The latest donations to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History will include puppets created by the late Jim Henson, including the original Kermit the Frog..
A total of 10 Henson-created puppets will be donated to the museum, including Henson’s oldest surviving puppet, Pierre the French Rat, which was created in a comic strip that Henson drew for his high school yearbook in 1954. … According to the Smithsonian, the original Kermit joining its collection has ping pong balls for eyes and was made from a green-felt coat discarded by Henson’s mother.
As a fan of the Muppets, Sesame Street and Jim Henson, as well as a big frog fan, I think it’s great that the original Kermit will now become part of the Smithsonian’s collection. Kermit can be seen in the performance of “I’m In Love With A Big Blue Frog” from the Muppet Show, so there’s kind of a “degrees of separation” thing going on here.
Albert Mohler, head of the Louisville, Kentucky Southern Baptist Theological Seminary recently opined: “The theory of evolution is incompatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ even as it is in direct conflict with any faithful reading of the Scriptures.”
Well, of course it is!
The Hebrew Scriptures were written by semi-nomadic Bronze Age goat herders, and the Christian reiteration was penned by a radical sect of those same goat herders, under the influence of Platonist philosophy and a mixture of Persian and Greco-Roman mythology. Science, on the other hand, is the process of examining our universe and seeking new understanding of how and why it is the way it is. Why would it surprise us to find that one was incompatible with the other?
A blogger in Germany, Malte Welding, has received notice that he is under investigation by the state police for “profanity.” This after he posted an unaltered photo of a religious icon from a Catholic church in Warr Acres, Oklahoma.
Having taken a few art history courses, I know that religious “icons” in the Byzantine style are purposefully stylized to avoid looking like a real person. This is a work-around for the Commandment against idolatry in the form of “graven images.” This one is no exception. The icon at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Warr Acres, including the “phallic” abdominal muscles, is a copy of the 12th century San Damiano crucifix which now hangs in the Basilica of Santa Chiara in Italy.
Now I’m not saying that these aren’t phallic. They clearly are. In fact, there may have been a theopolitical motive for representing Jesus with a gigantic uncircumcised penis. Who knows? I do know that iconographers are bound by certain traditional restrictions, and part of their job is to reproduce the original icon with as much attention to detail as possible. Here is a small cross-section of potential Jesus penises in Byzantine-style iconography:
Personally, I think some of these are more phallic than the Warr Acres icon. What do you think?
Today in Froggy News, we bring you a story from the Telegraph (UK) of monkey motherly love gone awry. “Swoozie”, a female swamp monkey living at the Paignton Zoo in Devon, gathered the toad from a pond at the edge of her enclosure and tried to resuscitate it for a full day before it escaped. Swoozie didn’t realize that toads are cold-blooded, and she apparently thought the amphibian needed warming up.
I’d love to know more about this story. So far, the news reports have all been clones of the same Telegraph story, so it’s hard to get any more than feel-good anthropomorphism. What I’d like to know is whether Swoozie had ever lost a child, or if she’s a sibling of other monkeys. In other words, I’d love to know why she took to this toad.
Elsewhere, the Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program in Canada “is promising ‘buckets of fun’ for anyone who wants to come out and help baby toads cross the road next week.” People are encouraged to bring buckets to carry the small Western Toads across the highway. It’s an effort to avoid a repeat of the 90 thousand toad massacre which occurred last year near Nakusp, British Columbia.
I think this is great. Hopefully they’ll have a big turnout and the toads will make it safely to their mating grounds.
In my job at the Fish-Wrapper, I sometimes have the opportunity to work on the ads for a local grocery chain that likes to put a Bible quote on their ad every week. The particular quote is left up to the designer, but gets final editorial approval by the customer. Whenever I’ve worked on this ad in the past, I’ve tried to slip by some of my favorite quotes from the Bible. For instance:
You will not eat it for just one day, or two days, or five, ten or twenty days, but for a whole month – until it comes out of your nostrils and you loathe it… – Numbers 11:20
That one got shot down pretty quickly.
This time I prevailed! I got the following quote through, and published. It’s one of my favorite Bible quotes of all time.
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. – Ecclesiastes 1:18
Unfortunately, I don’t get to work on this ad very often, so this will probably be the last time for a while that I’ll get to spread “the good news” through bizarre Bible quotes.
I was born in Mobile, Alabama in 1969 and I've lived my entire life (so far) on the Central Gulf Coast. I received my Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of South Alabama in 1992. Since 1993, I've worked as a graphic designer. I'm married, with two dogs, six cats and three mortgages. I primarily write about skepticism, free-thought, politics, atheism, separation of church and state, humor, science and my own personal experiences and issues.
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