The Mormon Church fires back at LGBQT students at BYU, says being homosexual is still a no-go.

Nine years ago, this blog jokingly started writing about the comically curious, absurdly strict, and just plain odd codes of conduct at various colleges and universities.

The first school chosen to showcase? BYU. From haircuts to clothes to who uses your bathroom, BYU lists a delightful array of absurdity by modern conventions.

Things haven't really changed in the near decade since. That was until a few weeks ago, when the university's Honor Code Office (yes, they have a full office for this stuff) surprisingly deleted a passage in the honor code that banned gays and lesbians from hugging, hand-holding, or sharing a kiss on campus. Students of all sexuality backgrounds were thrilled and excited. It seemed like a new day at BYU!

That lasted about the time of a cup of coffee, if The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints actually allowed adherents to enjoy coffee. (Psst: They don't.)

Church Elder Paul V. Johnson penned a letter rebuking Brigham Young University and its students regarding homosexual behavior.

Today this letter from Elder Paul V. Johnson, Commissioner of the Church Educational System, regarding the updated Honor Code was sent to students and employees at all CES schools. pic.twitter.com/sADljd8lQT

— BYU (@BYU) March 4, 2020

"Lasting joy comes when we live the spirit as well as the letter of God's laws," Johnson states.

This is where the trouble starts. The same passage of the Bible that says a man shall not lay down with another man also notes a cloth should not be made out of two types of thread, or a garden made with different seeds. I don't know about you, but I love me some cotton/poly blends and a good cucumber and tomato salad I grew myself. But I guess I'm packing a suitcase to Satan as I speak.

"Same-sex behavior cannot lead to eternal marriage and is therefore not compatible with the principles included in the Honor Code," Johnson continues.

So, if we're following Johnson's declaration about "the word" of God, then he also REALLY doesn't want you wearing those 98% cotton shorts with 2% spandex that stretches over your love-handles. Sorry, BYU.

Teens take over 70 books from a Little Free Library. Library owner wants them back.

Little Free Libraries are all the rage these days in cities large and small. Much like the "leave-a-penny, take-a-penny" trays at grocery stores, the ubiquitous and squat book abodes offer passersby the chance to leave books or take books freely.

Caroline Barnes of Portsmouth, VA, has one such Little Free Library outside her home. She apparently only has the latest hot page-turners, as local teenagers "stole" over 70 books one night recently.

There's the rub, though. It's a Little Free Library after all. You know, the whole "free" angle.

"We put this stamp in the books that says, 'Always a gift, never for sale'," Barnes told local news station WTKR.

But earlier this week her video doorbell caught the teenagers grabbing everything they could get their hands on.

As she told WTKR, "We heard them a little on the video say, 'We are going to sell these,' and and I thought, 'You are stinkers,'" she said.

Well, they might be stinkers, but they're literate entrepreneurial stinkers. Barnes showed the video to her local police, who broke the news to her that law enforcement can't do anything because--uhh, well---you can't "steal" if it's offered for "free."

Also, this being the Commonwealth of Virginia, this means some of the books "stolen" were also Bibles.

"We are hoping maybe they are using some of it for moral guidance because they sure need it," Barnes told the news station, seemingly still unaware how free things logically can't be stolen.

Unless when God said "Thou Shall Not Steal," there was some fine print we all missed about free books not being free.

The WWE has trademarked a small portion of the Bible. Well, sort of.

At some point in life you've seen or heard of some reference to the Bible verse John 3:16. Try driving ten miles anywhere in rural Georgia or Alabama and not see a billboard with a Bible reference, least of all John 3:16.

For those uninitiated, John 3:16 is apparently one of the most oft-quoted and well known lines in the New Testament. I wouldn't know, as I tend to spontaneously combust into flames anytime I walk past a church, but here's the passage:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

In the late 1990s, the WWE (then known as the WWF) had a character/wrestler named Stone Cold Steve Austin who referenced the Book of John passage, but later rebranded it as "Austin 3:16." Millions of fans started adorning themselves in t-shirts with the new title, they chanted it, Steve Austin reveled in it, and a wannabe wrestling cult was born for a handful of years.

