So what’s this I hear about the Templars wanting to sue the Vatican?

August 4th, 2008 • christianity, idiocy
Tags: christianity, legal

While thumbing through my shared RSS feeds in Google Reader, I came across this little gem: Knights Templar demanding “good name” and assets back from Vatican after 700 years. I’m not joking, this is a real article. Now, the fact that it’s from The Register makes it suspicious enough as they’re not only an IT site, they’re a bunch of wily prankster, treating everyday like April Fool’s Day.

I have a feeling this is another parody article but if it’s not, more power to the Templars! Not so much for sticking it to the Pope but for having the balls to go to court over 700 year old assets that may or may not have actually existed. I’m sure, locked somewhere in a dusty “Eyes only” vault, the Vatican does have some records of what assets they seized from the Order seven centuries ago but good luck getting it out of them. Suing for 100 billion Euros? Which one of them is doing the Dr. Evil pinky-to-mouth expression? There’s a part of me that wants this so very much to be real. A (now vaguely) religious and righteous fraternal Order suing the pants off the (now vaguely) relevant keepers of the coffers.

There’s just so many Monty Python jokes that can, and will, come of this.

Via Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins’ shared news items

Florida Governor Crist starts statewide push for alternative fuels

August 4th, 2008 • environmentalism
Tags: environmentalism

In a statement at the 3rd annual Florida Farm to Fuel conference, Crist announces enhanced support for alternative energy sources. No doubt much of his new found environmentalism enthusiasm has been spurred by his recent visit to the UK, meeting with leaders in their country’s push to energy alternatives.

I never thought much of Crist when he was elected, I knew I was just happy to have Jeb Bush no longer in office and in a position to plummet our state further away from progress. While there were some recent slip-ups with the proposed “I Believe” rights-infringing license plate and the push by legislators to “teach the controversy” in science classes — both of which failed — Charlie’s proven to be a pretty resilient guy in office. It seems not a week goes by when Gov. Crist isn’t making a statement about a support for or a push for developing alternative energy sources or trying to increase government-backed conversation efforts in the state. I applaud pushing for more alternative energy sources, especially in the way of solar and wind given that there are literally huge portions of this state completely unused. Putting up wind farms in central and coastal Florida can generate quite a bit of energy but one must be careful of ecological damage. The latter will be difficult to avoid with solar farms given how much room they need so I hope that Crist is taking it to his cabinet and underlings to vie for and research ecologically-sound and profitable solutions for us to use.

Maybe he’ll start taking hints from places like California that are offering huge incentives to install solar panels on homes and increase grants and incentives for businesses and developers to build more environmentally intelligent.