Why Christian Businesses Should Advertise As Such

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Ron at Bay of Fundie narrowly missed getting fleeced by a Christian business. Fortunately, they gave the game away by attempting to proselytize. While searching for a replacement hard drive for his iPod, he discovered a page on one seller’s site that announced its mission to bring people to Jesus. That told Ron to look elsewhere:

I decided to look around a bit more, just to make sure that iFixit really was the best place to get the drive.

Ultimately, I ended up buying a drive on eBay. There’s an eBay shop that was selling a new 30 GB drive for less than iFixit was selling a used one. I guess they shouldn’t have tried to sell me Jesus. They ended up not selling me anything.

I’ll argue that from the point of view of the business, that’s undoubtedly true: they shouldn’t have tried to sell Jesus because of the subsequent loss of a sale. But from a consumer’s point of view, they absolutely should try to sell Jesus. It warns the rest of us to be on the lookout for scams.

A person who will lie to you and tell you that everything in the Bible is true isn’t even going to blink at selling you shoddy goods, and charging you more than you’d pay for a better product elsewhere.

Self-proclaimed Christian companies are just as moral as the self-proclaimed Religious Right: i.e., not moral at all. I’ve noticed a pattern over the years: if a company is busy trying to tell you they’re a wonderful Christian business you can feel good dealing with, once you’ve scratched the surface, you’ll find a raving bunch of shysters under that pretty gold paper. Take Servicemaster’s slogan: “To honor God in all we do.” It was a company based heavily on Christian values. This translated to breaking federal labor and environmental laws, lying to employees, lying to customers, and milking every customer for every last penny possible, especially when the customer was being charged for an error the company had made.

This has not been an isolated instance. Remember: I’ve been dealing with small and mid-sized businesses for a decade now, and the pattern has held true. The more the company tries to convert its customers, the more likely it is they’re needing to create a pool of guillable victims. Even if they’re genuinely motivated by a desire to save your soul from damnation, there’s still a strange pattern of fundamentalist Christian businesses providing worse service and goods at higher prices.

That being so, I hope they continue to advertise as good, honest Christian companies. It makes it so much easier to avoid scams.

Why Christian Businesses Should Advertise As Such
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Completely Gratuitous Fun at McCain's Expense

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Phil Plait has some good news from the astrology community:

But a really dumb article from ABC news says that astrologers predict Obama will win in November. Why?

In May, seven astrologers at the United Astrology Conference in Denver predicted that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. would win the White House in November, citing Saturn’s opposition to Uranus on Election Day as a celestial occurrence that pits a stodgy planet against one of rebellion, resulting in transformation and social upheaval.

So McCain is Uranus? Interesting. Make your own jokes (but keep them to yourself, please, and not in the comments) but I find it funny that they equate McCain to a bloated methane-filled planet that’s tipped way over on one side, making it spin weirdly.

I’m adding this to the list of all-time best McCain insults. Nicely done, Phil!

You may all feel free to add your own in the comments. This blog doesn’t have to be kept family-friendly, as you might have noticed.

In other McCain bashing fun, my stepmother wanted me to share her new nickname for Cindy McCain: “Botox Barbie.” While the description is apt, I don’t think that in any way makes McCain Ken.

All of the above, of course, does nothing to further our nation’s political discourse. But when you have a man as pathetic as McCain in the running for Leader of the Free World, with a trophy wife who’s patent fakeness brings to mind artificial things beginning with the letter B, well, the impulse to insult just becomes overwhelming at times, dunnit?

Completely Gratuitous Fun at McCain's Expense

Happy Hour Discurso

jacob
Today’s opining on the public discourse.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi may be on my short list of politicians to kick out of the White House – first for taking impeachment off the table, secondly for allowing the FISA fiasco to come to fruition – but at least she and I can wholeheartedly agree on this:

I once saw a funny stand-up comedian who had a great bit about things one can say to soften the blow of insults. A person could say almost anything, just so long as they prefaced it by certain qualifiers. “That guy is blisteringly stupid, bless his heart.” Or maybe, “I can’t believe how ugly that person is, the poor thing.” Or the old standby: “With all due respect, that guy is a pathetic clown.”

Maybe House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saw the same bit.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called President Bush “a total failure” on Thursday, among the California Democrat’s harshest assessments to date of the president.

“God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States — a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject,” Pelosi told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an exclusive interview.

