tales of an ordinary girl

One thing that really struck me when reading a prior Nonbelieving Literati selection The Flight of Peter Fromm is the blood. Throughout Christianity, even back to its Jewish roots, there's the concept of the blood sacrifice as an absolution of sin. These days the idea of blood sacrifice is no longer socially acceptable, so the sacrifice has become more of a symbolic thing.

But, there are still many, many Christian hymns that are, to excuse my wording, blood-drenched. Take for example the hymn that I haven't been able to get out of my head for the past three weeks - Power in the Blood.

There is pow'r, pow'r,
wonder working pow'r
In the blood
of the Lamb;
There is pow'r, pow'r,
wonder working pow'r
In the precious
blood of the Lamb.

It just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? But when people sing it do they really think about the words? I mean, do they really imagine power coursing through blood? And what is this power? Well, the second verse gives a clue.

Would be free from
your passion and pride?
There's pow'r in the blood,
pow'r in the blood;
Come for a cleansing
to Calvary's tide?
There's wonderful
power in the blood.

Freedom from passion and pride and all you need to do is cleanse in Calvary's tide. Isn't that sort of saying that you should bathe in blood... metaphorically? Well, except if you'd never heard of Christianity before don't you think the lyrics would sound a little gruesome?

Okay, so maybe that one's not so bad. But then there's Are You Washed in the Blood?.

Are you washed in the blood,
In the soul cleansing blood of the Lamb?
Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

That's pretty much talking about bathing in blood. Eww. Really? Does anyone sing that song anymore. It's not one I remember from Sunday school, but I do remember Cleansing Fountain

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.
Lose all their guilty stains, lose all their guilty stains;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

Just reading that makes me feel yucky.

So why are there so many hymns about blood still sung today? I think most people just don't think too much about the lyrics. But in reality there are millions of people every Sunday singing about bathing in blood. Doesn't that seem kind of sick?

I know, I know, it's just supposed to be a metaphor. But is the crucifixion a metaphor too? Isn't it gruesome as well? I mean, why would God plan to sacrifice his son or require any kind of sacrifice anyway? Wasn't that why Cain's sacrifice was refused, because it wasn't blood?

And why do we have to have a sacrifice? Couldn't God have just wiped away our sins on believing in him? And why do we have to believe in him anyway? Isn't that kind of ego maniacal to need your creations to worship you when you won't even acknowledge them?

But singing about blood every week, really? That's just gross.

Dragon*Con was a lot of fun, as it always is. With it being the first official year of Skeptrack, I immersed myself into one track rather than visiting many several different tracks and missed a lot of other things going on at the convention. I kind of regret it, but at the same time I really enjoyed that panels I attended. Maybe next year I'll balance it a little more and spend more time on science fiction. The Independent Film track was great, as always.

Skeptrack had two overriding themes this year. The first was what it means to be skeptical, including keeping an open mind about everything. It's easy to dismiss claims that seem radical like Big Foot (a big joke due to the recent Big Foot hoax) or psychic powers, but rejecting all claims out of hand that don't meet your world view doesn't make you a skeptic. It makes you dogmatic.

The other major theme was skepticism and atheism. There were requests to keep them separate from some people and requests to not draw the line of skepticism at religious belief. I think having both groups there made a good balance. I was especially happy to hear Lori Lipman Brown and DJ Grothe speaking as atheists.

I, of course, think that people should be skeptical of their beliefs as much as anything else in their lives.

High points of the weekend

* Meeting podblack (Kylie) and seeing how passionate she is about education and just life in general.

* Meeting Evan from the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

* Having A. compliment me on my hair. I got the hair cut from hell just before I left for Dragon Con and I was freaking out about how short it is. And A. made me feel much, much better.

* Meeting Dale and Meg.

* Attending the Skeptics 101 and Future of Skepticism panels.

* Admiring all the time and effort people put into some incredible costumes.

* Attending to the The Other White Meat panel in the Independent Film track.

Low point of the weekend



Man, that's a fat foot!

Original Source

I started the day with wandering through the shops, something I haven't had much time to do this time around. The shops area pretty much always the same, so unless there's something I'm especially looking for, then I skip a lot of the shops. The t-shirt shops are usually pretty fun and some of the woo-ist shops (or woo-woo-ist as Randi would say).

The first panel I went to was the live recording of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. The video clips they filmed at the convention with Superman, a Klingon, and other assorted costumed people were a lot of fun. James Randi, Derek Colanduno, and Pamela Gay were guests on the show.

Then the Skpetic Zone, formally the Skeptic Tank or the TANK vodcast had their live podcast. Ginger Campbell and Phil Plait were guests.

Later in the day I went to another panel by Lori Lipman Brown about Pastafarian? Zoroastrian? Atheist? Monothiest? Can't we all just get along?. She brought up a good point about allies. If atheists are going to get past discrimination we're going to have to have allies that aren't atheists, since we are still a small percentage of the world (or America). She encouraged people who don't consider themselves non-theists to stand up for the rights of non-theists.

Jeff Wagg presented a discussion about Skepticism vs Dogma about as true skeptics we can never be 100% confident in anything. Even if we draw good conclusions from the evidence presented, new evidence should make people re-evaluate their positions. I agree to an extent. Being skeptical means that I have to evaluate all evidence, even if it means re-visiting topics I feel confident about. However, no one can live life without making decisions and judgments. My decisions and judgments may be wrong, but that's why I have other skeptics around to challenge me.

Finally there was a panel on The Future of Skepticism - Where Do We Go From Here? with James Randi, George Hrab, Jeff Wagg, DJ Grothe, Lori Lipman Brown, Ben Radford, and Karen Stollznow. It turned into a discuss of atheism and skepticism, with Jeff stating they should stay separate. I'm not convinced. I'm not going to criticize someone's personal belief as long as social policy and ethics are based on reality. I still agree with DJ who said that traditionally skeptics have stayed away from religion, because science cannot speak to religion because it is not material. But that when people are using religion to impede science, knowledge, and to actively discriminate, then we need to focus on those areas as skeptics, whether believer or non-believer.

Then I headed off to a zombie film festival. One of the shorts was really good, but unfortunately I can't remember the name of it. I'll find out and try to post a link to it later on. I bought a bottle of wine and smuggled it in and I'm not sure if the first festival started out with some uninteresting shorts or if they just got better as I got more inebriated. The wine made everything a bit surreal.

Unfortunately I fell down a stair (very embarrassing) in my rush to get food between a couple of sessions and sprained my ankle - though, not badly. It didn't really bother me yesterday, but it throbbed last night and although it's just stiff and a little sore it's tough to walk on. So I'm going to miss any sessions today. My flight isn't until 4:00 and I have to check out at 11:00. I'm not sure what I'm going to do for the next 6 hours, but it will not include lugging my suitcase along with me. Maybe I should just get a cab to the airport and spend the time waiting for my flight.. or get an earlier flight.

