Rapture Postponed Again
Shockingly, Harold Camping was wrong and the “approximately 200 million” people he predicted would ascend to Heaven didn’t get raptured after all. He predicted this would happen last Saturday at 6 p.m. local time (because God likes to base his rapturing on time zones, like Santa delivering presents. Equally real events.) Two hours prior to the predicted rapture, Pastor Jacob Denys and his congregation from the Calvary Bible Church in Milpitas, California arrived at Camping’s Family Radio headquarters in Oakland, California. They held up signs offering counseling and support to Camping’s followers when nothing happens two hours later. Denys said, “What we are hoping is that we would be able to invite people who might have been affected to our church in Milpitas and hold a special service that would embrace them and reach out to them.” The special service was held at 10 a.m. Sunday.
Not everyone was as supportive, of course. Some of us were just sarcastic. Robert Fitzpatrick, author of The Doomsday Code who also spent $140,000 of his own money on rapture ads, was mocked by the crowd in New York’s Times Square at 6:05 p.m. There’s a video of that here. Meanwhile, Redditor xtcg123 promised he would rent a billboard on May 22nd, showing off his design. The top-rated comment complained about his use of Papyrus font. He followed through on his promise, renting this billboard on I-40 in Greensboro, NC. Oooo, is that Papyrus font?
Zuckerberg says younger kids should be allowed to use Facebook, too.
Currently, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) doesn’t allow sites which collect user information to sign up anyone younger than 13, regardless of parental consent. This doesn’t really stop kids from lying about their date of birth when signing up for Facebook. In fact, a Consumer Reports survey released earlier this month estimates that 7.5 million Facebook members are younger than 13, with 5 million of them being aged 10 or younger.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed at the NewSchools Venture Fund’s Summit in Burlingame, California. He said children younger than 13 should be able to legally sign up for Facebook and that revising COPPA “will be a fight we take on at some point”, adding that “My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age.” If Facebook doesn’t teach your children how to farm by clicking on squares and harassing their distant relatives for Farmville gifts, who will?
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- Church offers free counseling to Camping’s followers outside his radio station on rapture night. (IBTimes)
- Robert Fitzpatrick, author of The Doomsday Code, mocked in Times Square at 6:05 PM on Saturday. (video at Buzzfeed)
- Camping’s Followers Struggle to Make Sense of May 22 (Discoblogs)
- Well, that was awkward. (TDW)
- Zuckerberg wants young kids on Facebook. (Fortune)
- 7.5 Million Facebook Users Are Younger Than 13. (Mashable)
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- The Tennessee Senate has passed a bill which forbids teachers and students in eighth grade or younger from saying that some people are gay. Because if you pretend I don’t exist, I’ll stop existing? Not how it works, Tennessee, but thanks for making me sound cool ’cause I’m too dangerous to even talk about. *sunglasses* DEAL WITH IT. (MSNBC)
- A third employee has died from the Foxconn Explosion. (Gizmodo)
- So the Rapture didn’t happen on May 21st, but Iceland’s most active volcano (Grímsvötn) did blow. I was going to spell out the pronunciation of Grímsvötn phonetically, but then my keyboard told me to f–k off. (WashingtonPost, video of how to pronounce Grímsvötn here)
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- For the first time, Amazon’s Kindle book sales now outpace all print book sales in the United States combined. Kindle book sales have increased 300% over the past 12 months, and are likely to keep rising now that Amazon has announced they’re dropping the price of the new Kindle to $114 with special offers. (SingularityHub)
- Nielsen recently polled 12,000 owners of eReaders, tablet computers, and smartphones and found eReader owners were the most likely to use the device while in bed (61%) and the least likely to use the device while watching TV (35%). No word on how many only use their eReader to play Minesweeper. (Nielsen)
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