It's round-up time again! Yeagh! Yeagh!

It’s been a long Hellatus (sorry, Supernatural fans), but I’ve been active on Twitter that whole time. Surprise

I’ve decided that a good way to keep content on the blog might be to round-up the week’s tweets in a blog post (which then gets re-tweeted. Ha-HA!). Here goes:

* Wikipedia Bans Church of Scientology | Wired.com

* Police tell cafe owner: Stop showing Bible DVDs, or we will have to arrest you | Daily Mail via @IanGBlack

* Google makes 5 Dead Sea Scrolls searchable | CNN Belief Blog

* Petition on White House website asks for investigation of Scientologists | Beliefnet News

* Torah Games? Bringing Torah to Life Through Game Design | State of Formation

* Thich Nhat Hanh is now a 3D Animated Comic Book | SF Gate via @walterm

* Woman read son’s religion paper minutes before slaying husband, tech expert testifies | NY Daily News

* British police give partial apology, say cafe owner can play Bible videos | Beliefnet News

* “Ha! Face of Jesus shows up on used Nintendo ES system. Kotaku has pics. Owner says: answer to ‘What Would Jesus Play?’” via @godwired

* “Bizarre video game based on a psychotic retelling of the near sacrifice of Isaac: ‘The Binding of Isaac’” via @godwired

I also realised I had some draft posts hanging around, including one I thought I’d lost. Stay tuned for more stuff soon!

Alan Berning

Trying to clear a bottleneck of stories I haven’t posted on. Mea maxima culpa.

Heidi Campbell ‘Can an online community be a church ? IRS says “No”!‘, When Religion Meets New Media (24/8/10)

Joshua M. Z. Stanton ‘Cyber Dialogue: The Future of Inter-Religious Engagement‘, Patheos (6/9/10)

Eli Yishai ‘Shas minister shuts down online payments on Shabbat, holidays‘, Haaretz.com (14/9/10)

Matthew Razak ‘Fallout Online viral advertising moves to religion‘, Destructoid (18/9/2010)

Reuters ‘Vatican Bank head in money laundering probe–sources‘, FaithWorld (21/9/10)
Vatican probably the only place in the world that allows people to use ATM’ s in Latin.

Mollie ‘Code name Esther‘, GetReligion (1/10/10)
The Biblical connection of the computer worm that got through Iran’s Digital Veil (that’s what we’re calling it, by the way).

Reuters ‘France charges man for burning, urinating on Koran‘, FaithWorld (5/10/10)

Randall Munroe ‘Online Communities 2‘, xkcd (5/10/10)
You can see “Religious Blogs” in the lower right-hand corner, east of the “Sea of Zero (0) Comments” and southwest of the “Blogosphere (Core Region)”.

tmatt ‘Bible-toting bullies with webcams?’, GetReligion (5/10/10)
and in the same vein
Jeff Kunerth ‘Religion plays different roles in cyberbullying debate‘, Orlando Sentinel (5/10/10)
as well as
Erica Brown ‘Outrage at humanity’s use of technology‘, Washington Post (7/10/10)

Elizabeth Drescher ‘Gen X, Gadgets, and God‘, Religion Dispatches (8/10/10)

Reuters ‘Brazil “values voters” go YouTube against prez hopeful Rousseff‘, FaithWorld (8/10/10)

Phew! That’s broken the back of it. Some more tomorrow, then we return to our regular programming schedule.

Austrian nationalists the Freedom Party recently hosted flash game Moschee Ba Ba (Bye Bye, Mosque) on their website. It has since been taken down, but the site still shows the basis of the game: a stylised skyline of Styria province. Apparently minarets (some complete with muezzins) would periodically bob up for the player to shoot down. A notice now graces the site that translates (roughly) to:

Dear visitors

Due to the banned political influence of our enemies this game has been forbidden by the Austrian Justice!

Now you decide on 26th September…

(Apologies to all Austrians, I’m sure there’s all sort of nuance lost.)

A political ad from the lead up to the Swiss referendum

Aside from the Swiss referendum on minarets last November (see above), this stems from a more recent Austrian debate sparked, in part, by Anas Schakfeh, one leader in Austria’s Muslim community, who said that he hoped for a future in which a mosque with a visible minaret would be in each of Austria’s nine provinces. The game originally ended with the message:

Styria is full of minarets and mosques. So vote for Dr Gerhard Kurzmann and the Freedom party on 26th September so that this doesn’t happen.

Styria currently has no minaretted mosques, so this statement must refer to the ‘near future’ depicted in the game, but the player is obviously left to infer what they wish.

via ‘Far-right anti-mosque video game triggers outrage in Austria‘, Reuters (1/9/10)

John Gabriel's Greater Internet Dickwad Theory, by Penny Arcade

I wasn’t following it at the time so this may not be news to anyone, but apparently the Obama administration’s Citizen’s Briefing Book – a collection of policy ideas submitted electronically by American citizens in the lead-up to the Inauguration – showed some interesting results. 44,000 proposals were floated by members of the public, and these garnered 1.4 million votes.

In the middle of two wars and an economic meltdown, the highest-ranking idea was to legalize marijuana, an idea nearly twice as popular as repealing the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy. Legalizing online poker topped the technology ideas, twice as popular as nationwide wi-fi. Revoking the Church of Scientology’s tax-exempt status garnered three times more votes than raising funding for childhood cancer.

(My emphasis.)

Much as I like the democratic potential of electronic voting, I am worried about possible abuses of the system, although it does seem to be going well in the European countries and American states it’s been implemented in. I’m sure none of the usual safeguards were in place in the Citizen’s Brief, however.

There are certain themes netizens will usually return to. One of these is the legalisation of marijuana. Another is an antagonism of Scientology

… the Internet’s openness allows well-organized groups to simulate support,to “capture and impersonate the public voice,” as [James Fishkin, a Stanford political scientist] wrote in an e-mail exchange.

As we’ve seen time and time again, John Gabriel’s Internet Dickwad Theory will almost always apply (the image above is a T-shirt version of this strip).

Anand Giridharadas ‘“Athens” on the Net‘, New York Times (12/9/09)