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Scott Stevens, a former TV weatherman, appeared on Lou Dobbs tonight with a very interesting theory: hurricanes Katrina and Rita were not natural disasters, but quite unnatural. For, you see, the storms didn't just happen. They were created by, here it comes: terrorists. Yes, terrorists. On his web site Weather Wars, Stevens tells how the Japanese mafia group Yazuka teamed up with the Russian government in the early 1990's to develop a weapon which can create catastrophes such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions. This guy is either a conspiracy theorist nut that would put even Oliver Stone to shame, or he's the prophet we'll all wish we listened to when we're pulling the tornado-torn, lava-laden Empire State Building out of the giant canyon. You know, kind of like that crazy guy that annoys you at the mall with the religious tracts.
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When Ashley Smith, the woman held hostage by Brian Nicolas after Nicolas shot and killed several people at an Atlanta courthouse, claimed that she convinced Nicolas to turn himself in after sharing God and The Purpose-Driven Life, many religious groups and media outlets rallied around Smith and this apparently miraculous work of literature. Now, months later, Smith reveals in her new book "Unlikely Angel" that Jesus wasn't the only thing she shared with Nicolas; she apparently gave him a little crystal meth, too. Apparently Smith herself suffered from drug addiction, having been in and out of rehab several times in the past. Armed with this new information, I wonder how many of the religious folks who praised Smith and "The Purpose-Driven Life" will now speak of the wonders of methamphetamine and its ability to show people the error of their ways. Smith herself has even claimed that God spoke to her while she was driving under the influence of drugs; God told her to let go of the steering wheel, which she did, causing her car to crash. Unlikely Angel indeed.
Link: CNN.com: Smith gave alleged courthouse shooter drugs
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 There's a battle raging among local TV stations these days. Over what, you ask? Is the conflict over whose news is the most timely, the most accurate, or the most important to the station's viewers? No, none of the above. It's about whose Doppler radar weather system has the biggest number at the end. The local station WNDU-TV in South Bend, IN has Super Doppler 16, with the number seemingly corresponding to the station's being channel 16 on the dial. Okay, so that makes some sense. WFSB in Hartford, CT, however, boasts a Doppler 3000 system which, while not super, does have a bigger number at the end. Finally, not to be outdone, is Charleston, SC's own (drumroll please) Super Doppler 5000! Yes, folks, that's 2000 more than WFSB's antiquated weather technology. Seriously, though, what do these numbers mean? I remember back in the 1980's and 90's when everything was "Something 2000," alluding to the next millennium to make a product sound futuristic. Of course, many of the companies and products (such as Gateway 2000) dropped that nomenclature once the year 2000 rolled around. Five-thousand, though, makes no sense to me. Are they claiming that they're actually 3000 years ahead of their competition? Will this numbers battle escalate into an all-out war? Will it reach a point where the numerical suffixes must be given in scientific notation? Or perhaps one day the whole conflict will end like arguments did in kindergarten: "Oh yeah, well I have Super-duper Doppler Infinity!" Only time will tell.
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The Vatican is now preparing a document which will ban gay priests, even if they are celibate. Since the 1970's, Catholics, unlike other even more intolerant sects of Christianity (such as the Baptists, who believe homosexuality is a choice and that gays can be converted to heterosexuals), believe that homosexuality is a true orientataion, and the real sin is the homogenital act. Just like it is a sin for two heterosexuals to engage in sex without the possiblity of procreation, it is a sin for two homosexuals to engage in sex because no procreation can take place. Okay, all this makes a little more sense than the Baptists' logic, but the new ban of homosexuals from the priesthood still has me a bit confused. It seems as if the Vatican is saying that it is okay for heterosexual men who are heterosexuals by nature to be attracted to women but not act on the attraction, but it is not okay for homosexual men who are homosexual by nature to be attracted to men while not acting on that attraction. Because Catholicism does not make the distinction between homosexual acts and heterosexual acts without the possibility of procreation, where does this logic come from? Apparently the document is really meant to address not the problem of homosexual acts between a priest and another consenting adult, but to address the recent epidemic of child molestation in the priesthood. The scientific community repeatedly publishes studies that show homosexuality and pedophelia have no link, yet the Catholic church seemingly does not make this distinction. My opinion has always been that the disproportionate number of gays and child molesters in the priesthood can be explained by the nature of the priesthood itself. If a man finds himself attracted to other men or young boys, what can he do to avoid these temptations? What better closet to hide in than the priesthood, where it is forbidden by God to act on those temptations. Of course, the threat of God's wrath still doesn't always overcome one's immediate biological and sexual urges, so acts of child molestation do occur in the priesthood. All of this gay-bashing by the Catholic church seems to me to be a misdirected effort to curb child molestation in the priesthood, yet only further proves to me the rampant contradictions still present in even the most progressive forms of Christianity and the futility of reconciling ancient "holy" documents like the Bible with the complexity of the modern world.
