So I was going to post this in the Coffee Hour, but it became somewhat long, so here it is as it's own diary.  I thought just from scanning the Darcy Burner items at dKos last week that Bush was to be in Bellevue Friday or the weekend, but I was surprised to learn it was today.  The location was less than one mile from my office, so I made a late afternoon break out of attending and took some pictures with my crappy cellphone.

Most of the pics were of the cops videotaping protesters, or of a small Young Republican counter-protest.  Some links to pics below the fold.

Beyond satire:

A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsquently rejected, building the so-called "Gay Bomb."

Perhaps this is simply a semantic exercise, but a relatively simple idea has lead me down a (what is to me) novel line of inquiry: the divine is that which is worthy of worship.  That is a statement which should be true in any religious framework.  While the statement might rightly be seen as beggaring the question, "What is divine?," I feel that it grounds the analysis of religion in a useful, practical framework.

Even in a hypothetical world bereft of religion, worship as a concept would be applicable metaphorically to one's "highest values," implicit or explicit: does one order one's life towards the pursuit of money?; power?; knowledge?; virtue?  We all of us, theist and atheist alike, worship our idols.  The aim of religion, or rational systems of meaning, is then to be seen as: to re-orient people towards that which is worthy of worship.  The content of a given religion then follows from a synthesis of the question (What is divine?) and answer (The divine is that which is worthy of worship) into the new question, and how that religion answers: What is worthy of worship?

Pope Benedict says Indians of Brazil were "silently longing" for Christianity at the time Europeans landed on their shores.  Problem is, this was apparently in response to a letter sent by Native Brazilian Catholics asking for Church support in defense of their lands and complaining that they have been the victims of a "process of genocide since the first European colonizers landed on their shores."

Did he also say that they had been purified?

Moved by Mrs Pastor.  This conversation is just as good as the one going on in PD's thread below - so if we can keep track of both, we should.

I note this morning that collinb's diary from last week has been deleted.  I am assuming at this point that the diarist himself deleted the diary, but I am open to the possibility that a front-pager or someone else with increased rights deleted the diary for cause.  [Update: it is almost certainly the case that one too many troll ratings received caused the system to delete all of collinb's content, including comments on other diaries.][Update #2: actually, it seems the diary and/or username was deleted, FWIW.]

I have two comments I wish to make regarding this episode: 1) if collinb was in fact a troll, then he was quite a successful troll as last I saw his diary had 200+ comments; and, 2) if collinb was in fact a troll, we as a community allowed our discourse level to be bent towards a more adversarial tone, making this a very successful example of trolling.

What are people's thoughts on this incident?

No really, he did.

Via Froomkin, we find out that:

Joyce May writes in the Cove Herald of Copperas Cove, Tex, about a Vietnam veteran named Bill Thomas who decided to give Bush one of the three Purple Hearts that he received in Vietnam.

And what wound did Commander Codpiece suffer in order to receive such an honor, you might ask?

I write this diary under the presumption that the entirety of the Christ story is historically true.  I want to explore the theological and metaphysical implications of the literal death of God, specifically of the timeframe between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.  I've been waiting to attach these inquiries to an appropriate diary, but I may as well initiate my own and have a dedicated "egg-head" Easter diary for this discussion.  I'm sure answers to my queries have been explored by the great thinkers of the Christian tradition, and I would be interested in hearing of those in addition to any original thoughts from the SP community.

The two queries I have are below the fold.

I'm passing on a newsletter which my mother forwarded to me.  The substance of the letter is appealing to me, though I know nothing of the author's (Eric Maisel) Ten Zen Seconds program.  If you like what you see, drop by the authors website: Ten Zen Seconds.  You can subscribe to the newsletter for free.

I wonder what NASA climatologist James Hansen's DailyKos userid is?  His speech/presentation (see below the fold) -- given as part of his acceptance of the WWF Duke of Edinburgh Conservation Medal -- was simply loaded with netizen goodies.  Specifically:

1. an allusion to Gore's documentary;
   
2. green/evangelical cross-over "creation care";
   
3. the phrase "miserable failure";
   
4. the term "bamboozle";
   
5. reference to the "we call it life" ads;
   
6. calling out Inhoffe;
   
7. implicitly calling the "clear skies policy" Orwellian; and, not least
   
8. pointing to internet activism as a novel hope.

Dr. Hansen provides us with a synthesis of Daily Kos, Think Progress, Talking Points Memo and our own Street Prophets.  The absolutely hillarious punchline on the whole thing?  His concluding disclaimer:

Of course, although I am a government employee, these are just my opinions as a private citizen. They do not represent government policy. Thank you.

Don't worry, Jim: we'll make it so.

[editor's note, by Rain] This cries to be read -- promoted by Rain.

[On edit, by Betty: cleaned it up some.]

Because of copyright concerns, I cannot post the whole article, but everyone (every US citizen, at least) needs to go read the whole thing.  Today's Washington Post gives us An Iraq Interrogator's Nightmare:

A man with no face stares at me from the corner of a room. He pleads for help, but I'm afraid to move. He begins to cry. It is a pitiful sound, and it sickens me. He screams, but as I awaken, I realize the screams are mine.

That dream, along with a host of other nightmares, has plagued me since my return from Iraq in the summer of 2004. Though the man in this particular nightmare has no face, I know who he is. I assisted in his interrogation [...]

If eteraz cross-posts his diary at dailykos here, I'll modify this diary and allow his to focus on the matter referenced in this title.  One of the contributors at his blog has been documenting the rise of religious groups on the online world of Second Life, and has this sorry update to share:

The next day, on Muslim New Year, the mosque suffered multiple attacks, the first by two unknown avatars spouting anti-Semitic slogans and sitting on the Qur'an. An illegal script was then set off, which caused everyone inside the mosque to crash out of Second Life. The owner of the mosque, a professional artist in real life, had already decided enough was enough. On Sunday, he made the mosque accessible via a members only group.

Read the whole thing.

I find the following article on the NYTimes' front page: TV Executives Debate Whether to Show Execution.

The apparently imminent execution of the deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein threw executives at television news organizations into hurried consultations today over how to handle pictures or video of the hanging.

My initial reaction to the article's title and topic was intense but one-dimensional; reflection causes me to arrive at a more nuanced position.