atheistblogroll

The peculiarities of dietary restrictions by the religious are always entertaining. Catholics have their own weird practices: here's a bit of strange information from a Catholic agony aunt forum.

Do alligators count as fish? As a Catholic who observes the custom of abstaining from meat on Fridays, I would like to know if alligator would be considered meat or fish. Recently, on a Friday, I was in a local restaurant where I was sharing a dinner of alligator. I thought upon this, and decided, as a reptile, alligator would fall into the fish category. I hope I'm not sounding too scrupulous, but if it is considered meat, I will avoid it on Fridays in the future.

Uh-oh. This woman made a judgment on Catholic theology without consulting a priest. Doesn't she know she could be getting an eternity in hell for her plate full of alligator? Fortunately, it turns out that going meatless still allows one to eat all the reptiles, amphibians, and insects you might want.

An alligator is certainly not a fish, and it certainly does have meat. But the custom of abstaining from meat on Fridays is abstinence from the flesh of mammals and birds. Fish, reptiles, amphibians, insects, etc., are exempt from this. Since an alligator is a reptile, those who abstain from meat on Fridays are free to eat alligator if they wish.

Why?

Does anybody ever just ask why these strange eating habits are a part of the doctrine? Does god like birds and mammals so much that he doesn't want you to eat them on one day? Would he really be that pissed if you had a cheeseburger on Friday?

MPR picked my brains about the impossible plan to eradicate mosquitoes. No, we can't, and no, we shouldn't. That wasn't so hard.

World Population Forecast to Top 7 Billion in 2011 - NYTimes.com http://nyti.ms/cyfVZb

Driverless vehicles headed from Serbia to China http://bit.ly/dwm63a

During the presidential primary, I was one of a few progressives warning everyone that Obama was a moderate at best. One campaigner told even told me that he thought Obama was the next Robert Kennedy. Sadly that seems unlikely.

On just about every issue Obama has let down his progressive base and continues to try to get Republicans to like him. The thought that we will be stuck with Obama for six more years is scary, but the scarier part is that the Republicans may get Sarah Palin or some other wack-job in office because Obama has lost his base.

For the good of the country, we can’t let Obama go unchallenged in his re-election campaign. It is time for the progressives in the country to run someone against Obama during the primary. If for no other reason it could light a fire under Obama’s ass and get him to actually do stuff.

While I love Kucinch, his image has been tarnished beyond repair. Kucinich might be able to make Senator, but I don’t think he could beat Obama in a primary even with Obama’s low approval rating and he certainly wouldn’t be able to beat the Republicans in the general election. The best chance we have to beat Obama in the Primary and to win in the general election is Congressman Alan Grayson.

Grayson, is a strong progressive in a right wing congressional district. Despite the fact that every Republican talking head is gunning for him and he lives in a strong Republican district, he seems to be in little danger of losing his seat. It seems that Grayson has discovered the formula for political success… guts.

To help persuade Grayson to run in a primary against Obama, I have started a facebook group. The way these things work is that we need at least a million people to join this group so that the media takes notice. Grayson will probably only run if he sees that there are large numbers of people who want him to run. So please join this group and spread the word.

I don’t talk too much about my personal/work life on this site, but I figured I’d share some of the things that are going on right now:

• I’m the new head coach of my high school’s Speech Team (a.k.a. Forensics)! I competed in this when I was in school and have been an assistant coach on various teams for the past several years, so I’m really excited about being able to run my own team. The students I have already are incredibly talented and now I can focus on recruiting other people to join them. When I don’t post anything between November and February, you’ll know why.
• I’m teaching my first Advanced Placement class (Statistics) this year! I’ve taught honors classes before, but this is a whole new level of crazy-smart, not-afraid-to-challenge-me, let’s-do-battle-over-one-point-on-the-test-you-already-got-an-A-on students. I can’t wait!
• With all this going on, something has to give. So I chose to step down from my position as chair of the Secular Student Alliance board of directors last week. The newly elected chair is a fantastic leader and I’ll post more about him soon. I’m going to remain on the board until my term expires next summer.
• I have a couple postings coming up on this site that have been in the works for a while now. They were probably the hardest things I’ve ever tried to put together but I think they’ll be worth it for readers. (This also probably means they’ll get all of 2 comments. That always seems to happen on posts I spend a lot of time on…)
• I may be writing for a couple other mainstream websites soon. If/when that happens, I’ll provide the links.
• I’m putting together my speaking calendar for the upcoming school year. If your campus/off-campus group is interested in having me, please let me know!
• My mom would also like me to tell you all that I’m very excited about meeting a nice Indian woman/getting married/having children this year. Apparently, she knows something that I don’t. (Should I be worried about this?)

These guys are walking (running) on water better than I thought possible.

Correre sull’acqua Uploaded by remylecrow. - Click for more funny videos.

Related posts:

1. Falling water drops as you’ve never before seen them.
2. Bottled water: harmful to the environment
3. Rush admits he has been a water carrier for the RNC

I feel fine/nothing.

(via nevver)

Wanted: A bash utility that sends the contents of a file to standard output. It would be named spew. It would be like cat but with the problems oft' complained about in cat fixed. There would be a few options. One option would be to chomp the final newline if there is one. Other options would change the character encoding. Another option would be to specify several commands to which the data could be sent simultaneously. But otherwise it would be pretty simple. Spew.

See the whole "WANTED" list here.