But what if she had vapors, or an imbalance of humors?

Come on, journals. What kind of garbage are you stooping to publish now?

This paper in Virology Journal has to be seen to be believed. The entire data set for the “study” is a few brief lines in the Bible, where Jesus heals a sick woman with a fever. From this, the authors conclude that she had influenza. Huzzah! A completely unjustifiable diagnosis from hearsay.

And even more absurdly, the journal editors thought this superficial noise was worthy of publication.

I will say, though, that my favorite parts were the bits where the authors noted that Jesus did not take her temperature because the Fahrenheit scale wasn’t invented until 1724, and the part where they seriously rule out the possibility that the woman’s illness was demonic possession. Another cheer for science!

Never mind me, though, Tara Smith knows more about disease than I do, and she pans the paper too.

Catholic taxonomy

The peculiarities of dietary restrictions by the religious are always entertaining. Catholics have their own weird practices: here’s a bit of strange information from a Catholic agony aunt forum.

Do alligators count as fish?
As a Catholic who observes the custom of abstaining from meat on Fridays, I would like to know if alligator would be considered meat or fish. Recently, on a Friday, I was in a local restaurant where I was sharing a dinner of alligator. I thought upon this, and decided, as a reptile, alligator would fall into the fish category. I hope I’m not sounding too scrupulous, but if it is considered meat, I will avoid it on Fridays in the future.

Uh-oh. This woman made a judgment on Catholic theology without consulting a priest. Doesn’t she know she could be getting an eternity in hell for her plate full of alligator? Fortunately, it turns out that going meatless still allows one to eat all the reptiles, amphibians, and insects you might want.

An alligator is certainly not a fish, and it certainly does have meat. But the custom of abstaining from meat on Fridays is abstinence from the flesh of mammals and birds. Fish, reptiles, amphibians, insects, etc., are exempt from this. Since an alligator is a reptile, those who abstain from meat on Fridays are free to eat alligator if they wish.

Why?

Does anybody ever just ask why these strange eating habits are a part of the doctrine? Does god like birds and mammals so much that he doesn’t want you to eat them on one day? Would he really be that pissed if you had a cheeseburger on Friday?

She made the right choice

Some things just make you want to cringe under a table somewhere, they’re so awful and embarrassing. And sometimes they’re so bad I don’t want to cringe down there alone, so I’m going to creep you all out, too. Behold, Andrew Cohen. His ex-girlfriend, who turned down his proposal of marriage for what rapidly become obvious reasons, was getting married to someone else — so he wrote her a ‘wedding gift’, a publicly published, soppy opinion piece on how wonderful she is and how much she’s hurting him by spurning his deep, stalkerish obsession with her. For her wedding, he tries to hand her a long guilt trip; I’m hoping that if she saw it at all, she’s just had the rightness of her refusal amply confirmed.

It’s an amazing example of inappropriate obliviousness, so painful that I thought Cohen had to be uniquely blind and self-centered…but no, the comments contain several people praising him for his fantasies about marrying and impregnating her. Gah. I need a shower now.

If you can’t stomach the whole mess, read this distillation of the worst of Andrew Cohen.

(via Amanda.)

Things that are backwards

Wait, wait, this story makes no sense.

A gay netball coach fired from a Christchurch Christian school has gained compensation and an apology.

The 28-year-old man was employed as a girls’ netball coach at Middleton Grange School in February, but said he was sacked by the board of trustees after members discovered his sexual orientation.

A gay man was fired from his job as coach of a girls’ team? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to fire him if he were heterosexual?

Oh, it’s a religious school. They specialize in stuff that makes no sense.