tales of an ordinary girl

Books
Amazon de-ranks so-called adult books, including National Book Award winner
"American Psycho" is Bret Easton Ellis' story of a sadistic murderer. "Unfriendly Fire" is a well-reviewed empirical analysis of military policy. But it's "Unfriendly Fire" that does not have a sales rank -- which means it would not show up in Amazon's bestseller lists, even if it sold more copies than the "Twilight" series. In some cases, being de-ranked also means being removed from Amazon's search results.

Amazon's policy of removing "adult" content from its rankings seems to be both new and unevenly implemented.

Civil Rights
Gay Marriage = Religious Freedom


Games
California bill: limit video games to one hour in day care
Yet another bill has been introduced that would seek to make playing video games a crime, although this one has an interesting twist: if you're running a day care, you can only allow children to play video games for up to one hour. No more. Yes, there are some who want to make this a law.

"For children in full day care, screen time, including, but not limited to, television, video games, and computer usage, shall be limited to a maximum of one hour per day and shall be limited to educational programming or programs that encourage movement," the bill reads. The reasoning? This is in response to the amount of children in California with obesity problems.

Humanism
Joss Whedon on Humanism


Humor


Kingsford Goes to the Beach - video powered by Metacafe

Law
A Reticent Justice Opens Up to a Group of Students
The event, on March 31, was devoted to the Bill of Rights, but Justice Thomas did not embrace the document, and he proposed a couple of alternatives.

‘Today there is much focus on our rights,” Justice Thomas said. “Indeed, I think there is a proliferation of rights.”

“I am often surprised by the virtual nobility that seems to be accorded those with grievances,” he said. “Shouldn’t there at least be equal time for our Bill of Obligations and our Bill of Responsibilities?”

He gave examples: “It seems that many have come to think that each of us is owed prosperity and a certain standard of living. They’re owed air conditioning, cars, telephones, televisions.”

Those are luxuries, Justice Thomas said.

“I have to admit,” he said, “that I’m one of those people that still thinks the dishwasher is a miracle. What a device! And I have to admit that because I think that way, I like to load it. I like to look in and see how that dishes were magically cleaned.”

Religion
An Alien God
But instead Darwin discovered a strange alien God - not comfortably "ineffable", but really genuinely different from us. Evolution is not a God, but if it were, it wouldn't be Jehovah. It would be H. P. Lovecraft's Azathoth, the blind idiot God burbling chaotically at the center of everything, surrounded by the thin monotonous piping of flutes.

Which you might have predicted, if you had really looked at Nature.

So much for the claim some religionists make, that they believe in a vague deity with a correspondingly high probability. Anyone who really believed in a vague deity, would have recognized their strange inhuman creator when Darwin said "Aha!"

So much for the claim some religionists make, that they are waiting innocently curious for Science to discover God. Science has already discovered the sort-of-godlike maker of humans - but it wasn't what the religionists wanted to hear. They were waiting for the discovery of their God, the highly specific God they want to be there. They shall wait forever, for the great discovery has already taken place, and the winner is Azathoth.

Well, more power to us humans. I like having a Creator I can outwit. Beats being a pet. I'm glad it was Azathoth and not Odin.

Astronomy
Martian Sunset



Comics
First issue of Dead Space comic online
Newsarama and Image Comics are teaming up again for their annual tradition of presenting select #1 Image issues for users to read, and one of the free comics this year is the introduction to the Dead Space miniseries.

The series itself serves as a prequel to the game, detailing what happened to the colony before the Ishimura was overrun by the Necromorph menace. Also, unlike the other prequel to the game, Dead Space: Downfall, the comics are excellent and feature an eerie and well-paced story, as well as the excellent art of Ben Templesmith, the artist behind comics like Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse and 30 Days of Night.

Games
Feds note gaming DRM woes: FTC to hold town hall meeting
The official page describes the meeting and its aim. "Digital rights management (DRM) refers to technologies typically used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, and copyright holders to attempt to control how consumers access and use media and entertainment content," the FTC explains. "Among other issues, the workshop will address the need to improve disclosures to consumers about DRM limitations."

Humor
Is Having Sex with a Robot Hooker Cheating? Revisited
A few months ago, we posed what will surely turn out to be one of the most important philosophical questions of the future -- Is having sex with a robot hooker cheating? In an effort to continue this important dialogue, Asylum, the journalistic hub of future events, has decided to revisit the topic so that when the day of robot hookers arrives, we'll be prepared to tell them "Yes, please!" or "No, ma'am" without guilt or pangs of remorse.

International
Woman suspected of witchcraft burned alive
Early Tuesday, a group of people dragged the woman, believed to be in her late teens to early 20s, to a dumping ground outside the city of Mount Hagen. They stripped her naked, bound her hands and legs, stuffed a cloth in her mouth, tied her to a log and set her on fire, Kauba said.

"When the people living nearby went to the dump site to investigate what caused the fire, they found a human being burning in the flames," he said. "It was ugly."

The country's Post-Courier newspaper reported Thursday that more than 50 people were killed in two Highlands provinces last year for allegedly practicing sorcery.

In a well-publicized case last year, a pregnant woman gave birth to a baby girl while struggling to free herself from a tree. Villagers had dragged the woman from her house and hung her from the tree, accusing her of sorcery after her neighbor suddenly died.

She and the baby survived, according to media reports.

lesbian sex

Astronomy
Zodiacal Light Over New Mexico



Orion Dawn Over Mount Nemrut



Games
Pennsylvania Task Force Says NO to Video Game Legislation
There is good news out of Pennsylvania today, as the commonwealth will apparently not pursue video game legislation.

A working group assigned by the Pennsylvania legislature to study the video game violence issue has strongly recommended that no laws regarding video game content should be enacted.

LittleBigPlanet used to create 36-cell computer, game of life
"Some guys put together a 36-cell simulation of Conway's Game of Life inside a LittleBigPlanet level, and it's absolutely amazing," Nina wrote us. "If you actually go through and play the level, they provide you with all of the components—logic gates, their computer clock and edge detector, a multiplexer, etc—to build your own mechanical computer. "

Government
Rule Shields Health Workers Who Withhold Care Based on Beliefs
The far-reaching regulation cuts off federal funding for any state or local government, hospital, health plan, clinic or other entity that does not accommodate doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other employees who refuse to participate in care they find ethically, morally or religiously objectionable. It was sought by conservative groups, abortion opponents and others to safeguard workers from being fired, disciplined or penalized in other ways.

