Harry Potter, Christian warrior

The Harry Potter series of books captivated many people young and old, but especially the young. As I discussed back in 2005, the students at Hogwarts seemed to be well and truly heathens because the books had zero references to god and religion, with only a passing reference to Christmas (a pagan holiday anyway) and the name of a Christmas carol, while filled with stories of sorcery and witches and wizards and spells.
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Notorious RBG interview

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has emerged as the leading liberal voice on the US Supreme Court. At age 81, she is also the oldest justice. She gave an interview to the magazine Elle in which she discussed, among other things, why those who have been publicly urging her to retire while president Obama is still in office so that he can appoint someone else in her mold are misguided and that she has no plans to retire.
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How The Daily Show did the Washington shoot

When watching The Daily Show, one often wonders why some people allow themselves to be made to look silly on the show. Sometimes they end up looking like such fools that one wonders whether they are actually actors following a script. Recently, they did a show about the fans of the Washington football team and their ridiculous devotion to the racist team name.
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Superstition and science

Well, Thursday came and went with absolutely none of the goodies arriving for me as promised by astrologer Susan Miller. I did not get a “big professional victory” nor a “surprising influx of unexpected cash” (can something be surprising and expected?). Of course, I did not “help things along” by doing the things she recommended such as arranging for a “big presentation, interview, or other major career event” nor did I launch a “new website or send out a press release on a recent victory”, so it may have been all my fault. I suspect that this is how believers in astrology rationalize when things fail to materialize.
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Congresspersons who do not specify religious affiliation

Stephen Colbert interviewed a congressman from California and zeroed in on the fact that in his bio he gives his religious affiliation as ‘unspecified’, like 10 other members of Congress. This is up from six in the previous Congress. Colbert suggests to him that he is in fact a hell-bound heathen but is trying to hide the fact.
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Apple mania

You have to hand it to Apple. When it comes to marketing their products, they are the masters. Even when they produce something that is just marginally better than their previous products and may even be copying what others have already done, they manage to create a media buzz that results in people waiting in line for days to get the new product or paying others to do so, as if there is some special cachet to owning something just a few days before others do.
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A puzzling bit of human psychology

Actress Emma Watson gave a speech on being a feminist and appealed to men to join the HeForShe movement that seeks to create a broad coalition in support of gender equality. It was a good speech, not at all incendiary or even controversial, but as is so often the case these days, all it takes is for a prominent woman to speak out publicly on an issue that advances social justice to result in all kinds of weird people to come out of the woodwork with angry responses and threatening revenge. And the latest vehicle for revenge is to threaten to release nude photographs and they promised to do so with Watson too.
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Cleveland Sunday Assembly

Sunday, September 28 is going to see the launch around the world of a large number of so-called ‘atheist churches’ under the umbrella of the Sunday Assembly movement, including Cleveland, Columbus, and Pittsburgh in this region. The first meeting of the Cleveland group will be at 10:30 am at the Old Town Hall in Strongsville located at 18825 Royalton Road and all are invited. Subsequent meetings will take place on the last Sunday of each month at the same location.
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