¿Hola? Esta housekeeping.

Okay, cleaned up some links and updated the radar. Also got some old pictures to post.

From the "Space Trash" party the girls upstairs threw recently:

As you can tell, things started slow...



But then I donned Grady's cowboy hat which is so big that it's hard to keep standing up. Ahem. Call me the Space Sheriff.



That got things kickin'.



(More pics at Grady's site

Yeah, so anyways, it was fun to have Jim and a bunch of other folks I hadn't seen in a while around.

Then there's this from Corpus, the ol' Magnifying Glass Trick.



All right, now, contrary to the previous two posts and what's about to follow in this one, I'm usually not one to mock. But this week, for some reason, stuff just keeps presenting itself that I can't let pass.

I'm taking a Bible as literature class right now, and the professor, an ordained Catholic minister (which is in some way I don't understand different than a priest) with a really foul mouth, loves to point out humorous Old Testament passages, such as this one from the King James Bible, Deut. 23.1:

Those Excluded from the Congregation

1 He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD.

Or as my NRSV puts it:

1 No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.

More than anything, I just find it humorous that this is the very first condition they give for exclusion from the, um, pearly gates. (After looking at it in class again, I think assembly actually means clergy, not all those admitted to heaven -- ed.)Well, that and the K.J. euphemisms are the best — privy member, woo! We asked, and the castrati are exempt from this clause because they're doing their thing in the service of the Lord. Christianity is full of weird, wacky, wild stuff ... not that there's anything wrong with that.

Lastly, I dedicate the following to Robert Walsh, dedicated objectivist ... not that there's anything wrong with that. This is the Texan's editorial from today, which I wrote.

THE DEATH OF REASON? ... Earth Day is next Thursday, April 22, and according to the Ayn Rand Institute, it foretells the coming of human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together — mass hysteria ... and other signs of the end times. According to the title of an op-ed by Michael S. Berliner, Ph.D., "On Earth Day Remember: If Environmentalism Succeeds, It Will Make Human Life Impossible."

Usually, the Institute sends us a daily opinion piece based on the tenets of individualism and reason, and even when we don't agree, we can usually expect it to be, well, reasonable.

But then there's this from Berliner: "Earth Day approaches, and with it a grave danger faces mankind. The danger is not from [pollution], as environmentalists would have us believe. The danger to mankind is from environmentalism."

Apparently, those students going door to door in support of the Clean Water Act hold intentions far more maniacal than we dared imagine: "The fundamental goal of environmentalism is not clean air and clean water; rather, it is the demolition of technological/industrial civilization."

But we thought they just wanted to keep places like Barton Springs clean? "Environmentalism's goal is not the advancement of human health, human happiness and human life; rather, it is a subhuman world where 'nature' is worshiped like the totem of some primitive religion. ... A more malevolent, man-hating philosophy is unimaginable."

According to Berliner, there is only one recourse left: "To save mankind requires the wholesale rejection of environmentalism as hatred of science, technology, progress and human life."

You heard the man. Next Thursday, don't plant a tree, don't clean up Waller Creek, and don't even think of recycling. But don't not do it for you. Don't do it for your children.

P.S. Check out this sweet ASCII chart that gives the HTML and Alt+ code for every character. Hot.