I'll post a wrap-up of Dragon Con sometime in the next week as well as some clips of a few of the sessions in the next couple of weeks.

Original Source

Well, last night I didn't make it to the horror film festival. I fell asleep during the Colbert report. I did wake up off and on through the night, of course, just got to a regular sleep around 5 am.

Today was fabulous.

The first panel was Get a Life! Keeping a Sense of Fun in Non-Theist Politics with Lori Lipman Brown once again. She brought up several ways that non-theists have pointed out the absurdity of religious claims including the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Teach the Stork Controversy, and the Three Year Marriage Limitation. The Three Year Marriage Limitation (a term I coined myself) came about from the state supreme court ruling in Washington state that marriage could only between heterosexual couples since the purpose of marriage is to procreate. So a non-theist group came up with a ballot item to annul marriages where the couple did not have children wihtin three years. Of course it ended up offending people because they didn't understand the absurdity of it, but I think it's a pretty interesting idea. Anything to make people think, right?

The next panel was supposed to be a live taping of Point of Inquiry, but instead it ended up being a panel on science podcasting including Steven Novella of SGU, Derek Colanduno of Skepticality, Pamela Gay of Astronomy Cast, DJ Grothe of Point of Inquiry, Richard Saunders of TANK (soon to be renamed something with skeptic (or probably sceptic) in the title), and VirginiaGinger Campbell of The Brain Science Podcast. Swoopy from Skepticality hosted the discussion. It was an interesting discussion about what makes a quality podcast and the different ways they each have gone about making their podcasts successful.

Then Phil Plait gave a talk about his new book Death from the Skies. It was a pretty interersting discussion and different enough from Death by Black Hole to have some new ideas. He played clips from Armageddon and Deep Impact as well to illustrate his points.

I ran down to the skeptic booth in the meantime and met Evan from SGU and picked up a t-shirt. I just have to say, Evan is awesome. He was completely humble about having a fan and was really, really nice. (He kept telling me where Steve was, so I had to tell him I came down to see him because he's my favorite on the podcast.)

Then I actually had to get some food and paid an outrageous $7 for a Sam Adams. But, damn, was it a goddamn good beer! I made it back a little late for Science Based Medicine with Steve Novella, but it was a fun talk. At one point the lady and I standing in the back were shushed after she asked me for the name of the speaker and the website he was talking about. You have to be having a good time if you're shushed, right?

I left during questions so that I could make it to the 2nd Annual Skeptics vs Believers Debate, which was pretty good. I recorded the debate and I'll try to post something on it when I get back if I can figure out how to merge audio with stills in MM.

Then I sat through a live session of American Freethought. I wasn't familiar with the podcast at all, but I wanted to see how they stacked up against AGP. I think AGP is better, personally, but they were pretty funny and intersting, just a lot more scripted than we are.

Finally I sat in for the Issues in Education panel with Lori Lipman Brown, Derek Colanduno, Phil Plait, Karen Stollznow, and Kylie Sturgess (podblack). Yes, Sean, I told Kylie you said hello. She was totally excited that people read her blog. They talked a lot about the known issues around creation/intelligent design, but also about the lack of fostering critical thinking, issues with history texts. Kylie was very enthusiastic about the discussion as an educator.

It was after 8 pm then so I was long past hungry. I headed down to the hotel restaurant and made a reservation for one. However, Evan caught me as I was heading back from the restroom and invited me to come along with him and some of the other panelists. I met James Randi, Steven Novella, Bob Novella, several of the skepchicks, and several of the Aussies. Randi complimented me on my name (Ordinary Girl) in the sea of people trying to be different. Although the food was way too expensive and the service was poor, it was a good dinner.

And now I'm back in my room and the internet is still not working. I guess that's it for tonight.*

Written last night when my internet was not working.

Original Source

Well, it's actually the first official day of Dragon*Con, but it's the second day here in Atlanta for me.

I started the morning early, getting up at 8 am for registration. I didn't want to wait in a line. Of course I ended up in the absolutely slowest line and waited for about 30 minutes as it advanced at a snail's pace.

I spent some time artfully arranging our postcards near the exit of registration and interviewing a few unsuspecting attendees. And I realized I was carrying too much. And it was way too hot to worry about carrying a sweater, so I headed back to my room for a few minutes before the Con started in earnest.

The first panel was Skeptics 101 with James Randi Director of the JREF - , DJ Grothe - host of Point of Inquiry, Jeff Wagg - General Manager of JREF, Ben Radford - Managing Editor of Skeptical Inquirer, Phil Plait - President of JREF, and Richard Saunders of the TANK vodcast. It was a good panel. They touched on atheism quite a bit, partially due to questions from the audience. At one point the panel was talking about how theists and atheist could work together as long as the theists accepted reality and then talked a little about how atheism wasn't even a term they really used. DJ spoke up and said that yes, he agreed with the sentiment, but that he called himself an atheist and that wasn't a label he was willing to hide. James Randi also started the talk by calling himself an avowed atheist.

I sat next to the fabulous Meg during the session (Hi, Meg!) and she was pretty cool being a theist and yet still very receptive to the idea of the AGP podcast.

Then I visited the dealer's room and bought a pretty cool shirt that says, "I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed person," from Buzzy Multimedia.

The second panel I attended was Lake Monsters I Have Known with Ben Radford. It was a good discussion about cryptozoology investigations and skeptical investigations in general. His least believable monster - the chupacabra.

And somehow I kept following Dale from Saskatchewan around from panel to panel. We ended up talking between most panels and he was the first guy to agree to an interview. Way to go, Dale!

Skeptics and Non-Theists: A Politically Powerful Alliance was next with Lori Lipman Brown. She gave a really good talk about what the Secular Coalition is doing to lobby the government for separation of church and state. I recorded the session and hope to incorporate some of it into an AGP podcast. I asked her about the "defacto" religious test that our politicians seem to be engaged in. After the panel I talked to her a bit about politics and about interviewing her in the future. She was fantastic.

Then I rushed over to the Marriott to see Michael Shermer talk about Shermer's Last Law. It was a good panel and he touched a little bit on why people turn to religion and why religious groups seem to be gaining ground in America.

I have one last event I hope to attend. There's a film festival of shorts, Blood, Shock, and Discomfort at 1 am featuring horror films. These are comic and disturbing. I'm hoping mostly comic.

Anyway, it's been a good, but very tiring day. Tomorrow there's a lot more in store and I can't wait.

Tomorrow evening I'll be heading out to Atlanta for a weekend at Dragon Con. I hope to do some blogging about the Con while I'm there, but I'm not sure how much time I'll have.

If anyone reading plans to attend, send me an email if you'd like to meet. I'll be hanging around mostly at Skeptrack sessions and hopefully doing some promotion and interviews for Another Goddamned Podcast.

Skepchick has added a new feature called the Afternoon Inquisition. The first topic is, Can a religious person be a skeptic?

Pop on over and join the conversation if you're so inclined.