Due to knee and neck injuries, Austin retired as a wrestler in 2003. Fast forward to this past week in the year 2017, and the WWE has successfully trademarked the term "3:16" to use for marketing purposes.

The WWE has trademarked the term "3:16". This will be used for shirts going forward for live events "City Name 3:16" pic.twitter.com/JES2Y4d0S6

— Heel By Nature (@HeelByNatureYT) July 31, 2017

Only 14-years after the wrestling reference was remotely popular! The WWE clearly has their fingers on the pulse of good timing.

The trademark is only good for clothing, though, so fans can insert their hometown city's name onto a shirt. In essence, a shirt might say "Boise 3:16" or "Des Moines 3:16."

I know, you're probably confused why someone would wear a shirt like that. I mean, I wouldn't want anyone to know I was from Des Moines either.



tweet by: HeelByNatureYT

The book translated into the most languages is...

...The Little Prince*, by Antoine de Saint Exupéry, which was just translated into its 300th different language.

The title of the book should sound familiar, and there's a solid 50/50 shot you were forced to read it in high school or in a freshman college class, where you likely slacked off, so things are foggy, but you entirely recognize the title from somewhere. (No, it wasn't made into a Disney movie. Yet.)

The novella, written in 1943 by the Frenchman de Saint Exupéry, has found a worldwide following in the decades since its creation. The 300th translated language of the book was in Hassanya, a North African version of Arabic, popular with Moorish tribes in southern Morocco, which is where Antoine de Saint Exupéry once lived and worked at an aéropostale** for France.

That said, there are an estimated 6,500 spoken languages in the world, and 4,500 of those are spoken widely. So, yeah, The Little Prince has a ways to go.



*The Bible and other religious texts have more translations, but they're not really gripping page turners written on a whim for artistic merit, y'know?

**Before it was a retail store for preppy people with way too much discretionary income to burn, an aéropostale was a French airmail company. I assume they were fashionably dressed, though.

Oral Roberts University says it isn't interested in their students' sex lives.

That's kind of a lie. Oral Roberts University is addicted to knowing about their students' sex lives. As noted here in 2011, ORU's Honor Code goes into intricate detail about what is and isn't acceptable in their students' ongoings, including drugs, alcohol, and sexual behavior.

Specifically, part five of the Honor Code touches on the pledge regarding sex, leaving us with this nugget:


"I will not engage in or attempt to engage in any illicit, unscriptural sexual acts, which include any homosexual activity and sexual intercourse with one who is not my spouse through traditional marriage of one man and one woman."


Does the Bible have many scriptural sex acts detailed though? Or are the illicit variety of sexual acts allowed only if they're scriptural? Why has this flown under the radar for thousands of years? WHAT BOOK IN THE BIBLE SHOULD I READ??

Regardless, ORU also requires a physical component to their college education, dictating that students meet certain fitness goals or risk never graduating. This has led the university to institute a policy requiring every student to use a Fitbit fitness tracker to monitor progress. Yes, the same Fitbit that was once known to monitor a user's sexual activity.

School officials have been quick to point out that there is no voyeuristic angle to requiring the student Fitbit use. They have no care to analyze their students' sexual behaviors, they claim.

Except when they do.

The English language is killing off the word "the" slowly.

For you non-English folks, a "determiner" is really just a word that quantifies or identifies a noun. Think of the articles the and a. But a determiner can be possessive (like my or their) or something that alludes to quantity (like some or few), among other words.

It appears the way people write today is killing off the determiner though. More specifically, we're killing off the.

Over at the Language Log, a bit of research has shown a precipitous decline over the last century, with some studies showing the use of the dropping by 8% over the last 25 years, or, as they state, a 28% drop compounded over a century.

The Language Log went one step further though. They examined the use of the in two versions of the Bible's Song of Solomon, published roughly 400-years apart: The King James Bible in 1611 and the Message Bible published between 1993 and 2002.

In the King James translation, the is used as 6.57% of all words. The Message Bible? 4.06%. Same Song of Solomon passage, but two very different interpretations from centuries apart.

