"Mad As Hell" from the movie Network

The Internet Declares War on Scientology

A group calling itself Anonymous has declared war on the Church of Scientology following the forced removal of a Youtube video showing Tom Cruise acting crazy again.

The group has launched a number of denial of service attacks against Scientology websites and has carried on other pranks in the last few days; last night they leaked supposedly secret documents from the church that show just how insidious Scientology really is, as if anyone had any doubts about that (I have not looked at the docs myself, for fear of retaliation, but a list of the contents shows a section entitled "Child Dianetics").

Anonymous promises a new attack on Scientology will occur today at 6 pm, so keep your eyes pealed.

Gawker has a rundown on the developments here.

Update: The UK's Sky News has a report:

My Friend Meredith

It has now been several weeks since the brutal slaying of Meredith Emerson, the University of Georgia graduate who was killed while hiking on Blood Mountain New Year's Day.

I have known Meredith for many years. She lived with my sister for a year, we had classes together in the French Department, and we both enjoyed a pint or two at Copper Creek on Tuesday nights. There really isn't much that I can add to what has already been said: Meredith really was a great person, usually (if not always) chipper, always friendly, possessed of a wicked sense of sarcasm and irony which never failed to amuse, willing and able to carry on an intelligent conversation on nearly any subject, and as sweet as the days are long. Truly, I am better off for having known her, and truly we are all worse off now that she's gone.

My sister has already done a better job memorializing her than I could hope to do. Her tragic and untimely death will always stick with me, and Tuesday nights over a cool pint at Copper Creek will, for me, be forever linked with her memory.

Bonehead Comment of the Week: St. Louis basketball coach Rick Majerus

Apparently, working for a Catholic University precludes you from expounding on your pro-choice take on abortion: who knew?

However, Rick Majerus (not to be confused with Mark Mangino, who is pictured to the right — both men challenge for the most overweight coach in his respective NCAA Division I sport) has done just that.


While speaking to a local St. Louis television station at a pro-choice rally, Majerus publicly supported stem cell research and the pro-choice position on abortion.

"It's not possible to be a Catholic and hold those positions," [St. Louis Archbiship Raymond] Burke said. "When you take a position in a Catholic university, you don't have to embrace everything the Catholic church teaches. But you can't make statements which call into question the identity and mission of the Catholic church."

Ok. A couple things — first, I disagree with the first statement Burke makes, but that's neither here nor there; the Church can call whomever it wants "Catholic" or "not Catholic," and individuals can call themselves whatever they want; I'm pretty sure Catholics can be pro-choice and support stem cell research. Maybe God would disagree — I wouldn't know, but I doubt Burke does either.

Secondly, although I'd like to get off on some sort of "who cares what he says, he's a basketball coach, not a 'beacon for the Lord'" rant, what exactly did Majerus think was going to happen??

However, in an interesting development mentioned further in the article:

"Last year, St. Louis U. celebrated a legal victory that affirmed it is not controlled by the Catholic church or by its Catholic beliefs. . . In a 6-1 decision, the court said SLU 'is not controlled by a religious creed.'"

In addition, University spokesman Jeff Fowler supported Majerus, saying that "Rick's comments were his own personal view. They were made at an event he did not attend as a university representative."

So, in the end, it appears that Archbishop Burke was just shooting off his mouth, as the University doesn't seem to be terribly concerned. Looks like Majerus will be able to coach incredibly potent team another day. But it's still not great publicity, for the University or the Catholics.

Religion & Election Update!

From Suburban Messiah:

Since I haven't posted much on the Quail lately, I feel some duty to keep everyone up on my latest Religion & Politics post, a topic I heavily covered here last semester.

With Obama and Huckabee winning the Iowa caucus a couple weeks ago, there was wide speculation — before they both lost on Tuesday in New Hampshire — about their effects on the evangelical vote if they were to be nominated for the general election. However, then they both lost in New Hampshire.

In addition, I reiterated the importance of the Catholic vote. I also found an interesting article the amount of money being donated to candidates by clergy members; surprisingly, the Democrats, specifically Obama, lead the pack.

