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Happy Moon Landing Day!

Harry Potter Roundup

From the Wild Hunt blog, a collection of spoiler-free article links in which Harry Potter is (often hilariously incorrectly) connected to pagans or the occult. Yeah, that one from yesterday is mentioned, too. ( More behind the cut, no spoilers )

When you think things are darkest now ...

Sound familiar?

A crisis of no common magnitude awaits our country. The approaching election of a president is to decide a question not merely of preference to an eminent individual, or particular views of policy, but, what is infinitely more, of national regard or disregard to the religion of Jesus Christ ... In their war upon revelation, infidels have levelled their batteries against the miraculous facts of the scripture: well knowing that if its historical truth can be overturned, there is an end of its claim to inspiration. But God has protected his word. Particularly the universal deluge, the most stupendous miracle of the old testament, is fortified with impregnable evidence ...

After these affronts to the oracles of God, you have no right to be surprized if [the presidental canidate] should preach the innocence of error, or even of atheism. What do I say! He does preach it. "The legitimate powers of government," they are his own words, "extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbors to say there are twenty Gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg..." Christians! what think you of this doctrine?

That's Rev. John Mason, talking about Thomas Jefferson back in 1800. Remember that when you think things are out of hand nowadays - we've been there before.

We just need the modern equivalent of a Thomas Jefferson.

Testing something ...

 Can I post 16-bit Unicode? Semagic's preview doesn't recognize it.

 EDIT: apparently so; at least it works on my end. Your browser mileage may vary.

EDIT THE SECOND: It mostly works, but it's too system specific for any real use on the net. Specifying a font might help.

EDIT THE THIRD: The non-standard bit is my system :) Looks like it will work if I stay with recognized standard Unicode :)

⟸ ⟺ ⟹ ... or not, those three are standard, but undefined on this system.

Movie Night

You gotta love the classics - Death Race 2000. David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone (with John Landis in a brief cameo), directed by Paul Bartel and produced by Roger Corman. It's all gratutitous, and requires little if any thought.