Best,
Brett
"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran's acting Friday prayer leader.In response, skeptic Jen McCreight over at Blag Had has proposed Boobquake:
On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that's your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake.In honor of Boobquake, and because it's really hot here today, I'm going topless. I can do that, you see, because we have no neighbors. So far, no local quakes. Maybe I'm not trying hard enough.
The modern English term Easter is speculated to have developed from Old English word Ä’astre or Ä’ostre or Eoaster, which itself developed prior to 899. The name refers to Eostur-monath, a month of the Germanic calendar attested by Bede as named after the goddess Ä’ostre of Anglo-Saxon paganism.[15] Bede notes that Eostur-monath was the equivalent to the month of April, and that feasts held in her honor during Ä’ostur-monath had died out by the time of his writing, replaced with the Christian custom of Easter.[16] Using comparative linguistic evidence from continental Germanic sources, the 19th century scholar Jacob Grimm proposed the existence of an equivalent form of Eostre among the pre-Christian beliefs of the continental Germanic peoples, whose name he reconstructed as Ostara.
The implications of the goddess have resulted in theories about whether or not Eostre is an invention of Bede, theories connecting Eostre with records of Germanic folk custom (including hares and eggs), and as cultural descendant of the Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn through the etymology of her name. Grimm's reconstructed Ostara has had some influence in modern popular culture. Modern German has Ostern, but otherwise, Germanic languages have generally borrowed the form pascha, see below.