I'm not a Roman Catholic (more a Deist Methodist), but I would think this were offensive if it weren't so laughable. (Hat tip: Fr. Jim Tucker who found it at Ship of Fools' Fruitcake Zone).

On a related note, Belle Waring at Crooked Timber links to a wicked riff by Michael Berube on the Left Behind series.

(I have to be careful not to be too scathing as I know several otherwise smart and educated friends and colleagues who have read those stories and not only liked them, but found them to be spiritually meaningful. For a more fun story about the end times, I instead would recommend this latter-day Heinlein).

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I feel like I've linked to this before, but even if I have, it's worth repeating (note well: large download; requires Shockwave plugin).

(Hat tip: Jerry Pournelle)

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When I saw the title to this post at Transterrestrial Musings, I thought for sure that Rand had also seen the March 29 entry at Gravity Lens (probably will be archived here soon), regarding the Maxim covers that simultaneously featured both Marge Simpson and Paris Hilton. Apparently, the Marge version is selling out faster than the Paris version. Maybe there is some hope for Western Civilization.

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Got this Canonical List of Musician Jokes from the Larry Niven listserv (subscribe here).

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Looks like Alan Brain is on this earth against the odds.

His grandfather survived four years of active duty as a sniper on the front lines in World War I and lived to tell the tale to a young Mr. Brain.

I don't have a similar tale of wartime courage about either of my grandfathers, but my maternal grandfather, Joseph M. Hill, MD, did manage to save the lives of thousands in World War II thanks to a method he developed of freeze-drying blood plasma. (See pp. 44-45 of this file, and the second paragraph of this one).

I wonder what stories my hypothetical grandchildren will remember about me?

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Father Jim Tucker, a libertarian Catholic priest in the diocese of Arlington, VA (where I lived during law school) points to this site, where you can hear audio clips of Greek and Latin classics with their original "classical" pronunciations (as I learned them in high school).

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It's true, the master of hard-SF wrote a few fantasy stories.

New Troy has a review by Robert Wilfred Franson of The Man Who Traveled in Elephants, one of Heinlein's fantasies (collected here and here).

Franson points to this vignette shared by Spider Robinson about the story in Requiem: and Tributes to the Grand Master:

[Says Robinson, presenting a battered old paperback for Heinlein to autograph]: "Mr. Heinlein, sir, I fetched this particular book because it contains my single personal all-time favorite story of yours of all time, sir."

He is used to people gibbering at him; he nods and waits politely. "It's called 'The Man Who Traveled in Elephants' --" and his face sags slightly and I panic oh hell what did I say wrong fix it fix it "-- I mean, hell, that's just my opinion, who am I --" and then I break off, because whatever he is doing with his face is the opposite of frowning.

"That," he says slowly, "is my personal favorite--and no one's ever had a nice word to say for it until now."

As they say, read the whole thing.

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While Glenn has been busy photoblogging with modern digital cameras, TangoMan at Gene Expression is blogging about the century-old color photographs of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudi-Gorskii, "Photographer to the Tsar."

I didn't even know that there was a color-photography process as early as the 1900's and 1910's. But there was, and TangoMan links to the page explaining how three different grayscale images were taken with blue, green, and red filters and then projected onto a screen using the same three filters. (Commenter Jesse also points to these links on "autochrome" technology).

Laws of physics being what they are, it shouldn't be surprising that similar filtering and combining techniques are being used to beam us color pictures from the surface of Mars one century later.

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If you're not a regular reader of the Volokh Conspiracy, you should be. Lots of smart commentary on matters of law, policy, and culture with a libertarian bent.

This year, Juan Non-Volokh has been posting a different song's lyrics each Sunday. His musical tastes seem to be as eclectic as mine. This week's selection is Prelude to a Kiss, by Duke Ellington. Go read the lyrics. If you can avoid having any sappy thoughts about someone you love or have loved as you read them, then you are hopeless.

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It appears that both the Mars Express orbiter and an earthbound team have independently detected Methane in Mars' atmosphere, on the order of 11 parts per billion. This is exciting news, as it points to the possibility of life, or of vulcanism (or both).

