Jonathan's blog

Via Today's Papers, from an article of the same title by Edward Wyatt in the NY Times:

O. J. Simpson, who was acquitted 11 years ago in the 1994 death of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald L. Goldman has written a book and will appear on television telling "how he would have committed the murders if he were the one responsible," his publisher and the Fox television network said on Tuesday.

Mr. Simpson was acquitted of criminal charges, but a civil court found him responsible for the deaths, and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in restitution to the families. Only a part of the amount has been paid, and relatives of the victims have continued to pursue their claims. It is not clear how much, if any, of the royalties on the sale of the book will go to the victims' families. A Regan representative and a spokeswoman for Fox declined to comment beyond the news release.

At least one other network said it had passed on the chance to bid on the TV special because it thought the content was of questionable taste. Rebecca Marks, a spokeswoman for NBC Universal Television, said the network passed because "from an advertising point of view, from a public relations point of view, everything, it was impossible." The TV special will be on Fox during the final week of the November sweeps, the period when local network affiliates measure viewership in order to determine what rates they can charge for advertising.

Via Phil Wilson's Blog. Here are some YouTube videos worth watching. The Kiwi video is all over the net, and the other two are also enjoyable.

From an article of the same title on beliefnet:

According to Sir Elton John, the world could be a more compassionate place free of "hateful lemmings" if only all religion was banned. In an interview with Observer Music Monthly magazine, Sir Elton says that while he loves "the idea of the teachings of Christ," he still believes that, as a whole, "organized religion doesn't seem to work."

This isn't an uncommon sentiment: the teachings of Jesus are good but organized religion and modern Christianity are bad. For example, I've heard Bill Maher say similar things. What's at the root of this sentiment? Do people like John and Maher misunderstand the teachings of Jesus and what he was all about...or is the modern church distracted and failing to live out and emphasize the teachings of Jesus?

Last month there was a bit of controversy about the excision of religious content from episodes of Veggie Tales airing on NBC. From an article of the same title on beliefnet by Chansin Bird of the Religion News Service:

Fans of VeggieTales, those lovable animated singing and talking vegetables, may notice a change in the episodes aired on NBC's Saturday morning cartoon lineup: There's less editing than originally feared. "The last batch of episodes are airing with very little editing," VeggieTales creator Phil Vischer wrote in an e-mail to Religion News Service. "Not none whatsoever, but very nearly none whatsoever. Much less than earlier episodes." Originally, NBC had asked for changes in four of 13 episodes -- mostly editing out references to God and the Bible. Vischer said he was not thrilled with the edits, but was happy to have the cartoons on network television.

Here are some things that I've noticed in downtown San Francisco (in the few blocks around the Hilton) that distinguish it from home.

• Several massage parlors on every block.
• Gratuitous honking of horns in traffic.
• UGG boots on every hottie.
• Indian Restaurants galore. Today I noticed one right across the street from another.
• Four grown men (definitely not younger than high-school age) riding skateboards in the middle of morning traffic on Monday.