Airborne agrees to pay $7M in multistate settlement
The maker of Airborne dietary supplements has agreed to pay $7 million to settle allegations by 32 states and the District of Columbia that it made false claims about the benefits of its products. While the company admitted no wrongdoing, under the settlement, Airborne Health Inc. will discontinue any claims about the "health benefit, performance, efficacy or safety" of its supplements in preventing and treating colds and other ailments.

Humor
Typo In Proposition 8 Defines Marriage As Between 'One Man And One Wolfman'
"The people of California made their voices heard today, and reaffirmed our age-old belief that the only union sanctioned in God's eyes is the union between a man and another man possessed by an ungodly lupine curse," state Sen. Tim McClintock said at a hastily organized rally celebrating passage of the new law.

If programming languages were religions...
Java would be Fundamentalist Christianity - it's theoretically based on C, but it voids so many of the old laws that it doesn't feel like the original at all. Instead, it adds its own set of rigid rules, which its followers believe to be far superior to the original. Not only are they certain that it's the best language in the world, but they're willing to burn those who disagree at the stake.

Photography
A Sun Pillar Over North Carolina



Religion
On Inerrancy
So, did God not want to communicate his message more clearly? Or did he want to, but lacked the ability to do so? Either option poses a serious challenge to belief in a benevolent, all-wise deity. Why would God even write a book - a single book, one whose origins lie in a long-ago time and a very different culture, one that is prone to mistranslation, misinterpretation and deliberate alteration? Why grant some people special access to his word, and convey the message in such a flawed and imprecise format? Why not just speak to all of us directly, impress his message on everyone's heart?

Science
Why Life Originated (And Why it Continues)
In a recent study called “Why did life emerge?”, two scientists, son and father Arto Annila of the University of Helsinki and Erkki Annila of the Finnish Forest Research Institute, offer some insight into the general driving force of life’s origins in terms of thermodynamics. As they explain, all organisms are composed of molecules that assemble together via numerous chemical reactions. Just as heat flows from hot to cold, these molecules obey the universal tendency to diminish energy differences, so that the most likely chemical reactions are those in which energy flows “downhill” toward a stationary state, or chemical equilibrium.

Sociology
Rom-coms 'spoil your love life'
"We now have some emerging evidence that suggests popular media play a role in perpetuating these ideas in people's minds.

"The problem is that while most of us know that the idea of a perfect relationship is unrealistic, some of us are still more influenced by media portrayals than we realise."

(via Venjanz)

Atheism
Atheism, Youth, and One Unicorn Drawing
I’ll be the first to admit that there are a lot of problems with the kids these days. Like, Paris Hilton. But, there are also a lot of problems with the olds these days. Like, Dick Cheney. And, there are a lot of good things going on with the kids these days, too. They’re not too embarrassed to march and picket and fight — they’re doing it every damned day, for peace in Iraq, for affordable health care, and yes, for freedom of (and from) religion. Has the editor missed the entire Anonymous vs. Scientology thing, which is entirely the work of teens and 20-somethings?

The Invisibility of The Black Atheist
The prevalence of Christian ideology in Black Culture creates a very difficult dilemma for a Black Atheist. Our skepticism must often remain hidden for fear of exclusion. When religion comes up we tend to stay mum or quickly change the subject. Those who are more vocal soon find themselves ostracized and isolated. When it comes to our relationships with the opposite sex we often find our choices limited by mates who are looking for a “good Christian man” or woman. Community activism, particularly Civil rights groups, tend to be dominated by religious organizations, making it difficult for an admitted atheist to even participate in any organized way in the betterment of the race. Politics, likewise, are dominated by the religious-minded. If you expect the Black vote than you had better be a Christian.

Comedy
Corn Fed Venison - It Looked Good On Paper!
The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope.

That deer EXPLODED.

Games
Game reviews: the ugly path from publisher to publishing
It's not that there is much direct evidence that the system is corrupt, but when all the major players are this defensive about the process of reviewing games, and there is this much money at stake, it's important to read reviews critically and try to figure out what could have influenced that all-important final score. Gaming is one of the few art forms where being able to critically review a release is this political, and if people are becoming more distrustful of professionally-written reviews, that could be a healthy reaction. The publishers control the careers and fates of review sites in a very real way; with everything from ad revenue, to access to future games, and even your job being on the line, it's not surprising that high review scores are so common.

Government
While I Was Away
This is the stuff of dictatorships. And yes, some evidence does suggest that massive roundups of American citizens have been contemplated.

If the evidence against al-Marri is so damning — and frankly it looks pretty awful — then let him face a trial, just like anyone else. You say he planned to kill hundreds or thousands? So did Charles Manson. So did Jeffrey Dahmer. Timothy McVeigh did worse than either of them, and even he got a trial. What is so peculiar about this case that would justify throwing away centuries of legal practice?

Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less: Gingrich Leads Chorus of Simpletons
Populism meets American exceptionalism in this ludicrous "petition." Some people still think that they can change the laws of physics, economics, or geology by fiat, or–in this case–democratic tantrum. It’s funny how so-called "conservatives" just can’t understand concepts of "pay-as-you-go" when it comes to energy and the environment. Or deficits for that matter. I just love the little manipulative sympathy ploy for "hard-working Americans." As if other people around the world aren’t even more hard-working (without the comforts brought by Americas voracious energy consumption). But no matter. Americans–blue and white collar alike–can work and struggle as hard as they want, and it won’t change the physical reality. The world is running out of easy oil. Production is close to peaking globally. Deal with it.

Medicine
Vaccines and Autism Revisited — The Hannah Poling Case
Fourth, without data that clearly exonerate vaccines, it could be argued that children with mitochondrial enzyme deficiencies might have a lower risk of exacerbations if vaccines were withheld, delayed, or separated. But such changes would come at a price. Even spacing out vaccinations would increase the period during which children were susceptible to natural infections, giving a theoretical risk from vaccines priority over a known risk from vaccine-preventable diseases. These diseases aren't merely historical: pneumococcus, varicella, and pertussis are still common in the United States. Recent measles outbreaks in California, Arizona, and Wisconsin among children whose parents had chosen not to vaccinate them show the real risks of public distrust of immunization.

Photography
June's Young Crescent Moon



Philosophy
Mixing Adults and Youths
Are they supposed these days to learn what they need to be a functional adult from Hollywood, the entertainment industry, and advertising? It seems to me we too often leave kids these days to be raised by the media.

