Does your insurance cover "acts of God?"

I've often heard about insurance companies that weasel out of paying a claim on account of the damage being caused by an "act of God"--apparently any sort of unpredictable (at least by the insurance company) event. This, however, gives new meaning to the term:

Insurers have withdrawn the cover on their virginity taken out by three sisters in the event of the second coming of Christ.
...
The cover was meant to pay for the cost of bringing up Christ if one of them had a virgin birth.

Avast, me holy harties

Let's make learning about the Bible fun for children. Let's adopt a theme of murder, rape, and pillage! That's the approach taken by the Mt. Zion Baptist Church in southern Pennsylvania:

Arr, we'll be teachin' ye how to swoop in on yer prey like a hawk on a pigeon. One lesson that is a favorite o' mine is the story of how Jael, the godly wife of Heber hammered a tent peg into the brain of Sisera, the Canaanite general, who foolishly thought he had found sanctuary in the house of Heber his friend. Now don't that just make ye feel warm all over?

Aye, ye will learn that Noah was a pirate who sailed around the sea,
Wi' half a dozen wenches and a big menagerie.
He failed the first season when it rained for forty days,
For in that sort o' weather, privateering never pays.

And also:
Esau was a pirate of the wild and wooly make,
Half the swag belonged to him and half belong to Jake;
Now Esau thought that his right to the swag was rather bum,
So he sold it out to Jakey for a sandwich and some rum.

Do ye know the real reason Jesus was put to death? Aye, the Roman armada caught him when he had come ashore to bury his swag.

So, me little precious darlin's, join me crew this summer and learn some real lessons, else I'll be comin' after ye and sendin' ye down to Davy Jones' locker!

Why I can't donate to PBS this time

No, it's not because Pledge Month comes every 3 weeks. It's because PBS is supposed to be educational TV, for crying out loud. But when it came on tonight, here was yet another quack selling a load of shit to the viewers.

This was a new one, Steve Lancelota, who was selling his Diet Code, which, he claims, is based on Da Vinci's Golden Ratio. Code? Da Vinci? Is this guy trying to ride certain coatails? Sure, Leonardo had lots of nutritional advice to give, hidden in a secret code, some 500 years ago.

Last night, they had some financial guru, with such sage advice as "your spouse is not really a financial asset."

If they want my money, they're going to have to broadcast a really good show, not the shit I can get from a Kwiki-Mart tabloid.