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First there was Cindy Sheehan protesting the war in Iraq; now there's a mom in New York challenging the RIAA after the association filed a lawsuit against her for pirating music over the Internet. Unlike most who have simply rolled over and paid the ridiculous $7,500 in damages to the RIAA, Patricia Santangelo is taking the case to court. Now I'm all for paying artists for music they create, and even paying the record companies for their work in distributing the music to the masses, but I think what Santangelo is doing is to be commended. It's about time somebody stood up to the thugs in the RIAA; after all, the RIAA and the MPAA are doing other nefarious things behind our backs which violate our Fair Use rights as US citizens and which go unchecked due to the ruckus they raise over the P2P scene. What strikes me as the most interesting, though, and the reason I'm writing this post, is the fact that it's moms, not the youth, fighting the power. Where are the demonstrations on college campuses and the great folk songs denouncing these types of things like we saw in the 1960s and 1970s? Are teens just not affected by today's issues like they were back then? Is it because the US draft has been replaced by a more subtle and marginal backdoor draft, and because it's the parents getting slapped with the lawsuits for the actions of their children? Or could it be that middle-aged women have just now discovered Rage Against the Machine? It does seem to have one very positive side effect, though; while Hillary Clinton continues to fight the tired battle of fixing other people's kids, the New Moms are taking care of their own.
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 Short post today; it's late and a bit past my bedtime. I just wanted to quickly inform everyone of one of the most horribly wonderful shows on TV: Bibleman. Conceived by the comedic genius Willie Aames of "Charles in Charge" fame, the show chronicles the adventures of Bibleman and his trusty token sidekick Cypher as they battle evil with bad acting and even worse costumes. If you get a chance, do check this show out; it comes on at 1 PM Eastern Time on TBN (you know, the network with all the crying people and the woman with the purple make-up). I'm not sure if I'd rather watch this show or a flash animation of Kirk Cameron telling me I'm going to hell.
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On Wednesday, federal judge Lawrence Karlton ruled that the pledge of allegiance is unconstitutional, or at least it's unconstitutional to make kids say it in school. Being an agnostic, I do have some rather strong feelings about forcing any particular religion on someone or punishing those who don't believe in the prevailing thought du jour, but really, the pledge of allegiance? The pledge says "under God," not "under Jehovah" or "under Allah." The great thing about the word "God" is that it means so many things to so many people. For many, like me, I see the words "under God" in the pledge as simply an idiom; it's a phrase that's there because at one time it actually meant something (i.e. to counteract atheistic communism in the 1950's) but now just serves as a symbol that we're all united under some kind of ideology. Besides, what is the pledge of allegiance really for, anyway, other than to give kids something to mumble through during homeroom? This is the kind of stuff that makes conservatives' blood boil, and rightly so. I certainly would like to distance myself from rulings like this, but inevitably many who know me probably think I'm for this kind of nonsense.
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Seeing as much running water as has passed through New Orleans in the last couple weeks would make me have to go, too.
Link: Reuters.com
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 While I've been sitting around waiting for Hurricane/Tropical Storm/Drizzle Ophelia to finally make landfall, I was thinking about all the prayer that has probably been going on recently among religious circles. Judging from the track of the storm, it looks like it's either going to hit South Carolina or North Carolina, which leads me to believe there's a "prayer war" of sorts going on between the two states. I would imagine that people from both states are praying that the hurricane doesn't hit their house, but as is the nature of hurricanes, it's not just going to simply disappear. After all, God stopped doing magic tricks miracles a couple thousand years ago. This leaves God up to making a nasty decision: whose lives to bestow his mercy upon, and whose lives to make a living hell for the next six months while they rebuild their roofs and make auto insurance claims for that Suburu with the new tree for a hood ornament. Of course, being the software engineer that I am, I would think that with the repetitive and complicated task of answering prayers, God would have some kind of heavenly IT staff to make this thing automated. I mean, it would be ridiculous to think that God would answer prayers on a whim, right? There has to be some predictable outcome based on a set of parameters, or else the whole thing would seem rather random, or at least somewhat capricious on God's part. So I've come up with an algorithm on which I believe this simple choice, hitting South Carolina or North Carolina with a hurricane, could possibly be made. The following is a formula for calculating each state's Weather/Prayer Index, or WPI:
WPI = (((((population of area * number of prayers) * (number of republicans / number of democrats) - number of sins committed in last 90 days) * number of abortions committed in last 90 days) - number of black people^2) / (number of baptists - number of catholics)) * Pat Robertson
Whoever has the highest WPI is spared, and the loser becomes the next Sodom and Gomorra. And you thought prayer was all fairies and unicorns. Silly you.
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They're back! The two posts from the past that you know and love! I was able to search through Firefox's internet cache on one of my computers and salvage my first two posts (my web host decided my database tables weren't good enough for their servers and deleted them). This will teach me to make backups, or at least make me say "I should have made a backup of my data" the next time this happens.
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