19 Marḥeshwan 5769: Homemade Bread Day/International Students’ Day

Greetings.

Worthy cause of the day: “Join Kyra Sedgwick -- Urge Congress to Stop Global Warming”.

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions:

1. I am pleased to have discovered that the entire run of Battlestar Galactica (original series) is now on-line. This is relevant to Divine Misconceptions because the show borrows some of its basic ideas from Mormonism. See “Battlestar Galactica Frequently Asked Questions” and “Battlestar Galactica and Mormonism” for details. At some point, perhaps while reading through Pearl of Great Price or Doctrine and Covenants, I hope to go through the episodes one by one and point out the Mormon ideas and how some of these ideas conflict with Judaism and Christianity, on the backs of which Mormonism tries to found itself.
   
2. “Student bloopers provide historic perspective”: This article (suggested by Mom) lists many religious (and other historical) mistakes made by schoolchildren, all of them humorous. “Student Bloopers” casts some doubt on all of them being genuine. Nevertheless, it makes for great reading if you understand the references.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “The Sober Science of Migrating Rubber Duckies”: I cannot make something like this up!
  
• “Scratch Input”
  

Today’s weird thing is “The World’s Top 10 Ugliest Buildings”. Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

18 Marḥeshwan 5769: International Day for Tolerance/Button Day

Greetings.

Worthy cause of the day: “SAVE THE WOLVES OF THE ROCKIES FROM SLAUGHTER”.

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions:

1. I am annoyed over one of the groups promoted in one the ads which Google Ads produced recently for my blog, and so I would like to promote that group’s archenemy, Jews for Judaism.
   
   
2. “Priest: Obama Voters Must Do Penance”: Thus is it written:

   A priest at a South Carolina Roman Catholic church says his parishioners shouldn't take Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because of the Democrat's stance on abortion.

   Fair enough. The Catholic Church is entitled to decide what is offensive to Catholicism and requiring serious penance. But this is the paragraph which is truly problematic:

   But, reports CBS affiliate WSPA, [Father] Newman said his congregants shouldn't take communion until they do penance for supporting the man he called the most radical pro-abortion politician ever to serve in the United States Senate or to run for president.

   Note the term “pro-abortion”. I have previously attacked the term on August 13, 2008 and February 12, 2008, noting that, unless I am very wrong, no politician has ever come out being actually for abortions, only for government noninterference in women obtaining abortions. I find it very disturbing that people keep making this major mistake in terminology which reflects paranoia and not anyone’s actual views.
   
   
3. “Tomboy protests a security threat?”: Thus is it written:

   Malaysia's police, who have recently cracked down on dissident bloggers and broken up anti-government demonstrations, say that protests over an edict against Muslim women wearing trousers are a security threat.

   Mainly Muslim Malaysia's National Fatwa Council recently issued a religious ruling that wearing trousers was un-Islamic.
   

   It said that, by wearing trousers, young girls risked becoming "tomboys" who became sexually active.
   

   That move triggered small protests later from two non-Muslim non-government organizations -- Katagender and Food-not-Bombs.

   I will leave it to Islamic scholars to determine if it is un-Islamic for women to wear pants. A protest being a security threat is frankly rather strange; unless the protest is unusually violent and threatens to spread and completely destabilize the country, this is hard to imagine. “Security threat” smells of an inappropriate government response. The idea that girls wearing pants leads to them becoming sexually active is probably the most far-fetched notion in the article; if there were actual empirical evidence of it, people in the West would probably be pushing for girls not to wear pants so as to avoid teen pregnancy. Anyone who knows of a study showing such a thing (or the opposite, for that matter), please let me know.
   
   
4. I have contributed two crummy church signs towards the latest issue of Crummy Church Signs. Come and bask in the utter crumminess of bad church advertising!

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Last One Out Please Turn Off the Lights”
  
• “California ordered to prepare for sea-level rise”: Thank you, Governor Schwarzenegger for taking a real threat of global warning seriously!
  
• “I can has cheezburger ... and pathos?”
  
• “Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction”: Something else humanity has to worry about.
  
• “EPA ruling halts all new coal-fired power plants”
  
• “Times Square getting its first 'green' billboard”
  
• “Parkland says: “No smoking outside either””: Finally someone figures this out! May smoking be banned everywhere
  
• “Gaza Violence: By The Numbers”
  

Today’s weird thing, submitted by Barry, is “12 Oddly Specific Museums Preserving Our History ”. Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

16 Marḥeshwan 5769: National American Teddy Bear Day

Greetings.

