church

The pope has friended the online social networks in a big way.

Pope Benedict XIV, who only recently joined Twitter himself, is calling on his followers to use social-networking sites such as Facebook, Tumblr, and Pinterest to spread their faith to nonbelievers.

"The challenge facing social networks is how to be truly inclusive: thus they will benefit from the full participation of believers who desire to share the message of Jesus and the values of human dignity which his teaching promotes," the pontiff said in a message delivered on the 47th World Communications Day. "Believers are increasingly … Read more

As if pulling a storyline from the movie "Jurassic Park," a Harvard University professor says it would be possible to clone the long-extinct Neanderthal. One little hitch is that he'd need a woman willing to carry the offspring.

Contrary to a flurry of headlines following his interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, however, Harvard molecular geneticist George Church is not currently taking applications from would-be surrogate moms.

"The real story here is how these stories have percolated and changed in different ways," Church, a well-respected genetics professor at Harvard Medical School, told the Boston Herald following a slew of recent impossible-to-ignore headlines such as "I can create Neanderthal baby, I just need willing woman," and, from the Daily Mail, "Wanted: 'Adventurous woman' to give birth to Neanderthal man - Harvard professor seeks mother for cloned cave baby." … Read more

Anonymous may have convinced the Westboro Baptist Church to cancel its planned protest of the funeral of Aaron Swartz.

A day after the news came out that the 26-year-old online activist had committed suicide, the members of WBC stated their intention to picket his funeral, which took place yesterday.

A press release on the group's Web site and Twitter feed revealed the location of the funeral and said: "Cyber criminals are the latest face of this nation's and this world's raging at God and His Servants at WBC. When you raging rebels give these cyber criminals … Read more

Twitter temporarily shuttered Anonymous' most popular account today, which caused a barrage of hate-tweets -- given that the hacker collective despises online censorship.

The account, @youranonnews, which now has more than 800,000 followers, went black around mid-day. The group claims the censorship had to do with a photo it posted regarding a campaign Anonymous has lodged against Westboro Baptist Church after church leaders announce plans to protest at the site of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre.

Once Anonymous' account was restored, the group posted an image of the letter it got from Twitter regarding the temporary suspension.

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Anthropologist says Apple is definitely a religion.

- Google brings Street View to the Grand Canyon.

- Apple now owns the trademark to The Beatles' Apple Corps Logo.

- What I learned while live-tweeting a friend's funeral.

Video voice mail: Mossimo has a positive update on a previous video voice mail.… Read more

Many people enjoy it when technology works automatically. Sometimes, though, a little stick-shift principle might be the wiser course.

I make this entirely free suggestion on having heard about Father Martin McVeigh, a priest in County Tyrone, Ireland.

McVeigh was making a presentation to parents of children preparing for Holy Communion. Like any modern pastor would do, he prepared a PowerPoint and carefully inserted his USB stick into a computer.

For reasons that seem not entirely clear, scenes of gay pornography appeared on the screen. Yes, in a slideshow.

The Associated Press offers that the parents at St. Mary's … Read more

Looks like we may have finally found the ultimate gearhead.

An Austrian man has scored a point for freedom of religion, or at least for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, as well as for kitchen gadgets. Niko Alm was allowed to wear a pasta strainer on his head for his driver's license photo by claiming it as a piece of "religious headgear," according to the BBC.

Alm planned the stunt after reading that Austrian authorities prohibit wearing of headgear in official photographs except for religious reasons. … Read more

Big Free Clock is exactly what its name suggests: a free utility that displays the time in a large format. Although it's a fairly basic utility, it comes with enough options for customization to make it interesting.

The program's interface is plain, just a large digital clock with two buttons: one to minimize it, and one to display the options menu. There are quite a few options, too; users can make the background and numbers transparent, change the number color, switch to 24-hour format, and increase and decrease the size of the numbers. Our first impression of Big … Read more

Valentine's Day is around the corner, so we're sure a lot of you are scrambling to schedule dates so you won't be alone with your toy pet Lulu on February 14. The problem is that first dates are almost always awkward, especially if you met on a dating Web site.

To help, OkCupid analyzed user survey data to glean the best questions to ask on a first date that actually correlate to sexier issues you won't get to until the fifth or sixth outing.

According to the site, if you want to get a clue into whether the first date will end in the bedroom, you should ask if your date likes the taste of beer! Or if you want to determine the long-term potential of your future relationship, you inquire about the person's taste in horror movies. And lastly, if you're curious about your partner's political affiliation, the best question to ask is his or her preference for simplicity or complexity.

The Catholic Church just approved an iPhone app that invites followers to run down a sinful check list prior to ease the process of confession.

The Church hopes that wayward souls will be inspired by the app to seek out the church for redemption for the bargain price of $1.99. To our Catholic listeners: don't worry, our resident skeptic Jeff Mubakalar deliberately says very little in this segment.

Finally, we wait until the second half to unleash Jeff on John Brandon, a Fox News reporter who penned an article titled "Is Bulletstorm the worst video game in the world?"

That's unquestionably, absolutely, and without a doubt the most bombastic link bait headline IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, and Brandon starts off the conversation with a quote from a psychologist that claims "the increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of (sexual) scenes in video games." Let the twilight's last reaming begin.

The author also stumbles on the issue of ESRB warnings on the back of games not containing the full reason for the rating; instead, parents only see a truncated version of the objectionable content and are encouraged to go online to get the full justification.

I'll let the hosts speak for themselves, because I know it won't be the last time we get into a fiery debate about who is responsible for video games and the adverse effects they may or may not have on kids. Tune in for the full discussion!