Somethings we can only learn from another person. Things we cannot learn from a book, a movie, the television, popular music, or a video game. Somethings we must learn through our interactions with others. And some of those things that can only be learned through our interactions with others are very important. I discovered when I hung out with teens that many teens had what struck me then as a thirst to hang out with adults. I suspect they needed encouragement, insight into themselves, support, and affirmation, among other things. Those are not things we easily get from a book or movie.

Politics
The Authority of Shepherds
And thunderous applause echoed throughout the church. Yet no one really seems to be talking about this. Pfleger and Wright seemed to have become social scapegoats, helping those who support them both avoid the spotlight of moral responsibility. Of course they should be condemned for what they say, but really, what they say has absolutely no effect on society–unless people give it power.

And they’re giving this bullshit power with every single yelp and clap.

Why are we not calling out those members of the congregation who stood up and applauded? Why are we not calling out those who lend credence and authority to the bullshit these pastors spew? Why are we, instead, creating effigies of these racist and sexist notions that resemble these two pastors and burning only the two at the stake? Why are we not calling out those who allow this bullshit to continue?

Recipes
Crash Hot Potatoes
Anyway, I just love Australia. I just tried this side dish last night—it was sent to me by Trish, an Aussie reader, a few weeks ago—and I wound up absolutely loving it. Created by Australian food writer Jill Dupleix, it’s called “Crash Hot Potatoes” and has soared to the top of my Favorite Side Dishes to Serve With Big Ol’ Hunks of Beef.

They’re so simple, it’s terrifying. Well, not terrifying…but almost. They’re a lovely twist on the tired old baked potato, and they perfectly embody a quality I always strive to achieve in my cooking: Flavorful, Crispy Surface Area. I’ll go into that principle more in a separate post, but just know I’ll be pontificating about Flavorful, Crispy Surface Area soon. And I’ll make you a believer.

Religion
See You in Hell!
I can’t help wondering why Christians bother devising such hateful slogans. Are they concerned that the positive points of their religion are not attractive enough, so that it may be necessary, at times, to resort to scaring the hell out of nonbelievers rather than loving us into God’s Kingdom? Do they not realize that such scare tactics only reinforce the already supremely negative image of their “loving” God as a cruel, egomaniacal tyrant? Or, it may be the case that Christians find these threats humorous. Or, the blurbs may make them feel “special” because they belong to the “in” crowd, the right club, the group that’s assured of a place in paradise well away from the rest of us nasty infidels who undoubtedly “deserve” whatever the hell Jehovah has in store for us. It’s also possible that they are so afraid of hell themselves that they will take any measures they believe are required, regardless of how reprehensible said methods may be, to avoid that eternal fate themselves. They may be deathly afraid that, if they don’t work hard enough to Win the World for God, they themselves will be cast into the fiery pit with the rest of us.

In One's Own Words
Now, this should not be a remarkable situation. Every state in the union has educational standards for its public school students requiring that kids as young as 3rd-graders be able to paraphrase and/or summarize written and heard material in their own words. Being able to restate concepts, facts, and details in your own words shows that you actually understand what you’re talking about. On the other hand, not being able to put someone else’s thought into your own words shows that you really don’t get it.

Jesus Didn't Tap?
Here, however, I want to mention that one of the fighters I saw tonight had a company logo on his little banner called Jesus Didn't Tap. Now, for those not initiated into the dark art of beating someone senseless, one way for a person to win a bout is if you have your opponent in a hold (arm lock, choke, etc...) where they can't get out and are in too much pain to continue, they can tap on your leg, arm, body, floor to signify their giving up. That's the ref's cue to stop the fight and your cue as the winning fighter to let go.

So, that means that the whole Jesus Didn't Tap thing is retarded as a concept. Jesus, a possibly mythical character to begin with, was nailed to a giant cross and left to die a slow painful death. He probably cried. A lot. May have peed on himself. No one would blame the guy...geez, you're nailed to a fuckin' cross. Cut a brother some slack.

Can You Prove It Didn't Happen? Progressive Religion and the Standards of Evidence
There is, in fact, a very serious problem with holding a belief that isn't supported by any good evidence, even if it isn't contradicted by any. If your belief isn't supported by any evidence, how do you choose among the millions and millions of possible beliefs you could come up with that also aren't supported by evidence but aren't contradicted by it? How do you even choose between the hundreds and hundreds of commonly- held religious beliefs that actually exist?

And if you don't have any basis for making that choice -- other than the demonstrably biased, easily fooled, heavily- weighted- in- favor- of- believing- what- you're- predisposed- to- believe form of guesswork known as "intuition" or "faith" -- then why on earth would you base your entire life philosophy around that choice?

Science
Put a Little Science in Your Life
In fact, many students I’ve spoken to have little sense of the big questions those technical details collectively try to answer: Where did the universe come from? How did life originate? How does the brain give rise to consciousness? Like a music curriculum that requires its students to practice scales while rarely if ever inspiring them by playing the great masterpieces, this way of teaching science squanders the chance to make students sit up in their chairs and say, “Wow, that’s science?”

A Twisted Solar Eruptive Prominence



Girls are becoming as good as boys at mathematics, and are still better at reading
On average, girls' maths scores were, as expected, lower than those of boys. However, the gap was largest in countries with the least equality between the sexes (by any score), such as Turkey. It vanished in countries such as Norway and Sweden, where the sexes are more or less on a par with one another. The researchers also did some additional statistical checks to ensure the correlation was material, and not generated by another, third variable that is correlated with sexual equality, such as GDP per person. They say their data therefore show that improvements in maths scores are related not to economic development, but directly to improvements in the social position of women.

The Sacrifice of Admetus
The researchers set up identical conditions by which their Pan and Homo subjects observed an unfamiliar person stretching to reach an object just beyond their grasp. In multiple individual trials the researchers recorded the frequency at which each group of 36 subjects would offer their assistance by retrieving the desired object and handing it to the stranger. Contradicting previous studies of chimpanzee altruism, the researchers found no significant difference between us and our evolutionary cousins. This result was upheld even when the subjects had to put in some effort, climbing over a series of obstacles, in order to deliver the object. In a variation on these initial trials the researchers also offered the subjects a reward to illicit their assistance (toy blocks for the infants and bananas, of course, for the chimpanzees). In both cases the only significant factor was whether the subjects observed the stranger attempting to reach the distant object; a factor that chimpanzees and infants both responded to selflessly. Offering a reward for their assistance had no effect on this display of generosity. Service, it seems, was its own reward.

Comedy
The Software Professional's Real Word Priority Scale
Lightning - You aren't assigned a project so much as you are struck by one. The only deadline is "now". Some would call this "Emergency" priority, but I prefer the term "Lightning" because such projects only strike the highest visibility employees and not those who have learned to keep their heads down.