Worthy causes of the day: “Encourage President-Elect Obama to Make Child Survival a Higher Priority”, “STAND WITH THE PEOPLE OF CONGO”, “The Missing Link for Lynx”, and “Say NO to Last-Minute Logging!”

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Alternate Energies”
  
• “Legal Hacks”
  
  
• “Study: Paying more for alcohol saves lives”
  
• “See Ancient Rome in 3D”: Yeah, sooner or later someone had to do this in Google Earth.
  
• “HUGE EXOPLANET NEWS ITEMS: PICTURES!!!”
  
• “French sheep breeders take flocks to Eiffel Tower”
  
• “Biodiesel flight across the U.S.”
  

Today’s weird thing is “The Best Fictional Doomsday Devices”.  On the down side, it now means I have to watch those stupid Planet of the Apes movies for my Divine Misconceptions project.  Exactly what were the writers thinking when they created a cult which worships a nuclear weapon?  Enjoy (or be scared or something), share the weirdness, and Shabbath shalom.

Aaron

15 Marḥeshwan 5769: Yarov‘am ben Nevaṭ Day/World Kindness Day

Greetings.

Worthy causes of the day: “Protect Civilians in DRC” and “Pledge to Higher Quality, Lower Cost Health Care”.

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions:

1. “Neither flour nor Torah”: The author makes a good case that relying on donations for long-term Torah study is not merely economically unsustainable, but also against Jewish tradition. It is indeed correct that many of our greatest scholars have had actual jobs. I would also like to add the principle אין סומכים על הנס (“[We] do not rely on a miracle”).
   
2. “Amazon UK pulls Scientology exposé for 'legal reasons'”: Translation: The Church of Scientology is using the law to threaten Amazon.com from distributing The Complex: An Insider Exposes the Covert World of the Church of Scientology by John Duignan and Nicola Tallant. This would not be the first time the Church of Scientology tried to play dirty with the law.
   
3. “From Tiny Sect, Weighty Issue for Justices”: Summary: Summum, a pseudo-Gnostic/Egyptian new religious movement, is caught up in a legal battle. Pleasant Grove, Utah, has a monument of the Decalogue (often incorrectly called “the Ten Commandments”) in a public park, and the Summumists want to put up a monument of their own Seven Aphorisms next to it. City Hall is against it.
   
   I am not reporting on this case to make a legal commentary. Rather, one of the comments in the article struck me as particularly odd. To quote:

   Su Menu, the church’s president, agreed. “If you look at them side by side,” Ms. Menu said of the two monuments, “they really are saying similar things.”
   
   The Third Commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”
   
   The Third Aphorism: “Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.”

   I find it incredible that Ms. Menu can claim any real similarity between the Decalogue (Exodus 20:1-13 and Deuteronomy 5:6-17) and the Seven Aphorisms. The Decalogue is a proclamation to the Jewish people that YHWH is their god and how they are to behave. The Seven Aphorisms deal with physics and metaphysics. A casual reading is more than enough to realize that they are not saying similar things. Why Ms. Menu bothered to lie so flagrantly, I have no idea.
   

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Terror in Egypt (1993)”
  
• “That Burger You're Eating Is Mostly Corn”
  
• “Trouble walking? Try Honda's new exoskeleton legs”
  
• “CHARITIES AND TERRORISM”
  
• “Fundamentally Freund: Britain's occupied territories”
  
• “Save the whales, but only when national security isn't at stake”
  
• “Why you should be careful when you get rid of a computer”
  
• “Google Flu Trends: Your own disease tracker” and Google Flu Trends itself
  
• “Cholera in the Congo: Fighting could cause disease outbreak”
  
• “Rescuing Cultures of India, From A to Z”

Today’s weird thing is “Prank NY Times: `All the news we hope to print'” and the on-line version of the prank. Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

14 Marḥeshwan 5769: Take a Model Train to Work Day/Birth of Baha’u’llah

Greetings.

Worthy cause of the day: “PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: SHOW REAL LEADERSHIP IN HUMAN RIGHTS”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “RIP, Mars Lander: NASA declares the end of Phoenix mission”
  
• “New pyramid discovered in Egypt”
  
• “Beyond Red and Blue: 7 Ways to View the Presidential Election Map”
  
• BrowserSpy.dk, which is “the place where you can see just how much information your browser reveals about you and your system”
  

Today’s weird thing is “Dalek Workout”.

