Chicken Born With Duck Feet
A chicken in Columbia has surprised everyone by being born with webbed feet and legs like a duck. Vetinary experts say that the chicken is not a result of cross-species breeding, and is just a genetic mishap.
(Thanks, Adam.)

Divine Or Delusional?
wcbstv.com has a gallery of images showing items on which religious icons have allegedly been found. We've covered a few of them here, but some of the images were new to me. I found I could generally make out the figure or face or whatever was being claimed to be there, if I squinted or tilted my head, however some of them were really beyond my ability to make out, even though I was trying to. Personally, I accredit these phenomena to pareidolia.

Vatican Newspaper Denounces Fake Penitent
The Vatican Newspaper has attacked a reporter who, in the course of writing an article for a magazine, made false confessions to 24 different priests. The article the reporter was writing was researching whether priests followed the strict teachings of the church, and how they handled difficult situations in which to give advice.

Museum of Hoaxes is Site of the Week
Scifi.com has this week chosen the Museum of Hoaxes as its Site of the Week.
(Thanks, Hulitoons.)

Duck Tales... Wooo ooo!

I don't understand how anyone could believe the last one. Museum of Hoaxes site of the week? Please. That's such an obvious hoax.

(Yes, I'm just teasing. )

I've always loved how every male face is that of Jesus and every female is Mary, when we don't even know what they looked like, and the general impression of them that we have doesn't even make any sense. And if there is a god, wouldn't he be too busy taking care of the world to fry the image of his son onto a pancake? I think that seeing diving images on objects is actually a fairly pessimistic view of religion, where god must create these small 'miracles' to get people's attention, but is doing nothing to stop poverty or war ... if you believe that your lord will take the time to make a water stain into the image of Mary but won't stop innocent children from dying is there really any hope for the afterlife, or this life for that matter?

*divine, not diving, lol.

Aww, but I like the notion of diving images, Dracul!



The thing I wonder about with those images is how people know it's Jesus in them, and not somebody else like Satan or Moses or Muhammad or Elvis?

"... The thing I wonder about with those images is how people know it's Jesus in them, and not somebody else like Satan or Moses or Muhammad or Elvis?"

If you'd been reading the Museum of Hoaxes faithfully, Accipiter, you'd know they're really images of Emmett Kelly.

Is the Church upset about the false penitent because he made false confessions, or because he dared to apply a little critical thinking skills and the scientific method to a Church-related activity? You know how much the Popes hate them scientists. (Galileo was only recently taken off the banned books list)

Dracul, I spent several months thinking about why God would allow evil in the world and came up with this: Humans must have free will or they are nothing different from rocks, tables or other inanimate objects. A loving God would grant free will as a sign of love and respect. Free will requires that the individual can choose to do evil, otherwise the will is not free. To give free will the chance to work, chaos and randomness must exist in the world or else choice becomes less free, or perhaps even non-existant. So, children in poverty, or any other such condition you wish to rail against, exists. God could easily eliminate such conditions, but doing so would also eliminate free will and reduce us to non-beings. We would exist, but as nothing more than the equivalent of finger puppets.

I hope I have explained myself clearly.

You know, if you would read a little in the way of philsophical works, maybe take a few college classes, you might come to realize that such an ontological position on free will and the nature of good and evil has already been explored and defended for thousands of years by hundreds of qualified philosophers, theologists, and even behaviorists and fiction authors.

You're sort of wasting your time, retreading the same path that has already been marked out, surveyed, and traveled by many, many minds much more wise and qualified that yours or mine. It's like you're discovering America all over again--it's been done, and better.

It's just that it's rather pretentious of you to present such a position as being your own idea when it's such an established concept. The fact that you don't KNOW it's an established concept just ends up implying a sad ignorance.


"I think that extraordinary people are not subject to the same rules and laws as the masses."

"Oh, so you agree with Neitszche then. Neat."

"Who? No, this is MY idea, came up with it all by myself."

"Riiiiight...."

Barghest, not everyone can afford to attend university classes just for the fun of it, or to see what was learned over the centuries. So I am not original in this, so what? Does this invalidate my thoughts? I would suggest to you that instead of worshiping a piece of paper (i.e. a college degree) you might consider that it is pretentious to believe that ordinary people cannot think such thoughts. I gave a brief explanation of what I did, and in its brevety I left out many details. Would you have prefered a post of several thousand pages explaining not only my thought processes but also what efforts I made to see where what I decided correlated with any philophers and theologens? Or were you just looking for a chance to snipe? If you do expect a play-by-play sorry, I'm not going to hunt down every book I read, even the ones I kept, just to validate your apparent belief that only people with a college degree have intelligence.

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck it must be a duck.

If it walks like a duck but talks like a chicken, serve it with a nice orange glaze anyway.

One who cannot spell Nietzsche ought not lecture others about erudition.

The fact that the chicken has duck feet is less surprising to me than the fact that it was "born."

I'm rather annoyed by all these "Marian Visions" people keep getting. When Mary appears, she just appears, simple as that. If she wants to leave an image of herself, she'll tell somebody. A water stain is not a "vision" of the BVM.

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I think the Vatican is upset that the reporter committed sacrilege by profaning one of the sacraments. The "Scientific Method" has nothing to do with it, since his test wasn't really "scientific" at all.

It's not like he uncovered anything unusual, either- I could have told you that plenty of priests would waffle on telling penitents to follow Church teaching. Heck, I've confessed mortal sins and had some priests tell me not to even worry about them- bad advice, to be sure, but it happens sometimes. The reporter could have easily collected the same information just by asking around.

I particularly liked the image of "Jesus" that looked like a one-eyed pirate in a Darth Vader breathing apparatus.