Why, yes. Yes, he is. So why the fuck didn’t you impeach the son of a bitch? And don’t tell me it was the specter of Cheney becoming (shudder) President – you could’ve impeached his ass too. And then, Nancy my joy, you would’ve become our next President.

I’m sure the Republicons would’ve screamed bloody murder over that, but hey – when you put Darth Cheney and Monkey Boy George in the Oval Office, what happens afterward is your own damned fault.

And our list of assclowns grows. Well, not grows, exactly – the usual suspects are there, it’s just that they get more assclownish by the day. Here’s Bill O’Reilly’s latest, and I personally think it stands beside the Sylvia’s remark as one of the most imbecilic utterances that has ever dropped from what I am forced, due to its location on his face rather than his arse, to call his mouth:

Yesterday, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly agreed with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and argued that it was fair for insurance companies to cover Viagra but not birth control because “birth control is not a medical condition”:

OK, listen up. Viagra is used to help a medical condition. That’s why it’s covered. Birth control is not a medical condition. It is a choice. Why should I or anybody else have to pay for other people’s choices? Do I have to buy you dinner before you use the birth control?

No, Bill, you would not. I certainly wouldn’t expect someone with the courting capacity of the common caveman to buy me a damned thing. And let’s be frank here: the kind of woman who would let a man like you paw at her wouldn’t have enough self-respect or education to use birth control anyway. She’d believe you when you told her she could avoid pregnancy by jumping up and down on the bed. Or she’s psychotic enough to want to have your babies. How does it feel to take advantage of the mentally handicapped, Bill?

Furthermore, you’ll need to save your money for the coctail of rophynol, GHB and ketamine it would take to get any sane woman, including this one, within 2,000 miles of your bed. Bill, you are birth control. You’re also the best damned argument ever as to why Viagra shouldn’t be covered.

Besides, Viagra is like elective surgery. You won’t die without it, so why should I have to pay for it? If I have to buy you dinner before you use the Viagra, I hope you enjoy starving to death.

Gah. I need to scrub the nasty images out of my mind. I feel like my entire body needs to be bleached inside and out. What has the power to stop my heebie-jeebies and make me happy once more?

I know!

We have a unique opportunity right now to send Karl Rove to jail, but only if we take immediate action.

All we have to do is pressure the 40 members of the House Judiciary Committee, make them hold Rove in contempt and send him to jail. We’ve never had such a direct opportunity to hold Rove accountable. No, this is not enough punishment for his years and years of crimes, but it’s a huge start, and will send a very clear message to the entire Bush administration.


Ooo, a petition to bust Karl Rove! That has some amazing restorative powers, that does. Keep the dream alive…
Happy Hour Discurso

Friday Favorite Science

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There are a lot of love stories in science.

Some folks fall in love with a branch early on and stay faithful to it – they marry their childhood sweetheart, so to speak. Some of us go through a wild oats phase in which we make out with as many varieties as we can before settling down with one. Some of us practice polyepistimi and marry as many branches as we can get away with.

Placing myself within this metaphor, I’m a serial monogamist. I tend to love one branch of science thoroughly and deeply and then move on to the next. Not that I’ve ever fallen out of love with any of my paramours – quite the contrary. It’s just the way my research goes: I need to read extensively in one area at a time to get enough of a feel for it to extrapolate into fictional reality.

I’ve met a lot of different scientific disciplines along the way. There hasn’t been one I haven’t fallen hard for, no matter what my first impression was.

Astronomy was easy: I’d been in love with the stars since childhood, even going so far as wanting to be an astronomer for a good long while. Astronomy leads quite easily into cosmology, which in turn leads to physics, and all three continue to be great loves.

They also fit in quite well with another childhood crush: geology. I love rocks. I won a prize at the fair for my rock collection. I had far more rocks than dolls. I was that kind of kid. So when I figured out that I’d need a good, solid grounding in geology to build a world, I was ecstatic. Finally, an excuse for my rock fetish! And it wasn’t just rocks – there was all that plate tectonics, which had just been gaining momentum when I was a kid in elementary school, and had gone through all kinds of exciting changes since I’d visited it last. Sexy!

But you can’t build a world with those alone. You’ve got to have some biology. And I’ll tell you a secret: I hated biology. I remember only fragments of my public school biology education. Most of it involved learning about Mendel’s peas and discovering that dissecting earthworms is about the most pointless task for a high school student ever. Maybe ours weren’t preserved right, but all I could see was undifferentiated mush. Bo-ring.