(NOTE: Non-Whovians may find this totally incomprehensible.) Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

13 Marḥeshwan 5769: Veterans Day (US)/Air Day

Greetings.

Worthy causes of the day: “Shape Yellowstone's Rules on Snowmobiles” and “Fend off the Bush Administration's 11th Hour Attacks”.

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions:

1. “Jewish group wants Mormons to stop proxy baptisms”: (Submitted by Dad.) To quote:

   Holocaust survivors said Monday they were abandoning negotiations with the Mormon church over its posthumous baptisms of Jews who were killed in Nazi death camps.
   
   Survivors claim elders of the Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have refused to systemically search for and remove the names of Holocaust victims from their master genealogical database and have failed to prevent "zealots" from adding thousands of new Jewish names to the list in recent years - including thousands lifted from Yizkor books of Jews massacred at Berdichev in Ukraine.

   Unfortunately, we can only expect the problem to persist indefinitely, and here is why: Baptism for the dead is a long-standing practice of the Latter-Day Saints (Mormon) movement by which they claim the dead are enabled to “enter the Kingdom of God”. Since Mormons are a religious people, and as religions usually demand that people help each other, naturally Mormons are inclined to perform proxy baptisms.  After all, deliberately withholding from the dead the means to a better afterlife would be a nasty, cruel thing to do, no matter what the living think.
   
   Unfortunately the Mormons are running up against Jewish attitudes towards apostasy, especially forced apostasy, and they are not positive. Throughout history, Jews have been periodically subject to forced conversion to Christianity and Islam, with the forced converts having no choice but to practice Judaism secretly if at all. Those living under such circumstances must live a life of constant deception, coupled with spiritual agony over what they do to stay alive. The sheer horror of the situation is cited repeatedly in Sabbatai Ṣevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676 by Gershom Scholem, including the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 (resulting in the apostasy of those who did not leave Spain) and how apostasy-guilt fed into the twisted messianic movements of Shabbethai Ṣevi and Jacob Frank.  The Mormon claim that proxy baptism is of no effect without its acceptance by the deceased falls on deaf ears; it still comes off as trying to turn those who died as Jews retroactively into Mormons and merely as another variation on forced conversion.
   
   The result of this situation:  The Mormons are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.  Given the choice, it is no wonder that agreements to stop proxy baptism keep getting broken.  Do not expect them to stop baptizing the dead ever.
2. “Will Obama inspire Jewish pride?”: Yes, you can visibly be a minority and still succeed in America.
   

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Halliburton Tries To Patent Form Of Patent Trolling”
  
• “World's Largest Truck Goes Robotic”
  
• This Modern World 2008-11-10
  
• “AFP's Staged Photo?” and “Radio-Canada Agrees to Air New Documentary”
  

Today’s weird thing is Nandor's Exhaustive Chemical Words Pages. Enjoy (or be puzzled why anyone did this) and share the weirdness.

Aaron

12 Marḥeshwan 5769: Marine Corps Day/Sesame Street Anniversary

Greetings.

Worthy cause of the day: “Impeach Bush and Cheney Now”.

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions: “Monks brawl at Christian holy site in Jerusalem”: Yes, this petty fight is still going on. Someone please tell all the popes and patriarchs to get together and draw up an agreement to make the Church of the Holy Sepulcher a hostility-free zone. Fighting monks is probably not what Jesus wanted and it is definitely an embarrassment to Christianity as a whole. If this keeps up, people may start betting on the monk fights.

Today’s news and commentary, much of which Barry is responsible for:

• “Safest plastics for food and beverages”
  
• “Blair urges Obama over peace deal”: Translation: George W. Bush’s idiotic Quartet still has not figured out that the so-called “Palestinians” have zero interest (at least on a governmental level) of making actual peace. Somebody please tell Mr. Blair that shooting rockets at civilians is a war crime and not a situation conducive to diplomacy.
  
• “Octopuses share 'living ancestor'”
  
• “15 Tips from George Washington’s Self-Help Manual ”
  
• “The Confederacy’s Plan to Conquer Latin America ”
  
• “8 Nuclear Weapons the U.S. has Lost?! ”
  
• “More Ammunition for People Who Hate Daylight Saving Time”
  
• “Success: Sky Pulls Gaza Photo Gallery”
  

Today’s weird thing, submitted by Barry, is the Antarctica Overseas Exchange Office. Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

PS: If I were a betting man, my money would be on the Greek Orthodox.

