From Gawker, which spotted it in Metro NYC:
We suppose we should be glad at least there’s still a distinction.
Category Archives: Celebrity
The girl can’t help it
raincoaster thinks Tony Blair is a sexy bitch. It’s just one of those attractions you can’t explain, but watch this video and see if you can’t begin to understand.
Also, note the tags on this post.
Must Love Jaws
The 100 Most Influential People in History…and their Religions!
For the next time you're looking for some way to stir the pot at a boring party. This is from Michael H. Hart's book The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History. No matter what the religion, you can find people the world would have been worse off without. But I didn't know Manicheanism was considered a whole separate religion: seems to me just a quality of most of them. Live and learn. Here's the top twelve:
| Rank | Name | Religious Affiliation | Influence |
| 1 | Muhammad | Islam | Prophet of Islam; conqueror of Arabia; Hart recognized that ranking Muhammad first might be controversial, but felt that, from a secular historian's perspective, this was the correct choice because Muhammad is the only man to have been both a founder of a major world religion and a major military/political leader. More |
| 2 | Isaac Newton | Anglican (rejected Trinitarianism, i.e., Athanasianism; believed in the Arianism of the Primitive Church) | physicist; theory of universal gravitation; laws of motion |
| 3 | Jesus Christ * | Judaism; Christianity | founder of Christianity |
| 4 | Buddha | Hinduism; Buddhism | founder of Buddhism |
| 5 | Confucius | Confucianism | founder of Confucianism |
| 6 | St. Paul | Judaism; Christianity | proselytizer of Christianity |
| 7 | Ts'ai Lun | Chinese traditional religion | inventor of paper |
| 8 | Johann Gutenberg | Catholic | developed movable type; printed Bibles |
| 9 | Christopher Columbus | Catholic | explorer; led Europe to Americas |
| 10 | Albert Einstein | Jewish | physicist; relativity; Einsteinian physics |
| 11 | Louis Pasteur | Catholic | scientist; pasteurization |
| 12 | Galileo Galilei | Catholic | astronomer; accurately described heliocentric solar system |
And an interesting table:
| Religious Affiliation | % in List |
|---|---|
| Catholic | 31% |
| Anglican/Episcopalian | 13% |
| Jewish | 7% |
| Atheist | 6% |
| Greco-Roman paganism | 6% |
| Chinese traditional religion/Confucianism | 5% |
| Lutheran | 5% |
| Russian Orthodox | 4% |
| pre-Nicene Christianity | 3% |
| Platonism | 3% |
| Islam | 2% |
| Hindu | 2% |
| Buddhist | 2% |
| Presbyterian | 2% |
| Zoroastrian | 2% |
| Manicheanism | 2% |
| Quaker | 2% |
| Unitarian/Universalist | 2% |
| Calvinist | 2% |
| Jain | 1% |
| Jansenist | 1% |
| United Brethren | 1% |
| Congregationalist | 1% |
| Dutch Reformed | 1% |
| Egyptian paganism | 1% |
| Mongolian shamanism | 1% |
| Taoism | 1% |
| Baptist | 1% |
| Sandemanian | 1% |
| Protestant (denomination unknown) | 6% |
| unknown | 5% |
Operation Global Media Domination: it’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy
Golly, wonder who said that? In any case, Steve got hisself pirate-jacked at the opening of the Apple Store in Manhattan. Courtesy of Gawker. And I, of course, totally wish I'd thought of that. Must be off as soon as I Mapquest all computer stores in the Lower Mainland.
With all the “excitement” at the new Apple store on Friday, no one seemed to notice the perpetually wandering Bucky Turco, who managed to con his way past the line and get into the store before the masses. Once inside, he hit as many computers as he could, changing all of their browser homepages to his website, AnimalNewYork.com. A great method of free advertising, and probably the only way to ensure that Kevin Bacon sees your blog.
Spoken Word Shatner
Click at own risk. This is William Shatner, circa 1972 on the Dinah Shore show demonstrating his command of early spoken word poetry. It is rather disturbing to realize that, while he has not gotten any better in the thirty some odd years since then, he hasn’t actually gotten any worse, either. And yet the man became a star; there is much to be said for the star-making value of perfect hair and tight velour.
raincoaster 