A Roman Catholic Cardinal told homosexuals and transsexuals today they would never get into heaven, prompting a rebuke from the Vatican itself.How about all the Catholic priests who molested children? Do THEY get to go into heaven? It's just my opinion, but after centuries of self-preservation and ignoring their own sins, the Catholic church lacks credibility in my book. I think I'll go ahead and let God be the judge of humanity and leave the wealth accumulation to religious institutions.
"Transsexuals and homosexuals will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven, it's not me who says it but St Paul," said Mexican Cardinal Javier Barragan, a former Vatican official who recently retired, referring to one of St Paul's epistles.
Asked if people were born homosexual Barragan, whose comments were posted on a conservative Catholic website called www.pontifex.roma, was quoted as saying: "One is not born homosexual but they become that way. This is for various reasons: education, for not having developed their identity during their adolescence, maybe they are not guilty but by going against the dignity of the body they certainly will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
"Everything that goes against nature and against the dignity of the body offends God," he added.
Aurelio Mancuso, president of Italy's main gay rights group, Arcigay, said Barragan's remarks were part of the Church's "ridiculous theories about sexuality and the dignity of the person".
The Vatican distanced itself from the comments in a statement that was highly unusual because it indirectly criticised a top Church official.
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the website should not be considered an authority on Catholic thinking "on complex and delicate issues such as homosexuality".
Lombardi quoted from the official Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, which says homosexual acts are a "disorder" but acknowledges that many people have "innate homosexual tendencies" and should be treated with respect and not be subject to discrimination.
The Catholic Church teaches that homosexual acts are sinful but homosexuality in itself is not.
Attention lust and Olympic craziness
For many organizations and individuals, attention is the most precious resource. The pursuit of attention for our ads, or our city or our careers dominates all else.
How else to explain the silly math that is used to justify Olympic hoopla? Can imagine how little patience people would have for the IOC and their internal politics if they didn't have a show that so many people wanted to watch?
Almost every city that has hosted an Olympics regrets it financially. The TV networks spend billions. The advertisers pay for it. The hoopla is vast and loud.
For what?
For the attention. It's the attention that gets cities to put up with the ridiculous system for choosing host cities and gets the TV networks to ship camera crews half way around the world. It's the attention that turns the Olympic committee into vigilant trademark and copyright police. It's easy to cut countries or companies willing to bankrupt themselves for pride or attention a little slack. After all, the Olympics is a magical event.
Except it's not. The same craving for attention happens every day in every organization in search of just one more pair of eyeballs. As marketers discover that more eyeballs does not equal better, the quixotic quest for attention will start to abate.
The formula is simple but depressing: marketers have been lousy at harvesting attention because there was just so much of it. So it was more like strip mining than careful, efficient use of a natural resource. Now that attention is harder to get, people are overpaying for it and the Olympics is just one example. The alternative is to create focused, intense networks that ignore the masses. For most marketers, that's exactly what we need.
California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano introduced a bill to help the Port of San Francisco with some financing issues. It sailed through both houses of the California legislature with little opposition and went to Governor Schwartzenegger for his signature.
But Arnold had other ideas. He vetoed the bill and sent Ammiano and his fellow legislators a veto letter. Not just an ordinary veto letter, mind you, but an oddly-worded letter with a Da Vinci Code-like message that reveals the Governator’s true feelings.
To decode Arnold’s message, just read down the first letter in each line on the left side of the letter.
While we can’t help but admire Arnold’s sentiment and ingenuity, we long for the likes of Harry Truman, who would have just come out and said what he meant.
Source: SFBG.com
Compared to this, T. rex was a kitten"
Impressive video at the BBC this morning showing the fossilized skull of a pliosaur. Since it was an aquatic creature, it's body size was much larger than land-based dinosaurs. ""It could have taken a human in one gulp; in fact, something like a T. Rex would have been breakfast for a beast like this."
“Democrats are an opinionated bunch. You know the other side, they just kind of do what they’re told. Democrats, y’all thinkin’ for yourselves.”
- President Obama, October 20
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