This morning I was listening to one of my co-workers tell her story about her weekend. At one point she said, "All I can do is pray," and immediately I thought "yeah, much good that will do you." But instead of listening to the rest of the story I got stuck on that phrase. Why do so many people pray?

Really, prayer has become such an alien concept to me that it's hard to remember what it was like to pray. I had to really think back about when I was a Christian. Did I pray? What did I pray about. Did I pray for people?

At first I couldn't remember a single instance of prayer until I thought about those moments when I just simply didn't know what to do, like when my cat ran away or when I was trying to get home by my 11:00 curfew and there was no way I was going to make it 5 miles in 5 minutes in my Dad's clunker truck.

And I think that's why most people pray. In a difficult situation, when there's nothing that can be done except accept what comes next, prayer helps people feel like they have some control over the outcome. And if they outcome turns out to be good when you're fearing the worst, then Presto! prayer works.

And for me my mumbled prayers were more like conversations with myself. I never really expected anything to change, but I held out hope. The fact that my cat returned and I ran into every green light on the way home even made me think my prayers had done something for a short time.

But we all know that it doesn't always turn out like that. Inevitably prayer will do nothing at the worst of times, like when a loved one is dying. Even though I was taught that prayer could lead to miracles, after I tried and experienced.. nothing, I came to believe that prayer was meaningless, at least if I was looking for a specific result.

But I think most people hold out hope because, like the lottery, there's that chance they may hit the jackpot. The fact that that chance is probably coincidence, is never really noticed. And even when our prayers are obviously ignored, people find ways to rationalize the outcome.

God has a plan for me.
She's in a better place now.
God works in mysterious ways.
I didn't pray enough.
I didn't want it badly enough.
I didn't know what I was asking for.

If any person told me to come to him for help and answered my pleas with silence, I certainly would lose faith. So why don't Christians lose faith in God? I think it's most Christians brought up with religion aren't challenged in their beliefs. Many people have such a good life that an unanswered prayer may mean something as trivial as finding a poor parking spot. But even when something bad happens to someone good, there's always a way to rationalize it. That person deserved it somehow. Or it's a test of faith. Or it's the plan of an unfathomable god.

It's impossible to argue against that kind of logic. Except that I think the rationalization is worse than the prayer. To accept that God wouldn't answer your prayers or the prayers of other believers requires either for you to believe that God is willing to put people through terrible pain and sadness for some higher reason or believe that people don't deserve to have their prayers answered.

So why do so many people believe prayer works? I'm sure there's a not a single, simple answer. But I heard an interview on Atheist Talk a few weeks ago that gave me an idea. In the episode I was listening to deconverts were talking about their experiences as believers. One deconvert was encouraged by his church to seek out rational, scientific explanations for the world around him. But he realized over time that the church doctrine did not match up to rational, scientific explanations. He explained that church doctrine was considered as much of a fact as any scientifically provable fact. The idea that Noah's flood was literal was as equal of a fact as the fact that the earth revolves around the sun. As a believer he never saw the difference.

I think most believers don't see the difference. When your raised to believe a certain way, you accept that belief. It's only when your belief comes in conflict with some other idea or thought that you begin to question it. Sometimes the belief is questioned and discarded, sometimes it is molded and refitted to not come into conflict, and sometimes the opposing thought or idea is discarded as false. That process can lead to three people with completely different world views. But there is also the person who has never had their beliefs threatened, never given them much thought in how they relate to the rest of the world. And that generalization probably fits the majority of Americans.

A few evenings ago I was drifting in and out of sleep on the couch, trying to forget I had a headache when I overheard part of the conversation between Matt and his sister on the telephone. Here's a little of how the conversation went.

Matt: You aren't telling me that you believe in zombies?

Sister-in-law: Well, I wasn't sure before but now there's the idea of government conspiracies and viruses that can make people go crazy.

Matt: Crazy living people are different than zombies. Maybe there could be a virus that spreads that makes people go crazy, but that's not being a zombie. Zombies are physical beings somehow animated by magic. You understand that it's impossible for zombies to move around, especially fast zombies. If their muscles and tendons have atrophied how do they get around? It's physically impossible. Even if they could animate a dead body, how does it become superhuman? You're not thinking this through.

SIL: I know that, but I can't help it. I'm still afraid one will jump out and eat my dogs.

Matt: That's ridiculous. How can you be afraid of some fictional thing made up for movies? I can understand being creeped out by the movie, but you're actually afraid you're going to be attacked by a zombie?

SIL: Well, I feel a little better after *insert a friend's name here* told me that zombies don't attack dogs. You know, like in that scene from Dawn of the Dead?

Matt: That's a movie. You're afraid of a made-up thing in a movie and you're basing your logic on something that's made up from a movie. You know you're talking crazy, right?

SIL: I know they're just movies, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen.

At this point, I decide to chime in. I wonder if I'm dreaming, but I'm pretty sure I'm awake.

Me: Tell her about it being physically impossible again.


But the fact is, I can't be too critical of my sister-in-law. It wasn't too long ago that I believed in demon possession, spiritual warfare, ghosts and angels, and other crazier things that I can't even begin to explain without you thinking that I should be locked up.

But growing up in a non-traditional, Pentecostal household these were things that my family bought into willingly. Not only was it a perfect form of control - don't think about X, where X could be evolution or secularism or something else antithetical to the religious dogma, because those concepts have been created by Satan to draw you away from God - but it was also a gateway into magical thinking. If we accepted these concepts, it was much easier to accept other strange or outright crazy ideas as being real.

In my own experience even after I no longer believed in a supreme being, I still found it difficult to escape the spiritual mindset and embraced belief in fate and energy manipulation. It took years of further thought into why these beliefs aren't rational before I gave them up. It was only then that I was willing to call myself an atheist.

My husband tried to let me off the hook when I explained my own evolution of belief by telling me that supernatural entities, while they may be as improbable aren't testable in the natural world. But I can't let myself off that easily. For a supernatural entity to be perceived it must enter the natural world. That is why my belief in the supernatural eventually crumbled. Most "evidence" of the supernatural is anecdotal, poorly researched, or fraudulent. A half-serious look into the evidence presented cannot lead to supernatural belief for any rational person.

It's only the people who don't learn to think rationally or apply critical thinking that fall into the trap of believing in the supernatural, magic, zombies, and religion. For a person without a rational mindset arguments for rationality will fall on deaf ears.

Atheism
Respectable Infidels
Unfortunately, there are some badly misguided people who want to write this spurious distinction into law, and who claim that we can safely ban "hateful" or "insulting" speech without taking away people's right to voice their own convictions. The most charitable thing that can be said about such people is that they have obviously never given even the most casual thought to the consequences of the policy they advocate.

Comstock's comments are revealing in another way as well. As I said in "Firebrands", the kind of atheists whom believers consider "respectable" are atheists who wish they were religious. They approve of atheists who validate their presuppositions about the desirability and superiority of being a theist, or who concede that religious ethics are superior to any secular alternative.