Games
Game Review: Age of Conan (PC)
You'll routinely fight upwards of three mobs at once, with little downtime. To add to the frenzy, you can dodge attacks with a variety of evasive maneuvers. Conan stands out as one of the few MMO games that could appeal to action game fans, as there is virtually no sitting around and waiting. It's all action, all the time. The game even includes fatalities, which, when activated, unleash spectacular effects. As a necromancer, my character's fatality stars a black shadow that wraps my foes in chains of darkness before disemboweling them. My warrior friend's fatality involves a two-sword, scissor-like decapitation. Brutal and satisfying.

Wild Tangent tweaks in-game ads, preserves player experience
The reasoning? St John doesn't think it's right to interrupt a player's gaming experience. WildTangent has let players buy its games for years with "WildCoins," which offer an alternative to purchasing a retail version of a game. Now, the company is offering an alternative to coin system and intrusive advertising. Instead, players can decide if they want to spend their own money on a game session or have a company, such as Coca-Cola, cover their play time.

"And if you say 'I'll take the free play from Coke,' Coke plays a little 30 second video ad while the game is loading—that's the time you are sitting there waiting for the game to load anyway, it plays the Coke ad. It's not doing anything else. Then you go into the game and play it for free," St. John explained.

Spore



Healthcare
Why doctors give out antibiotics you don't need
By my assessment, the child was not acutely ill: She'd had a low-grade fever for two days, her mother said, and a mild cough, but she had clear lungs and appeared well-hydrated. Her eardrum may have had some fluid behind it but wasn't red or bulging. Just as the baby was trying to put my stethoscope in her mouth, paramedics pushed through the ambulance doors with a patient who was having an acute stroke. I had to decide right then if I was going to give this mother the antibiotics she wanted, even though I thought her daughter probably didn't need them.

History
Obama and Auschwitz, Part II
To claim that American soldiers liberated Auschwitz is to perpetuate the myth that Americans played the dominant role in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II (with a little help from the British.) On the first day of the Fact Checker blog, I got into trouble with Fred Thompson supporters for taking issue with his claim that Americans had "shed more blood for other people's liberty than any other combination of nations in the history of the world." I pointed out the Soviets lost 10 times as many soldiers in World War II as American soldiers killed in all foreign wars combined. Winston Churchill credited the Red Army with "tearing the guts out of the Nazi war machine."

International News
Fortune-tellers targetted in new Consumer Protection Regulations
Fortune-tellers will have to tell customers that what they offer is “for entertainment only” and not “experimentally proven”. This means that a fortune-teller who sets up a tent at a funfair will have to put up a disclaimer on a board outside.

Why Women Should Not Appear on TV
Sir, when I play my part on TV, and when I claim my right to play a role in this professional field, I demand that my face, which constitutes my identity, be shown. Under no circumstances am I prepared to allow my identity to be obliterated.

Who are these people who wish to decide for me how I should behave? Why do you treat me as less qualified just because I am a woman? Why is there always a male voice deciding how I should behave? The Lord created me equal to you in my duties, punishment, and reward. When you fast, I fast. When you pray, I pray. When you steal, your hand is cut off. When I steal, mine is cut off. This is the greatest evidence that I am not less qualified. I know what I am doing, and I know how to maintain my honor.

The problems at Nottingham University
Systems function well, and gravitate towards some sort of integrity and truth when there is variability within those systems. Properly functioning systems require dissent. They require the diverse commentary of many individuals with differing perspectives on ethical standards. They require transparency. They require crooks, cooks and discussion over the definition of crookery and acceptable behaviour.

B.C. police probe infant offered for sale on Craigslist
A British Columbia woman looking for furniture for her son was shocked last Friday when she saw an Internet ad on Craigslist offering a seven-day-old baby for sale for $10,000.

"A new baby girl, seven days old, healthy and very cute," read the ad. "Can't afford and unexpected. Looking for a good home. Please call ASAP."

"I couldn't believe it," Marilyn Bateman of Pitt Meadows, about 35 kilometres east of Vancouver, said Tuesday. "I was shaking. I thought, 'This doesn't happen in Canada'."

The Stir Over Bill Henson’s Nudes
Unfortunately, we live in an age of sexual hysteria, when the mere image of a naked child plunges countless people around the globe into mindless panic. That panic is dangerous to our societies. It destroys trust, and turns every artist who works with nudes into a pornographer, every adult who cares for children into a predator, and every fool of a politician into a hero. In such an environment, the value of Mr. Henson’s work as “a counter-argument to the exploitation and commodification of young people” seems to have gone unnoticed.

Law
Jack Thompson flails about, trying to save his law career
GamePolitics has the details on how Thompson is trying desperately to delay the process, or make sure the final June 4 hearing doesn't happen. If you came in here expecting the crazy, you won't be disappointed. Jack Thompson has:

* Tried to subpoena 33 people, including Take Two chairman Strauss Zelnick, Jeb Bush, and the judge who presided over the Bully hearings. Those subpoenas were shut down by the court
* Filed suit against the State of Florida
* Promised not to attend the upcoming hearing unless he can yet again file his own motions in the Florida Supreme Court
* Filed a motion asking for a delay of next week's hearing while he undergoes a mental exam

Religion
The Sameness of Imagination, The Astonishingness of Reality: Thoughts on Science and Religion
I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I'm not sure if I have a point. I think I just want to say this, something I've said before: Reality is more interesting than anything we could make up. And when religious believers critique scientists for being mundane, close-minded, unable to imagine anything beyond the puny reality of the physical world, then they need to shut the hell up. The reality of the physical world is wilder and weirder than anything in their religion, and science has come up with many more things, in the skies and on the earth, than they ever dreamt of in their philosophy.

Photography
A Fog Bow Over Ocean Beach



A View to the Sunset



Science
Birth cry of a supernova
Because so many people observed this supernova from so early on, a vast wealth of knowledge was collected. The progenitor star probably started out life with about 30 times the mass of the Sun. Over a few million years, it shed quite a bit of its mass through a dense, super-solar wind, blowing off most (but probably not all) of its outer layers. When the core collapsed, the shock wave tore through what was left of the star’s envelope. Because there wasn’t as much material as usual surrounding the core, the energy of the blast could accelerate the gas outward at an unusually high speed. It’s also been determined that the explosion wasn’t symmetric: it wasn’t a perfect sphere, with the gas expanding in every direction equally. Instead it was off-center, with gas on one side of the explosion moving outward faster than on the other. This has been seen before, but never so early on.

