Why Magic Works (YouTube).
Question: I was thinking ‘religion’ while watching this–anyone else have the same thoughts? Where does it fit (or not)?

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I began this as a comment on Death II: Deal With It! on Letters from a Broad, but it quickly ballooned into post material.
Have you ever experienced the beauty of the sakura? They all but glow with pink-tinged light for a few days every spring, and then quickly fade to dark foliage until the […]

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Deliver Us from Evil is a documentary about the “clergy abuse” problem in the Catholic Church. It focuses on one priest in particular and some of his victims, used as a microcosm of other cases.
It is very well done and very tasteful (although, sometimes the clips of the priest in question are titillating rather than […]

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Virtual Tour of of the Creation Museum (flickr slideshow, h/t to bw)
Alternate link to regular flickr photo set.
Two (cute) heathens don homemade Jesus t-shirts (”I pity the foo who don’t LOVE JESUS” and “GOD don’t need NO science) and enter the Creationism Museum so the rest of us don’t have to. Save the twenty […]

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Is it coincidence that the Protestant Reformation, the first mass revolt against the Roman Catholic Church (I’m not counting the Great Schism between the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic in the 11th century), came not long after the invention of movable type in the West (again, not counting its invention and application centuries earlier by […]

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Forty years today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously against state anti-miscegenation laws. I’m too tired to analyze this right now, but I wanted to acknowledge that I’m the child of a mixed-race marriage, and though I rarely think of it in this way, I guess you could say I’m in a mixed-race marriage […]

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In my earlier post I think I distracted readers with thoughts of tasty, salty pork shoulder and ham or awakened anger against electronic junk mail.  This is totally understandable (mmmmmm….spam….).  But I hope a few of you will help me out with this struggle:
I’m still reading through Bury the Chains which covers the first modern, […]

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maybe that’s why more women aren’t atheists…
This stunningly offensive article at Slate describes a new book/study out about the sexual habits of teenagers as relates to their religion. Apparently, religion had never really figured into a study about the sexual habits of teens in any useful way. The new study takes into account not only […]

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Sorry this is late….
- Attend a city council meeting. Extra credit: say something.
- Write your senator or congressperson to thank them for a vote that you liked, berate them for a vote you didn’t, ask them to vote a certain way on an upcoming vote, or all of the above. Note that typed letters are […]

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Even though I grew up eating things like Spam Musubi (warning, potentially NSFA*), that’s not what I’m referring to here. I forward three email accounts worth of messages to gmail, which does an incredible job of filtering out the bad spam. No more (checking spam folder for inspiration) cialis or penile enlargement offers […]

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