But what would we do without them?

An analysis piece from the Orlando Sentinel says: While right-wing Christians are gearing up for fights this year on gay marriage, liberal Christians are enervated. Good piece.

Right-wing Republicans are vicious and scary, sure. But they're also entertaining, in a fatuous, idiotic way. Pat Robertson fills this need by blathering the other day that Bush can't lose because "he's a man of prayer and God has blessed him. It doesn't make any difference what he does" between now and the election.

Political viewpoint aside, how do you like that for theology? God picks someone, apparently based on his or her prayer practice, and decides that no matter what they do, they're going to be president. Hey, I pray every day too. I don't see anyone annointing me.

Courtesy of BoingBoing, here's a fascinating study of brand memory. An "Austrian arts collective" (I'm not looking into that one, just reprinting it as written) asked 25 people to draw 12 famous corporate logos from memory. The results are an interesting mixture of artistic incompetence and faulty memory. Sometimes people drew the old logo of a company, for example with BP and Adidas. Sometimes they just guessed, as with Iglo.