Friday in the wild - October 7, 2005

W00t! In just under the wire this week with the Friday roundup.

Since I've talked about Rick Warren's views on Hurricane Katrina before, it's only fair to highlight Tim Challies' take on Warren's recent appearance on the Larry King program:

Now there were two things in this brief exchange that grabbed my attention. The first was Warren's insistence that Katrina was not God's will. Warren says that God's will is not always done on earth, suggesting that these things somehow happen outside of His will. That position is biblically indefensible. Of course Warren attempts to prove it from Scripture, stating that we need to pray "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" so that God's will can be done here and now. But this is not at all a satisfactory explanation of the meaning of those verses.

[Read Where is God in the Storm?]

Julie at Observations from the Roof of a Building notices how uncannily often an article about Tom Cruise's and Katie Holmes' love child uses the word "fetus," and takes the opportunity to do some pro-life apologetics:

[W]hile we may condone abortion for the sake of women who were thrust into a cirumstance beyond their control, it's no longer become about that. Rather, most abortions reflect the lack of responsibility that our society wants to take for its actions. Loose lifestyles that worship the god of "whatever feels good to me" produce problems where a woman discovers playing with matches will start a fire, and no one can tell me that the women who sign their names on the dotted line of an abortion request didn't know where babies come from before they got themselves into trouble in the first place. But we, as a culture, no longer hold people accountable for their actions - we give in to the pervasive sense of entitlement where it's your right to do whatever you want whenever you want without reaping what you sow. So, abortion becomes less about "righting a wrong" (as much as I disagree that killing a child will make something like rape any better . . . more on that to follow) and more about covering up our sins or selfishly seeking to maintain our me-centered lifestyles. So the "what about rape, etc." line no longer cuts it for me.

[Read It's a . . . Fetus!]

While it's a bit old now, a recent post at What Attitude Problem put me on to this absolutely true satire of Canadian film posted at The War Room (one great comment: "We are the only country that has a national cinema that it's [sic] own populace will not watch"):

Cerise: Wow! The new Egoyan. I am soooo jazzed.

Bella: They say he�s the best Canada has to offer. Even if it stiffed at Cannes.

Cerise: This stiffed at Cannes? I thought Egoyan was like, king there?

Bella: Well, I guess Egoyan won�t be �goyan back to France anytime soon. �Cause they hated it. So did some American critics too. Said it was David Lynch wannabe poseur stuff.

Cerise: Americans. Pffft. Nazi�s. Apparently the MCAA is trying to censor it.

Bella: You mean the MPAA?

Cerise: Whatever. They say the three-way sex scene between Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth and some actress means the film gets an NC-17 rating. They�re all a bunch of fascist, homophobic, mouth breathing trogle�troogle�trogela

Bella: Troglodytes?

Cerise: Yeah. Babykillers all.

[Read Behind Enemy Lines: Censorship & the Toronto International Film Festival]

I see from my referral logs that Google Images has started indexing my pages, and I'm starting to get hits on specific pictures I've uploaded. I wish I could tell what search queries gave those hits. But speaking of hits, here is this week's rather lengthy set of misses:

• clive cussler nasa hoax: Dirk Pitt was in on it too. (He didn't really raise the Titanic either.)
• white crusty things in the ocean: er, I don't know. Dead belugas?
• For no apparent reason, there was a run on people looking for information on the "second consecutive non italian pope". (Isn't that old news by now?)
• Emma Watson's religious beliefs: Judging by the other searches I see, they probably involve wearing a thong.
• emma watson wardrobe thong: See what I mean?

Until next week, enjoy!