Enjoy the article, and let me know what you think here or on the site!

Files "mysteriously disappear" from Rich Rodriguez' office

The already messy divorce between Rich Rodriguez and the University of West Virginia football program seems to have hit another snag: nearly all of the files from Rodriguez' tenure as head football coach are missing.

The way this headline on ESPN's Bottom Line read seemed like Rodriguez destroyed the files himself, and it certainly looks like he has (or at least someone who worked for him). However, the article leaves things up in the air; I'm sure they'll keep us posted on further developments.

Regardless of what comes out, there are a couple possible reasons it happened. A justifiable reason would be that Rodriguez has a very specific system, and it's plausible that he wanted no one to be able to steal any of his secrets. Yet, I wonder if there's that much information available in all of the player information missing — like "contact information, scholarship money awarded, class attendance records and personal conduct records. At first glance, it seems like a cover-up for NCAA violations.

However, ESPN does report that Rodriguez' camp suggests not everything is missing, and as the details unfold we'll be able to speculate better.

At best, though, I think Rodriguez looks crazy, guilty of violating NCAA regulations or not, if it turns out he was responsible for destroying the files. By doing so implies guilt, justified reason or not. If he wasn't guilty, then why do it?

Only 23 More Months Until Graduation...

Is it wrong that during my marathon 9.5 hours of straight school today that I got some solace out of watching this video twice?



Just askin'.

Movie Review: "I'm Not There"

Todd Hayne's rambling biopic about the life of Bob Dylan, "I'm Not There", starts with an interesting premise: six different actors, each of them expressing a different aspect of Dylan's psyche. As the film goes on, unfortunately, it begins to ramble, and lasts much, much longer than the audience wished it had. The movie is also hard to follow, since all six of the characters are playing the same historical character, but each character has a different name (none of them are named Bob Dylan). Not to mention, all six of them are made up to look more or less like Dylan.

There are positive sides to the film. Ben Whishaw is great as Arthur Rimbaud, the poetic Dylan. He's young, sarcastic, nihilistic, and surly; a talented, fatalistic brat. Marcus Carl Franklin carries the toughest role in the film, as Woody Guthrie, an eleven-year-old blues prodigy; Franklin's character goes to visit the real Woody Guthrie on the folk hero's deathbed, just as a young Bob Dylan did. Christian Bale is good as Jack Rollins (aka "Pastor Jack"), who covers Dylan's spiritual uncertainty. Kris Kristofferson's narration is put together well with some solid camerawork from Edward Lachman. There's also a dynamite soundtrack consisting of Dylan covers, redone by names like the Millionaire Bashers (a supergroup featuring Sonic Youth stars Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley, Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, Television guitarist Tom Verlaine, Dylan bassist Tony Garnier, guitarist Smokey Hormel and keyboardist John Medeski), Sam Bush, Jeff Tweedy, Willie Nelson, Jim James, and Sufjan Stevens; Dylan's own version of the title track is officially released after years of being one of the most highly regarded outtakes of his entire career.

Cate Blanchett (as Jude Quinn/Strung-Out Dylan) and Heath Ledger (as Robbie Clark/Hollywood Dylan) are uneven and ultimately disappointing. Richard Gere's story suffered from the added weight of being nearly completely incomprehensible; as Billy the Kid (Aging Outlaw Dylan), Gere struggles in a freak-show/circus/wild-west town that is being destroyed by Commissioner Pat Garrett. With heavy doses of this crew, the second half of the movie falls apart, and limps toward the end of the film. At 2 hours and 20 minutes, it lasts a solid half-hour too long, and seems to end five or six times in the last half-hour; each time the full theater seemed to prepare to leave, only to settle back into their seats for another few minutes. I found myself doing likewise.

It takes a serious knowledge of Dylan's life to comprehend almost anything in this movie; I have (occasional) Pasty Quail contributor Nate to thank for being able to understand anything at all. A watchable movie for the hardcore Dylan fans; others would do better to stick with Scorsese's "No Direction Home".

