Florida license plates redux

I mentioned this new religious license plate in Florida before, and now it looks like it’s closer to reality. I don’t object strongly to it — it’s optional, and people who want it have to pay an extra $25 — but some of the arguments against it are embarrassing, and the arguments for it are even worse. There are a lot of variations of the slippery slope being thrown around.

Rep. Kelly Skidmore said she is a Roman Catholic and goes to Mass on Sundays, but she believes the “I Believe” plate is inappropriate for the government to produce.

“It’s not a road I want to go down. I don’t want to see the Star of David next. I don’t want to see a Torah next. None of that stuff is appropriate to me,” said Skidmore, a Democrat who voted against the plate in committee. “I just believe that.”

What? So the objection to a blatantly Christian plate is that it might encourage those Jews in Florida to brag about their religion on their cars? Is Judaism that offensive?

There is a better example of what kinds of interest groups the state might have to accommodate: the ACLU suggests that this could open the doors to KKK plates. That’s definitely much more offensive than driving while Jewish, but still…on giving it a little thought, I don’t think I’d mind if the hateful idiots of the KKK all labeled themselves, and paid the state for the privilege.

Simon, of the ACLU, said approval of the plate could prompt many other groups to seek their own designs, and they could claim discrimination if their plans were rejected. That could even allow the Ku Klux Klan to get a plate, Simon said.

But then there is the usual Christian hypocrisy. These plates are going to be offered selectively, only to groups of which the Florida legislature approves. Guess who’s left out?

Bullard, the plate’s sponsor, isn’t sure all groups should be able to express their preference. If atheists came up with an “I Don’t Believe” plate, for example, he would probably oppose it.

That’s the way, Bullard old boy; stop the slide down a slippery slope and replace it with an official state sponsored religious preference.

Virgo: You may think you’re sitting pretty, but there’s a really ugly test cross with a triple mutant in your future.

The Pastor Ray Mummert award goes to…

…Republican Representative John Duncan of Tennessee. Confronted with a vast amount of evidence provided by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, the US Institute of Medicine , the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Psychological Association that abstinence-only education does not work, does not reduce the incidence of either teen pregnancies or sexually transmitted disease, and that it is a waste of money, the honorable Mr Duncan declared his complete disinterest in data and expertise.

Rep. John Duncan, a Tennessee Republican, said that it seems “rather elitist” that people with academic degrees in health think they know better than parents what type of sex education is appropriate. “I don’t think it’s something we should abandon,” he said of abstinence-only funding.

Nobody is advocating an abandonment of the idea of encouraging abstinence; they’re saying that abstinence-only is a failure, and we should be encouraging dissemination of more information. I know, that’s terribly elitist — how dare we oppose some parents’ desire to keep their children ignorant and stupid.

I should also hand out an anti-Mummert to Henry Waxman, who deserves a lifetime award.

Panel chairman Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, said, “We are showering funds on abstinence-only programs that don’t appear to work, while ignoring proven comprehensive sex education programs that can delay sex, protect teens from disease, and result in fewer teen pregnancies.”

Scorpio: The black lights in your bedroom will pay off in a big way — expect a fluorescent romantic entanglement in your near future. Male Scorpios should definitely invest in life insurance.

It’s shrinkage!

Cancel your trip to Africa! There are sorcerors stealing…personal items.

Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Unfortunately, it’s not very funny since deluded people are blaming their tiny, impotent penises on random people and beating and lynching them.

Cancer: This is not a good day to molt—there’s a cephalopod with an eye on you. Hunker down beneath a rock with some ripe rotting fish and wait.

Astrology disproven!

It’s 2008 — I think astrology has been dead for a few centuries. But OK, it’s been shown to be worthless again. A large study of thousands of “time twins” — people who were born at the same time — has concluded that there are no correspondence between them.

Researchers looked at more than 100 different characteristics, including occupation, anxiety levels, marital status, aggressiveness, sociability, IQ levels and ability in art, sport, mathematics and reading – all of which astrologers claim can be gauged from birth charts.

The scientists failed to find any evidence of similarities between the “time twins”, however. They reported in the current issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies: “The test conditions could hardly have been more conducive to success . . . but the results are uniformly negative.”

Big surprise.

Don’t look for astrology to vanish, though. Here’s the real surprise in the story.

Some of the most popular figures in the field, such as Russell Grant, Mystic Meg and Shelley von Strunckel, can earn £600,000 or more a year.

A single profitable astrology website can be worth as much as £50 million.

When the Daily Mail discovered that its expert on the zodiac, Jonathan Cainer, was about to leave the newspaper in 1999, it reportedly offered him a £1 million salary and a £1 million bonus to stay. He still preferred the offer at the Daily Express: no salary but all the money from his telephone lines.

Obviously, I’m in the wrong business. Maybe I need to start inserting the occasional horoscope reading in my blog posts.

Pisces: You will be busy exchanging ions across your gill membranes today — watch out for predators, and trust your lateral line organs.

Who knew?

The things you learn from crazy clerics…

A prominent cleric, Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawy, said modern science had at last provided evidence that Mecca was the true centre of the Earth; proof, he said, of the greatness of the Muslim “qibla” – the Arabic word for the direction Muslims turn to when they pray.

Oh, well — if a prominent cleric said such a thing, who am I to argue? I’m sure there must be an utterly dazzling, deep theological argument to explain how one specific point on the surface of a spinning sphere, a point which doesn’t seem to have any special relationship to the pattern of rotation, can be defined as a “center”. I’m probably not smart enough to understand it, though.

Good news!

You have rarely seen me say this, but…Texas did a good thing. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has voted against, I repeat, against approving the application from the Institute for Creation “Research” to issue degrees in Texas. The ICR will not be handing out Master of Science degrees in Texas.

Good work, Texans!

Oh, well, that’s all right then.

I don’t say the pledge of allegiance; I actually find it rather offensive that I’m expected to give a loyalty oath to a political entity if I attend a school board meeting. So I was a little sympathetic to this story of a student was kicked out of school for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. But then…the school administrators made a fast about face and decided to let her return to school. Why, you might wonder…but I think you can guess.

She simply said she was a devout Christian and could not make oaths to anyone but her god.

Zooom! Excused!

So this means an atheist student wouldn’t have an excuse and could be compelled to recite an oath to a nation “under god”? Charming double standard there.

Imagine this

Uh-oh. They pissed off Yoko Ono.

Yoko Ono, son, Sean Ono Lennon, and Julian Lennon, John Lennon’s son from his first marriage, along with privately held publisher EMI Blackwood Music Inc filed suit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan seeking to bar the filmmakers and their distributors from continuing to use “Imagine” in the movie.

They are also seeking unspecified damages.

Ground your irony meters before reading

Paul Verhoeven is making a movie that claims Mary, the mother of Jesus, was raped by a Roman soldier. There is no historical evidence for Jesus, let alone the nature of his conception, so this is pure fictional speculation, from a director known more for over-the-top, superficial flamboyance than historical accuracy — expect a crotch shot of Mary, and lots of silicon breasts in the shower scene.

But of course Bill Donohue is outraged.

“Here we go again with idle speculation grounded in absolutely nothing,” Donohue told FOXNews.com. “He has no empirical evidence to support his claim, which is why they say ‘may have.'”

Hmmm. A lack of empirical evidence and a grounding in mere speculation has never stopped the Catholic church before…