WCI student isolates microbe that lunches on plastic bags
Now a Waterloo teenager has found a way to make plastic bags degrade faster -- in three months, he figures.

Daniel Burd's project won the top prize at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa. He came back with a long list of awards, including a $10,000 prize, a $20,000 scholarship, and recognition that he has found a practical way to help the environment.

Daniel, a 16-year-old Grade 11 student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, got the idea for his project from everyday life.

What is a species?
So, what sort of "unit" might a species be? I can think of three alternatives. One is that species are, in fact, simply a matter of convention, which is to say something that makes things convenient for us in communication, just as John Locke said in the Essay (although that was about the logical species, not the biological one). Instead, say researchers like Paris polychaete specialist Frederick Pleijel and Rutgers geneticist Jody Hey, we need to replace the notion species with something like a "least inclusive taxonomic unit" (LITU, Pleijel) or "evolutionary group" (Hey). There are other replacement concepts in the offing. And the so-called "phylogenetic species concept" is not really a concept of species, at least in one of the versions under that name, so much as something very like a LITU that gets called a species.

Animation
Das Rad (The Wheel)

Atheism
Bill Maher is a crank
Bill Maher is a Luddite, who has tried to blame the death of bees on cell phones has engaged in anti-vaccine wingnuttery, routinely complains of mysterious "toxins", supports animal rights extremists, and generally has a disgusting "blame-the-victim" mentality towards health. Lung cancer may be a largely self-inflicted illness, but the other big cancer killers? Breast cancer? Prostate cancer? Pancreatic and colorectal cancers? Each may have a small environmental component, but most cancers aside from those caused by cigarettes have much more minor contributions from lifestyle and environment. That is not to say these contributions do not exist, but compared to cigarettes the relative risks of misbehavior are astronomically smaller. Most of these cancers have overwhelmingly genetic risk factors and the number one risk factor is almost always family history. Maher's statement that cancers are "hatched" or that there is only "some" genetic component is typical of his ignorance of medicine, his blame-the-victim mentality towards disease, and is just as despicable as his depiction of medicine as a killer.

Comedy
Baby... burrito.. same thing



Education
Evolution on the table top
Evolution has taken another step away from being dismissed as “a theory” in the classroom, thanks to a new paper published this week in the online open-access journal PLoS Biology. The research article, by Brian Paegel and Gerald Joyce of The Scripps Research Institute, California, documents the automation of evolution: they have produced a computer-controlled system that can drive the evolution of improved RNA enzymes—biological catalysts—without human input. In the future, this “evolution-machine” could feature in the classroom as well as the lab, allowing students to watch evolution happen in their biology lessons.

Games
LittleBigPlanet coming to PSP
LittleBigPlanet is currently in development for PSP at Sony Studio Liverpool, a source has told CVG today.

No further details were offered as to how the game will work on the PSP, but if true, we'd expect the portable edition to feature link up options with the PS3 version, set for release in September.

Games for Windows magazine shuts down, staff moves online
Unfortunately, it looks like the realities of the marketplace has caught up with Games for Windows magazine: the print magazine will be shutting down, although the staff will continue writing for the 1UP Network, and the Sims 3 issue will be its last in print.

Upstart Gamer Doc to take on GameStop with themed stores
Huether is blunt with what he sees as the problem with existing retail stores. "There is too much merchandise packed into too little space with too little differentiation," he told Ars. Gamer Doc wants to be more of an experience than other gaming stores, and the company hopes that its unique store themes will help in that regard. "We are fully developing three designs that will be turnkey for our franchisees," he says. "In addition, they will be able to personalize the look of each of the designs to incorporate unique aspects of their market into the look and feel of their store and our brand." He cites Disney as an example of how to build a "consistently strong brand."

Government
The sacred right to rape children
His logic goes like this: because the United States federal government sends troops to foreign lands to fight wars, and because these troops engage in violence and sometimes to terrible things to innocent people, therefore the police officers of Texas have no right to point fingers at religious wackos who think God wants them to rape little girls. Indeed, although “there is no moral defense one could possibly make” of raping children, nevertheless, it is “difficult to tolerate” the “self-righteousness” of the state police or prosecutors who would insist on intervening to protect children from rape, given that federal officials sometimes endorse violent warfare. After all, the U.S. has “killed over one million” people in Iraq (we’ll put aside asking where that number comes from) and is now threatening “innocent” Iran*—and “such practices appear to be occurring, once again, on the plains of Texas.” Shaffer, of course, isn’t defending child rapists, no no. He’s just calling them “innocent” victims of unfair government aggression.

Why I Have Not Participated In Any Tax Evader’s Project
Perhaps you’ve been told that you don’t have to pay the Income Tax. I’m sorry to be the one to break the bad news to you, but all of the theories floating around are based on misguided or dangerous interpretations of the income tax rules. And, as I’ll demonstrate later in this article, they’re not the best way to end the Income Tax and win a much smaller, constitutionally limited government.

International
Brain Gym

Atheism
American Atheists in the Mini-apple
Ellen Johnson, president of American Atheists, kicked things off with a rousing and impassioned speech on political action, mainly addressing the fact that secular voters do represent a major voting block which should not be allowed to be ignored by politicians. She called for solidarity and strength, urging atheists to remain engaged rather than giving up, especially in the face of flagrant constitutional violations, and to resist caving to our frustrations.

Comedy
Zombie Jesus Day
What we see, through Zombie Jesus, is perhaps the worst thing a zombie can do, and that's found a religion. Now this may seem to have nothing to do with zombies desiring to eat your brains, but in fact is quite an ingenious scheme to devour the brains of countless millions, and having them voluntarily, often happily, offer their brains for sacrifice. Yes, that Jesus Zombie is a clever bastard. Every day it feeds on brains.



Games
Microsoft punishes Gamerscore cheaters with public branding
With the battle for high scores comes a high probability of cheating. When it comes to buffing one's Gamerscore on the Xbox 360, though, Microsoft has drawn a line in the sand. Microsoft's Major Nelson has documented the punishment for players caught cheating and it's surprisingly public. Following a recent round of "serious offender" identification, the company has come forth with a set of documented penalties.

Second Life lawsuit over purloined naughty bits settled
The not-nearly-as-sordid-as-you-might-think story goes like this. 19-year-old Robert Leatherwood allegedly stole scripts written by Florida-based Eros, LLC that gave people's avatars lifelike naughty bits and enabled them to engage in kinky, virtual sex. He then resold them without permission, which sparked a lawsuit from Eros founder Kevin Alderman over copyright violations last July. That was apparently when Leatherwood decided to stop selling the scripts, according to the Associated Press, and was likely part of the reason Eros decided to settle.