Can Math Prove God Doesn't Exist?

From Suburban Messiah:

There is pretty convincing mathematical evidence that God isn't all-knowing. Does this affect God's existence or shake the faith of believers?

Religious Freedom and the Atheist Contingency in American Politics

From Suburban Messiah:

I've been putting this article together for about 10 days now (taking significant breaks for holiday revelry), outlining how atheists are neglected in American politics, how that correlates to the concept of religious freedom, and also how the atheists of political belief — i.e. those who don't carry cards for either major political party — find themselves in a similar position.

What's Going on With the Quail?

You might have noticed that there has been a dramatic reduction in posting around here lately. We haven't given up on the Quail, but we have decided to make a few changes in our approach.

We have found that posting 10 times daily is exhausting and mostly unneccesary. Our traffic data showed us that only a very small number of people were checking the site more than a couple of times a week; it seems unlikely that more than 4 or 5 people were actually reading all 50+ posts a week (my apologies to those 4-5 people).

Also, our traffic levels hit a major wall around 100 views a day. In my mind, this means that we have maxed out our local growth potential (derived from real life interactions and localized social networks like facebook and myspace) and we need to focus on building global traffic. Unfortunately, this takes time; more time than posting 10+ times per day allows.

Our new focus will be on generating a smaller amount of original quality content and then working to more effectively distribute that content around the web. We hope that this will help create a better forum for discussion at the Quail, and will help us to better monetize our output (ie get people to click on ads).

In the meantime, Dan will be moving some of his original religion commentary to his new blog Suburban Messiah. Also, we are working on creating a Digg group that can quickly and effectively push content to some of the top bloggers around the web; we are also exploring alternatives such as Reddit and Mixx. Additionally, we have created a group del.icio.us feed that will allow us to easily share interesting articles from the web. Finally, we are trying to improve our presence on the top social networking sites, including Facebook, Myspace, and LinkedIn.

If any of you are interested in helping out with this, PLEASE get in touch with us. Many of these things work better with groups, and it would be great to get more people involved with what we are doing.

Thanks for your support this semester, and we look forward to an improved Quail in 2008.

Liberty University takes on new recruiting measure

From Suburban Messiah:

Recently, Liberty University made plans to build a new extreme sports park in order to up recruitment to its Lynchburg, Virginia, campus.

Judging from the dispassionate response of new university chancellor Jerry Falwell, Jr., there doesn't seem to be much more going on here than a strained advertising campaign to raise funding, which certainly makes sense from a business standpoint. But he himself seems unconvinced of the underlying message and seems even skeptical that kids would come to Liberty if things like this sports park weren't in place.

Jesus Battles Mickey Mouse For Theme Park Supremacy

From Suburban Messiah:

Thanks to a reader comment here on the Quail, I've tossed together a few quick thoughts on The Holy Land Experience, a Christian-based theme park in Orlando.

Recently acquired by Trinity Broadcasting Network, the Experience has raised its attendance by 25%, despite nearly doubling its ticket prices. Trinity seems to have nabbed a pretty decent business model, eh?

Dan's New Blog: Suburban Messiah

Hey everyone! As you may have seen with the last post, I've set up a new blog over on WordPress, designed to cover my religion angles specifically. It's called Suburban Messiah, which is a pseudonym I created for my solo music project denoting the fact that I'm just some random dude from the suburbs who likes to spout off his religious views like he's important.

As I continue to post miscellanies here on the Quail, I'll be hitting on my religion highlights as well, taking the Gawker Media format and posting the link to my homepage before pasting the entire article into the Quail page. This will remind you, or inspire you, to visit me over at Suburban Messiah for all your favorite Dan religious musings.

The same platform applies to the new blog as it did here: please approach me with any questions, suggestions or comments, and more than anything — enjoy!!

Megachurch Number Crunching - What does it prove?

From Suburban Messiah:

Martin Marty, a longstanding noted Christian scholar (in fact, I read one of his books breaking down the use of mass media in Christianity — from 1961), recently wrote an article regarding the numbers game in modern American Evangelicalism.

