Photo Of The Day

Aaaand President Obama just secured the nerd vote.

The photo of the President, with 'Star Trek's' Nichelle Nichols, was taken in the Oval Office on February 29th.  Nichols is famously credited with having the first interracial kiss on television.  Her and William Shatner locked lips in a 'Star Trek' episode which aired on November 22, 1968.  

The 79-year-old actress credits Martin Luther King Jr. for her success in the legendary sci-fi series.  She once told him that she was contemplating leaving the show, in order to pursue a Broadway career.  King convinced her that for the first time, white viewers would see African-Americans as equals.  He asked her to continue with the series, so that women and children would have someone to look up to.

I would say she succeeded.  

44 Years Ago

Maybe Jehovah's Witnesses Should Stop Pointing Fingers

In the November 2011 issue of Awake! magazine, the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses took a pot shot at the Catholic church.

On page 29, in their monthly 'Watching the World' section, they quoted the National Catholic Reporter, an independent agency established in 1964, that frequently writes on issues affecting the church.  On October 11, 2010, they published an article titled 'The 'Had It' Catholics'.  The article contained the following sentence, which was quoted in the Awake!:

"Slightly more than 10 percent of American adults (10.1 percent) have left the Catholic church after having been raised Catholic."

As seen in the Awake!:

This information is upon a study done in 2008 by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.  In the study, more than 35,000 American adults were interviewed about religion, and how their beliefs may or may not have changed over the years.  The survey showed that 23.9 percent of Americans identify themselves as Catholics.  This has pretty much gone unchanged for the last 40 years.  It has consistently hovered around the 25% mark since the early 70s.  Of those born Catholic, 68% remain faithful to the church in adulthood.  The quote above sounds worse than it actually is.  Yes, 10 percent of U.S. adults, or almost 23 million people, are former Catholics.  But, considering that there are 65-75 million practicing Catholics in this country at any given time, it's not that shocking of a statistic.  In fact, in 2010, the Catholic population actually increased 1.49% over the previous year, to 68.1 million.

What the Awake! conveniently failed to mention was that the very same Pew study in 2008 that showed a 32% turnover rate with the Catholic church, also showed that Jehovah's Witnesses have the lowest retention rate of any religion in the nation.  Only 37% of those that were raised as Witnesses stay in the congregation.  That means that 63% leave the organization, double that of Catholics.  Quoting the study:

"Jehovah's Witnesses have the lowest retention rate of any religious tradition. Only 37% of all those who say they were raised as Jehovah's Witnesses still identify themselves as Jehovah's Witnesses."

Time magazine even weighed in on the Witnesses turnover numbers, saying, "No wonder they have to keep knocking on doors".

The Awake! also failed to point out that the study showed that Jehovah's Witnesses were the least educated religious group in the U.S. (only 6% have college degrees).  They are also overwhelmingly the poorest (42% bring home less than $30,000/yr).  The religion also gives the illusion of preying on minorities.  60% of active Jehovah's Witnesses are female (highest percentage in American religion).  Also, African-Americans and Latinos make up nearly half of the church's population (22% and 24% respectively).  To put that into perspective, African-Americans make up 16% of Protestants (including Baptists).  Jehovah's Witnesses have the second highest percentage of Latinos, next to the Catholic church (with 29%).

This study only interviewed those that were raised a specific religion.  Who knows what the turnover rate is among those that converted to Jehovah's Witnesses later in life.  I would imagine, the results would be somewhat similar.  Logic states that if 63% of those "raised in the Truth" eventually leave, roughly the same percentage of those that joined the organization as adults would do the same.  It would make sense that people generally leave a religion for the same reason.  They don't believe what they're being told.

If Jehovah's Witnesses would stop focusing on the "problems" other churches are having, and spend a little more time taking care of the skeletons in their closet, maybe they wouldn't lose so many followers.  

Just a thought.

Interactive Graph Of The Day

In September, I shared an infographic on the popularity of Angry Birds.  Six months ago, downloads of the game reached 350 million.  With the recent release of Angry Birds Space, I'm sure Rovio has sold million more copies of the series.

OMGPOP released Draw Something on February 10th.  Since then, it has become the most popular game of all time.  It has been downloaded tens of millions of times in the last 7 weeks.  If you are reading this post, odds are you're laid down 99 cents to purchase the game.

Just how popular is Draw Something?  Take a look at some of these jaw dropping facts:


Created by MBAOnline.com

Photo Of The Day

This is a photo of Alessandra Ambrosio, Crystal Renn, and Brooklyn Decker, at a recent photo shoot for Victoria's Secret.  Here are photos of the same three women, after photos have been touched up.

Just In Time For Easter

There's also potato chips, salad dressing, and ham glaze.  It's bone lickin' delicious!

Jehovah's Witnesses To Announce Slimmer Magazines

During this Sunday's Watchtower study, a letter will be read to all congregations.  The letter states that, starting in January, the Watchtower and Awake! magazines will go from 32 pages, down to 16 pages.

Why?

Print has become a dead media, even for the Jehovah's Witnesses.  Moving operations online dramatically cuts costs.  Think about it...

How many of those magazines were legitimately "placed" out in field service?  My family would order a dozen copies of each issue.  Back in the day, we regularly had a stack of 50-60 magazines laying around the house.  It got to the point where we would leave an old Watchtower in the door, regardless of whether anyone was home or not.

A couple of years back, the organization scaled down their printing operations to only one "public" issue of the Watchtower and Awake! each month, with a second, super secret issue of the Watchtower made available to members of the Church.