13 Marḥeshwan 5769: World Freedom Day/World Run Day

Greetings.

Worthy causes of the day: “Tell your Senators to Support the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act!” and “Hold Industry Accountable for the Tax Dollars You've Invested!”

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions:

1. “Krygyzstan passes restrictive religion law”: Yet another violation of international law which only serves to make the people making the law look like idiots because they are attempting to control other people’s religions. It should be obvious that a government has no legitimate say in what is true for any sort of truth except, of course, what is true in that government’s legal system. Reality has never bent over backwards to accommodate the beliefs of any human or human institution, few (if any) religions these days are so strongly linked to a government so as to blindly assume the claims of the government are actually true, and anyone who defines his/her personal belief system with the assumption that the government is always right probably needs to be in a mental institution. Putting religious education into the hands of a state like this is an obvious recipe for religious miseducation.
   
2. “Homophobic GP banned for a year”: Summary: Dr. Muhammad Siddiq, head of the Islamic Medical Association of the United Kingdom, has been suspended from medical practice for a year for an anti-homosexual letter he wrote in the magazine Pulse. Now, everyone is entitled to their own views, so it is a little much to expect Dr. Siddiq to approve of homosexuality or like homosexuals. However, we all share the same reality, and so no one is entitled to their own facts. There is no sense to the claim that homosexuals are “the root cause of many sexually-transmitted diseases” (STDs); even though homosexuals have done a fair share of contributing to STDs, heterosexuals are also guilty of spreading STDs, too. The sex of whom one has intercourse with is nowhere as big a factor in the perpetuation of STDs as the conditions under which intercourse takes place. For example, being in a faithful monogamous relationship, whether heterosexual or homosexual, makes for a very limited opportunity for STD spread, being promiscuous, whether heterosexual or homosexual, on the other hand, is just asking to be part of an epidemic. Dr. Siddiq’s attempts to shift the blame for the letter away from himself are unimpressive.
   
3. “Christians On the Run in Iraq”: Unfortunately, this is still going on. Why are we giving aid to a country where the government does nothing to stop this atrocity?
   
4. Yes, I am aware that Google AdSense (in this case BadSense) has been calling up ads for a New Thought variation, left unmentioned in the text but made explicit in the labels. It is a side effect of the content of the blog, along with ads claiming that Jesus loves you. (I have to find out where it says that in the New Testament.) Wait a while for the algorithm to realize I have posted on other topics, and the noxious ads will go away on their own, at least until I read the book and write an almost certainly negative review (P > 0.99).

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Mexican "water monster" threatens to vanish”
  
• “Do Migraines Lower Breast Cancer Risk?”: Remember: Association is not the same thing as causation!
  
• “Bionic hand recognized as top invention”
  
• “Electronic Tribble Wants Your Quadrotriticale”: This had to happen sooner or later.
  
• “It’s just a theory”
  

I was hoping to post today new material from Saturday Night Live depicting prominent Republicans in the aftermath of the election. (Comedians have the great advantage that they can tell the truth about politicians with impunity.) Unfortunately, we got a rerun last night, so we will have to wait a while to see what they come up with. In the meantime, today’s weird thing is THE NEW PAPPA*PHONE. Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

9 Marḥeshwan 5769: Notary Public Day

Greetings.

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions, ¾ of which Barry is responsible for:

1. An interesting approach to the Faust legend, one that perhaps makes just as much sense if it is taken rather literally:
   
   
2. A comment on an unrealistic belief about the origin of homosexuality, with an assumption that is perhaps just as unrealistic:
   
   
3. This is about the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, which has harassed many innocent people in an effort to spread irrational hatred for homosexuals:
   
   Note: See Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31.
   
4. The reasoning herein is generalizable to a wide range of values:
   
   

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Toy Hall of Fame points to new addition: the stick”
  
• “Pet food making people sick”
  
• A sweet picture Barry dug up with the rest:
  
  
  

Today’s weird thing is yet another picture which Barry found:


Enjoy, share the weirdness, and Shabbath shalom.

Aaron

8 Marḥeshwan 5769: Saxophone Day/National Nachos Day/National Men Make Dinner Day

Greetings.

