"If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive." - Samuel Goldwyn

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Swimming pool got my daughter pregnant, says mother - "Sperm can live for a few hours outside the human body, but the chlorine concentration in a swimming pool would kill them in minutes."
At least she didn't say a god impregnated her.

Turkish gameshow Penitents Compete tests atheist resolve - "Turkish gameshow enlists imam, Greek Orthodox priest, rabbi and monk to try to convert atheists, with pilgrimage as reward... The programme's makers say they want to promote religious belief while educating Turkey's overwhelmingly Muslim population about other faiths. "The project aims to turn disbelievers on to God," the station's deputy director, Ahmet Ozdemir, told the Hürriyet Daily News and Economic Review."
Of course, an attempt to convert theists would be seen as stirring up religious hatred

Sharia law UK... How Islam is dispensing its own justice side-by-side with British courts - "Dr Hasan tells them that in every part of the world, there can be only one authority. 'In Britain, the ultimate authority is the Prime Minister. In an army, it is the commander-in-chief. On the bus, it is the bus driver. And in the house, the smallest unit of society, sharia says authority must be with the man to maintain the house. 'The woman's duties are much harsher. Biologically, she differs,' he says. Her duties lie with the cleaning and childcare... 'women have emotions, whereas a man thinks first before he speaks'... 'The problem with the feminist movement is they don't listen to the other side,' he observes gravely, stroking his beard. I ask if he believes sharia is the best code of law. 'People say it's harsh, but we say it's a deterrent. In Saudi Arabia very few hands are cut. People will not commit the crime as they know the punishment is so horrible'... Sarfraz Sarwar['s] mosque was torched three times and eventually destroyed, and his home has also been attacked... Sharia is a law still rooted in the 7th Century; it sees modernity as the path to an immoral society."

YouTube - Jesus vs terminator - "The Greatest Action Story Every Told"

You're Not an Environmentalist If You're Also a NIMBY - ""The truth is we just can't afford suburban sprawl anymore," explained Greenbelt Alliance's Elizabeth Stampe. "It just puts more cars on the roads, and adds to greenhouse gases.""

Light at the end of religion's dark tunnel - "The Jewish innovation of a hidden and universal God, how the cosmopolitan early Christians, in order to market their doctrines more successfully, universalised and sanitised this Jewish God in turn, and how Islam equally included a civilising universalism despite its doctrinal rigidity and founding violence. Fundamentalism, in this reading, is a kind of repetitive neurotic interlude in the evolution of religion towards more benign and global forms... In earlier eras, theologians were eager to see how new discoveries in human knowledge could inform their faith. Now such discoveries are seen as threats. That’s a function of insecurity, not faith. And why should we see ourselves as believers constantly trying to recover a pristine past instead of struggling towards a truer future?"
Amusing comment: "Dear Andrew,
Well, you've discovered Deism. Next will come agnosticism. If you endure long enough you make deny it all. Welcome to rationality."

YouTube - Ping-pong - "Car filled with ping-pong balls. Funny joke"

The 'Unseen' Deserve Empathy, Too - "President Barack Obama... wanted to appoint a justice who possessed the "quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles." Without casting aspersions on Judge Sotomayor, we may ask whether these are really the characteristics we want in a judge... The law consists of abstract rules because we know that, as human beings, judges are unable to foresee all of the long-term consequences of their decisions and may be unduly influenced by the immediate, visible effects of these decisions. The rules of law are designed in part to strike the proper balance between the interests of those who are seen and those who are not seen. The purpose of the rules is to enable judges to resist the emotionally engaging temptation to relieve the plight of those they can see and empathize with, even when doing so would be unfair to those they cannot see. Calling on judges to be compassionate or empathetic is in effect to ask them to undo this balance and favor the seen over the unseen"

Snipers guard Australian penguins - "The National Parks and Wildlife Service deployed its own marksmen as well as infrared cameras and traps after nine penguins were mauled to death by dogs or foxes in bushland to the city's north. Parks officials have carried out autopsies on the dead penguins and are also using DNA testing to try to track their killers."

Welcome to futuretweets.com - Schedule your Tweets - "FutureTweets.com is a free service that lets you schedule your Twitter messages. Send it at a specific time in the future or send a reoccuring Tweet daily, weekly, monthly or yearly! You'll never forget the birthdays of your beloved Twitter friends again! Just schedule a nice Tweet on their birthday!"
I was thinking more like scheduling a suicide farewell Tweet before you off yourself.

Elderly Woman Found Stuffed In AACo. Freezer - "Police say relatives of an elderly woman put her body inside a freezer. It stunned many in her Anne Arundel County neighborhood, but it may not be against the law. Now some are trying to change that. Police say 83-year-old Doris Cooke had been in that freezer for weeks. In Maryland, there are virtually no laws governing the reporting or disposal of her body, if she died outside a nursing home or hospital."

Anti-kidnapping expert kidnapped - "A U.S. anti-kidnapping expert was abducted by gunmen in northern Mexico last week, a sign of just how bold this nation's kidnapping gangs have become."

Cats 'exploit' humans by purring - "Researchers at the University of Sussex have discovered that cats use a "soliciting purr" to overpower their owners and garner attention and food. Unlike regular purring, this sound incorporates a "cry", with a similar frequency to a human baby's. The team said cats have "tapped into" a human bias - producing a sound that humans find very difficult to ignore."

Georgia General Assembly: HB 819 - Food service establishments; serving tea; requirements - "A BILL to amend Article 13 of Chapter 2 of Title 26 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to food service establishments, so as to define a term; to provide that food service establishments which serve iced tea shall serve sweet tea; to provide for penalties; and for other purposes."