Heaven is a place where you burn uncomfortably

Acknowledging my lack of expertise on the more mystical aspects of the religion, it still strikes me as odd that this picture is getting some Catholics so excited.

Granted the image does look a lot like Pope John Paul II, and did appear on the two year anniversary of his death. But, more importantly, isn't it dispiriting that a Pope on the short track to beatification is on fire and still carrying around a devastatingly hunched back?

Hopefully things will pick up for the former Pontiff, but there can be no guarantee. The poor Virgin Mary has been stuck attached to a half-eaten grilled cheese sandwich for quite some time now.

Michael Jackson to heal Sunni/Shia schism

Call him a contrarian, call him an iconoclast, call him a child rapist, but one thing is certain -- Michael Jackson marches to the beat of his own underaged, chimpanzee drummer.

While the eccentricities which were once enduring have morphed into revolting, Jackson, who in his more benign years successfully remixed Augusto Pinochet's closet into the very look of international pop stardom, refuses to embrace normalcy.

Is there a method to his madness? Charitable as I am, I tend to think that there is.

Case in point: Over the last few years some of Michael's superstar cohorts have adopted children of various racial and ethnic backgrounds, creating a kind of United Nations' family aesthetic befitting the increasingly interconnected human race of the 21st century.

That's all fine and dandy in a kumbaya kind of way, but what about the black man who wants to painfully bleach the pigmentation out of his skin and then have white-as-driven-snow biological children with a woman he hasn't technically "had sex" with?

Who would that man have, besides Michael Jackson, to stand with him and shout to a judging world that normal is only a wash cycle on a household appliance?

OK, Michael Jackson is completely insane. And you know what completely insane people eventually do . . ? They find religion.

I've always pegged Jackson for a future Scientologist because, dogmatically, Scientology overlooks some of the otherwise sinful baggage Jackson brings with him.

But you can never predict the life path of the former king of pop and, according to his brother Jermaine, Michael Jackson will convert to the considerably less tolerant religion of Islam.

As the Christians, Jews and Buddhists of the world breath a sigh of relief, I also wonder: Will Jackson don the burka and the veil?

Well played, Madge

Yesterday we reported that Malawi -- in what is widely believed to be a publicity stunt -- announced Madonna would be adopting an orphan during her visit to the African country.

Madonna's flack vehemently denied the official state declaration. Suddenly team Material Girl had a problem.

These days what self-respecting international icon goes to an impoverished nation and doesn't adopt a child?

As they say, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Or Kabbalah water.

In lieu of adopting, Madonna will be sinking three million dollars into a project to bring Kabbalah water to Malawi. The mystical water will be sprinkled on the orphans.

OK, beyond its magical qualities, the water will be clean and less likely to infect the orphans with waterborne parasites. But make no mistake. This is Kabbalah water.

So the dance continues. How Malawi will respond is anyone's guess.

The pope might not really mean it

The Pope and the Muslims have been at odds for a week now. The feud began when the Pope quoted a dialogue, involving 14th century Byzantine emperor Manuel II, which criticized Islam for being an evil, violent and intolerant force.

While Islam isn't the only religion that could have been accused of such things in the past, some of the louder voices in the present Muslim world responded to the Pontiff's "unjust" attack on "intolerant," "violent" Islam by threatening to kill or at least imprison the Pope.

Irony is more of a Western thing.

The Pope, perhaps realizing it's best to stick with analyzing his own religion, offered a semi-apology -- for the situation he created, not the words he quoted.

If the Pope's apology seemed insincere it's to his credit. Only sociopaths come off as sincere when they are being pushed into making an apology.

Predictably, the Pope's tepid apology didn't temper the situation. The protests against his words spread and may have claimed the life of a nun in Somalia.

So today the Pope tried again. Remembering he is infallible, he stopped with the apologies and issued a statement affirming his "deep respect" for Islam.

Ouch.

It is possible to say you "respect" another culture or religion and mean it. But unless "respect" is coupled with a word like "love," or "admire" or "appreciate" more often than not the compliment is backhanded.

Things get even more fishy when you start modifying how much you respect this culture or religion. A good rule of thumb is the stronger the positive modifier the weaker the true sentiment.

If the Pope had used "great deal" or "a lot of" before "respect" one could reasonably conclude the Pope is able to tolerate Islam, but he'd rather not.

"Deep respect" -- now that's just out-and-out dismissive.

Although it's still be better than "deepest respect" which, in this case, would mean if the Pope had a toilet made of Islam he would prefer to go on the bathroom floor.

Now that would be something for the Muslims to get fired up about.

Google as an all-seeing force in the universe

Yahoo! is the internet's most trafficked site. Yet, it continues to lag far behind Google in the all-important "search engine" market, despite this built-in advantage. Yahoo's inability to make up ground on Google's search engine market share was big part of Yahoo's stunning 22 percent decline in stock price last Wednesday.

Yahoo's search engine woes have also resulted in a little soul-searching of my own.

Why is it that I go to Yahoo! for most of my email, a good chunk of my news and all of my fantasy sports (a topic I have been banned from discussing on this space,) but still hop right over to Google any time I want to find information on say ... Yahoo's bad stock day last week?

To answer that questions I was forced to examine the tenets of my faith.

I've never been much of believer. The idea that some being, no matter how divine, could keep track of the comings and goings of up to 5 billion people never gelled with my better sense. Whenever someone told me it was possible, I'd think them a bit of a fool.

That was until the first time I used a search engine. What I was searching for, I have no idea, but it was late enough in the search engine game that about 50 million hits came up in about .26 seconds.

If this machine, made by mortal man, could do so many relevant computations in so little time, suddenly the idea an of all-seeing divine force that lived up in the sky wasn't so silly.

This possibility made me feel warm and good. Since I had done my first search on Google, that search engine acquired a certain providence, in my mind.

It helped the word "Google" sounds to me like a combination of heavenly and earthly infinitude.

"Yahoo!" sounds like a good place to check your email and play fantasy sports.