The Pope is out with a new book in which he compares abortion rights to the extermination of the Jews during WWII.

And this time we are talking about an extermination which has been allowed by nothing less than democratically elected parliaments where one normally hears appeals for the civil progress of society and all humanity.

Whatever side of the abortion issue you are on, this should strike you as an odd and wildly inappropriate analogy.

And that’s not just because it’s offensive and ridiculous to compare the two issues. It’s also because of the Vatican’s role (or lack thereof) during the period of extermination about which the Pope writes. You’d think the Pope would want to use an analogy that put his organization in a better light. What’s next, comparing the evil of abortion to the evil of ignoring a global pedophile movement?

The Pope also went to great lengths to point out that the notion of allowing gay marriage is part of a new ideology of evil:

It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man.

You know, there is more than enough actual evil in the world to fill a thousand philosophical and religious volumes. Do we really want to target our wrath on democratically elected governments and people who are trying to make their love legal?

Mobile PC Magazine has served up their list of the top 100 gadgets of all time. The list seems pretty good and certainly provides an entertaining walk down product memory lane. Here are a few of the top picks.

SWINGLINE 747 STAPLER

PEZ DISPENSER
(Come on. A friggin toy that dispenses
candy. Nothing during the internet boom
can even compare to that simple genius -
although streaming porn comes close.)

ATARI PONG C-100

MATTEL FOOTBALL II
(Can you have one lcd line pass a blinking
lcd line to another lcd line and make a game
out of it? Hell yes.)

ABACUS, 190 A.D.
(I’ve always hated the new math)

THE CLAPPER
(not to be confused with the similarly named STD)

APPLE IPOD

SONY WALKMAN
(originally called the Soundabout)

ZENITH SPACE COMMAND TV REMOTE CONTROL

That last one somehow only came in second place. Must have been a fix.

And I’m sure that there are more than a few folks out there who will be wondering about the two significant omissions from the list: Bongs and vibrators (at least one of which goes extremely well with Mattel Football 2).

When a movie is completed, insiders (and fools like me who think they’re experts because they watch a lot of DVDs and never miss an episode of Insider the Actor’s Studio) say that it’s in the can.

When we look at major media and marketing trends, the experts (and idiots like me who think they’re experts because they have a keyboard, two working fingers and web access) are looking at just the opposite phrase:

The can is in the movie.

In this case, it’s not just any can. It’s a can of Pepsi. In 2004, Pepsi dominated the scene(s) by appearing in more movie product placement shots than any other brand.

William Saletan gives a good overview of the speech by Harvard President Larry Summers in which he discussed the genetic differences between men and women that may have an impact on their performances at the highest levels of math and science.

Hey, what do I know about gender differences? I am a humanities major with three older sisters.

Thanks to massive coverage by ESPN and Travel Channel, Texas Hold’em poker has swept the country.

The problem is that some people (among them, law enforcement officials) still see poker as a form of illegal gambling.

But when it poker gambling and when is it just a friendly and social game? What if there is no buy-in but the winner gets a free t-shirt or a round of drinks at a bar?

And does it make sense to allow hundreds of Indian Casinos (where real, pure luck, I blew my paycheck gambling takes place) to be erected across the country, and state lotto games to be worth millions and Church group bingo games to feature cash and prizes but then to pretend that poker (which is played in houses and online from sea to shining sea) is somehow different?

Well, we know that legislation doesn’t necessarily have to make sense.

So what’s the future for bar-based poker games, etc? I’d say when things shake-out, there will be more legal poker games, not fewer.

Why? Because a lot of powerful people love to play poker and most of them don’t think of poker as gambling.

Of course, using that logic, I guess just about everything would be legal.

Comedian Jake Johannsen has a bit in which he explains that: It’s the not the guns that kill people. We all know it’s those darn bullets. Of course, the guns make them go really fast…

Should we allow the sale of guns to just about anyone even though those guns are often used (some models, primarily used) to send flying bullets in the direction of other people?

The Supreme Court plans to look at just this question, although in this case, the issue is not guns and bullets but rather file sharing networks and the stealing of music and movies.

Should file sharing networks be shut down just because some people choose to use them for nefarious purposes? This is just one of the issues that the Justices will be considering in case that could have a major impact on the future of file sharing.