Every few years, a TV series decides to tackle the topic of Wicca, particularly around Halloween. This year, the offender is CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Often, the point of such episodes is to defend Wicca (albeit usually with watered down versions of actual beliefs), but the bizarre mix of misinformation,Continue Reading
St. Margaret of Antioch, also known as St. Margaret the Virgin and St. Margaret the Martyr, is purported to have lived at the end of the 3rd century during the great persecution of Christians under the reign of Emperor Diocletian. Disowned for converting to Christianity, Margaret moved to the countrysideContinue Reading
Discarding Images, a common source of crazy medieval images for me, often labels their images in a very straight-forward manner, such as “Jupiter Castrates Saturn,” which is exactly what it sounds like, and is in no way safe for work. Every once in a while, however, I encounter an imageContinue Reading
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. – US Constitution, 1st Amendment The first amendment was written in a country full of religious refugees (and descendants of the same) who fled fractured Europe where millions of people had died in warsContinue Reading
Syfy recently embraced an unlikely premise: create a TV sequel to a movie few saw and fewer liked. Thus, out of Legion came Dominion. Dominion occurs 25 years after Dominion in a world mostly destroyed by angels. God turned his back on the world, and the angels believe it isContinue Reading
The house arrest of Galileo Galilei in 1633 is commonly put forth as an example of how religion, and particularly the Catholic Church, is against scientific progression. The issue of science and religion in general deserves its own post (or many), but this specific example has gained its own uniqueContinue Reading
I, like many of my friends, greatly anticipated the restart of Cosmos by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I like many things Tyson has done in the past, and he has a reputation for explaining sound science in language average people can understand and enjoy learning about. But he’s no historian. HisContinue Reading
In an amazing fluff piece on ABCnews.com, Noah (“It’s Like the Bible…with Explosions“) designer Mark Friedberg explained the effort put into creating the ark: In a featurette released by Paramount, Freidberg described the ark’s basic construction. “The ramp is meant to serve one function, for reptiles to be able to getContinue Reading
My husband and I have seen the Noah trailer before. That’s why the new ending had us in tears today. I start laughing. Jerry, paying slightly less attention to the TV, asks why, and I tell him to replay the ad. He gets only that last line: “We believe theContinue Reading
On December 29, 1170, Henry II of England accidentally murdered his former best friend, Thomas Becket. The Anarchy As always, to understand a historical tale, you need to understand some of the context. Henry’s entire childhood developed in the context of a 18-year civil war known as the Anarchy, andContinue Reading