Scrolling around...March 9, 2013

And the Most Popular Show on Television Is…the Bible
This past Sunday the television industry felt the ground shake when the first installment of the History Channel’s five-part miniseries, The Bible, drew a whopping 14.3 million viewers. To put that in perspective, those are higher ratings than American Idol drew on Fox in the same week. Higher ratings than the premiere of Celebrity Apprentice on NBC. And it officially made The Bible the number one scripted cable broadcast of the year.

The news was apparently so astonishing it prompted Business Week to investigate exactly how the basic cable network pulled it off and inspired Time magazine’s resident T.V. critic, James Poniewozik, to ponder whether The Bible’s success will lead to further mainstream forays into religious-themed entertainment...

Colleges Bleeding Students to Buy Golden Parachutes for Administrators.
...College administrators have found an interesting new way to strike it rich: quitting their jobs. Upon leaving his role as executive vice president of NYU for a job with Citigroup in 2006, Jacob J. Lew (the current Secretary of the Treasury) took a $685,000 bonus from the university. Harold S. Koplewicz, an executive at the NYU Medical Center, got a $1.2 million severance after choosing to leave voluntarily. Given that NYU’s tuition and fees are among the highest in the nation, we’re curious how students who took out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans feel about their money going towards generous benefits and severance packages for administrators...

Priest calls for next Pope to be gay
An Italian priest has said he thinks the next Pope being gay would be "wonderful." I think he meant to say "faaaabulous" but maybe he's not hep to the lingo and all... The Next Pope Should Be Catholic

Same sex ‘marriage’ is the ultimate act of dissolution, sociologist warns ...“We can be certain that same sex marriage will do no such thing as encourage stable marriage whether for heterosexuals and/or homosexuals. Marriage in Scandinavia, Spain, Netherlands and elsewhere is in deep decline.”

She continued: “Same sex marriage is both an effect and a cause of the evisceration of marriage - especially the separation between this and parenthood.”

“As marriage is redefined to accommodate same-sex couples, this reinforces the irrelevance of marriage to parenthood,” Dr Morgan said.

“Elsewhere, same sex marriage is an instigator for the casualisation of heterosexual unions and separation of marriage and parenthood.”

“Same sex marriage is more a terminus for marriage or ultimate act of dissolution, rather than a force for revival.”...

Porn and Raised
Pornography doesn't just exploit women, it also victimizes children--and pushes others to the brink of becoming sex offenders themselves...

Vatican: Cardinals to Begin Conclave on Tuesday
The Vatican says Roman Catholic cardinals will meet on Tuesday to start the conclave needed to elect a successor to Pope Benedict.

The conclave date was set during a meeting of the cardinals Friday in Vatican city, after five days of closed-door debate.

All 115 of the cardinals eligible to elect a new pope took part in Friday's meeting. They are all expected to vote during the conclave until one man receives at least a two-thirds majority, or 77 votes. Cardinals must be under age 80 to vote...

A vanishing generation
...I am now 61, and the proportion of citizens who remember a world where homosexuality was a weird rumor, shacking up was taboo, and abortion was scandalous is getting smaller and smaller. Normalcy for my juniors is not the same as normalcy for a sexagenarian. Moreover, my juniors are not bell-bottomed college rabble-rousers anymore—they are now the tenured professors, judges, and journalists...

How Liberty University Became the Largest Christian University
When pastor Jerry Falwell started Liberty University, he did not know it would become the largest Christian university in America. In recent years the school's enrollment has exploded. This week The Washington Post reported, "In the almost six years since Falwell’s death, Liberty University has doubled its student head count — twice."...

...‘Appalling’ waste and abuse in Iraq reconstruction.
“The extent of waste and abuse in the $60 billion of Iraq reconstruction funds coupled with the instability still evident in Iraq is appalling and highlights real failures of planning and execution that must be corrected to make U.S. foreign assistance a more effective tool for advancing the national interests of our country,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said....