Education
Hygiene, Mirrors, Sex, and...Finance?
I sat there for two hours while Mrs. J. droned on about how now that we were going through puberty we needed to make sure we always wore deodorant. We were also not supposed to laugh when the boys' voices cracked. And the most vital part of the course was that when talking a shower, we weren't to wash our butts and then our faces....always the other way around. My teacher really covered her bases. Nothing about condoms, sex or STD's, but all vital information, of course.

Government
Directive Details Trinidad Checks
Lanier's directive also says that anyone who does not give a reason for entering a designated safety zone may be turned away, said law enforcement sources who declined to speak on the record because they were not authorized to release the directive. "Legitimate" purposes to be in the area include going to a doctor, church or community event or visiting friends or relatives, officials said. Individuals can show a flier for an event to gain entrance, for example.

Law
How to Save Your State Economy
You know, if I were in California and a proponent of same-sex marriages, these are figures that I would be putting into the ads against the anti-same-sex marriage proposition that’s going to be on the ballot this fall. And I would ask: why do those against same-sex marriage want to interfere with the livelihoods of thousands of decent, hard-working Californians and deprive them of millions of dollars of potential income? Why do they want to take the food out of the mouths of California families? Why do they make it harder for these folks to keep a roof over their heads, or pay their medical bills, or put their kids through college? Why do they want to deprive thousands of Californians jobs they could use, and that the state needs? $684 million’s not exactly chump change, particularly in a weak economy.

Photography
A Fire Rainbow Over New Jersey



Politics

Religion
How Does Religion Influence Our Behavior?
Children buy that version of things because they are, after all, children. However, by the time we become adults, many of us recognize religions are not always that influential in shaping behavior — even when someone says he or she has been hugely influenced by their religion. As a practical matter, an adult who wants to accurately predict the behavior of an eighteen year old boy with his sixteen year old daughter had best take into heavy account many factors other than the boy’s professed religion. A landlord is much better off checking up on the rental history of his prospective tenants than checking out which religion they belong to. And many a woman who has married a religious man thinking that guarantees she won’t be abused by him has learned the hard way her husband’s religiosity guarantees nothing of the sort.

Most of us, by the time we become adults, have figured out thousands of clues for predicting what someone will do in a given set of circumstances. Most of those clues have little or nothing to do with a person’s religion.

Science
Does Time Run Backward in Other Universes?
If the observable universe were all that existed, it would be nearly impossible to account for the arrow of time in a natural way. But if the universe around us is a tiny piece of a much larger picture, new possibilities present themselves. We can conceive of our bit of universe as just one piece of the puzzle, part of the tendency of the larger system to increase its entropy without limit in the very far past and the very far future. To paraphrase physicist Edward Tryon, the big bang is easier to understand if it is not the beginning of everything but just one of those things that happens from time to time.

Engineering Life: The Dog that Didn't Bark in the Night
Despite all these bacteria suffering the indignity of being violated with human genes, no one seems to care. No one thinks the dignity of E. coli has been compromised. I have not heard of anyone refusing blood-thinners or insulin because it was produced from human genes put inside another species. In Europe, where protests over genetically modified plants and animals rage today, few seem to be bothered by the fact that a lot of cheese is produced with a cow's enzyme, chymosin, made by E. coli rather than cows. In fact, this cheese is labeled organic, because it's produced with "real" chymosin, rather than "artificial" chemicals.

I think that the story of engineered E. coli is an important one to bear in mind these days. Today we are faced with intense debates about whether it's right to create chimeras--a mouse that carries human neurons, for example. Headlines assault us with the danger that scientists will be playing God by creating life from scratch. We are revisiting old ground.

The Elusive Flock of Dodos
The message of the film is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, creationists are ignunt dodos. On the other, scientists are also dodos because they are bad communicators. I think he missed a flock. It’s a huge flock of dodos, but they’re elusive for a reason… and I think that the reason is that flock is his audience.

This particular flock of dodos tends to be willfully ignorant. They fear what they don’t understand, and are hostile to those who say things that they don’t understand like. They speak the vernacular and don’t even bother reaching for a dictionary when they use, as Peter Griffin puts it, “big words, and small complex words.” They think that their opinion should be as valid as the experts. “What do they know, anyway? They can’t accurately predict tomorrow’s weather! Why would they know anything about global warming?” They generally don’t like to think critically or learn.

Sexuality
Virginity?
"Women who get operations to restore their virginity". (Here). At first I figured, what the hell, they can do what they like. But reading on, I discovered women terrified that they will be beaten, abandoned, or shamed because they lost their hymens. When I read one woman's claim that to lose one's virginity was to become dirt, I decided that women were fools, and men were dolts to insist on something so mundane. After all, there's nothing special about virginity. We're all born virgins. It's stupid to prize something so common and so easy to fake. Why not prize intelligence? Common sense? Independence?

Who's Trying To Convince Everyone That Cell Phones Pop Popcorn?
A poor grasp of science leads people to fear the technology around them. Everyone's vaguely aware that phones use radio waves, so they misapply the concept. The phones in the video are merely ringing, which only means they're receiving the radio waves that are always around us. If those waves popped popcorn, there wouldn't be an unpopped kernel left in the U.S.

Skepticism
Getting skeptical about patriotism
Some readers got pissed off at my sarcastic message about the US the other day, so let me explain my views. I think patriotism is too close to nationalism to be safe; both are just souped up versions of tribalism. These things lead to “us versus them” thinking and to conflict being preferred over cooperation. It’s OK to love your country. But to be proud just because you were born somewhere is ridiculous. To ignore the flaws of your country and to refuse to criticize your government is dumb. And to think your country is the only great (free, safe, healthy, etc.) nation in the world is just delusional.

Sociology
On Offense
I know that, in these days of Ann Koulter and Michel Savage, there is an increased need for civil discourse. But I’m not talking about what Savagé and Coolter do. These dishonest, repellant social Darwinists call for the real death of hundreds of thousands whenever they open their mouths. I’m talking about something honest and symbolic for my Charlie.

Christopher Hitchens is pretty good at this. At the end of The Trial of Henry Kissinger, his call for Kissinger’s prosecution, Hitchens points out that, in addition to being a war criminal, Kissinger is also a Big Fatty. A low blow, but also a beautiful cherry on top of a substantive critique.

Shortly after I received my Prophetic Revelations comic I received something else in the mail. Something much more sinister.

Now rather than some childish comic, this was written for adults. The picture is much darker.* The black border and "Hell" in a large font adds to the effect. So who is this organization that is trying to tempt me into going to hell?

It's none other than CFI. Fortunately they immediately open with a positive and funny message. Whew. I was worried I might be attacked by a bear or a three-headed cheetah when I opened the pamphlet. I mean, I was really putting my soul in danger.

OK, not really.

I don't have a soul.

