This month there’s an interesting article in the Atlantic about the contrasting styles of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II. While the two were very close before John Paul’s death, there were also some philosophical differences and they have very different styles. As an example, JP was very outgoing and loved nothing more than standing in front of 100,000 people in a stadium while Benedict is more cerebral and comfortable among his advisors.
Whatever. I don’t really give a rat’s ass because I think religion is all a bunch of hooey anyway. But it did lead me to check out Wikipedia’s list of popes through the ages. And that in turn led me to the entry about the Cadaver Synod, in which a dead pope was dug up 9 months after his burial and put on trial. And when I say put on trial, I mean it literally. His cadaver was dressed up in flashy pope clothes and propped up in a chair in the courtroom, and he was assigned a lawyer to defend him! Hmmm… Maybe someone shoulda asked What Would Jesus Do before doing that.
After something like this (not to mention Galileo), how can anyone credibly argue for papal infallibility? As it happens, today Pope Benedict issued his first encyclical. I’m sure there’s probably some wisdom in it, but with something like the Cadaver Synod in the papal lineage, why should we treat any pope’s writing as anything more than, you know, potentially a good idea, but no more so than the kind of advice you might get get from Dr. Phil or Deepak Chopra?
As some of you may know, I met my wife on Match.com (aff.), so I’m obviously a big fan of online dating. If you’re thinking of trying it, or already have without success, check out Tom Geller’s great tip for figuring out which picture to use in your profile.
Miles better than even the “Hang in there” poster, Frappr may have the cutest page on the Internet.
I could use one of these when reading in bed, which I do every night before going to sleep.
Need redemption? Ask Jeebus and forgiveness is yours.
Note: not safe for work. According to Frappr, swingers are more likely to live in the Bible Belt. There are more in Salt Lake City than Los Angeles!
This particular Frappr is just for one group. But here are two more that are heavily Bible Belt: Southern Swingers (of course) and Cycle Swingers.
(Not that I hang out in these forums.
Seriously, I just did everyone’s favorite search on Frappr to see what came up.)
(Heh. I said came.)
If Web 2.0 is about social media, what could be more social that this? And it ties in with the whole phenomenon of sex driving the evolution of consumer technology. Lesson over.
Here’s an interesting post about one of the ways China censors the Internet. I’m pretty sure it’s not the only way they do it. My understanding is that in some cases they do IP-level filtering, so it doesn’t matter what your DNS server is. The most common workaround is to find a proxy server. There are several IM channels you can ping that respond with the url of a proxy server you can plug in to your connectivity settings. Pretty clever, that.
Prominent old-line conservative John Derbyshire says “I am at a loss to know how creationism has got mixed up with conservatism.” (via Andrew Sullivan).
Mr. Derbyshire must not be paying attention, because it’s really easy to explain. It’s a direct result of Nixon’s Southern Strategy. Nixon (a Quaker) correctly reasoned that southerners would recoil at perceived liberal excesses ranging from the Summer of Love to Vietnam protests to really crazy stuff like, you know the Voting Rights Act. So he used code words (“states’ rights”) to win the formerly Democratic “solid South” in 1968. Reagan solidified the Republicans’ appeal there by embracing Jerry Falwell and other people on the religious right, and then they only had to sit back and watch as Democrats either a) converted to Republicans (Strom Thurmond being exhibit A) or b) were forced to defend anti-God values like abortion rights, the ban on prayer in schools etc.
Let’s call a spade a spade. The “solid South” was a direct artifact of slavery and Jim Crow laws. While we have progressed from the days of separate water fountains – I don’t think any mainstream politician would support such a thing, not even privately – there is no doubt that some of the same acrimony that drove Jim Crow laws drove the conversion of millions of Democrats into Republicans.
It may be that conservatism as a philosophy would normally have nothing to do with creationism, but the ascendance of conservatism as a political force –manifested in the Republican Party – rests in large part on the ignorance and bigotry often found in rural areas of the country, particularly in the South.
(By the way, I grew up in rural Georgia. I saw plenty of bigotry and ignorance on display while growing up, and I still see it when I visit. No, it’s not as overt as burning crosses on front lawns (or, honestly, as consequential), but it definitely exists. During that time I watched the the Republican Party morph from Dwight Eisenhower into Ralph Reed.)
About this time last year I admitted that I’m a sport nut.Well, it’s NFL playoffs time again and I’m pretty cranked up about the Broncos-Patriots game this Saturday. Like any Denver sports fan, I mostly keep my radio tuned to Fan 950.
This morning something interesting happened. Apparently, somehow word got around in Boston that the morning host Marc Moser has been talking smack about the Patriots, and so a lot of Patriots fans in Boston started listening online and, this being talk radio, calling in to voice their displeasure. Moser knows good radio when he hears it, so he made sure to allow a plenty of Patriots fans to get on the air and encouraged them to keep calling. And then of course he gave Denver fans the red meat they need by insulting the Patriots fans.(One Patriots fan called right as the show was ending. Marc urged him to call back tomorrow because “I know you don’t have a job.” Classic.)
Moser promised to continue this through the rest of the week. This is the kind of thing that’s made for blogging, and I’ve always been surprised at the relative paucity of good sports blogs. Someday one of these sports stations will figure out the magic combo of live radio, podcasts and blogging. The AdSense revenue alone would probably be substantial – ads for sports paraphernalia, tickets, athletic gear etc, command good prices per click.
The Fan, Jim Rome and others do a decent job of featuring listeners’ email and running online features like contests and photo galleries, but they’re just scratching the surface. They could learn a few things from David Lawrence.
According to the Washington Post, Random House plans to offer refunds to some buyers of A Million Little Pieces. The too-shocking-to-be-believed memoir turns out to be mostly fake. Too bad. I was planning to read it. And I still might but will just treat it as fiction.
