Questioning Religion

Yatzer has shots of a neat installation in Paris:

Designer Robert Stadler is creating a lighting installation inside the church of Saint Paul in Paris during the Nuit Blanche all-night cultural festival in the city on 6 October.

Nuit Blanche is an annual festival that started in Paris in 2002, with museums, galleries and other venues open all night. The idea has since spread to other cities around the world. See Wikipedia for more information.

The glowing orbs look randomly placed from underneath, but when looked at from the entrance of the church form a question mark.  I like it.

Getting your Read on is now a Little bit Easier

So here are a couple website I recently discovered:

 GoodReads is a social networking site that allows you to post what books you’re reading, have read, or plan to read.  This in turn allows you to see what you’re friends are reading, read their reviews, and even trade books.  Worth a look around if nothing else.  I don’t see myself spending a lot of time on this site, but I definitely see me reading something that I learned about on GoodReads.

BookMooch is a book trading site.  You tell it what books you have that you’re willing to trade, and what books you’d like to receive.  Whenever you send a book to someone, you get a ‘point’ which then allows you to request a book from someone else.  If no one is currently offering the book you want, you can have it send you an email as soon as it becomes available.  I just sent off Christopher Hitchens’ “God is Not Great; How Religion Poisons Everything” and am thinking about what I want to spend my point on – very cool site.

Me of Little Faith – New Book by Lewis Black

Here’s a promotional video for Lewis Black’s upcoming book on faith and politics -

The book is called:  Me of Little Faith and is due out in early June.

Ben Stein is a Creationist

Salon has an article about the battle between intelligent design and evolution in which they report:

I.D. will also be striking back in “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” a pro-I.D. documentary, to be released in February. Featuring conservative writer and political commentator Ben Stein, it portrays I.D. proponents as a group of iconoclastic firebrand scientists with the guts to go after the dogmatic Darwinists who have, the I.D.ers say, grown lazy and corrupt sitting atop a monopolistic theory with zero tolerance for dissent, within or outside of their ranks.

Stein told the New York Times that Darwin may well have been onto something with his theory of evolution, but that it is isn’t up to explaining the origins and diversity of life on its own. Plus, he thinks Darwinism leads to racism and genocide. If Stein had his way, he said, the documentary would have been called “From Darwin to Hitler.”

I always enjoyed Ben Stein on his quiz show, Win Ben Stein’s Money.  I knew he was a political conservative, but I never took him as someone who would accept such bullshit as intelligent design.

I can’t wait to see the documentary – expect a long list of logical fallacies posted here after I do.

 

Huffington Post takes on the Onion

The Huffington Post has just launched a new satire site á la The Onion.  It’s called 23/6 and their motto is: Some of the News / Most of the Time.

It made me laugh; I suggest you check it out.

Feed the Hungry While Learning Vocabulary

Proving once again that you don’t have to be me to have a good idea -

FreeRice.com is a great little vocab trivia game.  It gives you a word and four possible one word definitions.  You choose the right definition and they donate 10 grains of rice to help stop hunger.  See what level you can get to, donate some rice.  Sure, 10 grains of rice is a paltry amount, but it adds up.

The rice is distributed by the United Nations’ World Food Program, and is paid for by the companies you see advertised on the bottom of the vocab screen.

As of right now, they’ve donated a total of 729,030,460 grains of rice.

Quote of the Day – Edgar Allan Poe

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

-Edgar Allan Poe

Preschoolers Express Themselves

Mark Frauenfelder’s daughter’s preschool class was asked to write what they currently felt and why they felt that way.  He enjoyed the answers and took photos of all of them.  I enjoyed the answers too, so am therefore sharing them with you.  Here’s his flickr site.

Kathy Griffin: “Suck It, Jesus”

Kathy Griffin won an Emmy for her reality TV show, and had this to say in her acceptance speech:

I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. So, all I can say is, ‘suck it, Jesus.’ This award is my god now.

The topper of the cake is that a religious theatre group (I know, what’s the point of theatre if you bias it with religion) posted a full page ad in a daily paper (priced at 90k) condemning her words.

The worst part is that the E! network censored her remarks.  Again, even to the liberal Hollywood type, nothing is sacred, except Jesus.  Read about it at the Washington Post.

More Maps!

I’ll say it again.  Sweet Jesus.  This is a perfect example of what is wrong with this country.  Here’s a youtube video of Miss South Carolina Teen USA answering one of those tough map questions.

Conservatives are Morans

These pictures have caused some serious buzz around the internet recently, especially when at a town-hall meeting someone asked Romney how he could dare compare any American to Osama Bin Laden.  Granted, that’s a stupid question, because there are lots of Americans I could validly compare to bin Ladan, but that’s not why I’m writing. 

What really offends me about this whole thing is conservatives and their stupidity.

MOMA?  MOMA??!!  Museum of Modern Art?

Dear god, it is spelled – M-A-M-A.  Mama, got it?

Which is especially odd because if you’re trying to rhyme obAMA, with osAMA, why on earth would you use mOMA?!?  Evidently she can’t spell or rhyme.

It reminds me of this photo, which I blogged about a long time ago.

Sinéad O’Conner and the Pope walk into a bar . . .

From this site, discussing people who have been banned from Saturday Night Live:

 * Sinéad O’Connor was banned from appearing on SNL again after her peformance on October 3, 1992. In her second set of the show, she performed an a cappella version of Bob Marley’s “War”. During the word “evil”, she picked up a picture of Pope John Paul II, ripped it up, and shouted, “Fight the real enemy!” Dave Wilson immediately turned off the “applause” cue and the audience reacted with complete silence. NBC received many complaints about this within a matter of minutes. At the end of the show, host Tim Robbins, who was raised Catholic, refused to give O’Connor the customary “thanks” for being the musical guest. [3].

Note: To this day, NBC refuses to lend out the footage of the performance to any media outlet, and they edited out the incident from the syndicated version of the episode, replacing it with footage from the dress rehearsal taped earlier in the evening. It was finally released in 2003, with an explanation from Lorne Michaels, on Disc 4 of the Saturday Night Live – 25 Years of Music DVD set.

Modern Excess

I’d like to introduce a new blog – Modern Excess.  This blog is devoted to all things cool – art, social trends, technology – you name it.  Enjoy!

Free TV on ‘The Internets’

So, you want to watch a tv show online for free?  Then head on over to Free TV Links.

Quote of the Day – Anton Chekhov

Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he’s been given. But up to now, he hasn’t been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life’s become extinct, the climate’s ruined, and the land grows poorer and uglier.

-Anton Chekhov