But look at the difference between the inside of the CFI pamphlet and the Prophetic Revelations pamphlet. There's actual text inside, not just a blurb about the speakers and some phrases with check marks. I get more information about the Free Inquiry magazine on the first page than I probably would have received in one session about the apocalypse.. well, more real information anyway. The apocalyptic seminar might have been more fun though.. at least to laugh at.

And there's a second page of text too! Wow! I feel almost like I've opened a real book, not just a picture book.

CFI asks for donations and they use a non-profit permit. But that doesn't bother me. They're not passing off a scheme. They're asking for donations outright and offering a magazine subscription and free book in exchange.

CFI 1, Prophetic Revelations zilch.

*Does anyone know if this is an Hieronymus Bosch?

Cats


Games
Microsoft deems "gayer" gamertag to be unacceptable
According to a letter Grant sent to The Consumerist: "...when i tried to sign into my xbox live account 'thegayergamer' I was told that it had to be changed. I figured that it was just from people reporting it as an offensive name being that the greater Xbox live community isn't exactly welcome to gay people, i spend a lot of time muting people on Halo3. I assumed that once i called Microsoft they would straighten things out. I talked to a supervisor there, Roxy, who told me that she didn't personally find the fact that my gamer tag had gay in the name offensive, but that the greater Xbox community did, so I would have to change it."

Gamers are different: a look at how gaming makes the mind
Koroush Dini, a child, adolescent,and adult psychiatrist, has written an amazing book called Video Game Play and Addiction. It's a much more even-handed look at the subject of children and games than we normally get, and it has been a fascinating read. One section that jumped out at me, and one that Dini has graciously allowed us to excerpt, is how gamers are different in terms of problem solving and how they approach problems and even social situations. "Gamers train for hours each day. They gradually incorporate certain mentalities through diligent practice. As a result, they do begin to adopt different views of the world," he wrote in the book. Here are some of his other findings..

Pyro achievements may come with the next TF2 update
A snooper over at the Control Point forums has found that the latest update to the game features a potential hint of things to coming. Tearing through the GCF content package for the game, the snooper found a section documenting the included achievements in the game which featured a new entry: "Achievement_Group_1600: Pyro Pack (%s1 of %s2)."

Previous updates were discovered by this very method, so a new set of upcoming Pyro achievements seems likely. I suppose that's one flame war that Valve will avoid. The company has not yet announced anything, of course, but we know that it has stated time and time again that it's going to continue to improve the game over time.

Why Wii Fit is Better than the Gym
8. It’s more fun than the gym can hope to be. Firstly, the range of activities are more diverse, from yoga to hula-hooping, and secondly, there are activities that aren’t actually possible in the real world. For example, when you were a kid, did you have one of those plastic games that had ballbearings in? You had to tilt the game to get the balls into the little holes. Imagine that, human-sized. You stand on the Wii board, and your every tiny shift of weight moves the TV version to roll the virtual balls into the hole. Or straight off the edge if you’re crap. Also, at no point in real gym life do you get to dress as a penguin, or float a giant bubble down a river. Take that, reality! You can’t compete with this rainbow universe.

International News
Teenager faces prosecution for calling Scientology 'cult'
Writing on an anti-Scientology website, the teenager facing court said: "I brought a sign to the May 10th protest that said: 'Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult.'

"'Within five minutes of arriving I was told by a member of the police that I was not allowed to use that word, and that the final decision would be made by the inspector."

A policewoman later read him section five of the Public Order Act and "strongly advised" him to remove the sign. The section prohibits signs which have representations or words which are threatening, abusive or insulting.

The teenager refused to back down, quoting a 1984 high court ruling from Mr Justice Latey, in which he described the Church of Scientology as a "cult" which was "corrupt, sinister and dangerous".

After the exchange, a policewoman handed him a court summons and removed his sign.

Schoolboy avoids prosecution for branding Scientology a 'cult'
A CPS spokesman said: "In consultation with the City of London police, we were asked whether the sign, which read 'Scientology is not a religion it is a dangerous cult', was abusive or insulting.

"Our advice is that it is not abusive or insulting and there is no offensiveness, as opposed to criticism, neither in the idea expressed nor in the mode of expression. No action will be taken against the individual."

National News
Oil prices
As gratifying as it is to point fingers elsewhere, the mirror is the main place to look for the reasons that oil prices are hovering around $125 a barrel. The nation decided to let the laws of supply and demand work. It was rewarded with two decades of low prices that led to larger cars, bigger homes and longer commutes. Meanwhile, with the Cold War's end, Third World countries suddenly saw the benefits of capitalism, fueling robust growth in places such as China and India. As in the West, oil fuels that growth, first for industry, then for consumers who, naturally enough, use rising incomes to buy cars. That trend more than anything else is behind rising prices. And it has just begun.

A keep-energy-cheap approach would have worked if supplies were unlimited and prices didn't tend to lurch forward, as in the 1970s and now, rather than to rise gradually.

An alternative would have been energy policies that discouraged consumption with gas taxes and subsidized alternative sources. But doing this would have required voters to be willing to accept short-term pain for long-term gain. It would have required leadership, vision and political courage — the very same qualities needed now to stave off menacing crises in health care and Social Security.

Politics
Hagee and Hitler and dangerous biblical scripture
And what if Hagee got the rest of his prophecy the way he wants it? What do his precious Jewish people gain from his Armageddon? Well, it’s not very pretty. You see, unless they happen to be Jews for Jesus, they and their children and grandchildren are all going to die in that much anticipated apocalypse. Aren’t they lucky to have a good American friend like Pastor John Hagee? And isn’t John McCain lucky to have his endorsement? He must think he is. On several occasions he has said that he is proud to have it. And wouldn’t it be great to have a President handling our Middle East policies who gets regular input from John Hagee, on what our next move should be? Want to know what his advice would be? He believes that a war with Iran is a necessary precondition for the kick-off of Armageddon – which is “imminent”.

Religion
Barefootin'
I went into detail about the contents of the envelope. She chuckled a few times.

“Doesn’t that sound like a con to you?” I asked.

She laughed again. “I can’t really say,” she replied. “Lots of people have faith in different things. I go to church every Sunday and tithe, so I can understand when someone sends money to a church. But let me look this one up for you to see if there are any other complaints.”

I didn’t know where she was searching, but my astute Sherlock Holmes mind interpreted the tapping and I assumed it was somewhere on the Internet. I waited patiently for a few seconds. “Well,” she said, “you’re not the first person to make a charge against them.”

Then I heard the tapping again. She said, “I went to their Web site. It looks like they actually do have a church building. So it’s not just a post office box.”

“But, tell the truth. It looks kind of fishy, doesn’t it?”

She repeated: “Lots of people have faith in different things. I’ve heard of churches that sell water that’s supposed to be from the Sea of Galilee.”

“Yeah, other crooks. I mean, have you ever heard of a Christian prayer rug? Does that sound kosher to you?”

She tittered ever so slightly. “Well, I can’t say. But you might want to report this to the IRS and have them look into it.”