So when I realized I couldn’t get away with making all the aliens just like us, I was a little upset. This meant I had to study fucking biology. Ick.

You know what happened. I picked up a few books on biology – some Stephen J. Gould, a few others whose titles and authors are now obscured in the mists of time – and yup. Fell hard. Biology was fascinating. Evolution was so much more than natural selection and a few wayward peas. Ancient creatures should be every SF writer’s dream come true: those little buggers were far more creative than we ever could be.

From biology, it was a short hop over to neuroscience. I love biology, but I’m passionate about neuroscience. The way the brain works makes for some utterly fascinating reading, I’m here to tell you. I’ve spent many a happy afternoon re-reading all of my Oliver Sacks and The 3-Pound Universe just for fun. And it makes psychology a lot easier to understand.

But you still don’t have enough to build a world. I’d have to learn – ogods – weather. Fucking meterology. I’m from Arizona – we don’t really have weather. I couldn’t conceive of anything more dull. I didn’t even figure I’d worry about it much. But I had to study it in college as part of physical geography.

It helped that the professor was the kind of man who’d once brought half an umbrella on camera when he was doing the weather report for the local news. Well, there was a 50% chance of rain that day – he’d wanted to be prepared.

After two weeks of Mr. Bennett’s tuteledge, I couldn’t only predict the weather, I didn’t only understand it, I really enjoyed it. Meterology and I – we were great together! And it’s a hell of a lot of fun to think about weather systems when you’re world-building. Honestly, it is.

Weather systems are driven in part by the interaction of land and water. Had to study oceanography then, didn’t I? And then there was…

But you get the picture. There’s only one scientific discipline that could possibly accomodate someone as promiscuous as me: physical geography. All of my great loves are in there. If forced at gunpoint to pick my favorite branch of science, that’s what it is, because then nobody gets left out. You can even sneak biology and all of its relatives in, because hey – biosphere, donchaknow? I’m sure I could manage to make a case for chucking computer science into that mix.

So there’s my science love story. You’ve got one too, no doubt. What’s your favorite science? How’d you two (or twenty) meet and fall in love?

Bonus points to everyone who knows what “polyepistimi” is supposed to mean. Whether that’s actually how it should be is another story. Damn it, Jim, I’m a writer, not a linguist!

Oh, hey… philology. Where have you been all my life?

Friday Favorite Science

Happy Hour Discurso

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Today’s opining on the public discourse.

Give devils their due: the Bush White House is nothing if not creative when it comes to misinterpreting the law:

“Scandal fatigue” can be common under the circumstances. After seven-and-a-half years of legal, moral, ethical, and political outrages, many of the scandals of the Bush/Cheney years start to blur together. Some are even forgotten, swept aside to make room for new, more offensive controversies.

It’s only natural, then, to shift the focus away from the White House and towards the campaign to pick the next president. I’m afraid, however, now isn’t a good time to stop watching the Bush gang — some of their bigger scandals are managing to look even worse.

The Bush administration today unveiled a set of novel and controversial legal arguments in refusing to disclose key details about Vice President Dick Cheney’s role in the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.

In two letters released Wednesday, the Justice Department revealed that, upon the recommendation of Attorney General Michael Mukasey, President Bush had invoked executive privilege rather than turn over to Congress a never-released FBI report (known as a “302″) recounting a confidential 2004 interview with Cheney about his knowledge of the Plame affair.


[snip]

Just how “novel and controversial” were the new legal arguments? Let’s put it this way: the Justice Department created privilege claims, out of thin air, that no one’s ever heard of before.

The decision by the White House to refuse to honor the subpoena from Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee for Cheney’s interview was hardly unexpected, given the administration’s history of fiercely protecting presidential prerogatives. What was surprising to some legal scholars was the basis for shielding the FBI interview report. It was covered, Mukasey said, by what he called “the law-enforcement component of executive privilege.”

“As far as I know, this is an utterly unprecedented executive-privilege claim,” said Peter Shane, an Ohio State University law professor who is an expert on executive privilege and separation-of-powers issues. “I’ve never heard this claim before.”

Normally, claims of executive privilege are invoked to protect the disclosure of the president’s communications with his top advisers. But in this case, the White House invoked the claim to keep secret Cheney’s responses to FBI agents (hardly what anybody would call his advisers), who were grilling him as part of the now-closed criminal investigation headed by Fitzgerald.