Questioning a topic I pondered about a month ago, Marty explains that numbers don't really tell the story of what a church is doing and how it's affecting its congregation, no matter how many people are attending.

I don't think this is surprising, but as is mentioned in his article and in mine, Willow Creek, one of the most influential megachurches in recent history, has begun to question its mission. Seeing that numbers were the focus instead of ministry, the church decided to take a different angle. With the recent surge of corruption in the Evangelical ranks, I wonder if others will follow Willow Creek's model like they did originally.

Giant Magnetic Ropes Discovered Connecting Earth to the Sun

This is just like it sounds. In studying substorms that cause varying durations of the aurora borealis (the Northern Lights), a team of scientists discovered evidence of "giant magnetic ropes linking the Earth's atmosphere to the Sun and channeling solar energy to create the spectacular northern and southern lights shows."

Situated approximately 40,000 miles above the earth, these "ropes," which are described to be intertwined much like a hemp rope, comprise a width the size of the earth itself.

I don't pretend to know how to conceptualize this, or what it means as a discovery. My main response to the news was "neato." However, this article does a much better job of explaining the scientific side of this phenomenon. Let us know what you think, or what this might mean. I'm just laying it out there.

To boot, here's some more info on the aurora.

A Finals News Dump

Hello Pasty Quaildom! As we've made ourselves scarce for the past couple weeks, I've still been reading on the ol' series of tubes we call the Internets, and here are just a few of the things I've come across that fit the "miscellaneous" category. By shying away from my daily religion news dose (though be sure, I've had plenty of time to think about religion), I found a few other interesting articles.

-- First, Deadspin had a couple intriguing posts I wanted to reproduce. Big Daddy Drew, of Kissing Suzy Kolber fame, posted an article about why the NFL should adopt the NCAA overtime format.

To sum: “Q: But doesn't that dilute the sanctity of the game?

A: I thought about this as well. And here was my conclusion: FUCK THE SANCTITY OF THE GAME. Who gives a shit? Are there any fans of college ball who wish they had the NFL's overtime format? Or that they had ties back? No. The purity of the game is overrated. The whole reason these games are played is to entertain fans. And college overtime is kickass entertainment.”

I think you might agree that this is worth a quick, mindless read.

Second, Deadspin reports that everyone's favorite person that constantly speaks above 100 decibels, ESPN's Stephen A. Smith (see picture), has called for the eradication of the blogosphere.


He says that "non-professionals" shouldn't be reporting on sports. There are so many ridiculous things to point out here that I don't know where to start. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.


-- On the political side, after the Romney ridiculousness last week, I've moved away from any Election coverage, so I don't have anything on that front. However, I do have some stuff on the Sean Penn acting like his opinion matters front. There's a transcript of his entire "major political address" that is well worth a read.


-- Finally, I have to work in my religion news. Here's an article re-posted on Dallas Morning News' religion blog, explaining that fictional religious people can, in fact, have intelligent and insightful things to say. This comes on the heels of a post I put up a couple months ago regarding a more realistic version of Christians in fiction.

Who Will Get 2nd Pick in the 2008 NFL Draft?

So, last night, while I was watching the pitiful Falcons lose their 10th game of the season, I started wondering what team will get the 2nd pick in the 2008 Draft?

For those of you who don't follow, the NFL ranks the teams from worst to best to determine the draft order for the following year. Miami has virtually wrapped up the 1st pick with their 0-13 performance this year, but there are 4 teams with 3-10 records in line for the second pick, and another three with 4-9 records. After doing some research, I found that the first tie-breaker will be based on strength of schedule.