Science
The Orgasmic Mind: The Neurological Roots of Sexual Pleasure
Achieving orgasm, brain-imaging studies show, involves more than heightened arousal. It requires a release of inhibitions and control in which the brain’s center of vigilance shuts down in males; in females, various areas of the brain involved in controlling thoughts and emotions become silent. The brain’s pleasure centers tend to light up brightly in the brain scans of both sexes, especially in those of males. The reward system creates an incentive to seek more sexual encounters, with clear benefits for the survival of the species. When the drive for sex dissipates, as it did with Marianne, people can reignite the spark with tactics that target the mind.

Skepticism

Atheism
Going to Church
For many years, I've had a certain creeping envy of people who belonged to religious groups. The whole idea of having a place to go once a week to seek ecstasy and transcendence and meaning and share it with others, as a link in a chain going back hundreds or even thousands of years... it was something I felt a curious longing for. During my woo years, I even sought out, in a half-assed way, a religious group that I might be able to join up with. It was kind of like that Onion article: Black Gospel Choir Makes Man Wish He Believed In All That God Bullshit. (Especially the line where the pastor says, "Perhaps our abiding faith in Jesus and love for our fellow man will, at the very least, inspire him to quit living in his head all the time.")

But at no point during this church service did I think, "This is something I would like to have, and don't."

Faith Walk: Saving lives is better than saying prayers
For the last two years I’ve participated in the National Gift of Life Day (see www.centerforatheism.org), which is an organized effort to get atheists, agnostics and nonbelievers to donate blood. A single donation of whole blood is one of the most effective proven ways to save lives. It’s also a demonstration of selfless sacrifice and altruistic caring about the rest of humanity.

Entertainment
Miley Cyrus and America’s Love Affair with Sexual Nonsense
I now ask that we turn to the third and last Very Serious Moral Issue™. I personally consider this to be the big one. It seems to me this incident, and so many incidents before it, indicate that many of us are given to sexual hysteria. “Sexual hysteria” might be a strong term, but what else can it be called when a mildly suggestive photo of a 15 year old seemingly causes millions of people to panic that an entire generation of youth will become “a nation of whores”? So, the last Very Serious Moral Issue™ here is this: Is it moral to respond to the mildly suggestive photo of a 15 year old celebrity by harshly and abusively condemning her, her family, her photographer, and the people who published the photo? Is that moral?

The Good News
A video excerpt from House, the television series.

Games
EA Reveals Online RTS/TCG BattleForge
Publisher Electronic Arts today announced BattleForge, an online PC real-time strategy game that has players assembling their forces through virtual trading cards.

Developed by SpellForce and Siedler creator EA Phemonic, the fantasy-based game is slated to arrive this fall. As with other online trading card titles, players will be able to win and trade cards, as well as buy new cards through micro-transactions.

Government
Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo by Murat Kurnaz
The bandages wrapped around Abdul's stumps were never changed. When he took them off himself, they were full of blood and pus. He showed the bandage to the guards and pointed to his open wounds. The guards ignored him. Later I saw how he tried to wash the bandages in his bucket of drinking water. But he could hardly move his hands, so he wasn't able to. And even if he had, where would he have hung them up to dry? He wasn't allowed to touch the fence. He wrapped his stumps back up in the dirty bandages.

Two completely different climate change articles. Or are they?
There is still a fairly large contingent of people who honestly believe that while there seems to be global climate change occurring, there is no proof that it is human induced and, further, that it is beyond our control. This is despite the bulk of scientific evidence running contrary to such a viewpoint. And, even if you accept the position, would it not be better for us on a number of levels to curtail the waste products we dump in our air and oceans? What’s the downside of taking the warnings seriously?

Healthcare
Heart Pump Creates Life-Death Ethical Dilemmas
"Once a patient leaves the hospital, the LVAD ceases to be a medical treatment and becomes effectively part of the patient himself, much like a transplanted organ or even a native one," Simon wrote in the January-February issue of the Hastings Center Report, which is published by the Hastings Center, a bioethics think tank. "We would not remove a patient's biological heart, transplanted or native, simply because the patient was suffering greatly from heart failure and did not want to go on; nor should we disable his LVAD."

History
'Human Smoke' by Nicholson Baker
Anti-Semitism was rife among the Allies. Of Franklin Roosevelt, Baker notes that in 1922, when he was a New York attorney, he "noticed that Jews made up one-third of the freshman class at Harvard" and used his influence to establish a Jewish quota there. For years he obstructed help for European Jewry, and as late as 1939 he discouraged passage of the Wagner-Rogers bill, an attempt by Congress to save Jewish children. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said in 1939 of German treatment of Jews that "no doubt Jews aren't a lovable people. I don't care about them myself." Once the war began, Winston Churchill wanted to imprison German Jewish refugees because they were Germans. What a comfort such leadership must have been to the Nazis, who, according to the New York Times of Dec. 3, 1931, were trying to figure out a way to rid Germany of Jews without "arousing foreign opinion."

Founding Creeds: An Interview with Jonathan Row
The most important component of the American Founding, in my opinion, was Enlightenment. Enlightenment defines as human progress through the untrammeled use of man’s reason. They believed man’s reason was so keen that it could look to all sources and pick out what was rational or useful and discard what was irrational or superstitious. Enlightenment was what made the synthesis possible. And man’s reason was the ultimate lens through which all sources were to be viewed. Noah Webster, when defending the US Constitution in 1787, citing mainly pagan sources, stated that they consulted the wisdom of all ages and in the Constitution contained an “empire of reason.” A better statement of Enlightenment could not be found.

International
Will we ever get used to seeing flesh?
Many (including women) feel that this sort of behavior by rowdies is “natural” as the girls are “asking for it.” I am sure their solution to keep the men in check is to cover up the girls and tone down their moves, completely glossing over the fact that on Indian streets girls wearing “modest” clothes and walking demurely are routinely teased and molested. Why can’t our politicians and our police understand that there needs to be a zero tolerance policy towards eve-teasing as that’s the only way people will learn how to behave? But we are a long way from that. Forcing the cheer girls to hide their bodies simply reinforces the belief amongst the public that it’s the girls who are at fault.

Almost, but not quite, right about gay marriage
Maybe the government finds it unpalatable to be the one that makes marriage available to gays and lesbians. In that case, I have already proposed what I think is a good solution: make "marriage" something that governments have no part in, and replace it with a civil union contract. Governments have no place in making people behave according to any moral code; in a democracy it should follow rather than lead the community, since the democratic source of legitimacy is the community, not the government. As marriage is seen as a moral issue, get right out of it and let the community do its thing. The religious can restrict it (in their churches) to hetero couples. Muslims can insist that Muslims only marry Muslims, etc. And gay and lesbian organisations can marry who they like.

Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier
"Not much can be done when we have an honour killing case," said Sergeant Ali Jabbar of Basra police. "You are in a Muslim society and women should live under religious laws. The father has very good contacts inside the Basra government and it wasn't hard for him to be released and what he did to be forgotten."