The word “madness” keeps coming to my mind, but others chose less provocative adjectives.


I’m not one of those others. Let’s try this description: this is utterly fucking criminal obfuscation, making a mockery of our laws and political processes, and a new height of batshit insanity from a bunch of fuckwits who had already proven they have nothing but contempt for the Constitution, Congress, and their countrymen. These assclowns deserve to rot in prison for eternity. This entire era of American government is nothing more than a sick, sad joke, an endless parade of criminal fuckery. I hope future generations spit whenever they mention this Administration.

In other news, either these two are complete lying whackjobs or you really don’t want to go to the same hospitals they have:

Today, during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) dismissed the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo and other U.S. detention facilities. According to Issa, “we treated our hospital patients worse” than we treat al Qaeda detainees. Former attorney general John Ashcroft chimed in, joking that doctors “were poking needles into
me”:

ISSA: It is sort of amazing that as a member of the permanent Select Intelligence Committee, I’ve never heard any allegation of any detainee being denied food or water for a week. It’s clear that we treated our hospital patients at times worse than al Qaeda.

ASCHROFT: What’s more, they were poking needles into me all the time time.


Hmm. I’m going to plump for “complete lying whackjobs with a heaping side of criminal insanity.” But of course, this is the Bush Administration, so maybe the treatment at VA hospitals was worse than “severe sleep deprivation, ‘forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, physical force, prolonged stress positions and prolonged sensory overstimulation, and threats with military dogs.'”

This, however, could go a long way toward explaining why some of these incredible fuckwits seem to have such a hard time with a little thing we like to call reality:

If this doesn’t set the tone for former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on interrogation methods at Guantanamo, I don’t know what does.

In his opening statement, Ashcroft admitted that he had “limited recollection” of the events pertinent to the committee’s inquiry. Specifically, “it’s been difficult . . . to distinguish between what I in fact recall as a matter of my own experience, and what I remember from the accounts of others.”


Yep. This is John Ashcroft unable to separate fantasy from reality. Fucking brilliant. And people like this are in charge of the country.

Weep, America, weep.

Happy Hour Discurso

Muster Up, Ye Elitist Bastards!

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We’re about to cast off at Pharyngula, my swarthy crew! Get your submissions in to [email protected], and just to be sure, what with all those angry Catholics flooding his inbox, ye’d better get them to [email protected], too. Wouldn’t do to leave a fine Elitist Bastard standing dockside, now, would it?

See ye on board!

Muster Up, Ye Elitist Bastards!

The Real Curse in the White House

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I shouldn’t be surprised in the least by the outrageously stupid things theocons say. But Ed Brayton reports on one who has just climbed an Olympus Mons of batshit insanity:

Joseph Grant Swank, a past winner of the Robert O’Brien Trophy, has an amusing article where he declares that the White House is now under a curse. Why? Read for yourself:

For instance, I believe there presently is a divine curse on the White House. Why? Because President George W. Bush placed the Koran in that house’s library. The occasion was a much-celebrated Ramadan dinner where both Muslim males and females were guests.

With much fanfare Mr. Bush announced his placing the Koran in the White House library. Taking biblical data into consideration, one can conclude that God was very angry at that move. I believe He has brought a curse the White House because of placing the Koran alongside the Bible in the White House library. God cannot tolerate those who place other gods alongside Him.

Uh oh. There’s a “curse” in the White House. Someone has put a hex on the country, perhaps even gave us all the Evil Eye.

Gee. I wonder who that could be?
Seriously. You don’t need a jealous tantrum-thrower of a god getting miffed at the Koran to explain why the White House appears to be under a curse. You just need to look into the eyes of the dillweed playing spoiled rich brat in the Oval Office to know that yes, the White House certainly is under a curse. No God did it. The little fucker stole two elections to get there.

And there’s a few problems with Swank’s theory:

1. It’s utterly fucking inane.

2. I’ve had the Koran and the Bible inhabiting the same shelf for a decade. Aside from Bush, it’s been remarkably free of curses.

3. The Koran is a book, not a god. I know this is difficult for mentally challenged people like Swank to understand, but I do wish he’d try.

4. And lastly, Allah is God, you raging fuckwit. God would be putting a curse on the White House because he’s jealous of himself.

Which, from what I’ve seen of the right-wing idea of God, wouldn’t really surprise me. If ever there was a deity who needed Prozac….

