Lrbever

If you gave any money to Megareverend John Oliver‘s Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption Church, you may be aware that he’s received it. He showed off his “seeds” on the most recent episode.

You may not be aware, though, that he’s also writing back to all church members.

And, in true church leader fashion, he’s asking for even more money.

Here’s what you get, courtesy of the Central Florida Freethought Community:

Makes you want to send him a(nother) check, doesn’t it?

Damn, these people are good!

(Update: I have replaced the original image from Redditor tuffbot324 with higher-resolution images from the CFFC)

avengersonna:

suck-my-otaku-ass:

gayswimlord:

Reasons not to add me on snapchat:

What do you mean? I want to know more about you tiny snail son

Smol

Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam (1931-2015) was a scientist, aeronautical engineer, writer, and the 11th President of India, serving from 2002-2007. During his decorated 40-year scientific career, Kalam pioneered India’s space, missile and nuclear programs, earning him the nickname “Missile man of India”. Some of the posts he held include director of India’s first satellite launch vehicle, chief of the guided missile development program and chief scientific advisor to the Prime Minister.

Throughout his career as a scientist, one of Kalam’s goals was to inspire and motivate the youth of India to get excited about science and knowledge. For instance, after his position as chief scientific advisor ended in 1999, Kalam announced he would personally meet at least 100,000 students in a two year period to help spread the word of science. Kalam’s fame grew even more during this time, as his first autobiography Wings of Fire was released (the quote used in the comic is taken from the book). In it, Kalam recounted how a poor country boy from the small town of Rameswaram went on to study physics, work his way through the ranks of the Defence Research and Development Organisation and then the Indian Space Research Organisation, visit NASA and the Goddard Space Flight Centre in the United States during the height of the space race, play a large part in India’s technological advancement and become India’s most-famous scientist. All of this BEFORE Kalam became the President of India in 2002, in which he gained another nickname, the “people’s president” for continuing to connect with the youth of India and allowing the public to visit the presidential palace in New Delhi.

It’s crazy to think that Kalam didn’t even want to be a scientist, he just wanted to fly. Dreaming of becoming a pilot, Kalam studied aeronautical engineering at the Madras Institute of Technology: “What fascinated me the most at MIT was the sight of two decommissioned aircraft displayed there. I felt a strange attraction towards them, and would sit near them long after other students had gone back to the hostel, admiring man’s will to fly free in the sky, like a bird. … The goal was very clear in my mind, I was going to fly aircraft. I was convinced of this.” After graduating, Kalam landed two job interviews. One was for his dream gig of joining the Air Force, the other a technical role at the Ministry of Defence. At the selection board, only the best eight candidates out of 25 would be selected to join the Air Force. Kalam finished 9th. He was devastated, but picked himself up and accepted the new path of his life and went to work for the Ministry of Defence. Turned out to be a pretty good Plan B.

Kalam was a deeply spiritual man and practised what he preached, shunning material possessions and rewards. The only material goods Kalam coveted were books, owning over 2500 of them. His only other possessions were a watch, six shirts, four pants, three suits and a pair of shoes. He did not own any property, a fridge, TV, car or air conditioner. From Kalam’s former media advisor, “He would never accept a gift, save a book, and whenever somebody brought him a packed gift and tried to pass it off as a book, he insisted on examining what was inside. Anything other than the book was politely returned.”

Kalam died last month after suffering a heart attack while giving a speech titled “Creating a liveable planet Earth”. Over 350,000 people attended his funeral in his home town of Rameswaram.

RELATED COMICS: Jiddu Khrishnamurti. Rabindranath Tagore. Bill Watterson. Howard Thurman. Alan Watts.

– Sigh, if only more great scientists would become politicians the world might be a better place. Fun fact – the most famous scientist of them all, Albert Einstein, was asked to be the President of Israel in 1952. He humbly declined.
– Thanks to the many readers who suggested I do a quote from Kalam.
– CREDIT: This comic, based on the passage from the book Wings of Fire, An Autobiography, A P J Abdul Kalam with Arun Tiwari, is published with the permission of Universities Press (India) Private Limited.

According to the Catholic Church, marriage is between one man and one woman — unless you’re marrying Jesus and declaring your eternal virginity. Last weekend, a woman in Indiana did just that, complete with wedding ceremony, bridal gown, and reception.

Jessica Hayes, a 38-year-old Catholic school teacher, became a “consecrated virgin” — one of only a few hundred in the United States and a few thousand worldwide. In a video interview with a local Fort Wayne news station, Hayes sounded content and fulfilled. She was also thrilled that so many friends and family members came to celebrate with her.