Nonbelieving Literati
Virginia and me
As I was reading along, I kept hoping the author would explain her position and present her arguments. Instead I found page after page of rambling and irrelevant poetic descriptive passages. I know her fans are probably saying "The poetry isn't irrelevant -- it's an essay about being a writer!" Right, but I was hoping that she'd show her mastery of the writer's craft by demonstrating that she knows how and when to make a point clearly and concisely.

Nonbelieving Literati: A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf
I think humans have come a long way in being tolerant, but I think we will continue to struggle with bias. It's innate in us and not easily resolved. And I know this because no matter how I struggle with it I still find that I am in ways sexist (against men), racist, and biased against transgenders - those being my three examples in any case, but it should apply to anyone different than me. It's about understanding and I don't always understand.

A Blog of One's Own
Many of us in the Atheosphere — myself included — if we’re honest with ourselves, admit that we feel superior, at least intellectually, to theists. Even writing that sentence, I can’t keep myself from chuckling over how ironic it is that I seem to be critical of that feeling. Because aren’t we, in fact, superior? Or am I just being sarcastic?

The crux of Woolf’s paragraph, of course, is that every individual and every group likes to think that he or she or it is better than others. We atheists, for all our own feelings of superiority, encounter the tremendous “superiority” of religionists every single day. We’re outnumbered and, usually, outmaneuvered. They’re going to heaven; we’re not. They’ve got god on their side; we don’t. They control the political dialogue in this country; we can’t get a word in edgewise. The only thing we can do, as Woolf points out, is to bolster up our own self-confidence, to refuse to accept being treated by the vast quasi-theocratic establishment as if we’re godless babes in the spiritual cradle

'Oxbridge'
Yet when I see the shallow layers worn away on the steps, worn down by the shoes of students -- those shoes are mine. Though they were all men, or most of them, their shoes are mine and my feet step in their footprints and they belong to me and I to them. Once this place was barred to us but we have found our way inside and the men who once lived here belong to us now, too. Their legacy is ours.

Chloe Liked Olivia
According to Woolf, not only were women proscribed from writing throughout much of human history - the literary roles they were alloted (by male authors) were rigidly constrained. Off the top of my head, I can think of two current fiction series that feature groups of women or female buddies: Lisa Scottoline highlights a female law firm in several books and James Patterson has a series that features a Women’s Murder Club. If you’re familiar with other female buddy fiction series (and you probably are), mention them in the comments.

A Doghouse Of One’s Own
Why do I have to live on the end of this tether? I can’t go anywhere, I have to stay here in the yard, and sleep under the porch when it rains. He gets to sit up there in the room, and all he does is read and write, all day long. Or he leaves me here with his sister while he does whatever he does down at that theater. He spends no time with me. Does he let me off this rope and take me to the park, throw a stick or a ball so I can chase it and get some exercise? No. I need my exercise. My muscles are beginning to atrophy, and all I can do to keep some semblance of health is to walk in a circle around this firkin’ tree. I wish Will would build me a doghouse.

A man and his room
Thus, this book is a terrific reminder of how difficult life is for any group that has faced discrimination, even a number of generations later. Woolf is brilliant in showing us why this is a truism and does so without whining. She simply sets up the facts and makes analogies and she is spot on with every one of them.

a room of one's own (how to be chinese for a day)
Walking through Flushing that day totally smacked me in the face. Just being there, surrounded by folks who looked nothing like me, speaking a language I could not understand, made me overwhelmingly conscious of how different I was from everybody else. I felt as though I was walking through a foreign land, without any of the comforts or emotional anchors I’ve grown to rely on to maintain a feeling of safety and competence in my environment. And that night, as I went to bed, I thought about high school and how it must have felt for a small number of kids with skin much darker than mine to walk down a hallway surrounded by privileged white kids.

NL: A Room of One's Own
I find myself wondering why Woolf - who certainly controls her language - is using the conditional here - "she would come if we worked", not "she will come if we work". Does she mean to say that we will not work? Or does she mean that we will not "have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own" or "the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think"?

Politics
A holiday from gas prices?
James Hamilton, professor of Economics at the University of California-San Diego, said that most of the benefits from a temporary tax moratorium would likely go to producers rather than consumers. He said that states that suspend gas taxes are able to respond to rising demand more efficiently than the country as a whole, because gasoline supplies can be easily moved from one state to another.

"Prices would certainly rise to the market-clearing level," said Hamilton. "I would expect the price [of gas] to go back to very close to where it was before [the tax cut], in which case consumers would not see any benefit."

Laura Bush, docile doormat
I was equal parts appalled and amused. And not only because my brash, blunt friend and Heinz obviously had far more in common, personality- and attitude- wise, than she cared to acknowledge. No, I was stunned because my friend far preferred, as the perfect counter to Heinz, as a role model and a woman and the ideal presidential wife, one tepid, timid, thoroughly useless Laura Bush.

Wait, what? You mean docile, prudish, former librarian Laura Bush, she of the nonexistent inspiration and dull-as-dishwater personality? Yes indeed, that Laura Bush. Here was my friend, brash and funny and who spoke her mind without the slightest reservation, and who could drink and think and opine with the strongest of men, and yet she admired this ... limp wallflower? I didn't get it. I still don't completely get it, to this very day.

Religion
The Great Leveller
The history of Christianity is a history of complete and utter failure. Hundreds of Mega-churches, thousands of missionaries, millions of dollars and billions of Sunday services have achieved absolutely nothing. It is all a delusion; a pretence; a sham which could not convince one man in a million that are capable of rational thought.

Should we embrace moderate Christianity?
Sam Harris and many others often claim that moderate religious groups give cover to fundamentalists by honoring the holy books that they use to build their walls of doctrine. I used to agree, but now I’m not so sure that’s true. No, we shouldn’t have to respect beliefs that are based on a foundation of straw, but we can respect people who share many of the same goals that we do, even if we do not share the same beliefs regarding religion. Just because I think all religion is a waste of time, doesn’t mean I have to think that all believers should be shunned or ridiculed.

Skepticism
Huffington Post is a denialist website
This is an example of something we here at denialism blog have been talking about lately. Liberalism is no protection from anti-scientific thinking. In fact, if there is a unifying theme of denialism, it is that any extreme of ideological thinking leads to the necessary denial of fact. When one considers the causes of denialist worldviews, one sees again and again some form of fundamentalist belief. Fundamentalist religion leads to the rejection of evolution. Free-market fundamentalists are the leading source of anti-global warming denialism. On the liberal side, a mixture of technophobia and neo-luddism leads to paranoid suspicions about everything from GM crops causing non-existent illnesses to fear of harmless radio technology such as wifi to the fear of vaccines and medicine innovations exemplified by the HuffPo cranks and the evidence-based medicine/HIV/AIDS denialists like Mike Adams and Gary Null.