(Hat tip to Fred Kiesche at Martian Soil who turned me on to new blogroll member MainlyMartian).

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Ted has another "boring" installment of Air Force Blue up at RocketJones. More fun stuff about security police training.

Money quote: "Big fun. Really. Like playing as kids, except we had real M16's full of blanks."

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I used to like Pee Wee's playhouse, especially after staying up all Friday night on a few occasions back in college.

Now Paul Reubens (a/k/a Pee Wee) is back in the news, pleading guilty to a misdemeanor obscenity charge in exchange for dismissal of the more serious child pornography charge leveled against him because of some questionable photographs seized from his home three years ago. Under the terms of the deal, Pee Wee cannot have unsupervised contact with minors, must register as a sex offender, pay a $100 fine, and enter counseling.

That's all just background for you to watch this neat little gem of children's programming.

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I just had to use that title after seeing this at Reason's Hit and Run blog.

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Last week, Ted at RocketJones pointed to this site featuring 50-word fictional works.

Here's my entry (logging in at 49 words, including the title):

The Sixth Republic

Beautiful bodies on the beach -- the Riviera.
Then, the bomb.
Like Byzantium's Hagia Sophia, Notre Dame is now a mosque.
As with Spain (now Andalusia), we could have fought.
We didn't.
France has its sixth republic: La Republique Islamique.
Baggy burkhas on the beach -- the Riviera.

I've been trying to expand this to a novella or novel length, but to little success so far. The bracketing lines of this story come from this image contrasted with this one.

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He wrote these lyrics to celebrate the momentous occasion:

Ima muthaf***in G straight out the west,
you be throwin up signs, I be throwin up my crest.

Ol' b**** in London knew I was nice,
I f***ed that b**** till she called me Sir Ice.

Comin' atcha head with my double-edged steel,
you f***ed up n****, now you gotsta kneel.

Ice Cube comin' straight out over the ocean,
now the queen b**** wants the three-wheel motion.

Used ta carry guns, now I gots a sword,
Sir Cube comin' straight out tha psycho ward.

(It's satire, people. Via McSweeney's).

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"There are some who call me. . .Timothy?"

Sorry there, er, Timothy, for calling you "Tim" in all of my previous posts. Didn't mean to presume anything, Timothy. (Though to be fair, you did have that Python quote up on your blog when I first linked).

Just please don't presume to call me "Johnny."

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The London Royal Opera House recently fired Rubenesque American soprano Deborah Voigt from a role in Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos that would have required her to wear a small black evening dress. This has led to some interesting but predictable hand-wringing over merit versus looks. After all, isn't opera all about the music?

Well, no, not exactly. This article cites a couple of good reasons that an opera company may legitimately exclude a plus-sized singer: if the role calls for a starving or sickly character (such as Mimi in La Boheme), or if the staging calls for active movements (say, up and down stairs on stage).

[Warning! Gratuitous name-dropping moment: please note the mention in the Miami Herald piece of my childhood friend Laura Claycomb, a rising star in the opera world, with whom I had the pleasure of singing and touring in my old church's youth choir back in the mid-1980s].

This debate calls to mind last year's blog coverage of the report that good-looking college professors score higher on course evaluations than the more homely.

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Details here.

(As you can see, the real headline is much funnier, but this is a family blog).

Looks like I just found a "news" site to go along with the Onion.

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I built an Enterprise model much like this one when I was a kid.

I also had a phaser and communicator set, but not as nice as these. Wish I hadn't thrown them away.

Am I mistaken or does this Captain Kirk look a bit like President Bush?

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The Hokey Pokey (by W. Shakespeare(*)):

O proud left foot, that ventures quick within
Then soon upon a backward journey lithe.
Anon, once more the gesture, then begin:
Command sinistral pedestal to writhe.

Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke,
A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl.
To spin! A wilde release from Heavens yoke.
Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl.

The Hoke, the poke -- banish now thy doubt
Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about.

(*) Actually, by Jeff Brechlin, 2003

(Hat tip: William Gibson's archives)

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