How else to explain how one minute it looked like most of the trapped miners in West Virginia were alive - Praise Be to God!!! - and the next all but one were dead. "God works in mysterious ways!"

When good things happen, all Praise unto him but when bad things happen - nothing. No invectives against the same deity.

Worse, this God, this all-powerful, all-knowing, all-everything keeps choosing "Prophets" and whiny Preachers to send out his message instead of easily imbuing all of us with His Message. And these messengers have done their part. But, unfortunately for us, most people worship the messengers and forget the messages.

How much less violent would our world be if it weren't for Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, and all other Prophets and Messengers? How peaceful it would be if God, in his infinite wisdom, would cut the crap and the mysterious ways and just reveal himself or herself to everyone. Peace would reign in the Middle East, at least, for a little while.

But, no, "God works in mysterious ways!"

And we have the Jews who claim they are the Chosen People, which guarantees they'll be hated by those Not Chosen. And we have the Christians/Catholics who believe that Jesus may or may not be God or the Son thereof - but please send in your 10% tithe. And we have Islam which states something like killing non-believers equals an eternity in paradise although Jews may or may not be protected.

And we have other religions that simply try to escape the obvious insanity, and others that claim not one deity but pantheons. And Agnostics and Atheists hated by all.

It really is easier to get rid of religion and live a happy life without having to worry whether your neighbors are going to stone you, bomb you, or kidnap your kids because they disagree with your religion.

Removing religion removes a crutch of passing responsibility for your actions on to God. No more killing heathens to attain paradise replete with virgins - you're just a cold-blooded murderer. Or lynching Jews becuase they killed your Savior - you, too, are just a cold-blooded murderer.

In the U.S. we have a set of Laws that are seemingly above religion but it's getting scarily close to where there will be no boundary, that Biblical Law will prevail.

Some of you may applaud and support that and those same folks are the ones who think that the Bible is all you need. Forget Science and everything. The Bible is it - the Prime Source. To you folks, I say give up your Science completely. No more cell phones, medicine, technology - give it all up. Go back to the Stone Age and let God provide for you.

Religion makes me ramble. Achhh. "God works in mysterious ways!"

"If God meant for us to have Faith, he'd wouldn't have given us brains." -- Little Mr Mahatma - 2006

Winter Olympics - 2006
I love the Olympics, having suffered through viewing them for many years. It used to be - many years ago - that the Olympics would be broadcast on TV with minimal interruption. You'd see events followed by more events and it didn't matter whether the event was popular or not, it'd be shown even a little bit. The dramas and tragedies spoke for themselves, written on the faces of the athletes. You could see their efforts, their struggles, their victories and defeats. It was the Olympics - the pinnacle of Sports.

Maybe my memory has fogged. Maybe I'm blanking out the commercials and retrospectives. But it seems that, starting with Olga Korbut, there is more Olympic time spent on showing the stories of the athletes rather than the actual events. Worse, the last Summer Olympics had way too much time devoted to Pro-U.S. stories and propaganda. Sure, I like our teams. I support our teams. But we are not the be-all and end-all of athletics.

Sadly, NBC continues the tradition of having more style than substance but far better than ABC's last effort. If the announcers would stop stating the obvious...