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The Vatican has backed a Roman Catholic bishop who has told Catholic schools in his diocese to reject “safe sex” education because it is “dangerous and immoral”.

The Bishop of Lancaster, the Rt Rev Patrick O’Donoghue, said in a document calling for traditional moral teaching that “so-called” safe sex was based on the “deluded theory that the condom can provide adequate protection against Aids”.

Archbishop Mauro Piacenza, the secretary of the Congregation for the Clergy, said in a letter that the document was fully in line with Vatican teaching.

In other news, the Vatican has urged all military training facilities in the world to stop teaching recruits how to use bullet proof vests, since they are based on the “deluded theory that the bullet proof vest can provide adequate protection against rifle shots”.

Idiots.

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Tired of your mailbox filling with unwanted junk mail?

State lawmakers this week were expected to begin debating a bill that would create a ‘no-junk-mail list’ similar to the no-call list for telephone telemarketers.

Rep. Sara Gagliardi (D-Arvada) said her measure would allow fines against companies that send mail to people on the list. She and other supporters said the list could help cut down on identity theft and help the environment.

“The statistics are just overwhleming. Ninety-million pounds of junk mail a year. It costs somewhere between $2 and $4 million to clean it up,” Gagliardi said.

But the United States Postal Service said it’s got concerns about the economic effects of the bill and similar measures proposed in five other states.

Postal Service spokesman Al DeSarro said half of the mail his agency handles is direct marketing mail, and reducing its volume could cost thousands of Postal Service jobs.

The solution is, of course, simple – force the Postal Service to pay a “cleanup fee” of five cents for each pound of mail it delivers, to cover the cleanup costs. This way they can no longer externalize their costs, and they’ll charge the correct fee to the catalog distributors.

[News article from Jan 3, 2007:]

In what has become an annual tradition of prognostications, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in “mass killing” late in 2007.

“I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to be nuclear,” he said during his news-and-talk television show “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.”

Robertson said God told him during a recent prayer retreat that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.

So, Pat, how did your prediction work out?

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With its daily solar-energy supply shrinking as Martian summer turned to fall, Spirit drove to the northern edge of the plateau called “Home Plate” for a favorable winter haven. The rover reached that northward-tilting site in December, in time for the fourth Earth-year anniversary of its landing on Mars. Spirit reached Mars on Jan. 4, 2004, Universal Time (Jan. 3, 2004, PST).

They were designed for 90 day missions…

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Rudy Giuliani, speaking about his sixth place finish in Iowa yesterday:

“None of this worries me — Sept. 11, there were times I was worried.”

As a GOP operative I know loves to say, the man has “9/11 Tourettes.” Can’t help himself.

“Be strong and be brave”

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There isn’t much to say about this other than, Finally. According to Business Week, Sony BMG has decided to sell some of its digital music without attaching copy-restriction software, making it the final major label to abandon ridiculous, impractical, anti-customer restrictions in its products.

[..]

Actually, what’s happened is quite ironic. It was the industry’s own DRM mandates that tied many music-lovers in to Apple’s music storefront (we all had iPods, and the only way to buy digital music for the iPod was from Apple).

Now Apple’s become too powerful for the labels. They need an alternative distribution channel — they want to get music to our iPods, but they don’t want to go through Apple to do it.

The only way to do that is to offer retailers like Amazon the chance to sell songs as plain, unrestricted MP3s, which are iPoddable.

Shakespeare coined a phrase for this sort of plot-twist. Hoist by his own petard, I think it was.

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I know – you’re saying to yourself, “But wait a second! Didn’t Orlando hover near record high rates for murders in the year 2007? Shouldn’t there be a sign, instead, that reads: “Please do not impale with bullets or otherwise inflict death blows on other beings?” The answer is yes, but people who commit homicides tend to start as people who recline on park benches. It’s textbook.