Worthy cause of the day:

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions: “Knesset okays bill to divide assets between couple undergoing divorce”: It is very pleasing to know that the National Union-National Religious Party in Israel is doing their part to prevent abuses in the Jewish divorce courts. There are too many horror stories out there of couples in the middle of divorces trying to blackmail each other, and it is good that people are doing something to stop such indecencies.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Jerusalem Municipal Election: By The Numbers”
  
• “Eight-Armed Animal Preceded Dinosaurs”
  
• “Birds of a Feather: Commercial Producers Play Chicken with Avian Flu”
  
• “Rainman - Link Between Precipitation and Autism”
  
• “Understanding the Arab-Israeli Conflict”: For anyone wondering why there is an Arab-Israeli Conflict and why mere diplomacy will not solve it.
  

Today’s weird thing, thanks to urging from Barry, is the Saturday Night Live skit “Giraffes!”.

Enjoy (or be scared or something) and share the weirdness.

Aaron

7 Marḥeshwan 5769: Obama-Biden Victory Day/Guy Fawkes Day

Greetings.

As you have probably heard by now, Barack Obama has been elected the next president of the United States of America. I am feeling very relieved that things in this country will probably be better over the next four years.

Worthy cause of the day: “Congrats Obama: Let's Do it Together”.

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions: “A litany of World War Two saints”: This is an interesting argument that there are Catholics more worthy of being made saints than Pope Pius XII.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Dick Cheney battles Laura Bush over protecting Pacific Ocean”
  
• “Ten Ways the World Will End”
  
• “Who has a better sense of humor -- liberals or conservatives?”
  
• “Cancer Vaccine: Looking Beyond Tumor Size”
  
• “Sky Goes Photo Crazy For Gaza”
  

Today’s weird thing is “Apple I BASIC as a Mac OS X Scripting Language”. (No, I am not making this up.) Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Last minute weird news

Greetings.

This weird news story will become obsolete by this evening: “Japan's Obama town set to party for U.S. namesake”.

Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

6 Marḥeshwan 5769: Election Day (US)/Waiting for the Barbarians Day/Melbourne Cup Day

Greetings.

Worthy cause of the day: “STOP BUSH FROM TAKING A LAST STAB AT ENDANGERED SPECIES”.

Also: If you have not voted yet, please go out and vote now. We need everyone we can get to save the United States from McCain and Palin!

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions:

1. “French magazine banned after some say it offends Islam”: This is an immature way to handle being offended.
   
2. “Op-Ed: Prop 8 goes against God’s love for every person”: This is some of the lamest exegesis I have ever read. The author, Reform pseudo-rabbi David Ellenson, knows very well that Leviticus 18:22 prohibits male homosexuality. To quote:

   Yet I refuse to allow such negative judgments regarding gays and lesbians to go unchallenged from a religious perspective. As Catholic scholar Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza has maintained in her powerful book “In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins,” the divinity of any passage in Scripture that diminishes the humanity of another—as the one in Leviticus does—surely can be questioned.
   
   The thrust of one such passage should not override an overarching biblical ethos that teaches us that God loves and affirms the full humanity of each human being.

   Essentially Mr. Ellenson has missed the point of Scripture.  Rather than base his views of YHWH on what the evidence of Scripture has to say and reconsider his views if he finds any inconsistency, he reserves the right to reject any evidence that suggests that he is wrong.  It makes no sense for him to claim he holds by the “biblical ethos” when he takes a view contrary to the Hebrew Bible.  Furthermore, Mr. Ellenson does not even understand what the passage in question is about.  Leviticus 18 consists almost entirely of prohibitions, mostly of a sexual nature, culminating in descriptions of the consequences of abiding or not abiding by these prohibitions.  The whole passage is about behavior.  Nowhere is it claimed that homosexuals are in any way less than human or are unloved by YHWH.  It should also go without saying that desire, which is often not voluntary, is not prohibited at all, so that anyone with homosexual desires—or the desire to do anything else prohibited, for that matter—is not automatically culpable or incapable of being holy.  I would also like to note that Mr. Ellenson misuses the term “fundamentalist”; as noted by Dr. Stephen Prothero in Religious Literacy (pp. 180-181), fundamentalism is a form of Protestant evangelical anti-modernism, and as such the term cannot be legitimately applied to non-Protestants.
   