WoW bot maker sued after home visit from Vivendi attorney
However, Donnelly's bot is particularly powerful. While many popular bots, such as the infamous Fishing bot from Final Fantasy XI or the crafting macro-botting of Star Wars Galaxies, are limited to a single task, Glider can automate the majority of the game. "Glider works a lot like a regular player. It looks at your health, mana, energy, etc. It moves the mouse around and pushes keys on the keyboard," the software's web site explains. "You tell it about your character, where you want to kill things, and what to kill. Then it kills for you, automatically. You can do something else, like eat dinner or go to a movie, and when you return, you'll have a lot more experience and loot."

Rockstar and Amazon bring digital music distribution to GTA4
Citing the success of downloadable music sales as implemented in Rock Band as an inspiration, but boasting the ability to take songs outside of the game, Amazon and Rockstar are looking for similar results from players of Grand Theft Auto 4. "Music has long played an integral part of the game playing experience," said Ronn Werre, executive vice president of EMI Music's Sales, Licensing and Synchronization unit, in a statement. "We think giving players the ability to identify and buy their favorite tracks from Grand Theft Auto IV's popular radio stations is a great new music discovery tool for fans and an innovative new revenue stream for artists."

Government
Grandma, grandpa get owned by Illinois' failed gaming law
The way the legal fees were paid has been an ongoing concern. In May of 2007 we discovered that the governor raided funds throughout state government to pay for the litigation. Some of the areas money was taken from included the public health department, the state's welfare agency, and economic development department. If you had cash, you gave your funds to pay for the failed legislation, whether or not the department had anything at all to do with the law itself.

International
Indian 'witch' tied to tree, beaten by mob
"I was appalled at what I saw because people should be more socially responsible than to do this," Tiwari said.

Life-Stories
North Platte, Nebraska, to Salt Lake City, Utah
Taking I-80 through Nebraska is not very exiting. Nebraska is rather flat, the road is rather straight, the scenery is mile after mile of irrigation rigs and the occasional old-fashioned windmill-powered well pump with a few cows standing around. Wyoming offers little improvement at first, but as you head west you begin to see more hills which roll higher and higher until the snow-streaked mountains come into view. By the time you reach Western Wyoming, every bend in the road, every vantage point over every hill is more awe-inspiring than the last. Following a thin ribbon of highway down into one valley, then up and out gives one an understanding of the phrase "wide-open spaces". I considered taking some pictures, but realized that my camera's lens would only flatten the image into a narrow slice of depth-less frame that could not possibly convey the awesomeness of the sight. It was a partly-cloudy day, cold, and large patches of snow were still on the ground. In some places massive snow drifts had become isolated and were slowly disappearing allong fences or in gullies. The whole world as far as I could see was blue and white sky, brown and green scruff, covered with large patches of white, mottled like a cow's hide. In the mid-afternoon sun, the high cirrus clouds and the lower, heavier clouds in the distance helped cast a cool, bluish-white glow on the entire landscape. It looked cold.

Philosophy
Three Objections to Objectivism
This sounds very compassionate of her - until you remember that Ayn Rand believes that the free market is, by definition, infallible (see last point). In Objectivist philosophy, if you succeed it's because you deserve to succeed, and if you're poor it's because you deserve to be poor. Combined with Rand's repeated expressions of fierce disdain for "parasites" and "looters" and "moochers", it seems hard to escape the conclusion that a consistent Objectivist would never give any money or other assistance to others. After all, if they were deserving of your help, they wouldn't need it; they'd have already achieved success and security on their own through hard work and persistence. To an Objectivist, the way you prove you're worthy of help is by proving you don't need help. And the reason Rand was so upset about the starving citizens of the USSR wasn't because they were starving; it was because they were starving under the wrong ideology. In an Objectivist society, people might still starve, but we can at least comfort ourselves with the knowledge that they must have deserved it.

Politics
Reason: The Gold Standard of Politics (A Girl Can Dream)
What bothered me as I watched the speech live, streaming over cnn.com, was not the emotional presentation and delivery (which I believe is genuine—I have no reason to believe otherwise); it was not the nearly perfect linguistic structure or perfectly situated word choice. No. It’s that in the 21st century, Obama still embraces a dogma (i.e, Christianity) and the physical representation of that dogma (i.e., Wright) that propagate nonsensical beliefs, superstitious drivel, blatant gobbledygook, and vacuous platitudes. These purposely distort information; they produce disinformation. They are exploitative and downright wrong.

Religion
Can a Christian accept natural selection as true?
I think that nobody is purely rational, not even cephalodesque Elder Deities that eat creationists at movie premieres. So I am unable to say that my theist friends are compartmentalising their beliefs any more than, say, I do when I contemplate quantum mechanics and hold to a classical view of causation at the macro level. But there is a problem with Providence, taken literally. If God wants so many organisms to die horribly, or refuses to act to resolve it (Fall or no Fall) then He is not a providential deity. So maybe Providence has some other meaning. Not for me to say. Good luck to those trying to come to an accommodation. I merely point out that formally NS is not a special problem for theists - reality is.

You’re Welcome
Everyday during breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we would shout over the table at each other about evolution. Goodness, it was loads of fun in retrospect, but I don’t think any creationist has raised my blood pressure so much since James. We would pick apart the arguments that were infecting his mind, pick them apart, but he would stubbornly change to something else like the start of the universe. It seemed entirely hopeless.

Praying parents' other 3 kids removed
Madeline Neumann, 11, died Sunday the Weston home of an undiagnosed but treatable form of diabetes as her parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann, prayed for her to get better. Her mother said she never expected her daughter, whom she called Kara, to die.

Science
Any way you slice it - I'm OLD
But – now that Orrorin (said to be about 6 million years old) has been tagged as an “upright walker”, where does that leave the hypothesis? As the video makes clear, bipedalism would likely have come at the cost of considerable time. Are we talking about 7 million years (or more) since the split? I think it’s possible we will be hearing this in coming years.

Saturn and Titan from Cassini


Spoil-Proofing Elections
When Ralph Nader recently announced he was entering the 2008 presidential race, many Democrats groaned. It was his fault, they say, that George Bush defeated Al Gore in 2000. But Nader retorted that the Democratic Party has only itself to blame for the loss in 2000.

Mathematicians offer a different perspective. The problem, they say, doesn't lie with Nader or with the Democrats. It lies with our voting system.

