Politically correct bible verses

You knew it was only a matter of time: the Church of England has revised the 23rd Psalm to be more kind and gentle. Ben Kepple has the gory details, plus some hilarious additional psalms for the modern seeker.

The Czech Republic needs your help!

NewsMax reports that many people in the Czech Republic don't like the name of their country:

Czech Republic is too long, folks fret. Some businessmen stamp "Made in Czech" on their goods, but "this is the grammatical equivalent of 'Made in British'," the Economist notes.

Some officials are pushing "Czechia," but many citizens don't like the sound. "Cesko," pronounced chess-go, is gaining popularity inside the republic, but former prez Vaclav Hazel [sic] complained it made his "flesh creep."

(NewsMax needs to update its spell checker.)

Can anybody come up with a better name? For the sake of process of elimination, I've identified a few alternatives that probably won't go over too well:

West Slovakia
Vaclavistan
Seven of Eight, Tertiary Adjunct of the European Union

Speaking of which, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder are fuming at the Czechs for cutting taxes:

Please, may I have more? »

Great lines

"I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse."
--Charles (Carlo) V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain

Suspect: "You've got to be kidding!"
Lennie: "If I were kidding, I'd be wearing a fez and no pants."
--Lennie Briscoe, Law & Order

"Dear Sir: I am presently seated in the smallest room of my home. In front of me is a copy of your review of my concert last evening. In a moment, it will be behind me."
--German composer Max Reger, in reponse to a critic

"If I want to escape, any old James Bond novel (not the lousy movies) can provide three times the value, with none of the boring bits about why it's bad to wander through the Deserts Of Scrofula. And James Bond has sex in his adventures, unlike that twerp Aragormless, who could have been laid about six times during the course of the three movies, but instead comes away with, in total, a kiss from Aerosmith's vocalist's daughter, and a hug from that gay-looking elf kid Legless, who was so good-looking, I wanted to fuck him."

--Kim du Toit, reviewing Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

Lt. Van Buren: "So, you're telling me that twenty-three people died because of an opera??"
Lennie: "The Germans. What are you going to do?"
--Lennie Briscoe, again

The ignorance of youth

I get a bit irritated when I read those smug overseas news stories about how stupid American schoolchildren are about geography and history.

Hence it was not without a twinge of schadenfreude that I read this account of what British children think really happened on D-day:

It is 1899 and Denzel Washington, the American president, orders Anne Frank and her troops to storm the beaches of Nazi-occupied New Zealand.

This may not be how you remember D-Day but for a worrying number of Britain's children this is the confused scenario they associate with the events of June 6, 1944.

But not all hope is lost:

There were some exceptions to the general ignorance. One teacher at Great Addington Church of England Primary school in Northamptonshire was amazed to find that one of his pupils had scored 100 per cent in the test.

He said: "I asked him how he knew material which we had not covered in school. He told me he had picked it up from a D-Day game he played on his computer."

Hey, whatever works.

With friends like these...

The Day After Tomorrow is so ludicrous, evenGeorge Monbiot is dissing it:

Perhaps it was a mistake for 20th Century Fox to invite a group of scientists to the preview of its new disaster movie. Before it began, the climatologist Mike Hulme asked the audience to consider whether good science and good film-making could go together. A few minutes later, it became obvious that the answer was no. The Day After Tomorrow is a great movie and lousy science.

That's harsh, dude.

New York-style soft pretzels

Not as large as the ones you get from the street carts, but just as tasty-chewy-crisp.

4 ½ cups flour
½ cup water
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 ½ teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 packet or 2 ¼ teaspoons yeast
1 egg
Rock salt or kosher salt *

Preheat oven to 350F or 175C.

1. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar and salt. If using instant yeast, add that too.
2. Combine milk, oil, and water (and yeast if you are using regular non-instant yeast) in a microwaveable container. Microwave on high for 40 seconds, or until warm-hot but not burning hot. (Don’t kill the yeast!)
3. Mix liquid and dry ingredients to form a dough. Knead for five minutes. Cover and allow to rest for 10 minutes.
4. Divide dough into 10 pieces. Roll out each piece into a 16-inch rope which should be no thicker than your index finger, or about ½ inch diameter. Form the rope into a large U, then fold the tops of the U down to the bottom, crossing each other, to make a pretzel-shape. Lightly press the ends down to secure. Lay pretzels on a greased cookie sheet, cover, and allow to rest for another 10 minutes.
5. Lightly whisk egg with a few drops of water. Brush tops of pretzels with egg, and sprinkle with rock/kosher salt.
6. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until tops are nicely browned. Serve with mustard and melted butter for dipping.

*Rock salt is the traditional garnish but if you want to get fancy, you can combine ½ tablespoon each onion salt, garlic powder (or garlic salt and onion powder), sesame seeds and dry mustard. Or anything you dang well please, for that matter.

Freebies!

I didn't know that there was a class-action settlement against cosmetics manufacturers who conspired to price-fix. It appears that anyone who bought cosmetics in the last ten years from Estee Lauder, Chanel, Clarins or Givenchy (and that includes dozens of affiliated brands, as listed in the document linked above) is eligible for a freebie worth between $18 and $25.

Ladies, go sign up! (Gents as well, the brands include Aramis and Tommy Hilfiger).

It's all about oil, eh?

Interesting little tidbit:

Canada's newest ex-prime minister may be trying to avoid scandal at home, but now he may need to duck controversy abroad after a Kazakhstan court said a Canadian firm employing Jean Chretien as a special adviser raked in $91 million US in "unjustified revenues."

But PetroKazakhstan Inc. says Chretien isn't being asked to ride to the company's rescue in its latest fracas with Kazakhstan regulators.

PetroKaz, the Calgary oil company that signed on the former prime minister earlier this month, said Tuesday that a court in the former Soviet republic found its subsidiaries had overcharged customers for gasoline and other petroleum products.

Rather than force the famously feisty ex-PM into the fray, the company will instead rely on its own resources to resolve the dispute.

I don't have a punchline for this post, but you probably don't need one.

As if there were any doubt!

Take the quiz: "Which American City Are You?"

New York
You're competative, you like to take it straight to the fight. You gotta have it all or die trying.

And judging by the picture, I'm pre-9/11 New York, which also means pre-Bloomberg New York. Yee-ha!

(via Daimnation!)

Kabbalah, Christianity and mysticism

David Adesnik of Oxblog has a thought-provoking post on Madonna's decision to cancel tour dates in Israel due to a terrorist threat to her children. David wonders,

So why hasn't Madonna bought into the anti-war, pro-Palestinian Hollywood consensus? I don't really know, but one has to wonder whether her intense attachment to the Jewish mystical tradition known as Kabbala has something to do with it. On the other hand, some (so-called) experts are suggesting that rabbinicial condemnations of Kabbala were responsible for the cancelled tour stop. [...]
I'm not sure what it means to "practice" Kabbala. I haven't studied it much, but at least in the mainstream, there is no such thing as Kabbalistic Judaism.

Forgive my presumption if you already knew this, David, but there is a long tradition of Christians and occultists who used Kabbalah, although not for reasons approved of by traditional Jewish scholars.

Please, may I have more? »

Coke, pop, or soda?

This map tracks usage of generic terms for fizzy drinks.

That's fascinating, but what we really need is a map of generic long-roll sandwich terms. Hero, sub, grinder, hoagie, po'boy...and I'm quite sure I haven't heard them all.

Just for the record, Coke refers only to Coca-Cola ( the brown stuff in the red can) Everything else is soda. And I'll have a hero with that.

(via Gene Expression)

Banning coal in Newcastle

Well, just as bad. The food-nanny organization CSPI is looking to ban milk in Wisconsin.

Not all milk. Just whole milk and 2 percent. Skim milk and 1 percent are apparently OK.
Specifically, the center is ranting against the dairy industry for supporting the wording of a bill passed by the House of Representatives to reauthorize federal child nutrition programs, including the school lunch program. The bill requires schools to offer milk in a "variety of fat contents."
What's wrong with variety? What's wrong with giving children choices?
The center is aghast because a variety of choices means that some of the milk offered in schools might be - dare we say it? - 2 percent or even whole milk.
Egad! What are we to do?
Ban 2 percent and whole milk from schools, of course, along with the flavored milk drinks that exceed the fat-free or 1 percent limit. At least that's what the Center for Science in the Public Interest wants.