Not counting the italicized ones, I used the 13 times just now. I'm so King James-y.

Biblical scholar: Eve was created out of Adam's penis bone, not his rib...wait--what?

Ziony Zevit, a professor of Biblical Literature and Northwest Semitic Languages at the American Jewish University in California, claims we've all misinterpreted the Book of Genesis by one major word.

In case you've forgotten, the Book of Genesis is a fun sitcom origin story of Adam and Eve, the first two humans God created. Hijinks ensue, and a good laugh was had by all as God banishes humans from the Garden of Eden.

God created Eve out of Adam's rib, or so the story goes, because, I don't know, God was running low on human-making supplies. Prof. Zevit disagrees with the rib translation though. The problem is with the Hebrew word 'tsela,' a reference to the bone taken from Adam. Writing in Biblical Archaeology Review, Zevit explains, "This Hebrew word occurs some 40 times in the Hebrew Bible, where it refers to the side of a building or of an altar or ark, a side-chamber, or a branch of a mountain. In each of these instances, it refers to something off-center, lateral to a main structure."

Focus, people! Zevit is getting to the good part.

Through translation and lost languages, Zevit explains further that the word 'tsela' would translate to "limbs lateral to the vertical axis of an erect human body: hands, feet, or, in the case of males, the penis."

And what's the logical conclusion for all of this? Zevit writes, "Of these appendages, the only one lacking a bone is the penis." Oh, that God! Always with the low brow humor!

Well, if there's ever been something off-center with a man, it's his penis.

Everything old is new again: Possibly the oldest draft of the King James Bible discovered.

The most widely read book in English literature history now has new information as to how it came to be.

Jeffrey Alan Miller, an assistant professor of English at Montclair State University in New Jersey, was in England at the University of Cambridge looking for an unknown letter of a man named Samuel Ward. Ward was known to have worked as part of a collection of men commissioned by King James that translated the Old and New Testaments into a definitive English-language bible for the Church of England--but, alas, Miller just wanted to find a letter.

Instead, while combing through the archives, Miller stumbled upon a small book belonging to Ward, wrapped up and cataloged nearly 30-years ago as "verse-by-verse biblical commentary" with "Greek word studies, and some Hebrew notes." When Miller dove into the book he realized it wasn't just any old collection of biblical notes--but an early draft of portions of the King James Bible, which was published in 1611.

Ward's draft must have been worked on between the years of 1604, when King James commissioned the work, and 1608, when drafts were required to be submitted to a committee for review. That means Ward's small, humble little book is the earliest known document of the King James Bible ever to be found.

"There was a kind of thunderstruck, leap-out-of-bathtub moment," Miller told the New York Times. "But then comes the more laborious process of making sure you are 100 percent correct."

In all likelihood, Miller is correct, say his fellow scholars, and will be verified in the coming months.

And as for the unknown letter of Ward's that Miller was looking for?

He found that, too.

Alan Moore has finished writing million word novel 'Jerusalem.'

Moore suddenly realizes he hasn't seen the sun in years.

Not only is it a light read, but it'll work as a handy step stool in a jiffy.

For comparison's sake, Les Misérables is roughly 530,000 words long. War and Peace? 560,000. Atlas Shrugged? 645,000. Even the Bible is only roughly 800,000 words.

Despite Moore's million words and desperate need for an editor, his novel won't hold the record. That belongs to Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, which comes in at a tidy 1,267,069.










photo: The Guardian

That really inspirational/witty/clever tweet you love can now be immortalized in wood or metal.

#PermanentRetweet, a company launched this week, takes any 140 characters of unforgettable Twitter magic and etches it into permanent material. The cost? $20 for wood, $25 for metal.

Creator Brian Thompson tells Yahoo that the inspiration for the idea backfired on its original source. "It was originally inspired by my wife’s frustration with how distracted I get by Twitter, as she put it ‘looking at your phone instead of being here in the real world with us,'" Thompson says.

Now the man looks at Twitter all day and makes permanent tweets.

The question about royalties is something Thompson covers, too. "I’m giving two-thirds of the purchase price to the original tweeter," he tells Yahoo.

So all those people on Twitter that quote the Bible? Jesus is going to make some bank soon.




photo: PermanentRetweet.com

Book of Kells is now free to view online.

You most likely didn't receive a degree in medieval literature, so the Book of Kells is probably vague nonexistent What the hell's a Book of Kells? obscure material.

It's like a poor man's bible with meticulous drawings and text that's the calligraphy equivalent of Liberace, circa 1976 (minus the candelabras), and makes a Ph.D. candidate in medieval literature asthmatic with excitement.

Now, the 1,200-year old book is re-scanned with all-new digital imagery and free to view through the website of Trinity College in Dublin.








Photo: A rare medieval drawing of Geppetto and his creepy wooden puppet child, Pinocchio, in the Book of Kells.

No--wait, that's the medieval version of Mary and Jesus? So Jesus is a marionette?? I'm so confused.

You can now read the Dead Sea Scrolls online.

Should you be interested in a little light reading, the Dead Sea Scrolls are available for your online perusal with all new photography.

Nine hundred manuscripts from the scrolls are now meticulously photographed through a partnership between the Israel Antiquities Authority and Google. Five thousand fragments make up those nine hundred manuscripts, including most of the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Genesis, and the Ten Commandments.

NASA technology helped matters with photographing over one thousand of the fragments through new technology not previously available. As photographer Shai Halevi explained the process to CNN, “We took the pictures over there with all the colors, different light length, then we're getting all the exposures on the screen, and I'm combining them all into one multispectral image. And now secret writings are going to be revealed with the infrared image."

Secret writings.

Because everyone 2,000 years ago was secretly looking to communicate with the future in code.

The BBC suggests we're all Bible literate.

I'm an old-timey guy.

I'm an old-timey guy in that it takes me awhile to come across stories sometimes. Especially if they're published by the BBC. I don't know about you, but steam ships just don't seem a reliable way to communicate across the Atlantic anymore.

Well, it seems the BBC reported a little while ago that the bible--the King James Bible, specifically--has greatly influenced the way modern individuals speak. So much so that linguist David Crystal suggests in his book (Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language) that there are 257 phrases from the King James Bible used in modern English chit-chat.

Not that the King James Bible necessarily created those phrases. Just that it popularized them. The King James Bible itself coined, according to scholars, 40ish new words, including backsliding and battering ram. Experts say this all had to do with the English language evolving at this time. Shakespeare, writing around the same time, similarly influenced language. He created about 1,000 new words.

Half of which, to this day, still make no sense whatsoever to American high schoolers.

But how soon until the special edition Torah?

Too often I've been reading the Bible thinking, "You know what would jazz this up? If Jesus was into race car driving."

Well, I need wait no longer. Jesus--and entrepreneurial marketers--have heard my prayers. According to the company putting this winning idea out:

For fans of stock car racing, this Bible is a must-have. It features commentary and testimonies from some of racing’s most famous names, as well as full-color action photos of some of racing’s most famous faces.

And I bet it also contains some commentary and testimonies from the Bible's most famous names, too. Like Jesus! And Moses! But what really matters with such a Bible is whether Dale Earnhardt Jr. has a full-color photo inside.

What's great is that now you can have NASCAR racing action in all your literary choices. I pointed out a couple months ago how there are NASCAR sponsored romance novels. And now, after you feel dirty from reading those, you can do some repenting by reading the Bible in all its left-hand turning glory. Is action photography of speeding cars frozen in time not enough to get you to buy this Bible? Well, there are three features to this Bible, according to the website:

1.)  Jesus's words are highlighted in red. (Sorry, Moses.)
2.)  Maps are included. (No word on whether the maps are of Daytona and Talladega.)
3.)  Concise Concordance is included. (Eh?)

Is that not enough to sell you? Well, thankfully, they aren't crass and have advertisement using racing puns every 20 seconds to--

Ah, wait, yes they do.



Did he just say God is the "ultimate sponsor"? Hey, let's not be hasty here. Give McDonald's or Sonic a few minutes to up their financial offer before you count them out, okay?