So, big weekend just passed. I participated in the "Un-Anointing" of a Polk County (Florida) road. The media got wind, and this thing has exploded! The Huffington Post probably had the best coverage.  This is my immediate post-media-frenzy retrospective. And again:

This was a lovely experience in how far the media can miss the story. The Humanists of Florida Association, Tallahassee Atheists, Atheists of Florida, and the Freethinkers FSU went down to Polk County for two reasons:

1. To welcome all regardless of religious beliefs into Polk County because the Polk Under Prayer religious group’s oil ritual was to intended to bring those in Polk County to a “full knowledge of Jesus Christ” and to ask “God to have angels inspect every vehicle that travels into or out of this county” and “if they will not submit to God's way of living, then the prayer is to have them incarcerated or removed from the county.”

2. To help the rest of Florida understand that the Polk Under Prayer Group praying for the incarceration of all who do “not submit to God’s way” is publicly endorsed by Lakeland Mayor Gow Fields, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, and Polk County Superintendent Sherrie Nickell in their official government capacities. Thus government and one specific flavor of religion become entwined setting up separate classes of citizens.

We’ve known for some time that Polk County government is behaving theocratically. But many of us only became aware of its explicit association with Polk Under Prayer earlier this month.

See the full story here, including the making good of that incarceration threat in the arrest of HFA President EllenBeth Wachs.

http://free2think.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1458

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I just read this article claiming that Ren & Stimpy have turned 20. What?! 20 years? That show takes me back. I was a freshman in high school in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It was the 1992-93 school year. My friend David Holm and I had Mr. Max's Earth Science class together. Mr. Max had a huge, lumpy, vaguely phallic shaped statue up on a shelf.  When a student asked what it was for.  Mr. Max replied: "That's where I'll make you sit if you're bad." But, I digress.

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