Chad's News

Last New Year’s Eve, a suicide bomber in Russia was preparing to blow herself up amongst the crowds in Red Square. The bomb was to be triggered remotely by a handler, who would send a text message to a cell phone attached to the explosives. Unfortunately for the bomber, the phone received an unexpected and unwanted text several hours before the planned detonation. The bomb exploded, killing her and no one else.

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…
(via Slashdot)

In this age of Twitter and its 140-character limit on tweets, the most important aspect of URL shorteners is how many characters they use up. But don’t forget to take into account the likelihood of the site staying in business. Libya is the home of the .ly top-level domain, and is the parent of the highly-popular bit.ly URL shortener and others. These domains, however, fall under Libyan law which is based on Islamic law and is more restrictive than the United States concerning what’s objectionable. Take the case of vb.ly, an adult-friendly shortening service shut down by Libyan authorities because its home page included a picture of co-founder Violet Blue, scantily-clad and holding a bottle in her hand. The linked article has more details.

Here at the Chad’s News network command center, we always go with tinyurl.com because it’s a fairly safe bet.

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/…
(via Slashdot)

Church tax? Politicians specifying who can attend mass? Thank God for the Bill of Rights.

Link: http://www.reuters.com/…

The linked article covers several theories on the astronomical basis of the Star of Bethlehem. The conjunction of Venus and Jupiter was just recently announced and is my favorite, especially since the period between the major conjunctions was 9 months.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…

Some schools in the UK are dropping the Holocaust from their curricula because they fear the lessons may offend Muslim students. Additionally, they’ve removed the crusades because those lessons contradict what is taught in the Islamic mosques.

I’m speechless…

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/…
(via Slashdot)

Women in France who come from families with Muslim values are feeling the pressure to be virgins when they marry. But what do you do when you’re not one? Just go to the doctor and have your hymen sewn back together.

Link: http://today.reuters.com/…
(via digg)

We’ve all heard about the Shias and the Sunnis in Iraq, but a lot of Americans don’t really know what that means. The linked article gives a quick breakdown of the main differences between Sunni Islam and Shia Islam, the two primary Muslim denominations. It all comes down to the succession of power from Muhammad.

Link: http://www.neatorama.com/…

A recent digg entry shows that some people have put quite a bit of thought into the Christian prophecy of rapture. First there’s the (derogatory) Post-Rapture Post, which will deliver letters after the rapture, enabling one to send a message to non-believing friends/family explaining what’s happened. The service is guaranteed to be rapture-proof, because it’s run by Atheists. On a less-sarcastic note, Rapture Letters provides a similar email service. It’s run by Christians and works via a software dead-man switch. When the rapture occurs, the dead-man switch will not be reset, and the emails will be sent. Both services assume that critical infrastructure will be in place to enable the transmission of messages.

The most thought-provoking service is Jesus Pets. Suppose you’re instantly removed from the Earth via rapture. What will happen to your pets? Think about it. Jesus Pets states: “We are assembling a community of heathen pet-lovers to care for pets that are ‘left-behind.’ We are coordinating with feed mills and kennels in preparation for your post-apocalyptic pet care needs.”

(via digg)

Charles Krauthammer, a columnist for The Washington Post, has written an op-ed piece on the Islamic response to Pope Benedict’s speech. Here’s an exerpt from the article:

“‘How dare you say Islam is a violent religion? I’ll kill you for it’ is not exactly the best way to go about refuting the charge.”

I cannot agree with him more. The main defense I’ve heard of the violent reactions to the Pope’s speech is that these people only represent a tiny minority of the Islamic community. Baloney! The vast majority of Muslims still allow the violence by not condemning it. If mainstream Islam truly opposed the activities of this “fringe minority”, the extremists would be arrested and charged with crimes—just as we do with “Christian” abortion activists who firebomb clinics and try to kill the doctors.

And the weirdest thing is that the Islamic community does not appear to see the inconsistency between their words and actions. That’s the irony of Islam.

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

UPDATE: Just to be fair, here is a differing opinion.

Here are the 12 cartoon pictures of Mohammad that are causing so much controversy. Given the reaction, I was expecting something much worse.

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/…