It looks like trouble, and some ministers are defending the proposed blasphemy law — you people aren’t going to let this violation of civil rights pass, are you?

We have some more details on the law, too: it authorizes fines up to €100,000, and gives the police the right to seize blasphemous materials from your home. If you’re reading Pharyngula right now on your home computer, you may have broken that law, and they can come take your computer away…and then they’ll notice all those books by Hitchens and Harris and Dawkins and so forth on your bookshelves, and next thing you know, you’re locked up in the Catholic Prison, stamping out communion wafers for 20 years.

And then there are the other implications. The Scientologists must be rubbing their hands with glee: their outrage will be sufficient to arrest people who protest their cult. If you draw a doodle that looks vaguely like Mohammed, and some nearby Moslem is outraged, you are guilty, guilty, guilty.

I know that Turkey is one of those countries I’d be wise to avoid unless I want to risk arrest…do you really want Ireland to share that distinction, too?

I need details of this law against blasphemy. If “Begorrah!” and “Saints preserve us!” are outlawed, then Irish stereotypes will be utterly demolished. On the other hand, one Irish fellow I knew used the peculiar expression “fewkin'” as every other word…I presume charming references to sexual acts will not be regarded as blasphemous? Otherwise, the charm of the Irish vernacular will be lost to us forever.

Here is the only definition I’ve seen so far.

“Blasphemous matter” is defined as matter “that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion; and he or she intends, by the publication of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.”

Wait, they’re going to make this work in Ireland? So the government plans on censoring every mention of “Catholic” and “Protestant” because they’ll spark outrage in some subset of the population? I think that, in general, prohibiting things because some fraction of the population will feel outraged at the concept would effectively mean that everything should be outlawed. I know I could stand outside any church or cathedral, stamp my foot, and fulminate at length — if only I were Irish, I could stroll the land, casting the priestly snakes off the island.

When I heard that Sean Hannity had jauntily offered to allow himself to be waterboarded, I confess to a moment’s small, viciously gleeful anticipation. However, archy makes a good case for not doing it. After all, if it really is torture, and torture is wrong, and we argue that we shouldn’t even be doing it to putative terrorists…we also shouldn’t be doing it to the small, weak-minded, and stupid.

Those astronomers keep finding new extrasolar planets — 350 of them so far — but none are just right. Two new planets have been discovered that are almost earthlike.

Gliese 581 e is the closest in size to Earth, only 1.9 times larger. Unfortunately, it’s also too close to its star, and is probably way, way too hot.

Gliese 581 d is even larger, but it’s sitting square in the habitable zone, where liquid water would be possible. The gravity would be a killer there, but…hmmm. If it were covered in water, it could be a perfect place for squid — huge colonies of space squid in a vast ocean. And it’s only about 21 light years away, right next door! As long as I’m imagining space squid, I think all I need to do is imagine a faster than light drive, and presto, I’m there!

The physicist Stephen Hawking has been hospitalized, a serious business for a 67 year old man with ALS. We should all hope for the best, but don’t pray — we shall trust in modern medicine and science, and the stamina of a man who has demonstrated remarkable persistence in the face of daunting health problems.

Old timers here may recall the saga of Abunga Books, an online bookstore with the sole distinction of having a feature that allowed customers to ban books from the inventory that they didn’t like…which meant, of course, that evolution and atheism and anything that touched on those two was promptly purged. You can imagine how people here responded to that empowering policy: they scurried right on over to help ban the Bible and C.S. Lewis. The hypocrisy of Abunga was then exposed: they honored requests to ban Phillip Pullman, but banning the Bible was not allowed. So much for the illusion of vox populi.

You will be pleased to learn that now, after about a year, Abunga Books has quietly expired. There will be no funeral. Nobody cared.

It’s a question that makes it hard to suppress a giggle: how many of you are going to be teabagging today?

I think it’s awesome that this last desperate gasp of the far right wing to achieve political relevance got tagged with such an appropriately ridiculous moniker. The demented duo of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity have made me laugh for the first and probably only time.

It is getting a little old watching the more culturally conscious members of the media making fun of the clueless wingnuts, though. This is just too easy.

(via Sullivan)

This will put a smile on your face — James Dobson is in despair.

The battles that we fought in the Eighties now, we were victorious in many of those conflicts with the culture, trying to defend righteousness, trying to defend the unborn child, trying to preserve the dignity of the family and the definition of marriage. We fought all those battles and really it was a holding action. […]

[W]e made a lot of progress through the Eighties but then we turned into the Nineties and the internet came along and a new president came along and all of that went away and now we are absolutely awash in evil. And we are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say that we have lost all those battles, but God is in control and we are not going to give up now, right?

Knowing Dobson’s definition of what is ‘evil’, I am overjoyed to be awash in it. Keep on discouraging these sour old dogmatists!

I’m on the Reasonable Doubts podcast this week, if you’d care to tune in. This was recorded when I was in Michigan, near the end of my visit, and you can tell…my voice gets huskier after a couple of days of non-stop talking. Or maybe those rascals snuck in a ringer to dub over me, in order to get something that sounded intelligent.

Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has died.