Today, they claim that they're printing 42 million copies of each issue today.  I don't buy it.  If they are, the amount of waste is staggering.  Speaking for myself, I regularly shred 8-10 magazines a month...and that's just the ones I randomly come across in doctor's offices.  (Just imagine how easy it will be to shred Watchtowers that are half as thick.)

After years of having elders warn their congregations about the "dangers" of the internet and social media, it seems that the Society has reversed their position when it comes to their interests.  In the coming months, Jehovah's Witnesses are going to be consolidating their three websites into one, and focus the majority of their proselytizing to the World Wide Web.

Now, you can read the latest issue of the Watchtower, and have your favorite kiddie porn site open in the next tab.  That's a joke, of course.  We all know that only elders and ministerial servants watch kiddie porn.

You can see an image of the letter being read Sunday, below:

Headline Of The Day

"Ex-Gay" Men To Gather At GA Retreat For Masculine Bonding & Circle Jerks

Story here.

Mashup Monday Feat. Jaydiohead

The choice for this week's featured track was a no-brainer.  It's a little old (It came out a little over three years ago), but it's a wonderful example of how perfectly two songs can be matched.

Jaydiohead is the brain child of producer Max Tannone, aka Minty Fresh Beats.  In January of 2009, he released 'Jaydiohead', an ten song album comprised of mashups between Jay-Z and Radiohead tracks.  In July of that year, he released 'Jaydiohead:  The Encore', containing an additional five tunes.

One of the standout tracks is 'Wrong Prayer'.  It's a mix of Jay-Z's 'Pray', with Radiohead's 'I Might Be Wrong'.  Who would have thought this would sound so good?



You can download both albums at the link above.  I highly recommend it.

Chart Of The Day

The following is a rundown of the more notable pieces of real estate put up for sale by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.  The parent company of the Jehovah's Witnesses organization has 34 buildings up for sale in Brooklyn, New York.  The list includes four parking lots, 17 residential buildings, and 13 buildings zoned for manufacturing.

In recent weeks, the WBTS has sold three buildings in the area, for a total of $14.2 million.  With a total square footage of 25,800, it comes to approximately $550 per square foot of real estate.  The 34 remaining buildings have a total square footage in the neighborhood of 3.4 million.  At the current going rate, they're likely to make something in the $1.8 - $2 billion range.

Three years ago, the organization purchased a 248 acre piece of land in Warwick, NY, for $11.5 million to move their entire publishing operation to.  In the time since, they have "laid off" a very large percentage of their staff.  I use quotation marks because the facilities' workers didn't make a salary.  They received room and board, but essentially worked for free.  Some of these properties have been part of the Witnesses portfolio for decades.  In 2004, they sold one building for $205 million, after having bought it 30 years prior for less than $4 million.

The Witnesses intend on announcing this Sunday that, starting in January, both the Watchtower and Awake magazines will go from 32 pages per issue, down to 16. (The announcement letter can be found here.)

My question is:  Where is all of the money going?

44-45

The Hotdog, The Hallway, And 19 Reasons (And Counting) To Vote For Obama

I saw this coming a mile away.

Guess who made an online ad in support of Rick Santorum?  The Duggars.

You know the Duggars.  They're the professional breeders in Arkansas that TLC employs, as long as the Jim Bob and Michelle keep adding to the litter.  Two weeks ago, they recorded a three minute video in support of Santorum 2012.

It's unflatteringly (is that a word) honest.  The script in the ad is practically, "Rick Santorum believes a woman's place is barefoot and pregnant.  Rick Santorum hates gay people, blacks, and Mexicans."  It doesn't help that the 19 children in the commercial are, for the most part, mentally deficient.  The majority of them have trouble reading the cue cards.  I know that god supposedly commanded Noah to "populate the Earth", but it doesn't say anything in the Bible that they have to be uneducated and contribute nothing to this planet.



The Duggars aren't the only freak show to endorse Santorum.  The Bates family from Tennessee has also backed him.  They just had their 19th child last month, matching the Duggars for the largest family in the U.S..  Oh..they also have their own TLC show coming up.  In recent weeks, they've been appearing alongside the Duggar family at Santorum's campaign stops, taking the stage to form some bizarre Evangelical super group.  With the Duggar and the Bates vote, Santorum has already clinched 32% of the electorate.  That's like...2.4 million voters.

I can't make this shit up...

And, is it just me, or does Kelly Jo Bates look an awful lot like Michelle Duggar?  If it weren't for the fact that no one woman could have that many kids, I would almost guess that they're the same woman.

What is it with Evangelical women and THAT fucking hairstyle?

Michelle Duggar has been making waves in the last week after an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network grabbed journalist's attention.  In the interview, she called the threat of overpopulation is "a lie".  She claimed that you could take the world's population of over 7 billion, and fit them within the city limits of Jacksonville, Florida.  Yahoo points out that, even with an area of nearly 885 square miles, that would create a population density of approximately 8.5 million people per square mile.

What Duggar fails to realize, is that overpopulation is not an issue of how many people you can cram onto the planet.  It's a matter of whether or not the Earth can sustain of people on it.  In 2009, Dr. Charles A. Hall called the overpopulation of the Earth "the only problem".  He even went so far as to say that if there were only 10 million people on the planet, "no others would be a problem".

Here's the interview in question, filmed in May of last year:

Homeschooling for the win!!

Assassin's Creed: Coming Soon For Kinect On 360

It has been announced, that a new game in the Assassin's Creed line will soon be released with full Kinect capability for Xbox 360 users.  Very cool.

Infographic Of The Day

The word fuck has been part of our lexicon for nearly 540 years.  It's truly a fascinating word.

Introducing The Bipartisan Bunny

The description:

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This political themed vibe can be purchased at Babeland, while supplies last.

Sunday Comics