Leesburg, VA is the focus of a Christmas controversy this year, as ten different groups struggle over who gets to use a coveted spot on the county courthouse lawn for their holiday display. A 2009 report from the county’s arborist that the condition of a tree that stands on the spot was too fragile for routine use by displays resulted in a court decision that the site had to accommodate holiday displays other than the traditional nativity creche, and so this year the various groups who wanted access to the site all get their shot for one weekend each. Among the displays this year, a Pastafarian version of the nativity, with the Flying Spaghetti Monster held in the arms of the Virgin Mary, while admiring pirates and lawn gnomes look on.

Needless to say, the various displays have been met with typical Christian “compassion” in the form of protest and vandalism, and the newly-elected all-Republican county board of commissioners say they’ll “fix” the “problem”. I’ll bet.

Plus, he’ll kick your ass to the curb if he thinks you’ve got Alzheimer’s. Now THAT’s Christian compassion!

This time it will kill us all, FOR SURE! We promise!

Recently, Asia Times ran this story recapping and analyzing what actually happened at Fukushima during the minutes of the March earthquake that led to the even greater disaster as the tsunami hit. The entire Fukushima site was in trouble with safety inspectors for years, coming to a head in 2002, but problems persisted for years afterward. Even without the one-two punch of the natural disasters, it seems likely from this story that a serious accident at Fukushima was merely a matter of time. Also, if you missed it last week, the IEEE has republished blog posts made by an anonymous cleanup worker who operates a robot in the facility to remove materials where the radiation is too high for humans. The posts, which were extremely critical of TEPCO management of the cleanup operations, were deleted from their original website after drawing attention, but the IEEE recovered the posts and republished them to much attention. Last week, Naoto Kan, the prime minister of Japan, resigned because of criticism of the government’s handling of the crisis.

If you get your news from the American news media, you probably didn’t hear this tidbit: the U.S. government has negotiated an agreement to leave up to 25,000 troops in Afghanistan until 2024. You hear a lot about the troops coming home in 2014, but not so much about the “special advisors” staying for at least another full decade in the single biggest waste of money and materiel in the history of humankind. That, of course, presumes that we haven’t completely bankrupted ourselves before then.

PZ Meyers had this story about a “pastor” who thinks it would be great if there could be a national registry of all of us atheists just like they have for “convicted sex offenders, ex-convicts, terrorist cells…” and other undesirables. It would be for “information purposes”:

Now , many (especially the atheists ) , may ask “Why do this , what’s the purpose ?” Duhhh , Mr. Atheist , for the same purpose many States put the names and photos of convicted sex offenders and other ex-felons on the I-Net – to INFORM the public ! I mean , in the City of Miramar , Florida , where I live , the population is approx. 109,000 . My family and I would sure like to know how many of those 109,000 are ADMITTED atheists ! Perhaps we may actually know some . In which case we could begin to witness to them and warn them of the dangers of atheism . Or perhaps they are radical atheists , whose hearts are as hard as Pharaoh’s , in that case , if they are business owners , we would encourage all our Christian friends , as well as the various churches and their congregations NOT to patronize them as we would only be “feeding” Satan .

Gee, wouldn’t it just be easier if we all wore a patch or something?

Former BBC producer Jo Glanville has written an in-depth piece for the London Review of Books chronicling the battle over the future of one of the (if not THE) pre-eminent broadcasting institutions, the BBC World Service. While the mission of the World Service unquestionably needs to be re-evaluated in the era of the Internet, British domestic politics may have more to do with its fate than the information age.

Anything else I can help you feel bad about today? I’ve got plenty of links.

Wikipedia list of Christian evangelist sex scandals 1920-present.

(P.S., is it my imagination, or does Jesus totally look like the guy on the Zig-Zag Papers in this picture?)

And this is how the Christians responded:

(via The Friendly Atheist)

But it could have been worse. In Cincinnati, the billboard company who sold space to the Cinncinnati CoR group was forced to move the sign to a different location because they were receiving death threats. As luck would have it, though, the billboard was moved to a more prominent location, so the threats sort of backfired in terms of shouting down the message.

The Friendly Atheist also recently had this post with a collection of most of the different public message campaigns that have occurred in the past year, beginning with the now-famous bus ads in the U.K. Meanwhile, this site has been collecting some of the “rebuttals” from Christian groups like these charmers:

Can you feel the love?

Maybe tomorrow there will be less ranting here. Maybe not.