“Beat It” – Mariachi Style
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New service lets Jews tweet a prayer to God
JERUSALEM — Judaism’s holiest prayer site has entered the Twitter age.
The Western Wall can now be accessed through the networking service, allowing believers anywhere to have their prayers placed between its 2,000-year-old-stones without leaving home.
Saudi girl crowned Miss Moral Beauty
Saudi beauty queen Aya Ali Al Mulla trounced 274 rivals to win a crown, jewellery, cash and a trip to Malaysia, and all without showing her face, Saudi media reported on Friday.
With her face and body completely covered by the black head-to-toe abaya mandatory in the conservative Muslim kingdom, 18-year-old Mullah was named “Queen of Beautiful Morals” late on Thursday, newspapers said.
There was none of the swimsuit and evening gown competitions and heavy media coverage of beauty pageants elsewhere when the contest was decided in the eastern city of Safwa.
Too bad Miss Teen South Carolina 2007 didn’t have a chance to enter the competition.
Posted in Goofy, Pop Culture, Spiritual
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Mansion’s ‘cross’ didn’t help banker’s tax case
One of the most artful property-tax tricks in the history of Illinois — a sham of near biblical proportions — has finally been exorcised.
This is the story of Chicago banker George Michael, who lives in a gorgeous $3 million mansion in Lake Bluff. Being a man of logic and finance, he didn’t much like his $80,000 yearly property-tax bill.
So he found an Internet outfit called the Church of Spiritual Humanism. According to the church’s Web site, it’s not big on faith, but it’s all about reason:
“If you agree that Religion must be based on Reason, you can be ordained right now for free, and be still able to practice your own religious traditions by simply clicking the button below:
“ORDAIN ME.”
And lo, Michael clicked “Ordain Me,” and it was done.
Michael submitted evidence to the Illinois Department of Revenue that his mansion wasn’t really a mansion. It was a church and therefore exempt from the burden of $80,000 a year in property taxes.
The article goes on, but this is the part that cracked me up:
Michael’s evidence that his mansion was a church included a copy of his snazzy Internet clergy ID card, which authorizes him to “perform all duties of the clergy including marriages, baby namings, invocations and all manner of religious ceremonies.”
He also included a photograph of the home depicting a suspicious-looking cross on the exterior wall of the mansion. The photo appeared a tad askew.
“This equal-sided cross was drawn on the photograph with a marker and did not physically exist at the time the photo was taken,” Galvin wrote in his order.
