links for 2010-07-06

The targeting of religious buildings and processions by the Taliban in Pakistan during the past more than six months, then, signals not only a determination to destabilize the country but also a conviction that Pakistan has departed from the true, pure Islam and that its heretics deserve condign punishment. These Taliban are underlining their faithfulness to the rigid theological ideas of the Wahhabis as the neo-Deobandis interpret them–though contemporary Wahhabi clerical authorities in Saudi Arabia forbid such suicide bombings.

In Edo period theater, playwrights needed a trick to show how sneaky ninjas were on stage, as well as a way to make them into "invisible" assassins. The stage hands already dressed in all black, so the audience had long been used to ignoring them since they weren't "part of the play." So, actors playing ninjas started dressing up in all black, too. Then the whole audience would jump when one of them would leap out of nowhere and kill a dude. Also, it looks totally badass…

… A lot of the paintings of Jesus they made during the Renaissance became the "definitive" versions of his image, and they were just portraying him as a handsome Italian man, like everyone else in their paintings.
But the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles aren't the only ones to blame; European paintings from the Medieval ages did the same whitewashing, most likely because, in the age of the Crusades, the Church was better off not reminding people they were praying to a little, brown Jew.