While the WANE article contends that “It’s not the wedding day Hayes envisioned for herself as a little girl,” that doesn’t seem quite true. Hayes got to feel beautiful and be the center of attention like any other bride.

To hear Hayes talk about her marriage to Christ — which differs from becoming a nun because Hayes remains a layperson — her decision is in line with contemporary ideas about sexual diversity and acceptance of differences.

“I think that in some sense, we’re all called to be married. It’s just a matter of discerning how. So, my marriage is to Christ and someone else’s marriage is to their spouse. A priest’s marriage is to the church. That’s a good desire that’s planted in us by God. The real question is how, how is this lived most joyfully in me,” Hayes said. “I do think that not everybody has the same path. To be able to look at all of these different ways of life and to see people living them out joyfully is an invitation to consider a little bit more deeply what those things mean.”

That’s perfectly fine, but when Hayes talks about her goal of convincing more girls to marry Jesus, she’s probably going to want a more convincing argument than the pure joy of perpetual abstinence:

“I think, especially with the young women I’ve worked with in my teaching so far, the religious life isn’t something that many of them consider because we don’t have women religious teaching with us in our schools like we used to years ago. So, many of them don’t consider that as an option anymore because they don’t see young women their own age considering it and joining it. That’s really something I try to expose my female students a little bit more to,” Hayes said.

It’s hard to imagine many American teenagers finding this option appealing.

Part of me also wonders if Hayes’ decision has to do with her own sexuality. It’s none of my business, of course, but the Church has never been comfortable with anything beyond the one-man, one-woman, in-marriage bond. I’m curious how many women who become “consecrated virgins” would be in a same-sex relationship, or part of the growing asexual pride movement, if they weren’t tied to Catholicism.

That said, if publicly declaring her virginity makes Jessica Hayes happy, then that’s great for her. It’s just not a path I see other women, even Catholic ones, following.

There is one upside to this kind of marriage, though: If Hayes ever gets a divorce, it’s going to be the greatest celebration *ever*.

Warner Bros. on Monday announced that its upcoming Harry Potter spinoff, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, has officially started production. Principal photography began today at the Warner Bros. production studios in Leavesden, UK, the company said in a news release.

The movie is being directed by Harry Potter veteran David Yates, and stars Eddie Redmayne as the protagonist, New Scamander, the "wizarding world's preeminent magizoologist." Redmayne won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in last year's The Theory of Everything.

Scamander, a character created by J.K. Rowling, traveled the world and documented his findings in the Hogwarts textbook Fantastic Beats and Where to Find Them. His adventure will be the basis for the upcoming movie, set--at least in part--in New York 70 years before the events of Harry Potter.

Rowling makes her screenwriting debut with the movie. "Exciting," she said on Twitter about today's news.

Other actors appearing in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them include Colin Farrel (True Detective), Katherine Waterston (Inherent Vice), Alison Sudol (Transparent), Dan Fogler (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), Ezra Miller (Trainwreck), Samantha Morton (Sweet and Lowdown), Jenn Murray (Brooklyn), and newcomer Faith Wood-Blagrove

Fantastic Beats and Where to Find Them will open in theaters on November 18, 2016. When the movie was originally announced in September 2013, Warner Bros. also said game adaptations were in the works. However, no games based on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them have been announced so far.

Video games based on the popular Harry Potter films were developed and published by Electronic Arts. It is unclear if Warner Bros. will develop the new Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them games internally through its Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment label or license them out.

The most recent Harry Potter game was 2012's Kinect-required Harry Potter for Kinect.

submitted by PianoCube93 [link] [44 comments]

Jacob A. Riis (1849-1914) was a Danish-American social reformer, journalist and photographer. Immigrating to New York from Denmark when he was 21, he found work as a police reporter covering the Lower East Side. Riis was deeply affected by the terrible conditions people were living in and set about reporting on everything he saw. His pioneering photojournalism work culminated in the book How The Other Half Lives, which for the first time documented the plight of the working class in New York.

Riis’s now-famous ‘stonecutter’ quote is taken from his autobiography The Making of an American. Riis is writing about the huge uphill battle he had trying to improve the conditions of the police lodging dens and tenement slums, which were cesspools of disease and squalor:

“And I know now that I was right. But it takes a lot of telling to make a city know when it is doing wrong. However, that was what I was there for. When it didn’t seem to help, I would go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I knew it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before together. When my fellow-workers smiled, I used to remind them of the Israelites that marched seven times around Jericho and blew their horns before the walls fell.
“Well, you go ahead and blow yours,” they said; “you have the faith.”
And I did, and the walls did fall, though it took nearly twice seven years. But they came down, as the walls of ignorance and indifference must every time, if you blow hard enough and long enough, with faith in your cause and in your fellow-man. It is just a question of endurance. If you keep it up, they can’t.”

