Covid vs. Fervid

 

Siyum haShas observances—the day everybody finishes the last page of the Talmud at the end of a seven-and-a-half year cycle—at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, 2012. Some religions really are fun, I get that. Via KVPR radio, California.

The Supreme Court's ruling in favor of two applications for "relief" from the threat of Governor Andrew Cuomo, one from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, one from the ultra-orthodox Agudath Israel organization and their Kew Gardens synagogue, that he might at some point go back to issuing restrictions on the number of people allowed to attend religious services in a given area, to 25 people for an "orange zone" and 10 people for a "red zone", even though they allowed the governors of California and Nevada to do the same thing in May and June, and even though it's not actually going to happen

In a letter to the court last Thursday, Barbara D. Underwood, New York’s solicitor general, said that revisions to the color-coded zones effective Friday meant that “none of the diocese’s churches will be affected by the gathering-size limits it seeks to enjoin.” The next day, she told the court that the two synagogues were also no longer subject to the challenged restrictions.

(yes, there's a new justice since June, and she's said to be very big on what they now call "religious freedom") is smelling as good as roast turkey to some of the usual suspects, and has got my proverbial goat:

Cheap shots and pink helicopters

Authenticated photo of the unmanned aerial surveillance vehicle outside Senator Dianne Feinstein's house, June 15 2013. Image from Demotix.

We've previously noted how Senator Feinstein (R–Military-Industrial Complex) had a strange, not to say psychedelic, encounter, last summer, with an overly friendly airborne robot:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein says she once found a drone peeking into the window of her home — the kind of cautionary tale she wants lawmakers to consider as they look at allowing commercial drone use.... Feinstein said she encountered the flying robot while a demonstration was taking place outside her house. She said she went to the window to peek out — and “there was a drone right there at the window looking out at me.” (Politico)

It now seems, as Politico is (not exactly) reporting, that it was only the first blow in the Senator's war with the Central Intelligence Agency, and we have sourced some pictures of the incident here:

Holy Alliances, Batman!

I love the developing story of the conservative Christians having a summit at a ranch outside Houston to agree on a Republican candidate as their Anointed One, getting snookered by the Catholic contingent, by a little sharp electoral practice, into naming Rick Santorum (don't forget to click, it's still down in fourth place).

The Sufi saint Ibrahim ibn Adham (c. 718–c. 789) in an 18th-century Indian miniature. This version found here. He is the subect, under a garbled name, of Leigh Hunt's poem "Abu ben Adhem".

It seems that after two indecisive ballots a number of the delegates had to leave to catch planes, so a rump cast a third ballot without them, or with (possibly kind of forged) proxies, and [jump]