Across the Universe
How far can you see? Even the faintest stars visible to the eye are merely hundreds or thousands of light-years distant, all well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. Of course, if you know where to look you can also spot the Andromeda Galaxy as a pale, fuzzy cloud, around 2.5 million light-years away. But staring toward the northern constellation Bootes on March 19th, even without binoculars or telescope you still could have witnessed a faint, brief, flash of light from a gamma-ray burst. The source of that burst has been discovered to lie over halfway across the Universe at a distance of about 7.5 billion light-years. Now holding the distinction of the most distant object that could be seen by the unaided eye and the intrinsically brightest object ever detected, the cosmic explosion is estimated to have been over 2.5 million times more luminous than the brightest known supernova. The monster burst was identified and located by the orbiting Swift satellite, enabling rapid distance measurements and follow-up observations by large ground-based telescopes. The fading afterglow of the gamma-ray burster, cataloged as GRB080319B, is shown in these two panels in X-rays (left) and ultraviolet light (right).

Sexism
Steelers explain Wilson's release, Rooney clarifies statements
"I know many are asking the question of [why] we released Wilson and Harrison we kept," Rooney said. "The circumstances -- I know of the incidents, they are completely different. In fact, when I say we don't condone these things, we don't, but we do have to look at the circumstances that are involved with other players and things like that, so they're not all the same."

In Harrison's case, Rooney said the player was trying to take his son to be baptized.

"What Jimmy Harrison was doing and how the incident occurred, what he was trying to do was really well worth it," Rooney said of Harrison's initial intent with his son. "He was doing something that was good, wanted to take his son to get baptized where he lived and things like that. She said she didn't want to do it."

Sociology
From Crib to Cubicle, A Familiar Voice -- Our Own -- Reassures
Carli Entin, an associate magazine editor, loves talking to herself whether it's "appearing" as a panelist on "Meet the Press," narrating her imaginary cooking show ("replace some of the water with coffee for a tastier cupcake"), or blogging.

At work, even when a colleague told her she stopped listening, that didn't stop Ms. Entin's side of the conversation or the fun she had engaging in it. Besides, her self-chatter can be efficient. "By acting out the conversation," she says, "I no longer need to have it."

Atheism
Funerals Make Me Glad to Be an Atheist
This is why I’m glad to be an atheist. Because I know that, when I go, there won’t be some asshole up at a podium using my death to push his agenda. Instead, my family will be there, remembering me for the life I actually lived and the things I actually did. That’s how I want it to be. That’s how it should be.

Blog Against Theocracy 2008 - Details
1. Write a post in support of our United States Constitution, specifically regarding the separation of Church and State. You can write your post anytime, but the blogswarm takes place Easter Weekend, March 21-23. Your post will be linked at the Blog Against Theocracy website during and just after that weekend.

Comedy


Economy
The Bad News at the Pump
Nothing similar is likely to happen now. For the present surge in prices — crude oil costs have risen by 74% over the past year — no such easy solution is in sight. To begin with, we face not a sudden spike, but the results of a steady, relentless climb that began in 2002 and shows no signs of abating; nor can this rise be attributed to a single, chaos-causing factor in the energy business or in global politics. It is instead the product of multiple factors endemic to energy production and characteristic of the current era. There is no prospect of their vanishing any time soon.

Education
Raising California: The rights of a parent
Like any position of power, the power of parenting brings with it a responsibility to use it only when necessary. Children are people too. This may seem a tired statement--this is certainly not the first time you've heard it--but it is rarely recognized for what it really means. No person is the property of another person, and since children of all ages are persons, this includes them. But many parents are eager to make the jump from "My kids are my responsibility," to, "My kids are mine." Since children are too young to make important decisions for themselves, legal responsibilties are often passed on to the parents. This further promotes the idea that they are our property: we have to sign release papers in order for anyone else to use them. But responsibility for a person does not mean that you own them and are free to control their lives in any way you see fit.

Oklahoma’s Proposed “Religious Freedom” Law
The purpose of the bill is clear - to open the door for religious views not only in schools but in the classroom, on homework assignments and on tests. Such a law is an abomination of religious freedom, not a protection of it. It violates the Constitutional provision for separation of church and state, and is also degrades the quality of student education. I suspect that the promoters of the law wish, if nothing else, to make the teaching of certain topics, like evolution, as controversial as possible, hampered by legal landmines. That way teachers and schools are likely just to avoid it altogether, and textbook manufacturers will be motivated to avoid it lest their book sales suffer. This strategy has been unfortunately successful over the last century, creating an American public that is largely scientifically illiterate concerning one of the fundamental pillars of modern science.

Games
Patents on video game mechanics to strangle innovation, fun
We've already seen the danger of these patents. Sega owns patent no. 6,200,138, which is entitled "Game display method, moving direction indicating method, game apparatus and drive simulating apparatus." What this means is that Sega has a lock on the idea of driving a car around a city with an arrow pointing towards the next destination; it's a patent on Crazy Taxi, more or less.

Simpson's Road Rage was a game that featured Simpsons characters driving around a city, picking up customers, and dropping them off in other locations, all with an arrow pointing towards the next destination. When the game came out, Sega promptly sued Fox Entertainment, EA, and Radical Games. The case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. Don't expect to see many arrows in your driving games, unless they've been cleared by a number of lawyers making sure they're not close to Sega's idea of what an arrow can or should point to.

Video game designed to help paralysis patients
Once again proving that video games can be used for more than entertainment, Today's Zaman is reporting that engineers from the Middle East Technical University Technopolis are working on a video game designed to rehabilitate patients who have been paralyzed. The game itself is called "Çiftlik” (Turkish for "Farm"), and can be played with an optical remote control instead of a mouse and keyboard.

Nintendo not allowing holocaust game in North America
The New York Times recently reported on a game by British developer Luc Bernard, entitled Imagination is the Only Escape, which follows the story of a young boy living during the Nazi occupation of France. The game's world is based upon a fantasy land that the boy creates to escape the horrors he has to live through, similar to the film Pan's Labyrinth. Bernard hopes to use the game as a platform to educate children about the Holocaust. "I hope that young children will play it," he explained.

Slate editorial bashes D&D, but we know the truth
Yesterday, writer Erik Sofge wrote a rebuttal to the many touching tributes and comics and remembrances of Gygax that have spread across the web. Erik doesn't think Dungeons and Dragons was a very good game, but it seems very few people are agreeing with him. In fact, many corners of the Internet are calling his piece nothing more than a thinly-disguised troll, a way to get the geeks and Internet people riled up, visiting the site, and generating ad revenue. That could be, but I don't think so. The more I read his piece, the more I'm convinced something even worse is at play here. I thought long and hard about whether to give Sofge's piece yet more publicity, but then I thought it would be good if we used it as a warning, as a worst-case scenario. Even as an apology. See, I think I know what happened to the young man who wrote this piece.