3. “How to fix Orthodox dating”

Today’s news and commentary:

• “LA Times Rehashes A Libel”
  
• “Animal Feed Is Fishy”
  
• “Rainforest Fungus Naturally Synthesizes Diesel”
  
• “Frozen mice cloned - are woolly mammoths next?”
  

Today’s weird thing, suggested by Barry, is Atlantropa. Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Last minute comic

Greetings.

This comic may go bad by tomorrow: This Modern World 2008-11-03. Enjoy.

Aaron

5 Marḥeshwan 5769: Cliché Day/Sandwich Day

Greetings.

Note: Tomorrow is Election Day (here in the United States). “Party at the Polls!” gives some useful tips on how to make voting a more comfortable and fun experience for everybody.

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions:

1. Notes on a few books:
   1. Join Me! by Danny Wallace: This is one of two books relevant to my project I have read recently. Wallace’s great-uncle at one point tried to start a 1,000-person agricultural commune; he got a total of three volunteers. After the great-uncle’s funeral, Mr. Wallace was inspired to start a 1,000-person collective. He therefore placed an advertisement in a paper saying little more than “JOIN ME” and this and other efforts at publicizing created a movement which took on a life of its own. At first Wallace provided no purpose for the Join Me movement, but eventually “the Leader” needed to provide the needed purpose in the form of sending people to do nice things for old men, later expanding it to doing nice thing for practically anyone. Despite that one name of the movement is the “Karma Army”, it never gained any real theology, so at best it was a quasi-religion. This book is perhaps useful for understanding something of how ideological movements can get started. It is also sufficiently humorous for even those who have no interest in the origins of religions to find interesting reading.
      
      Relevant Web-sites:
      
      • “Join Me!” (not updated since 2006; the movement appears to be defunct)
        
      • “Danny Wallace” (personal Web-site)
        
      • “Lovely Country - Your Home from Home” (Wallace’s current project, the micronation of Lovely)
        
      • “Lovely” (another Lovely site)
        
      • “Citizens Required” (yet another Lovely site)
      
      
   2. Religious Literacy by Stephen Prothero: This is the other of two books relevant to my project which I have recently read. Dr. Prothero notes that in the United States most people, even religious people, know very little about religion, whether their own or those of others. (This includes the misconception that Noaḥ’s wife was Joan of Arc, something I previously thought no one actually believed!) This ignorance makes for severe trouble in understanding and dealing with religiously knowledgeable people, which includes a very sizable fraction of the planet. He also explains how we got into such a sorry state (runaway tolerance compounded with anti-intellectualism, including emotion-emphasizing revivalism). Dr. Prothero therefore advocates basic religious education for everyone. This book ought to be required reading for everyone just so people realize how much they do do not know.
      
      Relevant Web-sites:
      
      • Stephen Prothero’s Web-site
        
      • “Quiz: Do You Know Your Bible?”
      
      
   3. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne: I have not read this book yet, though I have watched the movie it is based on. However, I understand this book is (and certainly the movie is) based on the idea that you get what you think about (“the law of attraction”), which allegedly works through means not demonstrated to be real. Wikipedia presents a good deal of valid criticism of this idea, which will be a nontrivial task to outclass. (Though I think I can probably write about how Secret-esque thinking is subject to confirmation bias.) I would like to note that I obtained the book in exactly the wrong way that Byrne says I should get it. It was something I put on my PaperBackSwap.com wish-list and specifically thought I would never get that way since there were a zillion other people wishing for The Secret, too. I thus did not bother thinking about getting it that way. When the book came up on eBay, I fully expected that any time I bid on a copy that I would be outbid. Sum thinking: “I’m not going to get this book any time soon.” According to the law of attraction, this should mean that I should not have gotten a copy of this book. And yet, to my own surprise, my request on PaperBackSwap.com for The Secret was fulfilled, and I got a copy, proved by this picture:
      
      Me:  1, the law of attraction:   0.
2. What's The Harm? has updated, giving more examples of why irrationality is dangerous.
   

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Odds of single vote deciding election: 1 in 60M”
  
• “ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS”: Thank YHWH that voting is not as dangerous as it used to be!
  
• RepRap: Submitted by Barry. This is a site about fabrication machines. They have reached the stage where fabricators have fabricated the parts for new fabricators!
  
