A Mountain I'm Willing to Die On: "If our goal is to be tolerant of people who are different than we are, Chase, then we really are aiming quite low. Traffic jams are to be tolerated. People are to be celebrated."

The Onion: Gay Teen Worried He Might Be Christian.

After a brilliant first season, Mr. Deity seemed to spin its wheels a bit, but the two most recent episodes — Mr. Deity and the Skeptic and Mr. Deity and Da Man — have recaptured the glory.

I just finished The Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs, in which he attempts to follow the Bible as literally as possible for a full year, and really enjoyed it. I was expecting humorous mockery of some of the absurd rules a la that Jeb Bartlett lambasting of the Dr. Laura character on The West Wing—and it is indeed very funny—but instead I was quite impressed by how hard Jacobs works to get at what the real meaning behind these rules are, his delving into many different sects, practices, and interpretations, and in general how even-handed he is about the whole thing.

That said, his long-suffering wife’s response to his following Leviticus 15:20, “everything upon which she leis during her impurity [menstruation] shall be unclean; everything also upon which she sits shall be unclean,” is a riot:

I came home this afternoon and was about to plop down on my official seat, the gray pleather armchair in our living room.

“I wouldn’t do that,” says Julie.

“Why?”

“It’s unclean. I sat on it.” She doesn’t even look up from her TiVo’d episode of Lost.

OK. Fine. Point taken. She still doesn’t appreciate these impurity laws. I move to another chair, a black plastic one.

“Sat in that one, too, “ says Julie. “And the ones in the kitchen. And the couch in the office.”

In preparation for my homecoming, she sat in every chair in the apartment, which I found annoying but also impressive. It seeming in the biblical tradition of enterprising women—like Judith, who seduced the evil general Holofernes, only to behead him when he was drunk.

I finally settle on Jasper’s six-inch-high wooden bench, which she had overlooked, where I tap out emails on my PowerBook with my knees up to my chin.

The Big Picture has a fantastic set up, Scenes from Pakistan. The great photography is offset by the grim news:

The government of Pakistan announced on Monday that it would accept Islamic Sharia Law to be implemented in its Swat Valley region, as part of a truce with local Taliban leaders. Militants had been demanding Sharia law, attacking opponents, burning scores of girls’ schools and banning many forms of entertainment. Gun battles between Pakistani security forces and militants have killed hundreds, while up to a third of the valley’s 1.5 million people have fled.

Evil Tines at Smithsonian magazine:

In the 11th century, a Byzantine princess ate her sweetmeats with a forbidden object: a two-tined gold fork. At the time, the Church so opposed forks that after she succumbed to the plague, a Franciscan theologian called her untimely death "a just punishment from God."

That's fair.

Two things I printed out for bedside reading:

• Richard Dawkins' letter to his (then?) 10-year-old daughter on believing (he's often too atheist for little ol' agnostic me, but is still compelling).
• Malcolm Gladwell on Project Delta and the quest for the perfect cookie.

I think I got both of these from Jason Kottke.