The Real Curse in the White House

Happy Hour Discurso

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Today’s opining on the public discourse.

Looks like Bush is going to be busy eating his words:

Two months ago yesterday, George W. Bush addressed the Israeli Knesset, and suggested that those who support negotiations with Iran are guilty of “appeasement,” equivalent to those who were reluctant to confront Hitler in 1939. The remarks were quickly embraced and
amplified by John McCain, who insisted that Barack Obama’s willingness to talk to our enemies is evidence of his alleged naivete.

For an experienced and naive rube, Obama seems to have inspired Republican leaders. Yesterday, McCain adopted Obama’s Afghanistan policy as his own, and today, the Bush administration will join high-level talks with Iran for the first time, just as Obama has been talking about for a long while.

The decision by the Bush administration to send a senior American official to participate in international talks with Iran this weekend reflects a double policy shift in the struggle to resolve the impasse over the country’s nuclear program..

First, the Bush administration has decided to abandon its longstanding position that it will only meet face-to-face with Iran after it first suspends uranium enrichment as demanded by the United Nations Security Council.

Second, it infuses the negotiating track between Iran on the one side and the six global powers – France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China and the United States — on the other with new importance, even though their official stance is that no substantive talks can begin until the uranium enrichment stops.


The Europeans and Russians have been urging the Bush administration to join the discussions, but the White House resisted. Now, fortunately, the administration is sending William Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, to participate in the meeting.

I guess we’re all appeasers now.


It would appear so. But you know that nothing’s that simple with the Bush White House – they never back down, they just move the goal posts and redefine the terms so they can pretend they weren’t forced to back down from a bloody stupid policy:

Though White House press secretary Dana Perino declined to address Obama’s comments specifically, she told reporters repeatedly that there has been no change in policy and there will be no negotiations with Iran unless the country suspends its enrichment of uranium and that is verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

“Our principle remains the same, and the strategy and the goal remain the same, that they must halt the enrichment of uranium in order for there to be negotiations,” Perino said.

[snip]

Perino insisted that Burns will be in Geneva as part of the international community because he will be joined by representatives of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — the U.S., China, Russia, France and Britain — and Germany.


If you think that makes no fucking sense whatsoever, you’re absolutely right. Obama was right, Bush blinked. End of story.

Maybe that’s why he’s so het-up over birth control. With his will thwarted in one area, he’s got to attack on a different front, and redefining “abortion” to mean “contraception” just gives him a nice warm vindictive glow:

Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said, “This proposed rule will put women’s access to birth control and the information they need to make health
care decisions at risk. The proposed rule will radically redefine abortion to include some of the most common and effective methods of birth control. As a result, women’s ability to manage their own health care is at risk of being compromised by politics and ideology.”

Quite right. According to the HHS draft, “abortion” takes on a very broad meaning: “The Department proposes to define abortion as ‘any of the various procedures — including the prescription and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between
conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.’”

That necessarily means that common birth-control methods — including the birth control pill and IUDs — would be designated as “abortion.”


This brings us one step closer as a country to outlawing contraception entirely. I don’t know how long it will take to undo this damage.

And he’s on a fast-track to ensuring he leaves the biggest mess behind he possibly can:

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is the federal agency responsible for all U.S. government international broadcasting, including Voice of America and U.S. broadcasts into countries like Iran and Cuba.

Oddly, as Ari’s Freedom Switch points out, President Bush last week named Cliff May, President of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, to the BBG. From the announcement:

The President has nominated Clifford D. May, of Maryland, to be a Member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, for the remainder of a three-year term expiring 08/13/09.


The scandal-plagued BBG has often been a dumping ground for Bush’s staunch conservative allies, including former chairman Kenneth Tomlinson. In 2006, a State Department Inspector General’s report showed that Tomlinson had abused his position and defrauded taxpayers by using BBG resources to support his personal horse racing operation. He also “requested and received compensation that exceeded the maximum allowed by law.”

May is an ardent Bush administration cheerleader and has a history of controversial remarks that make it unlikely he will be a diplomatic steward of U.S. broadcasting.


I wonder how many more ultra-conservative fuckwits he’ll try to salt the earth with before he hands it over to the next President? We may have to fire the entire government and start from scratch.

Happy Hour Discurso

Intolerancia

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Today’s smiting of intolerant bastards.

Would monsieur and madame like a little religion with their pollyticks? Tres bien! The chef has some delightful trifles especially for you.