• “Peru hopes for record with 7.5 tonne pair of jeans”
  

Today’s weird thing is a song by weird musical artist Weird Al Yankovic, “Bob”.

Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

4 Marḥeshan 5769: Plan Your Epitaph Day

Greetings.

Worthy causes of the day: “Stop the Bush/Cheney Assault on Endangered Species”, “Hold China's Government Accountable for the Safety of Its People”, and “Tell the EPA: No new rules to benefit dirty power plants.”

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions:

1. “Home Depot for the Holidays”: This is a report on a wandering message claiming falsely that Home Depot’s Web-site makes absolutely no mention of Christmas, even for blatant Christmas products. This seems to be part of the ongoing “war on Christmas” paranoia. Major rule: Many accusations are false; be skeptical.
   
2. “Dole challenger irate over suggestion she is 'godless'”: Summary: Elizabeth Dole, trying to retain her Senate seat, has claimed that her opponent, Kay Hagan, is “godless”. This is a ridiculous accusation since Hagan is a Presbyterian church elder, regardless of whether she had a political meeting with atheists or not. All politicians have to pay attention to people who might vote for them, whether or not they agree with their religious views. Shame on Elizabeth Dole.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Radio-Canada Wrong In Airing Pro-Palestinian Advocacy Film”
  
• “To Pluto With Postage: Nine Souvenirs Stow Away on NASA Probe”
  
• “Widespread Vaccination Keeps Unvaccinated Flu-Free”: As I said before: Get a flu shot and spare other people from getting the flu!
  
• “KEYS CAN BE COPIED FROM AFAR, JACOBS SCHOOL COMPUTER SCIENTISTS SHOW”
  
• “World without Frogs: Combined Threats May Croak Amphibians”
  
• “Ten things you don’t know about black holes”
  
• “Warmer Antarctica Shows Climate Changing on Every Continent”
  

Today’s weird things are two Saturday Night Live sketches featuring John McCain.


Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

2 Marḥeshwan 5769: Halloween/Frankenstein Friday

Greetings.

Worthy cause of the day: “Support Responsible Energy Corridor Development!”

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions:

1. “Archaeologists report finding oldest Hebrew text”: (Submitted by Barry.) Summary: Archaeologists have found a 3,000-year-old Hebrew inscription 20 km away from Jerusalem. In case anyone (<COUGH> Arabs <COUGH>) wants to forget the fact, Jews have a very long history in Israel.
   
2. “Why Children Like to Share”: Maybe human nature is not as bad as people often make it out to be.
   
3. “Mills and Boon is more embarrassing than the Bible”: Not quite sure what to make of this.
   
4. “To Ethiopia, in search of The Ark”: The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church claims that they have the Ark of the Covenant, only they refuse to show it to anyone. The excuse that anyone who actually sees it will “burst into flames” is not attested anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. The fact that they refuse to substantiate that they have the Ark in any way, shape, or form should be a warning sign that the claim is probably false.
   

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Trick or Treat”
  
• “Elvis ranked top-earning dead celebrity”
  
• “McCain’s and Obama’s Public Commitments to Address Global Poverty: Final Report”: Possibly useful for voters.
  
• “Messenger Finds Blue Goo on Mercury”: Great headline.
  
• “How to Keep Waste Oil Out of the Water Supply”
  
• “MTV Bleeps File Sharing Software Out Of Music Videos” with the unbleeped version of the cited video, “Don't Download This Song” by Weird Al Yankovic
  
• “32 Nearby Stars”: Cool thing done with Flash
  
• “Chocolate: Treat or Trick?”: This is VERY bad news.

Today’s weird thing, considering one of today’s (quasi-)holidays, is a bunch of masterfully carved pumpkins. Enjoy, share the weirdness, and Shabbath shalom.

Aaron

1 Marḥeshwan 5769: Ro’sh Ḥodhesh/Haunted Refrigerator Night

Greetings.

Worthy cause of the day: “United Against Nuclear Iran » Sign the petition” (I fully expect the next president of the United States, be it Obama or McCain, to do nothing of substance against Iran and that Israel will have to level Tehran on their own) and “Tell the FCC: Open White Spaces for Everyone”.

