Pun Salad

… to be torn between truth and illusion?

• The Pope must have been listening to that great old song from the Band:

  ROME - Pope Benedict XVI said on Thursday that the media's increasing reliance on images, fuelled by the endless development of new technologies, risked confusing real life with virtual reality.

  "New technologies and the progress they bring can make it impossible to distinguish truth from illusion and can lead to confusion between reality and virtual reality," the pope said.

  "Just watch out for the sign of the snake."

• I remarked a couple days back on the perceived cognitive dissonance in NH Congressperson Carol Shea-Porter's endorsement by the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

  Except—and I should have remembered this from a couple years back—the endorsement was not from the VFW, but by the independent VFW Political Action Committee. And (as it turns out) the VFW is kind of pissed about its PAC's endorsements.

  The national line officers of Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) are at odds with the VFW Political Action Committee (PAC), calling the methodology process used by the PAC "seriously flawed at best this year and in immediate need of extensive review," in the wake of the recent congressional endorsements made by the committee.

  Via Captain Ed at Hot Air.

• The kids at FactCheck.org take apart an ad I've been seeing a lot: accusing Charlie Baker, GOP candidate for Massachusetts Governor, of wanting to "ship jobs overseas". The thing is: (1) it's a bogus claim; and (2) totally irrelevant to the Massachusetts Governor's race.

• Wired has 10 Things You Didn't Know About The Empire Strikes Back. And sure enough, I didn't. I loved this one though:

  Miss Piggy had a cameo in one of Yoda's first scenes in rehearsal. When Mark Hamill first met Frank Oz, he asked him to do a brief Miss Piggy cameo during rehearsals on set, as a practical joke -- but when the time came much later, it caught even Hamill off-guard. During one scene, Yoda tells Luke to follow his feelings. Luke protests that he has followed his feelings -- and suddenly, Frank Oz whips out a Miss Piggy puppet, saying, "Feelings? You want feelings? Get behind the couch and I'll show you feelings, punk. What is this hole? I've been booked into dumps before, but never like this. Get me my agent on the phone!"

  Attention, George Lucas: include this as an extra on some future DVD release, and I'll buy it.