You remember South Carolina’s obnoxious “I Believe” license plates? Americans United for Separation of Church and State surely does. And they’re bringing suit on some excellent grounds:

According to the suit, the AUSCS contends license plate specialization is more restricted in other instances, and that the legislator circumvented the usual practices for the approval of license plates. By law, organizational plates can only display a name of a sponsoring organization and its logo. Personalized vanity plates can only contain seven characters, with no symbols or emblems permitted. The legislature, rather than private entities, introduced and passed the measure for the ‘I Believe’ plates.


It’s bad enough that the legislature pushed this through, but it gets worse. How deeply has South Carolina’s government been dabbling its fingers into the whole promoting Christian plates effort? Very deeply indeed:

Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer said he would spend $4,000 of his own money to meet the state’s requirement of at least 400 prepaid orders for a plate or a $4,000 up-front payment in order to create such a plate. Bauer said he expected to be reimbursed by the state for his expenditure to ensure the plate’s passage.


Something extremely wrong with that, methinks. It’s one thing to want to spend $4,000 of your very own dollars to promote a religious plate. It’s quite another to expect the good state of South Carolina to reimburse you for it.

And that’s only the beginning of the lunacy:

[Rep. Bill] Sandifer said that while the legislature was simply granting the opportunity for South Carolinians to demonstrate their faith, that did not mean he would afford practitioners of other religions the same opportunity. When asked whether or not he would support a legislative action sponsoring another religion like Islam on specialty plates, he responded directly.

“Absolutely and positively no,” Sandifer said.


I believe that’s what we like to call an Establishment Clause violation, ladies and gentlemen. I trust the court will rule accordingly. If not, I’ll know we’ve officially become a theocracy.

Over at Submitted to a Candid World, Ames has a brilliant piece pointing out an intolerable double-standard:

Even our rhetoric is still geared towards the acceptance of fundamentalist and militant non-Islamic religion. Take, for example, Campus Crusade for Christ. No, please, take it. Not even the temporal
distance we have from the malignant and bellicose origins of the word “crusade” can excuse its use by an evangelizing organization to define its plans for the nonbelievers – “turning lost students into Christ-centered laborers,” indeed. That “Cru” is “appropriating,” “subverting,” “redeeming,” or “detoxifying” the word is no defense to the tactlessness of its use. We ought to be as offended by the implication of a “Crusade for Christ” as we would be by a “Campus Jihad for Allah.”


Ames, darling, you’re too right. Christianity, for all its love of screaming “Persecution!” at the least little criticism, gets far too many passes on this kind of crap. Time for the double-standard to go the way of the coconut-munching T-Rex.

We’ve got our work cut out for us if the clueless Christian in his comments section is any indication. Amazing how blind rabid Christians are, innit? That’s how good but unthinking people end up getting led ’round by the nose by the likes of Monkey Boy George.

I’m happy to report that none of my Christian friends are so blind. Then again, some of them are the kind of people who would encourage a “Campus Jihad for Allah” group just so they could sit back and watch the fun. All in the spirit of equal treatment and toleration, of course! ;-)

We come now to possibly the funniest post written about the Great Cracker Controversy of 2008. Atheist Chaplain had me doubled over many, many times. I’ll leave it to you to discover the joys of PZ as a man holding a magnifying glass over an anthill, and the sneaky ways one can get consecrated Host unstuck from the roof of your mouth. You’ll also get the most eye-opening description of what the wine-transmuted-to-Blood-of-Christ should actually taste like. Those gems should be left to you, dear readers, to discover. I’ll just share this last bit, which is the best idea in the universe for what PZ should do with a purloined cracker:

I humbly suggest that he do something with it that the Catholics would absolutely wet their pants over, auction it off to the highest bidder and donate the proceedings to the No To Pope Coalition or maybe one of the many organisations around the world that is fighting for justice from the Catholic church over its deliberate and organised denial of justice against its sexually promiscuous priests and pedophiles. You could see the Catholics reaching for their cheque books now, hoping to bring the cracker back home, but the pain of signing on the dotted line, knowing that the money would be funding one of their many detractors would bring Schadenfreude to those who have long suffered at the hands and other bodily organs of the Catholic priesthood.


This would be a phenominal solution, don’t you think? PZ gets to make his point, the hostage Host is returned safely, and the fuckwits who ruin it for the sane Catholics get to support a good cause against their will. Perfecto!

Intolerancia