Be sure to visit Carnival of the Cats #131 for some entertaining photos and links to a whole lot more.
This is disturbing and made me feel unclean — and I don’t mean that in a good way. It’s horrible. [via Apostropher]
It’s time for the IRS to go after Jerry Falwell’s non-profit status based on his involvement in politics. To wit: “The Rev. Jerry Falwell acknowledged on Sunday saying that if Hillary Rodham Clinton were the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 2008, it would motivate conservative evangelical Christians to oppose her more than if the devil himself were running. Falwell said in a telephone interview that his comments to several hundred pastors and religious activists at the ‘Value Voter Summit’ conference were ‘totally tongue-in-cheek.'” First: So these are the kinds of values we’re supposed to find so wonderful and enlightening for America? Second: Tongue-in-cheek my ass. Third: While the IRS has focused primarily on liberal churches when they speak out on political issues (and rightly so), it’s time for them to show they can enforce the law equally well when a conservative religious figure is involved.
And more on the conservative Christian political movement in politics: The so-called ‘Values Voters’ are using deception and lies to turn out their voting base. This meeting of Christian partisans offered scripts for use when talking to potential voters, and those scripts made clear they should lie by “posing as a nonpartisan pollster to ask people how they planned to vote.” In fact, one of the introductory lines in the scripts was “Hello, I am with ABC polls.” How’s that for values and honesty!
This is a great bumper sticker: “Be nice to America. Or we’ll bring democracy to your country.”
Astronomers have discovered a star about 300 light years away that is spinning at near break-up velocity. In fact, it’s spinning so fast that centrifugal forces may well launch material off of the star’s surface in the equatorial region, and any increase in the rotation rate would enable the same force to begin ejecting all of the stellar material outward — an event that would cause the star to tear itself apart. “At its equator, the star is spinning at 1 million mph (470 kilometers per second)—near its break-up velocity…”
This is an enchanting artistic take on a lunar eclipse. Very nice. [via Astronomy Picture of the Day which showed another of the same artist’s work earlier this month]
While quite long, this post on “real Christians” is very much worth your time. Here’s a brief excerpt to get you started:
A multitude of people are disappointed, to say the least, by what they’ve been hearing these days from so-called Christians. For years now the loudest and most strident voices of the Christian church in America have been those of fundamentalists and evangelicals whose yearnings to be the holy hall monitors in a new American authoritarian theocracy have played into the hands of the Republican party as well as drowned out the voices of reason, rationality and inclusiveness that are as much a part of the American religious landscape.