Oh, boy, is this one going to run and run

Christians Sue For Right Not To Tolerate Policies

Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant.

Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she's a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.

Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she's demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy.

And a little further on in the article we find out why:

In their lawsuit against Georgia Tech, Malhotra and her co-plaintiff, a devout Jewish student named Orit Sklar, request unspecified damages. But they say their main goal is to force the university to be more tolerant of religious viewpoints.

So let me get this straight. They're suing to stop tolerance...to increase tolerance? (headclutch)

I have got to stop reading the news before I've had my tea. (staggers off, muttering)

Tags: Christianity, religion, tolerance, intolerance, no I don't mean the film and I really wish I did

The Morning Star has a new neighbor

The Venus Express has successfully gone into orbit. Yay ESA!

After the end of the main engine burn, Venus Express still had to perform a few automatic operations. These included re-orienting the solar panels towards the Sun and one of its high gain antennas (the smaller High Gain Antenna 2) towards Earth.

It is through this antenna that the spacecraft established the first communication link with Earth and started to send back information about its health status. The spacecraft data are sent to ESA’s European Spacecraft Operations Centre (ESOC) via ESA’s Cebreros ground station near Madrid. The data downlink lasts for a few hours.

(Long enough for him to start blogging, it looks like. Wonder if that downlink counts as broadband?)

Tags: Venus Express, Venus, ESA, European Space Agency

Who knew the Mysterons had an LJ?

You find out something new every day. (Although sometimes very belatedly. They don't post a whole lot, either.)

1:36am:
This is Captain Black, relaying a message from the Mysterons.

The Mysterons have spent the last several weeks in seclusion at their citadel on Mars. They have been considering many things, primarily to do with their ongoing war of nerves against your species.

They have been deliberating on the nature of the robotic life form known as spiritrover. They have been observing this being since inadvertently damaging her shortly after her arrival on Mars. They have come to greatly admire her strength, determination, powers of recovery, and independence. This has caused them to re-evaluate much of what they believed to be true about her creators - you Earthmen.

Now their deliberations are complete, and the Mysterons command me to deliver to you this offer:

They will forgive your attack upon their Martian complex and call off their war of nerves against your species if you provide them with spiritrover's telephone number.

Is that all? Message complete? I hope you realize how deeply, deeply embarrassing this is for me. But, of course, you do, or you would have posted the offer yourselves. Don't give me that. The only thing wrong with your computer is its jammed caps-lock key... oh, what now?

Oh, yes. Under these terms, you are also required to keep opportunitygrrl at least 50 kilometers from the pyramids of Cydonia at all times. The Mysterons have nothing against her and follow her LJ, but she is far too chirpy for direct contact.

The Mysterons have spoken.