Religion has much less to do with morality than it does with salvation.

- bakiwop

Australian scientists aim to reduce sheep burps

“Australian scientists are working to breed a sheep that belches less, as they look for ways to reduce harmful methane emissions from the country’s woolly flocks…Twelve percent of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions originate with agriculture, and some 70 percent of that amount is blamed on ruminant livestock, with most of it coming from burps.”

Whether or not you think global warming is real, you gotta love it for providing news like this.

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Smart Phones Allow Quick Diagnosis of Acute Appendicitis
But will doctors text: “UR OK LOLz” and will carriers still charge 95 cents per incoming medical text?

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The Sapeurs of Congo: Open Gutters and Gucci Loafers, Héctor Mediavilla photos of Sapeurs

“The Sapeurs adhere to a subculture of high fashion, often against a backdrop of extreme poverty. Many live in shacks bordered by stinking sewers in the southern suburbs of Brazzaville [Congo]. Those of them who can work double jobs; those who can’t must beg, borrow and occasionally steal; whatever it takes to strut in Versace, Prada and Gucci…Within the SAPE movement there are rivalries and affiliations. Paris vs Brussels, Brazzaville vs Kinshasa, Bacongo vs Mungali. It is total fashion warfare.”

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Explanation for brain fart

“It turns out the root of these brain farts may be a special kind of abnormal brain activity that begins up to 30 seconds before a mistake even happens…The international team of researchers suspects this abnormal behavior is the result of the brain attempting to save effort on a task. When the brain goes too far, errors occur.”

Lazy brain!

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The dark side of the internet

“‘Many many users think that when they search on Google they’re getting all the web pages,’ says Anand Rajaraman…But Rajaraman knows different. ‘I think it’s a very small fraction of the deep web which search engines are bringing to the surface. I don’t know, to be honest, what fraction. No one has a really good estimate of how big the deep web is. Five hundred times as big as the surface web is the only estimate I know.’”

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Study: Believers’ inferences about God’s beliefs are uniquely egocentric

“The final study involved functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure the neural activity of test subjects as they reasoned about their own beliefs versus those of God or another person. The data demonstrated that reasoning about God’s beliefs activated many of the same regions that become active when people reasoned about their own beliefs.”

It turns out that god truly is inside each and every one of us.

The Brick Testament

Scenes from the Bible including…

Matthew 5:41 – ‘Give to the one who asks you, and do not reject the one who wants to borrow from you.’

Luke 6:30 – ‘Give to everyone who asks you.’

And the all-time favorite, based on a best-selling Dan Brown novel…wait, that’s not right…The Last Supper.

A guy gets beat up for being gay and a friend of one of the attackers defends his friend’s actions by showing his tattoo of Leviticus 18:22:

The tattoo reads: “You shall not lie with a male as one does with a woman. It is an abomination. Leviticus 18:22″

What, I’m guessing, this guy fails to realize is that in the next chapter of Leviticus, God says, “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD.” (Leviticus 19:28)

Think this guy knows about the beat down God is going to give him?

How interesting that the man – John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, KCVO, DL, known as Sir John Dalberg-Acton, 8th Bt – who said, “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely,” believed in an omnipotent christian god.

Huh.

GuideOne Insurance, one of the nation’s leading insurers of churches, has combined its expertise in church and personal lines insurance with its commitment to social responsibility to provide distinctive auto benefits for people of faith.

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• Medical limits are doubled if the insured is involved in an accident while driving non-family members directly to or from a church service or other scheduled worship activity.
• Any existing auto loan payments on covered autos up to $3,000 are paid if the insured suffers a loss of income from a disability caused by an accident in an insured auto while driving directly to or from a church service or other scheduled worship activity.
• A memorial gift of $1,000 will be made to the insured’s church if his or her auto is involved in any car accident that results in the insured’s death or the death of a household family member.

GuideOne welcomes all applications, without regard to religion, race, color, national origin, sex, handicap, or familial status.

It seems the Catholic Church still has the Inquisition, whose primary goal is no longer to defend the Church from heresy, but rather “to promote and safeguard the doctrine on the faith and morals throughout the Catholic world: for this reason everything which in any way touches such matter falls within its competence”, which actually still kinda sounds like heresy seeking to me (although – I hope – without the more colorful and enthusiastic tools of previous centuries, but I sure do wish they’d keep the dancing monks, swimming nuns and snappy show tunes).

It seems that back in 1908 the Catholic Church changed the name from the Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition to the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office and in 1965 the name was changed to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The current pope, Pope Benedict XVI (aka Joe Ratzinger) was the head of the Inquisition until he was promoted to pontifhood.

Extra! Extra! According to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, it looks like being a freemason or ordaining women is still punishable by pain of…pain.

“When I was a kid, I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord, in his wisdom, didn’t work that way. So I just stole one and asked him to forgive me.”

– Emo Phillips

“I find it interesting that some of the people who are so into personal responsibility are among the same people who are so into celebrating Jesus dying for their sins.”

- bakiwop

It does not require faith to not believe in something for which there is no proof.

- bakiwop

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