More of This, Please

At the risk of possibly contradicting my colleague here, this is the kind of violence in the Middle East I can get behind:

Saudi Cleric Rules That Buying Twitter Followers is a Sin

Sheikh Abdullah, a senior Saudi religious scholar, has been telling some news organizations that it’s a sin to buy Twitter followers, kind of like everything else. It’s funny that Allah manages to keep up with social networking websites and yet still thinks that your hands will become germ-free as long as you stick them in two feet of water. Here’s the NY Daily News:

Tunisian Journalist Arrested For Criticizing Proposed Anti-Blasphemy Law

Police arrested a Tunisian journalist and outspoken critic of a proposed anti-blasphemy law under pretty suspicious circumstances.

Crazy Lady Discovers Why Everyone Else is Crazy Except Her

Noted racist cat lady Pamela Geller has a written a very powerful exposé on her blog called “The Right’s dirty little secret.” Without looking, since that would be cheating, can you guess what this secret is? Because we do not follow Sharia law here, I will make this a multiple-choice question. See the answer after the jump.

What is “The Right’s dirty little secret” that Pamela Geller totally busted wide open?

a.) They all really liked the third Godfather movie.
b.) Dick Cheney is secretly a woman.
c.) Some blogger told another blogger to stop talking shit about Muslins.
d.) All of the above.

Higgs Hysteria

One of the great things about science is how it strives to wipe away any of the subjective interpretations that fanatic ideologues try to impose on its findings. There aren’t liberal and conservative positions on, say, the speed of light. There is just the speed of light. It doesn’t change based on the political or religious views of the observer.

Books You Should Read: Them, by Jon Ronson

So I finally got around to reading Jon Ronson’s second book, Them: Adeventures With Extremists. He’s also the author of The Men Who Stare At Goats, which was made into a mediocre movie a couple years ago.

Republican Race Wars! Muslims Invade Asia! Antivaccine Airlines! Breatharianism!

His misspelled sign burned in the fire before the photo was taken.

A group of religious fundamentalists were protesting the expansion of a mosque in their area. They said it was being built on land that was sacred to them and they did not approve. They said they would destroy it unless the construction site were moved. When they found that a worship site of yet another religion was already in the area, they then demanded that that site be moved as well.

This all sounds pretty familiar, but this isn’t about a few ignorant Christian yahoos holding their noses and using their vacation time at their shitty jobs to freak out about a Muslim cultural center which would immediately become a center for terrorism and Victory Mosquing in Midtown Manhattan. This is about ignorant Buddhist yahoos doing pretty much the same thing in Sri Lanka.

Fuck Judge Mark Martin of Mechanicsburg, PA

Last October there was a Halloween parade in central Pennsylvania where a guy named Ernie Perce dressed up as Zombie Mohammed, as one does. Talaag Elbayomy, an outraged local Muslim attacked him and Perce reported to incident to police in the area. They then arrested Elbayomy for harassment. This is pretty much what one would expect to happen. It’s sad that Elbayomy reacted in the way he did, but at least justice was served in the end. Right?

Well, no. Jonathan Turley is bringing this case up because Judge Mark Martin threw the case out on the grounds that Elbayomy was the true victim here, not Perce. And to be clear, this doesn’t appear to be a case where the defense lawyer is obscuring the basic facts of what happened. A video of the incident itself was even admitted into evidence. Everyone agrees about what actually happened. Martin sided with Elbayomy because he thinks he was right to attack Perce in defense of his boyfriend Prophet Mohammed.

In Which We Jump on the Tebow-Bashing Bandwagon

There are lots of numbers associated with football games. But what do they mean?

A lot was made of Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow throwing for 316 yard in last week’s footsball game against the terminally unemployed steel-workers of Pittsburgh. You see, Tebow stood out from other quarterbacks for painting Bible verses on his face, a favorite of his being John 3:16. People imagined there was some connection between the number of yards Tebow threw for and the placement of one of the more important verses in Christianity within one of the later Gospels.

Ophelia Benson Interview

Ophelia Benson is the co-author of books like The Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense, Does God Hate Women?, and Why Truth Matters. She also blogs at Butterflies & Wheels, which is on the Freethought Blogs Network. We talk about what happened in the past, what will happen in the future, theocracy in the Middle East, creationism, postmodernism, and how America is doomed in 2012 but not necessarily because of the ancient Mayan apocalypse prophecy.