People in Quebec are making gummy candies with a packaging motif of horrible gummy candy death -- by lighter, cheese grater, automobile, drowning, etc.

Awwww....isn't that cute...

Of course I had to read an article titled "Paperweight severs Calif. teacher's hand." Here I was, expecting to find out about some kind of freak accident -- maybe a temporary gravity surge of some kind, or a Rube Goldberg-like series of mechanical coincidences like the ones in the Final Destination movies. Then it turns out the "paperweight" in question is a 40 mm shell which went off when he used it to try to squash a bug. Which is less freaky than I imagined. But a lot funnier.

So, a new study questions the health benefits of omega-3 oils just as scientists using genetic engineering techniques have produced pigs rich in omega-3 fatty acids.

The pigs are cute, anyway.

Defend Internet freedom!. Because greedy telecom giants don't want you to read Goth House.

Bill Nye the Science Guy -- wowing children and annoying flat-earthers in Waco, Texas.

Bill! Bill! Bill!

Archbishop: stop teaching creationism. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams:

"I think creationism is ... a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories ... if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories I think there's just been a jarring of categories ... My worry is creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it."

Also, I didn't know there was actually a name for the omphalos hypothesis, that is, the idea that, when creating the universe, God pulled a Dawnie* and all the apparent evidence of age and history is a fake-out, or possibly a very obscure joke.

This thesis is sometimes referred to as Last Thursdayism and is clearly not true, because of course Flying Spaghetti Monsterism is true and they can't both be true, now, can they?

*Buffy the Vampire Slayer reference. Refers to Buffy's "little sister" Dawn, who was created at the beginning of Season 5 whole cloth out of a ball of energy, including other people's memories of her as a child and physical artifacts such as family photographs.

Speaking of Buffy, here is some cool Buffy art.

Grover Norquist jumps the shark.

“Some people say Kleenex when they mean tissue,” Norquist said [of his plan to trademark the phrase "K Street Project"]. “We will jealously guard the real phrasing the way Kleenex and Coca-Cola do. We will sue anyone who says it wrong and make lots of money.”

Why do I call it shark-jumping? Well, check out Norquist in 2004:

The Democratic Party is made up of trial lawyers, labor unions, government employees, big city political machines, the coercive utopians, the radical environmentalists, feminists, and others who want to restructure society with tax dollars and government fiat.

What? I leave town for a few days and Tom DeLay quits? Maybe I should leave town permanently.

Because I sometimes have a juvenile sense of humor, I'm calling this Bush's incontinence problem. Although I still don't know if you can trust a grown man who calls himself "Scooter," Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, told a grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame leak, that Libby leaked National Intelligence Estimate information to a New York Times reporter after Cheney told him Bush told him to.

(huh? Let's try that again. Libby, who leaked the info, has just told a grand jury that Cheney told him to, and that Cheney said it was okay with Bush.)

However, the court papers do not indicate Bush specifically authorized Libby to disclose Plame's secret identity as a CIA operative.

However however, when this leak first became public, the president said that anyone in his administration involved in the leak would be fired.

So, any day now, Bush will fire himself, or Dick Cheney, or both.

And pigs will fly. Pigs that glow in the dark, are full of omega-3 fats, and possibly play the accordion.

Atheists are America’s least trusted group, according to a national telephone of more than 2,000 households and interviews with more than 140 people.

I'm sorry about that. For what it's worth, I trust atheists as much as I trust everyone else, which is to say, not a lot.

Actually, I think I trust atheists slightly more, because when people say, "I'm an atheist" I tend to assume they're being truthful, whereas when people say, "I'm a Christian" experience has led me to suspect they are lying.

It's got to be a joke but maybe it's not...part 1

According to this press release, "A nude Britney Spears on a bearskin rug giving birth is the 'ideal' model for Pro-Life." "Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston" is a life-sized statue, "an idealized depiction of Britney in delivery. Natural aspects of Spears' pregnancy, like lactiferous breasts and protruding naval, compliment a posterior view that depicts widened hips for birthing and reveals the crowning of baby Sean's head."

Oh, yeah...annoying pop stars make ME wanna have a baby.

This exhibit is on view April 7th thru 23rd with a reception for the dedication April 7.

Now, if that reception were on April 1, I'd feel like I knew what was going on.

It's got to be a joke but maybe it's not...part 2

You need flash to get full hilarity of this one, but it's worth it, to hear the Glaucoma Hymn. Everyone must hear the Glaucoma Hymn.

No, really, it's not a joke...is it?

King Charles' Head: a subject that keeps popping up in a written work no matter how much the author tries to steer away from it. Man, I hate that George W. Bush.

So, it's craniopagus parasiticus when a parasitic twin head with an undeveloped (or underdeveloped) body is attached to the head of a developed twin. And it's fetus in fetu when a partially developed fetus is found growing inside its twin.

I'm waiting for the right-to-lifers to pick up on this one. Come on, guys -- parasitic twins look as human as your typical fetus or brain-dead coma victim. Where's your marches and desperate acts of Congress to save the parasitic twins?

Oh! Won't someone save the parasitic twins!

There was no joy in spaceville...Mighty Falcon has struck out.

After years of development and no less than three scrubbed attempts, Falcon 1 rocket first launch of a privately operated rocket roared toward space Friday only to be lost just after liftoff, its builders said. The debut flight of a low-cost launcher developed and financed by Internet billionaire Elon Musk lasted about a minute before the rocket failed due to unknown technical reasons.

Oh....so that's why Regal Cinemas are so dreadful.

Every stage of your moviegoing experience -- from production to promotion to distribution to exhibition -- was controlled by one man: sixty-six-year-old religious conservative Philip Anschutz. Named Fortune's "greediest executive" in 1999, the Denver resident is a generous supporter of anti-gay-rights legislation, intelligent design, the Bush administration and efforts to sanitize television. With a net worth of $5 billion, he is Forbes ' thirty-fourth richest American

Clearly, the man who invented the idea of showing me 20 minutes of ads before the movie, and then trying to get me EXCITED about the ads, has got to be some kind of greediest something.

However, I do have a major quibble with this article -- the implication that the Narnia movie was primarily about pushing some kind of Christian conservative agenda on the public. It seemed to me primarily about capitalizing on the success of the Lord of the Rings pictures by filming the second most beloved fantasy series of the 20th century. And C.S. Lewis, while definitely a Christian, wasn't a particularly conservative one.

In fact, if you read The Great Divorce, he comes off as kind of a universalist. Shh, don't tell anyone.