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions: “Israeli court clears way for Jerusalem museum”: Submitted by Barry. Basically, part of a 300-400 year old Muslim cemetery has been designated to be used to build “The Museum of Tolerance”. Muslims cried fowl over this, despite the fact that they had previously let other parts be turned into a parking lot and a hotel without objection. I hope this is not an unwitting comment on Muslim attitudes towards tolerance.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Halloween (1994)”
  
• Tom the Dancing Bug 2008-10-29
  
• “UMN Obliterates The World Record For Most Flu Shots In One Day”: This is a very worthy record for them to have set. Please make sure you, too, get your flu shot soon and help save time, money, effort, and lives from being wasted needlessly. Remember: getting a flu shot does not merely lower your chances of getting the flu; it also lowers the chances you will pass the flu on to other people. Do everyone else a favor and get vaccinated.
  
• “Sarah Palin's latest swat at science”
  
• “Rafah cemetery collapses into smuggling tunnels”: Now who is treating Muslim cemeteries shabbily?
  
• “Alaska G.O.P. Still Backs Re-election for Stevens”: You would think the Republicans would simply cede that seat to the Democrats and save themselves the negative publicity.
  
• “Descent Into Durban 2”
  
• “Gaza Tunnels: By the Numbers”
  

Today’s weird thing, submitted by Barry, is Virtual Magic Polyhedra. Enjoy, share the weirdness, and happy new month.

Aaron

Request for help: ’ethrogh recipes

Greetings.

Before I forget about this:  I have a few ’ethroghim (citrons) around the house, grown on the trees out front.  I prefer to eat the ’ethroghim rather than let them shrivel up, so if anyone has any good ’ethrogh recipes, please let me know.  Thanks in advance.

Aaron

30 Tishri 5769: Ro’sh Ḥodhesh/Internet Day

Greetings.

Worthy cause of the day: “Change military policy about animals”.

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions:

1. “Atheists read religious texts for charity”: Not quite sure what to make of this. At the very least, this means at least a few atheists are not totally ignorant of what their opponents believe.
   
2. “Are You Evil? Profiling That Which Is Truly Wicked”: Summary: Someone is trying to deliberately make an evil computer program, called “E”. The problem with the concept is that evil (and its opposite, good) are essentially matters of opinion.  To quote:

   To be truly evil, someone must have sought to do harm by planning to commit some morally wrong action with no prompting from others (whether this person successfully executes his or her plan is beside the point). The evil person must have tried to carry out this plan with the hope of "causing considerable harm to others," Bringsjord says. Finally, "and most importantly," he adds, if this evil person were willing to analyze his or her reasons for wanting to commit this morally wrong action, these reasons would either prove to be incoherent, or they would reveal that the evil person knew he or she was doing something wrong and regarded the harm caused as a good thing.

   It is correct to define evil in terms of morality, but “morally wrong” can only be defined in terms of a moral system.  Morality, however, is not an intrinsic property of our reality, but is essentially an opinion.  In religions, normally it is the opinion of a deity or other important being which counts.  Atheists and many philosophers prefer their own opinions on which to base their moral systems.  What “morally wrong” means in the context of E is not stated in the article, though considering that multiple philosophers are specifically drawn upon for the definition of evil, I suspect that “morally wrong” is also defined in philosophical and not religious terms.  Considering that there is great variability in what people consider morally wrong (e.g., see the works of Anton Szandor LaVey for truly unusual moral views), no matter how evil appears to its creator, it is bound to be viewed by some as a dismal failure.
   
   Also, there is the question of whether E can truly be evil.  Since E is designed to act in an evil manner, E’s evil behavior is arguably the fault of its programmer and not its own, thus making E the innocent victim of its programming.  Also, “evil” as a label is usually applied only to sentient beings, such as humans, e.g., we do not usually label non-sentient beings, such as dumb animals, as evil, even if we would typically consider a human who acted the same way as evil.
3. “Causes of the Collapse”
   
4. “Journalism Today”

Today’s news and commentary:

• 
  
• “Election watchdogs: Confusing US ballot could undercut votes”
  
• “Why McCain is getting hosed in the press” (Submitted by Barry.)
  
• “Taking Wing: Uncovering the Evolutionary Origins of Bats”
  
• “Astronomers may have spotted Mr. Spock's home planet”
  
• “Zeppelin taking to the skies over Bay Area”
  
• “Funeral home parties with replica Elvis casket”: This sounds like a variation on a skit in a Night Court episode.
  

Today’s weird thing is “Robotic Sculpture”, the purpose of which I do not understand. Enjoy, share the weirdness, and happy new month.

Aaron