More information on the CSPI from the indispensable ActivistCash.

Read, listen, watch

There's a full complement of brand spanking new "Things I Like" in the right-hand column. Do check them out. Also, at the last blogroll update I forgot to add the long, long overdue Catallarchy.net, if for nothing else, this. (Have an hour or so free before you click on that link... but it's very worth it.)

More goodies from Slate

Another great week at Slate magazine, which gives us:

* Jim Holt's article explaining one of the several controversial theories of intelligent design :

In the early 1980s, the then-thirtysomething Linde came up with a novel theory of the Big Bang that answered three vexing questions: What banged? Why did it bang? And what was going on before it banged? Linde's theory, called "chaotic inflation," explained the shape of space and how galaxies were formed. It also predicted the exact pattern of background radiation from the Big Bang that was observed by the COBE satellite in the 1990s. [...]
Among the many curious implications of Linde's theory, one stands out for our present purposes: It doesn't take all that much to create a universe. Resources on a cosmic scale are not required. It might even be possible for someone in a not terribly advanced civilization to cook up a new universe in a laboratory. Which leads to an arresting thought: Could that be how our universe came into being?

* To go with their popular "Bushisms" feature, Slate''s William Saletan has added "Kerryisms". 'Bout time.

* Dahlia Lithwick's excellent rebuttal of the "slippery slope" argument against gay marriage, that if we allow to people in love to commit to each other legally, it's just a hop, skip and jump away from letting an old woman marry her five cats. Or something.

*A review of Colonial House by Dennis Cass. I never saw CH's progenitor, Frontier House, but I did see a couple of episodes of 1900 House. I am curious about how far back they can go with this concept. Medieval House? Roman House? Neanderthal House?

*The new realities of upscale mall food. You think Bennigan's and Mr Chow's? I'm talking Ducasse, Vongerichten and Bouley.

Puttin' on the Suspenders

It's good to see Michael Moore won the Palme d'Or for his unregulated contribution to the Kerry campaign. I think it's important for America that we raise the level of seething hatred in our public debate from merely seething, to foaming at the mouth lying-our-asses-off-name-calling-drooling-irrational-hatred-level seething.

In keeping with that, John "I never f***ing fall, stupid Secret Service Agent SOB..." Kerry, upon being apprised of George Bush's mountain biking spill today, said, "what, he took the training wheels off?" According to Drudge, the mass media is mulling over whether to treat it as background - like all Kerry's F-bombs, or whether to treat it as reportable, as if it was something he actually said. Which he did.

I say ignore it. It's important that we get Bush out of office, no matter what the cost.

Please, may I have more? »

The Coolest Kid in Class

God bless our Bloggfather, Mike Hendrix at Cold Fury. He is one of the smartest and funniest people I've come across, ever. And I'm not just saying that because he hosts this blog. Here's a sample from his latest ramble:

Did I mention we’re dieting here at Casa Hendrix? Well, we are. The gf is unhappy about her weight lately – which seems to happen every so often – and if she’s unhappy we all are here, including the cats and dog. Personally, I don’t care; I haven’t even owned a bathroom scale in like twenty years. But the nice thing is she’s a nurse and can get samples of all sorts of diet pills, and the ones she’s chosen for this particular jaunt through Sunkencheekville make me feel like I’ve got ball bearings in my blood. Which is cool, although I must say that living on amphetamines isn’t as much fun as it was in college. But that’s okay; lately I need the energy more than I need the sleep I’m losing.

Rock on, Mike. Rock on.

Something Completely Different

Smash is trying something different - Haiku blogging. So I'll try something different for me - pith.

One Sarin shell = irrelevant. As if you could develop a sophisticated binary shell without WMD research programs, weapons factories, special storage areas, etc.

Maybe the fact that it is completely unmarked, explains how U.S. troops didn't find it before, and may not be finding its brothers and sisters in the hundreds of ammo dumps.

Please, may I have more? »

N/A

Speechless.

Please, may I have more? »