You can see a collection of Riis’s photographs here.

Previous comics featuring the boy Dragonslayer: Calvin Coolidge. Oswald Chambers. Samuel Beckett. Winston Churchill. Robert Kennedy.

– Riis had help shutting down the police lodging dens from future president Theodore Roosevelt, who was NY police commissioner at the time. The two went on to become lifelong friends.
– The stonecutter quote is the mantra of the NBA team San Antonio Spurs (shout out to Aussie player Patty Mills!). A favourite of coach Gregg Popovich, the quote is stuck on the wall in the Spurs locker room (and is translated into French, Spanish and Portuguese to accommodate the team’s international roster). If that’s not enough, Popovich’s small wine label is called Rock and Hammer and the team’s fan website is named Pounding the Rock.
– Thanks to Michael, Will, Anthony and Danilo for submitting this quote.

BUY THE POSTER

Photo courtesy of Jason Smit.
Found in Japan. 

At a recent Alice Cooper concert, two sisters got VIP access to one of his shows and got to meet with the man himself. One of them promised to make a pony plushie of Alice for him to sign if the other got the tickets.

Looks like things worked out as Alice was happy to sign the plush and get this picture taken with it saying, 'It was the coolest thing he has ever signed.'

Rock on!

Source

Looks like instead of new pony episodes we're getting EqG shorts each Saturday! This time around we have a short featuring Lyra and Bon Bon. They sure are getting a lot of attention recently!

Check on after the break for the short and thanks to everyone who sent it in!

Read more »

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submitted by Dalek_Kolt [link] [24 comments]

How to Tip

submitted by cyberscythe [link] [10 comments]

Cats cats cats!

submitted by Myrandall [link] [6 comments]

An article from NPR notes that Africa has hit the one year mark for being polio free. This great news, however, is followed by a troubling report from Kenya — that Catholic bishops and doctors there are opposing some of the very efforts that have made this milestone possible.

… last week, a polio vaccination campaign in Kenya faced an unlikely opponent: The country’s Conference of Catholic Bishops declared a boycott of the World Health Organization’s vaccination campaign, saying they needed to “test” whether ingredients contain a derivative of estrogen. Dr. Wahome Ngare of the Kenyan Catholic Doctor’s Association alleged that the presence of the female hormone could sterilize children.

Ngare is a practicing gynecologist with no infectious disease experience.

NPR’s Gregory Warner notes that some of the opposition to immunization efforts in the area are fueled more by suspicions about the international organizations administering them and the tactics of those organizations, rather than the vaccines themselves. But in the case of Dr. Ngare, while he emphasizes that “regular immunizations are safe and they must continue,” many of his objections to the polio vaccine are the standard anti-vaccine pseudo-science you hear in the U.S.

He raises the specter of eugenics — sterilizing segments of human populations. He put forth other objections as well: “There are all sorts of stories out there,” he told me. “Vaccines can cause autism. Vaccines have been used for spread of HIV. There are some cancer-causing viruses that you’d find in vaccines. So there are lot of stories. Some of them we don’t know whether they’re true or not true.”

When Warner pointed out that his arguments were faulty, Ngare’s defense exhibited a similar indifference:

“We could debate this forever.”

(Nor, it should be noted, is this the first time that the Conference of Catholic Bishops have warned their fellow Kenyans against vaccines, with less than supportable reasons. Just last year, the bishops objected to tetanus immunizations on the suspicion that it too would would cause infertility.)

The Washington Post quotes a Ministry of Health statement that rather admirably puts the situation into perspective.

“Any attempts aimed at mobilizing the public against taking their children for vaccination is a serious violation of the right of children to health and survival,” said Dr. Nicholas Muraguri, director of Kenya’s Medical Services, in the statement.

“The ministry of health once again reassures the public of the safety of all vaccines used in Kenya,” he said. “I therefore appeal to all stakeholders, especially the leadership of the Catholic Church, to continue supporting” the immunization campaign in Kenya.

And as for the bishops?

“We are not in conflict with the Ministry of Health, but we have an apostolic and moral duty to ensure Kenyans are getting safe vaccines,” Bishop Philip Anyolo, the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops chair, told journalists at a news conference in Nairobi.

Much like how many in the U.S. use “religious freedom” to mean the taking of other people’s freedoms in the name of religion, Bishop Anyolo seems to think that opposing the Ministry of Health’s efforts to protect children, for apostolic reasons, is somehow not opposition. Of course it is. And, as all too often happens in these cases, the bishops’ apostolic efforts, if successful, will harm the very people they purportedly aim to assist.

(Image via Asianet-Pakistan / Shutterstock.com)

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Steve the Tomato