Pope Song

Reason in the Big Easy

A the whole proclamation and little more found at Friendly Atheist.

BOOBQUAKE!!!

I wholly endorse this idea:

On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that's your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake.

Found via this delightful comic strip.

Teabonics

A Flickr set of signs from Tea Party demonstrations.

Would you like to learn more about Blaintology?

When a famous tantric guru boasted on television that he could kill another man using only his mystical powers, most viewers either gasped in awe or merely nodded unquestioningly. Sanal Edamaruku’s response was different. “Go on then — kill me,” he said.

Plenty more found here.

Teach the Controversy!

Baggage

Goddamed FOX News.

In case you can't make it out, the sign in question reads, "Tea Bag The Libs Before They Tea Bag YOU!" This appears in the latest Captain America comic. #602.

Seems to me, I've seen a sign like this in real life. Oh, that's right, a similar one appeared at a Tea Bagging rally last year.

Seriously, comics can't make this Tea Bagging movement look bad, the fact that it holds up Sarah Palin as an example does that.

SF vs WBC

It was at the protest in front of Twitter last Friday. Also, SF showed up for the protest at Fiddler on the Roof, but WBC didn't.

Always Interrupting Man's Work

From The Onion:

According to recently excavated clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform script, thousands of Sumerians—the first humans to establish systems of writing, agriculture, and government—were working on their sophisticated irrigation systems when the Father of All Creation reached down from the ether and blew the divine spirit of life into their thriving civilization.

Literally?

Still, It's Upsetting

The Amazon thing I posted about was an error:

Amazon managers found that an employee who happened to work in France had filled out a field incorrectly and more than 50,000 items got flipped over to be flagged as "adult," the source said. (Technically, the flag for adult content was flipped from 'false' to 'true.')

"It's no big policy change, just some field that's been around forever filled out incorrectly," the source said.

Some questions were answered here:

Q: Was the problem with a French programmer? Can you illuminate what you think happened?

Daisey: Someone was editing the category systems inside of Amazon.fr, made an error, and that system is global, so it propagated everywhere. I have no insight as to anyone's nationality, or whether it was a language gap, or anything of that nature.

As one who helped to blow it more out of proportion, sorry. Still, to know that one employee making a mistake (or a "mistake") can effect thousands of titles is disturbing.

To Amazon or Not to Amazon

Looks like Amazon is discriminating against GLBT material when it comes to their ranking lists.

Authors such as Jaci Burton, Maya Banks, Larissa Ione and Stephanie Tyler have reported that since being stripped of their sales rankings, their titles are no longer found in searches on Amazon.com. MetaWriter is also compiling a list of titles that have been stripped of their sales rank.

When pressed for a reason, Amazon.com’s customer service department told YA author Mark Probst:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

There's an ever growing list of books at Meta Writer of books not listed.

BeaukoupKevin wrote a letter to Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, on his blog.

Me, I'm seriously disappointed in Amazon, but I'm sure the paltry amount of money I spend there wouldn't even be missed. Still, I won't be ordering from them for a while.

Porn in the USA

Conservatives seem to be the biggest consumers of pornography:

Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don't explicitly restrict gay marriage.

To get a better handle on other associations between social attitudes and pornography consumption, Edelman melded his data with a previous study on public attitudes toward religion.

States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behaviour."

But... What is "The American Way"?

Bill Willingham, writer of the most excellent Fables and co-writer of the nearly as excellent Jack of Fables, has decided to step away from the "Age of Superhero Decadence." Where "Old fashioned ideals of courage and patriotism, backed by a deep virtue and unshakable code, seem to be... well, old fashioned."

Wanting to emphasize the "hero" in "superhero" is a worthy goal, I think, but I'm always disturbed by the thought that we, whoever "we" is, are right. I think I know what courage and patriotism are, but are they the same for me as they are for Mr. Willingham or anyone who may read this?

Are heroes ever justified in killing? Is one who has a code against killing better than one who doesn't hesitate to blow a hitman's head off?

I look forward to seeing how well Mr. Willingham can stick to this mission statement when he co-writes Justice Society of American later this year. If editorial doesn't like what he and his co-writer do with the characters, will he leave the book or compromise?

(The comments section is interesting, too. Some are well thought out and others are just insane. What does creating multicultural characters have to do with morality? Especially when the character brought up (the new Blue Beetle) is a very heroic character with a moral base.

Or the guy who said, "The only noise you should be hearing out of bastard-child Lois Lane in Superman's presence is 'slurp slurp slurp.'" 'Cause, you know, that's Superman, all the way.

Ain't the internets grand.)

(Via Robot 6)

Dance Like a Monkey!

Prop 8: The Musical

Too good to not pass on.

Check-out that all star cast.

WAR! Redux

This is just another urban legend reflecting a strange Christian persecution complex.

Now, this is a real insult to a holiday that matters:

WAR!

The American Family Association has fired the first shots of this year's War on Christmas with a pre-emptive strike on The Home Depot!

Oh, AFA, what would these next two months (and TV and movies and education and the internet) be like without you?

Edited to try to increase the irony that I was going for.