• Philadelphia police are trying to keep people from saving the parking spaces they have cleared of snow by pointing out that it’s perfectly legal for anyone to move your old lawn chair and park there. That’s true. It’s also perfectly legal to show up at Lincoln Financial Field wearing a Dallas Cowboys jersey and taunt Iggles fans. But I still wouldn’t recommend it.
• You know what the Internet is missing? A good goat simulator. What’s that? Oh, OK, never mind. We’re good.
• It’s 2014, so I’m “celebrating” more than 20 years of reading articles that tell me Christians must choose between being right-wing partisan stooges or quiescent, “otherworldly,” a-political creatures. Because that’s apparently the entire universe of imaginable possibilities.
I’m tired of this. I was tired of this 20 years ago.
• John Fea writes about a new exhibit on the Revolutionary War in New Jersey. He posts a map showing the sites of the many battles fought in the Garden State, where much of the early conflict took place. That is why, like most kids growing up in Jersey, we seemed to have a class trip every other week to meet some nice lady in Colonial dress who asked us not to touch anything as we filed past the very chairthat Gen. Washington once sat in.
Also from Dr. Fea: At least three cities are vying to host the future Obama Presidential Library. Imagine you’re some future Ph.D. student doing your research and you have to spend two weeks in that library poring over documents. Do you want to spend those two weeks in Chicago or in Honolulu? Just sayin’.
• Turns out the Dilophosaurus in Jurassic Park — the one that ate Newman — wasn’t completely accurate. It was still cool, though, especially up close — I got to see one of the full-scale models from the movie at Dino Don’s house when we were both volunteering with MoveOn during the 2004 election back in Everybody’s Hometown. (He loves to give directions to his house: “When you get to the end of the street, my house is on the right. It’s the one with the velociraptors on the front lawn.”)
• What do the Latter-day Saints, Catholic bishops, Southern Baptists and Missouri-Synod Lutherans have in common?
Yes, they are all vehemently anti-feminist, but I’m sorry, that wasn’t the answer we were looking for.
OK, and yes, they’re also all terrified of modernity, but again, that wasn’t the answer we were shooting for this time.
Yes, that’s true too. They do all seem to be angrily chasing away everyone under 30, but more specifi —
… What’s that? Did you say they’re all vehemently anti-gay? We have a winner!
• Rachel Marie Stone writes: “What’s most troubling to me is the casual abuse of the venerable concept of ‘religious freedom’ in order to secure the right to refuse, on dubious scientific grounds, an effective and important public health measure, particularly when very few Americans practice any form of organized religion that specifically proscribes vaccination.”
Yes. And if you replace the word “vaccination” with the word “contraception,” every word of that sentence remains true.
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