• Bigotry can be expensive: “Oklahoma must pay $303,333 for attorneys’ fees” due to “the state’s effort to keep international law and Sharia law out of Oklahoma courts.” Here in Pennsylvania, meanwhile, the state’s auditor general notes that taxpayers spent millions of dollars defending Gov. Tom Corbett’s unconstitutional voter suppression laws and the state’s unconstitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Both have now been struck down in the courts, and we’re not getting that money back.
• Richard Beck, “Wearing a Crucifix”
I believe God is found among the victims of the world. God is hanging on crosses all over the world. And so I wear a crucifix to remind me, to help me see.
Yes, above all else, that. And also too, of course: Vampires.
• Phililip Holthoff, a high school teacher in Arkansas, was forced to resign after it was discovered he’s a white supremacist and a long-time contributor and financial supporter of the neo-Nazi website Stormfront.
So now, if dozens of well-paid media pundits are to be believed, freedom of speech requires that Holthoff must be granted an honorary doctorate from Rutgers and given $30,000 to speak there to a captive audience, otherwise we’re all guilty of fascism.
• The paper I worked at was not a very good newspaper (it wasn’t trying to be — it was a Gannett newspaper), but it got some things right. The advertising and circulation people worked downstairs. We didn’t talk to them. Ever. We didn’t know them. We appreciated their hard work and we hoped they were good at their jobs but we didn’t ever give them any thought beyond that and we didn’t want to. (And vice versa, too, of course.)
Here’s the sort of thing that can happen otherwise.
On the other hand, I have a kind of grudging respect for this.
• “Should a Christian recite the Pledge of Allegiance at all?” Ben Corey asks, in good Anabaptist fashion. This is another problem with pretending that the book of Revelation is actually some kind of coded prediction about the future — it prevents you from seeing that John’s Apocalypse is one big reminder that we can pledge allegiance to the Lamb or to the Beast, but not to both.
Corey doesn’t mention this, but it bears repeating: Requiring children to recite a pledge of allegiance is about the creepiest idea in all of Creepytown. “Now children, let’s all stand up, put our hands on our hearts (!) and recite our loyalty oath.” How is that not chillingly horrifying?
• Mookie!
• While the weather here was a bit exciting yesterday, here’s the weather report from 600 million miles away: “Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Is Shrinking.” Phil Plait reports that the spot — ” giant, stable, circulating storm” — was about 14,500 miles in diameter back in the 1970s. Today it’s only 10,250 miles across. Cue Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day — “It’s a countdown!”
• From Steve Wiggins I learn that Piscataway, N.J., where I went to high school, is home to the annual Steampunk World’s Fair. I think this must have started some time after I left for Pennsylvania, after all “steampunk” is only just now getting into the dictionary. And I think I would have remembered seeing thousands of people in awesome costumes, giant robots and dirigibles. (They do have dirigibles, don’t they? It seems like they should, even despite Jersey’s unfortunate history with airships.)
• Wussy, “Teenage Wasteland”
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