: The Science of Star Trek”
• “Risks Associated With Complementary And Alternative Medicine (CAM): A Brief Overview”: Despite popular belief, herbs and chiropractic can hurt or kill people. And due to stupid politics, the FDA does nothing to keep dangerous "supplements” off the market until someone gets hurt or killed.
• “The UN on Gaza: partial and partisan”
• “A Failure to Fact Check”
• Interesting idea for ṣedhaqah/charity: GIVE VACCINES.
• “Broke-Ass Supervillain After Shadow Hare”: The Consortium of Evil is only offering $10 for Shadow Hare’s secret identity? I would think that a superhero’s secret identity was easily worth at least $100!

Today’s weird thing is a scan of a title page I came across long ago with some interesting sarcasm written on it.

Enjoy, share the weirdness, and Shabbath shalom.

Aaron