Since exams are over and I have nothing constructive to do with myself, I decided to figure out the strength of schedule for each of the teams in the race for the 2nd pick. Here is what I found out (SOS = Combined wins of all past and future opponents to this point in the season):

Jets (3-10) – SOS = 109
- Remaining Opp. = @NE (13-0), @TEN (7-6), KC (4-9)
Falcons (3-10) – SOS = 107
- Remaining Opp. = @TB (8-5), @ARIZ (6-7), SEA (9-4)
49ers (3-10) – SOS = 100
- Remaining Opp. = CIN (5-8), TB (8-5), @CLE (8-5)
Rams (3-10) – SOS = 107
- Remaining Opp. = GB (11-2), PIT(9-4), @ARIZ (6-7)
Baltimore (4-9) – SOS = 107
- Remaining Opp = @MIA (0-13), @SEA (9-4), PIT (9-4)
Oakland (4-9) – SOS = 106
- Remaining Opp = IND (11-2), @JAX (9-4), SD (8-5)
Kansas City (4-9) – SOS = 106
- Remaining Opp = TEN (7-6), @ DET (6-7), NYJ (3-10)

Looking at this information, I have to figure that the 49ers (now without Alex Smith for the remainder) are the odds on favorites to have the 2nd pick. The Falcons will probably grab the 3rd spot, assuming they don't do something absurd like win out the season (This seems, um, unlikely now).

So what does it mean? Check here for ESPN's draft board, including a ranking of the top 100 players who are likely to throw their names in. Some highlights:

Darren McFadden, Glenn Dorsey, Matt Ryan, Brian Brohm, and Andre Woodson.

Meebo: The Future of Interaction on the Internet

A few weeks ago, we reported on Meebo, a browser based IM service, offering games that you can play against your friends. We even added a "Chat with TPQ" feature over on the side of the page.

Read/WriteWeb has an article up about how Meebo got to where they are, and where they are going from here. In a move that sets them apart from most other new social networking sites, Meebo has maintained control of their platform, only authorizing 39 out of 300 requests for applications. While Facebook's ad platform has not generated the results they expected, Meebo may have taken a step to avoid such a failure. Their recently announced partnership with Viedo Egg will offer video advertising in IM and chat windows, as well as alongside the games and other video content (including video chat).

Meebo will offers IM, chat rooms, video IM, and games all within a single browser window. And by including the video advertising in the same windows as these other services, they may have finaly found a way to make money off of Web 2.0.

Romney's "Faith in America": The Hangover

I mentioned in my post last night (includes complete video of his address) that I thought Romney's speech needed to cover his Mormon religion moreso than contemplating "Faith in America," as he did.

Well, Christianity Today checks in on that very tip, explaining "What Evangelicals Heard in Romney's Speech."


Echoing my speculation, David Neff, the author, explains, "According to a Pew poll, 36 percent of evangelicals say that they are less likely to vote for a candidate who is a Mormon (compared to 25 percent of all Americans). Republicans know that this kind of evangelical resistance must be overcome in order to win a presidential election."

Of course, polls are always sketchy footholds, but it demonstrates that a much larger percentage of Evangelicals, to whom Romney was speaking directly in his address, are skeptical of his religious affiliation.

Neff outlines several places where Evangelicals can jive with Romney, based on the overarching, non-committal comments he made about "religion," which, by itself, was never actually defined. Granted, he was speaking to a group of people that already has pretty firmly in its place a definition of religion, but as someone with a non-traditional definition of the term, and a swing vote, I'd like to hear at least one candidate come out for some type of religious pluralism in America — isn't that kind of what freedom of religion is all about? To live justly and "freely" together is not only about "tolerating" all religions — "tolerance," to me, implies reluctance and still suggests that the "tolerator" is superior to the "tolerated — but also, I think, involves actually engaging with others of these faiths and trying to understand them as well.

But I digress. Neff explains, despite Romney's slick speechwork:

"Because of the iconic quality of the presidency, many Americans will feel discomfort with the mainstreaming of a marginal faith that a Romney presidency would represent. It's one thing to listen to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or to elect Harry Reid or Orrin Hatch. It is quite something else to elect a Mormon President. Americans accept partisanship and diversity in our legislators. But the presidency is supposed to unite the nation, and for many, Romney's reassurances can't address the apprehension they feel in their guts."

Yes, this is only one viewpoint, but a strong influence in the Christian media at that. If my suspicions here are confirmed, we probably won't see Romney on the ballot next November.