Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, talks about the most obscene letter in the alphabet.  While I have to point out the asterisk is not actually a letter in the alphabet, I still strongly recommend you go read it.  Quite humorous.

Very interesting…  “The U.S. government conducted a series of secret war games in 1999 that anticipated an invasion of Iraq would require 400,000 troops, and even then chaos might ensue. In its ‘Desert Crossing’ games, 70 military, diplomatic and intelligence officials assumed the high troop levels would be needed to keep order, seal borders and take care of other security needs.”  So Bush and Rumsfeld knew before sending troops in that we needed a lot more and chaos would still probably result from the invasion.

A dolphin was recently discovered with vestigial hind legs.  “Japanese researchers said Sunday that a bottlenose dolphin captured last month has an extra set of fins that could be the remains of hind legs, a discovery that may provide further evidence that ocean-dwelling mammals once lived on land.”  It’s like when a human child is born with a vestigial tail—it’s a nod to the animal’s evolutionary roots to see the extra pieces and parts where its ancestor once had a full limb.

Good Planets Are Hard to Find: It’s another web carnival I’ve recently discovered.  This one is all about photographs celebrating planet Earth.  They’re beautiful and quite diverse.

The truth finally comes out of the closet.  “In a letter that was read to the congregation of the New Life Church by another clergyman, [Ted] Haggard apologized for his acts and requested forgiveness. ‘I am so sorry for the circumstances that have caused shame and embarrassment for all of you,’ he said, adding that he had confused the situation by giving inconsistent remarks to reporters denying the scandal. ‘The fact is I am guilty of sexual immorality. And I take responsibility for the entire problem. I am a deceiver and a liar. There’s a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life,’ he said.”  Let’s start with this: the dark and repulsive things are the hypocrisy, the bigotry, and the closet.  All of them are vile places that damage, harm, disrupt, deceive, and distort.  Next, at least now we hear the truth, but remember this devout Christian man and leader of the American Talebangelist crusade took several days to stop lying and to admit to his mistakes.  And notice the drug issue is ignored entirely; religionists are pathetic that way in that they can easily overlook drug issues but simply cannot move beyond the gay thing.  What small-minded sheeple they are, so full of intolerance and evil zest to harm others who are different, so hypocritical in their selection of biblical verses to believe and enforce as opposed to those which can be ignored because they’re inconvenient.  This entire situation is pathetic, from the man who lied while swearing on the Bible to the church members who haven’t mentioned drugs but are ashamed and shocked at the homosexuality to the entire evangelical movement that enables hate as though it is what Jesus would do.  They are violations of their own faiths; they are abhorrent cretins who don’t practice what they preach; they are endorsers of sin in the name of their mythological gods.  How disgusting.

While we’re on the subject, evangelicals are blaming Haggard’s wife.  “Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.”  Un-Fucking-Believable!  As usual, blame everyone except the man who’s at fault.  Bash the women since the Bible says to keep them subjugated anyway.  Set aside the premise that we are each responsible for our own actions.  Finally, don’t admit that the constant badgering of gays and the espoused hate in the name of some bleating, pathetic, despicable god couldn’t possibly have anything to do with this.  No, you little man (and I mean mentally, emotionally, and sexually), if anyone is to blame aside from Haggard himself, it’s you and your ilk.  You force homosexuals into the closet where they are haunted by humanity’s demons that you yourself created and feed and enable.  You cause the horrific teenage suicide rate among gay teens.  You cause men like Haggard to hide in despair and self-loathing agony as they struggle against their nature and find the only way to communicate with your stupid deity is to lie, deceive, hide, and pretend to be something they’re not.  You abuse your faith, unkind sir, and you abuse those who hear it.  Who would Jesus hate?  It’s you, you dumb fucking hatemonger and Pharisee hypocrite.  It’s you who have distorted the relatively good nature of Christianity and turned it into a weapon to be wielded against those you wish to belittle and exterminate (which is mighty Hitler of ya!).  Would someone please take this man out behind the barn and teach him a thing or two, preferably with a heavy blunt object to the head several times before working over the rest of his body, and let’s see if we can beat some humanity into his spiteful ass?  Please?

I’ve hit my limit with religion.  I really have.  I have no more respect for it.  I greatly respect those followers of their various faiths who do not allow themselves to be drawn into these vicious black holes, but I can no longer say I have any level of respect for the religions themselves.  They’re no good, none at all, and each wishes nothing more than to rule the world by force, to eliminate any who disagree, question, or are different, and to keep the masses focused on harming minorities instead of feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless, caring for the sick and infirm, tending to those in need, and generally being humane.  No, there is no more humanity left in religion, and Christianity is now the new Islam.  You are all terrorists, except most of you prefer to use words and laws instead of bombs and guns (although some of you do that quite readily).  It’s all hate all the time, and I’m quite sick of it.