Get Cynical

Oy!

NEW YORK (CNN) — A Muslim man jumped to the aid of three Jewish subway riders after they were attacked by a group of young people who objected to one of the Jews saying “Happy Hanukkah,” a spokeswoman for the three said Wednesday.

The New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating Friday’s incident on the Q train.

Friday’s altercation on the Q train began when somebody yelled out “Merry Christmas,” to which rider Walter Adler responded, “Happy Hanukkah,” said Toba Hellerstein.

“Almost immediately, you see the look in this guy’s face like I’ve called his mother something,” Adler told CNN affiliate WABC.

Two women who were with a group of 10 rowdy people then began to verbally assault Adler’s companions with anti-Semitic language, Hellerstein said.

One member of the group allegedly yelled, “Oh, Hanukkah. That’s the day that the Jews killed Jesus,” she said.

When Adler tried to intercede, a male member of the group punched him, she said.

Another passenger, Hassan Askari — a Muslim student from Bangladesh — came to Adler’s aid, and the group began physically and verbally assaulting him, Hellerstein said.

Preach it brother!

Brady now has 45 touchdowns. Forty-five. With three regular-season games to go. You figure he throws nine against the Manginis, six against the winless Miami Dolphins and four against the New York Giants before he’s pulled midway through the second quarter. That gives him 64 for the year. The scary thing: I’m only half-kidding.

Brady’s numbers are beyond obscene, beyond otherworldly. He needs five more TD passes to move ahead of Peyton Manning’s record of 49 in a single season. That’s more than doable against the Jets, who shouldn’t expect any mercy moments from Coach Hoodie at Gillette Stadium. Remember those Coliseum scenes from “The Gladiator?” It’ll be like that. You’ll need tweezers to pick up the remains.

To bring some clarity and perspective to Brady’s season, think of it this way: He has more touchdown passes than the rest of the AFC East (31), more than the combined totals of Brett Favre and Drew Brees (44), and the exact combined totals of Peyton and Eli Manning. He also has just five interceptions in 476 pass attempts. Dallas’ Tony Romo threw that many picks in a single game this season.

I need to start posting about some of the more obscure religions that people have followed. Like Koreshanity:

Koreshanity is the set of religious/scientific beliefs put forth by Cyrus Teed. Followers of this belief were called “Koreshans”, and most of them formed a utopian communal society called the Koreshan Unity.

The major beliefs of Koreshanity or Koreshan Universalogy, as put forth in the many writings of Cyrus Teed and his followers are:

* Cellular Cosmogony, which is Teed’s unique form of Hollow Earth theory which puts forth the idea that the Earth, and universe are contained within a concave sphere, or ‘cell’. The Koreshans even conducted several experiments, similar to those conducted by believers in a Flat Earth. The most well known was conducted on the beach of Naples (the Koreshan Geodetic Survey of 1897), a town south of the Koreshan Unity commune at Estero, Florida. Here is the description of the earth from Cellular Cosmogony:

“The sun is an invisible electromagnetic battery revolving in the universe’s center on a 24-year cycle. Our visible sun is only a reflection, as is the moon, with the stars reflecting off seven mercurial discs that float in the sphere’s center. Inside the earth there are three separate atmospheres: the first composed of oxygen and nitrogen and closest to the earth; the second, a hydrogen atmosphere above it; the third, an aboron (sic) atmosphere at the center. The earth’s shell is one hundred miles thick and has seventeen layers. The outer seven are metallic with a gold rind on the outermost layer, the middle five are mineral and the five inward are geologic strata. Inside the shell there is life, outside a void.”

And in case you were curious as to whatever happened to the founder, Cyrus Teed:

After Teed died in 1908 (after being beaten by the town marshall), the group went into decline. Because one of the beliefs of the Koreshans was in re-incarnation, they thought their leader would come back to life, and instead of burying him, propped him up in a bath tub. After several days, local health officials stepped in and forced the burial of Teed.

Live acoustic performances – White Summer, Midnight Moonlight and Kashmir, a short interview

This might not be the best theory, but it’s my new favorite.

From USA Today:

LAS VEGAS — Las Vegas is building a museum about some of its founding fathers and most influential figures — guys with names like Bugsy, Lefty and Lansky.

The mob museum will stand as frank acknowledgment of the major role mobsters played in developing Las Vegas into the gambling capital of America and giving the city its rakish glamour during the 1940s and ’50s.

“Let’s be brutally honest, warts and all. This is more than legend. It’s fact,” said Mayor Oscar Goodman, a former defense attorney whose clients once included mobsters Meyer Lansky and Anthony “Tony the Ant” Spilotro. “This is something that differentiates us from other cities.”

The project has gained the support of the FBI and is guided by a retired FBI agent. They say they are involved because you can’t tell the stories of Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, his banker, Lansky, casino boss Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal and others without telling the story of the lawmen who pursued them.

Personally, I think banning something, even if it’s a ridiculous space cult, is a bad move. I don’t think banning religions or cults do much more than make them more desirable. Education is always the key to destroying religious farces and superstitions.

BERLIN, Germany (AP) — Germany’s top security officials said Friday they consider the goals of the Church of Scientology to be in conflict with the principles of the nation’s constitution and will seek to ban the organization.

The interior ministers of the nation’s 16 states plan to give the nation’s domestic intelligence agency the task of preparing the necessary information to ban the organization, which has been under observation for a decade on allegations that it “threatens the peaceful democratic order” of the country.

The Church of Scientology, in a response sent to CNN, denounced the German proposal, calling it out of step with various international court rulings. Read the Church of Scientology response

The ministers, as well as federal Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, “consider Scientology to be an organization that is not compatible with the constitution,” said Berlin Interior Minister Ehrhart Koerting, who presided over the officials’ two-day conference.

Sabine Weber, president of the Church of Scientology in Berlin, said she views the renewed attempt to ban the organization as a reaction to increasing acceptance of Scientologists in several European countries.

I’m off to a slow start this morning and this is a bit much to process:

ELMWOOD PARK, N.J. – When a robber started taking cash from his register over the weekend, Dunkin’ Donuts employee Dustin Hoffmann fought back by clobbering the man with a ceramic mug. But Hoffmann admits he was less worried about the stolen cash than how he might look on the video-sharing site YouTube.

“What was going through my mind at that point was that the security tape is either going to show me run away and hide in the office or whack this guy in the head, so I just grabbed the cup and clocked the guy pretty hard,” Hoffmann told The Record of Bergen County for Tuesday’s editions.

I guess if you’re named Dustin Hoffman you have to think about how you’ll look on camera. Just wow though. He’s being robbed and the first thought that popped into his head was that this video might go viral?

As for YouTube fame, Hoffmann said he’ll put up the surveillance video himself when it becomes available.

“There are only a few videos like that on YouTube now, so mine’s going to be the best,” he said. “That’ll teach this guy.”

Ok that settles it. I love Dustin Hoffman.