Gibson suing Activision over Guitar Hero guitars
Activision, maker of the Guitar Hero franchise, is being sued for violating a patent by Gibson Guitars, whose products the Guitar Hero controllers have been modeled on. The lawsuit stems from a patent issued to Gibson in 1999, which involves "a system for electronically simulating participation by a user in a pre-recorded musical performance."

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War -- Soulstorm (PC)
Soulstorm is an unfortunate way for an incredible game to sail into the sunset. It shows flashes of its former brilliance through two new races that are full of personality and are a lot of fun to play with, but falls flat through a lackluster single-player campaign, mediocre (at best) new air units and two devastating bugs that will kill the multiplayer scene until Relic issues an eventual patch. The Sisters and the Dark Eldar could really reinvigorate multiplayer games, but until a patch is released the Dawn of War faithful deserved a better expansion.

Healthcare
The post in which I continue to attack the damn libertarians
The second idiocy here is that the type of medicine under a universal health system will hopefully be fundamentally different than what we have now. Currently, doctors are essentially penalized for providing more care, and rewarded by insurance companies for providing less care. There is also completely inadequate support for preventative medicine. Despite these measures to reduce cost we still manage to spend more per capita on healthcare than any other nation, are ranked almost dead last among industrialized nations for provision of care (mostly due to access problems), and have over 40 million uninsured. These facts make a prima facie case for the need to reform our medical delivery system. The current system is unjustifiably stupid economically, and the restructuring of healthcare delivery has the potential to gear medicine more towards better disease prevention, screening, and overall increased quality of care as people are less fearful of being dinged by their insurance company for the crime of getting sick or being diagnosed with a disease.

History
Scary Science That Humans Have Foolishly Embraced
Roman historian Pliny the Elder notes that asbestos in clothing "affords
protection against all spells, especially those of the Magi." If that’s not handy enough, the Romans also discover that asbestos is a strong building material, and that it can make tablecloths flame retardant. (Simply burn off the food to clean them!)

Curiously, Pliny also warns against purchasing slaves who’ve worked in asbestos quarries. He writes, "They die young."

Life Stories
Ten Years Ago Today
And thus it was, standing in the living room of a cheap apartment that we were being shown in Leesburg, Virginia, I had what I expect was the lowest moment of my adult life. I was standing in the living room with gray walls, gray carpet and gray window blinds, on an overcast day, listening to my wife ask about the much reduced amenities relative to the apartment we lived in at the time, and it felt like my life had hit some sort of rewind — that I had managed to come so far, and now this was the bend in the curve, where things started their downturn.

Go Outside and Watch Some Birds
At about three o’clock, a red-shouldered hawk landed on an extremely thin branch of a naked sycamore near the back of my house. He was relatively small for the species: a male, no doubt. He widened his tail and pumped it up and down a few times, trying to catch his balance, while the other birds, suddenly confronted with the possibility of a swift and unexpected death, flew into the thicket, a short but safe distance away. The bravest of the cardinals and goldfinches peeked out from time to time to see what the hawk was up to. Not much, as it happened. After a few minutes of watching the ground — waiting hopefully for some rodent to come for the spilled seed, although none did — he coursed away.

Miles to go
It seems to me that I have spent most of my life "going places". On the road. In boats, planes, motorhomes, buses. I learned to walk on the train crossing Canada, they told me. And I am still wandering. There is so much to see, so much to do; there is always something new and interesting around that next corner. I rejoice in the feel of a highway unfolding ahead of me, the mystery of where it will lead, the scent of future discoveries.

Photography
Watching Pictures In The Clouds


Podcasts
Another Goddamned Podcast #6: March 6, 2008
St. Patrick’s Day falls during Holy Week this year. OH NO! We toast one another with green beer while throwing this non-controversy right in the Papal face. But then we find a topic we really disagree on. Lifeguard wants to be Aquaman. Which superheroes would the other Herd members choose? And who can kick whose ass?

Politics
McCain's Spiritual Guide: Destroy Islam
On February 26, McCain appeared at a campaign rally in Cincinnati with the Reverend Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, a supersize Pentecostal institution that features a 5,200-seat sanctuary, a television studio (where Parsley tapes a weekly show), and a 122,000-square-foot Ministry Activity Center. That day, a week before the Ohio primary, Parsley praised the Republican presidential front-runner as a "strong, true, consistent conservative." The endorsement was important for McCain, who at the time was trying to put an end to the lingering challenge from former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a favorite among Christian evangelicals. A politically influential figure in Ohio, Parsley could also play a key role in McCain's effort to win this bellwether state in the general election. McCain, with Parsley by his side at the Cincinnati rally, called the evangelical minister a "spiritual guide."

Religion
Self-Correction
By contrast, religion is a system of thought notably lacking in mechanisms for self-correction. The vast majority of religious beliefs do the exact opposite - assume that all significant truth was handed down at that religion's founding, perfect and complete, and that nothing of significance remains to be learned. There is no reward in religion for those who introduce new beliefs into the system or argue against old dogmas. In fact, most religions are set up specifically to discourage that possibility, with some going so far as to pronounce curses and divine wrath on anyone who tries it. There is no system of voting or other means by which the lay believers can express their discontent or call for a change of direction. And in many religions, there is an oligarchical elite of clergy who choose their own successors, shutting ordinary followers out of the decision-making process altogether.

Letting go of Jesus
Within the treatise, Hume, like a good Scotsman, appealed to common sense: You have never seen a brick suspended in the air. Wood will burn and fire will be extinguished by water. Food does not multiply by itself with a snap of my fingers. Water does not turn into wine. And in a deceptive opening sentence, he says, “...and what is more probable than that all men shall die.” In fact, “nothing I call a miracle has ever happened in the ordinary course of events.” It’s not a miracle if a man who seems to be in good health drops dead. It is a miracle if a dead man comes back to life—because this has never been witnessed by any of us. We only have reports, and even these can be challenged by the ordinary laws of evidence: How old are these reports? What is the reliability of the reporter? Under what circumstances were they written? Within what social, cultural and intellectual conditions did these reports originate? Hume’s conclusion is so simple and so elegant that I sometimes wish it, and not the Ten Commandments, were what Americans in Pascagoula were asking to be posted on classroom walls:

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish...