by Ian Punnett

OK,  let me first start by clearing up something from my last blog.  I shared the story in this space about a Los Angeles man who was on vacation in Ocean City, NJ, who stopped for a little, friendly Tarot card reading on the Boardwalk.  As the story goes:

A born-again Christian card reader June Mitchell's dire prediction about her client's hereafter led to a public dust-up, a police investigation and a petition drive, the Press of Atlantic City reports.

Mitchell told client Jamie Cohen, 22, who is gay, that he was going to hell. Cohen stormed out without paying her $20 fee, and that's when things got really ugly.

According to the news account, Cohen returned to retrieve his cell phone, which he had left under his chair. He says Mitchell ordered him out of the store and, in front of a crowd, used an anti-gay slur.

Mitchell says she had not meant to offend him.

"I wanted to make him happy," she says.

As a born-again Christian, Mitchell admits her religious doctrine opposes ****sexuality. (ANNE-MARIE COTTONE, NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM)

After that I said, “The only thing better than the born-again Christian tarot card reader surprised that this gay client was not happy with being told he was going to hell is that the man has to go back and get his phone after stiffing her the $20.  Awkward.”

And then, just to be clear, I made the point:  “The Bible never says that gay people are going to hell any more or less than straight people will--not once, not anywhere.  Her church might claim it but they’re making it up.

“Meanwhile, the born-again Christian tarot card reader apparently hasn’t read Leviticus 20:27:

“A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones; their blood shall be upon them.

“Or Exodus 22:18

“You shall not permit a sorceress to live.”

And then I made a comment to the effect that I wasn’t calling the woman a witch and I wasn’t hoping that any harm be done to her but I thought she might want to keep the whole “I’m a fortune teller” thing on the QT just in case other people in her church aren’t reading the Bible all that closely either.

Which got me this letter from Angie who said, in part, “I’m wiccan and I surely hope I didn’t hear you say it was OK to kill this fortune teller if she had been a real witch.”

To which I replied, that she was right, I surely didn’t say that and wouldn’t ever mean to imply that but I’m glad I have the opportunity to amplify that.

Personally, I don’t spend any time with any of the lists in the Bible of the people that it says it’s OK to kill or marginalize.  I’m not making any apologies for the Bible on that, it says what it says, but it doesn’t say what I say and it doesn’t say things that I wish it would say now but that’s all I have to say about that.

I think when we go down the road of thinking about whom we have a right to kill--any of us--we all end up like that nutbar shooting up that fitness center just because his life isn’t going the way he thinks it ought to.

I told you about a couple of intriguing UFO stories last night, one from England, one from Florida.  Whether or not it’s true that that family in Florida is being visited by grays, reptilians and even dragons, there is videotape proof of this story (see link below):

A Wesley Chapel, Florida, triangle UFO sighting has been termed a "true unknown" by Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) Field Investigator Morgan Beall.

The July 17, 2009, sighting has multiple witnesses and the event was videotaped. The object had three points of light. Two of the lights were white, and a third light was blue.

The object hovered in the sky, but tilted back and forth, throughout the multi-hour sighting.

The object returned to that same location again on July 25, 2009, and was also videotaped by the witnesses.

www.examiner.com/x-2363-UFO-Examiner~y20...

I think this should serve as reminder for all of us at least to have a cell phone camera always at the ready.  Whether it’s still images or video, we ought to practice getting out our cell phones and trying to do****ent the amazing things we come across.  And those cell phone cameras are getting better and better as science marches on . . . 

(PhysOrg.com) -- Currently, most nuclear fusion power plants are large, expensive projects that will take decades to benefit from. But a startup company in Vancouver, Canada, called General Fusion is taking the fast track to fusion, with a plan to build a working prototype fusion power plant within the next decade at a cost of less than a billion dollars.

General Fusion has recently raised enough financial support - $13.5 million - from public and private investors to start the project.

The reactor consists of a metal sphere with a diameter of three meters. Inside the sphere, a liquid mixture of lithium and lead spins to create a vortex with a vertical cavity in the center. Then, the researchers inject two donut-shaped plasma rings called spheromaks into the top and bottom of the vertical cavity - like "blowing smoke rings at each other," explains Doug Richardson, chief executive of General Fusion.  (physorg.com)

I hope when it’s time to get this product out to the market, the owners have the good sense to name this amazing little machine, “Mr. Fusion,” just like in Back to the Future.  I was watching that movie with my kids the other day and I laughed when I saw the professor using his “Mr. Fusion” machine and my kids didn’t get it because there aren’t any commercials for “Mr. Coffee” on TV anymore!  Speaking of my kids--including my four-legged one:

You may have thought that a dog has little on its mind other than eating and walkies.

However, it turns out they are also capable of pondering a spot of basic maths or the meaning of certain words.

In fact, some dogs are as bright as a child, say scientists. They can understand up to 250 words and gestures, count up to five and perform simple arithmetic, putting them on a par with a two-year-old.

But it seems not all dogs are equal. Border collies, whose cunning has long been appreciated by shepherds, are at the top of the class. The dunces include bassett hounds and the British bulldog.

Ouch--I love bulldogs.  The one I had was delightful--except for her gas.  You’ll hear that a lot from bulldog lovers.  Mine was so lethargic that I just don’t see how anybody could say she wasn’t bright.  She would eat, lie down, stink up the room while we were watching TV while we ran around opening up windows and trying to breath.  I mean, who were the stupid ones?  

Finally from Wired Magazine:

You can’t hear it, but the Earth is constantly humming. And some parts of the world sing louder than others.

After discovering the mysterious low-frequency buzz in 1998, scientists figured out that the Earth’s hum is caused not by earthquakes or atmospheric turbulence, but by this radio show!  That’s right, the buzz that this radio show creates can actually be measured by scientists.

(Oh, or the global buzz might also be caused by ocean waves colliding with the sea floor, primarily from the Pacific coast of North America.  That’s the current back-up theory from scientists in case this radio show ever goes off the air and the buzz continues . . . I’ll keep you toasted . . . )