The F word, Racism, and Skepticism
This schism is occurring because a group of people can’t change the way they think about the world. One factor is more important than any other. They also have trouble admitting when they are wrong.

As a white broad, I try. Hard. But I still screw up.
I’m a product of my culture, which is racist, and homophobic, and xenophobic. And when I’m wrong, I admit it, and learn from it, and CHANGE. I don’t accuse everyone else of being wrong and out to get me, I acknowledge the fault in myself.

I've Converted To EVERY Religion (Just In Case)



Sociology
What elevators can teach us about superstition
“In the old system—board elevator, press button—you have an illusion of control; elevator manufacturers have sought to trick the passengers into thinking they’re driving the conveyance. In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works. (It does work if, say, a fireman needs to take control. But you need a key, and a fire, to do that.) Once you know this, it can be illuminating to watch people compulsively press the door-close button. That the door eventually closes reinforces their belief in the button’s power. It’s a little like prayer. Elevator design is rooted in deception—to disguise not only the bare fact of the box hanging by ropes but also the tethering of tenants to a system over which they have no command.”

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

Editor's Note: Hmm.. where did this come from? I didn't hear Kansas OR Arkansas, but I thought I heard California.

Shock at polar bear's carp kill
Germany's celebrity polar bear Knut has triggered a new controversy by fishing out 10 live carp from his moat and killing them in front of visitors.

Editor's Note: Good for you Knut. After all, why should a wild animal act like humans want him to just because he's hand reared?

Tibet’s Olympian opportunity
The torch will arrive in New Delhi in less than a week. Considering the large Tibetan population in India, a serious security problem is anticipated and well, the protesters are determined to disrupt the march. I can’t help but wish them the best of luck, because all they want to do is stop the march. They don’t intend to indulge in any violence. They are simply using the Olympics to draw attention to their cause. Which is not necessarily a separate homeland for Tibet, although some radicals demand this. It is important to remember that the Dalai Lama has agreed that Tibet is a part of China. All he is asking for is autonomy but the Chinese are not agreeable to this either.

Religion
Commentary: What is this thing called religion?
Moreover it is not clear that "primitive" religions were religions at all, as we have come to understand the concept; they were more like rudimentary forms of science and technology. It seems likely that their espousers did not regard gods and spirits as supernatural, but as straightforward parts of nature, operating in fairly systematic ways as instigators of wind, thunder and other natural phenomena, and amenable to manipulation through sacrifice and observance of taboo. There is a marked difference between someone who holds contemporary Christian evangelical views and an ancient Egyptian who literally felt his god on his back - Ra, the sun - every day of the week.

The different epistemologies of science and religion
So the next time you hear someone say that religion and science do not conflict, the key question to ask is: which religion? The speaker's? Of course they would say that. But is it true? Science constrains rational religion, while no religion, Plantinga notwithstanding, constrains rational science. So when the two conflict, as they must given that they often attempt to explain the same phenomena, which one is it rational to adopt and teach?

A Cult By Any Other Name
One observation I made while reading the various news reports as the story unfolded this weekend was how the cult was described by the media. For some reason, the media is afraid to call them what they are: a cult. CNN described them as a “rogue church”. USA Today calls them a “polygamist-sect”. The Associate Press reports that they are “a congregation.” This is utter political correctness at its absolute worst. FLDS and The YFZ Ranch are a cult, and to call it anything else is insulting to those that know better, including experts on destructive cults such as The Rick Ross Institute, who has been accurately reporting the despicable conduct of this particular cult for a decade now. It is even more insulting to the living victims of cults, and it is entirely disrespectful to the memory of those that have died at the hands of cults.

Bring on the McGay, Bitch!
I hate to break it to the children of born-again parents, but you will never be allowed to have another Happy Meal again. Wanna know why? Mostly because your parents are batshit crazy, and think that because McDonald's is now a corporate sponsor of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, if you eat a Happy Meal you will instantly turn into a homosexual. But not just your run-of-the-mill homosexual, but instead, a raging, maniacal, crazy-eyed homosexual with an agenda. THAT GAY ONE! Then after you've tried turning everyone else into a raging, maniacal, crazy-eyed homosexual, you'll be damned to hell for all eternity. All because you ate a Happy Meal! Way to go, kid. I hope the crappy toy was worth it.

Thomas Jefferson Endorses Rev. Moon
From beyond the grave. Yes, it sounds like a bad movie. But the moonies seriously claim this. In fact, they claim that damn never every famous dead person in history with any tie to religion or politics has endorsed Moon in the "spirit world" where they are apparently convinced of the truth of Unificationism by Sang Hun Lee, a dead Moon. And yes, this would be a bad joke if I was actually making it up. But I'm not. Seriously.

A New Planet?
Yet the questions become greater and hold more intensity if it turns out there is life on a distant planet. What if there are beings with consciousness who are similar to us (whether more advanced or not) who never even heard of a religion or a god? Or have a god or gods that are laughable to modern Christians, Jews, Muslims, and/or Hindus (etc)? Imagine a Christian trying to "save" a distant planet inhabitant with the words of Jesus and the Bible and being heartily laughed at. Here, we know better; we respect mass accepted beliefs* (to a point).

It’s My Fault Indonesia is Totalitarian
If Muslims really want to say that Fitna is wrong, the best thing they can do is send death threats to people who post the film stop supporting people who blow things up. Or, if they already don’t support people who blow things up, they can actively speak out against the people who blow things up.

Science
Water's benefits questioned by scientists
Now there's no reason to feel guilty for not hydrating during aerobics class because there's not much evidence showing that drinking "lots" of water will improve our health, according to the editorial "Just Add Water" by University of Pennsylvania researchers in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

That means excessively hydrating won't necessarily clear toxins from your system, keep organs healthy, curb hunger pains, reduce headaches and improve your skin tone, said authors Dan Negoianu and Stanley Goldfarb of Penn's Renal, Electrolyte and Hypertension Division.

Mysterious White Rock Fingers on Mars



Brain Dead
A PET scan was performed at 36 hours. PET scanning (technically referred to as Technetium-99m hexamethylpropyleneamineoxime brain scan) is a measure of blood flow to the brain. Zack’s doctor, Leo Mercer, showed his parents the scan - his brain was entirely black. No blood flow. This was sufficient to meet criteria for brain death. The process of organ donation began.

About four hours later, while the family was saying their goodbye’s, Zack moved his foot in response to his cousin rubbing a knife blade along his foot. His responsiveness was confirmed by squeezing his nail-bed - he moved his arm with clear purpose. The diagnosis of brain death was set aside, and the process of organ donation was stopped, Zack was returned to full care and he slowly recovered. Zack’s story came up in the news again recently following a TV interview in which he said that he was doing OK.

A Mutual Affair
The front entrance of the burrow is often reinforced with bits of shell and coral — all of which is done by the shrimp. The goby just sits in the entrance of the burrow, keeping guard and warning the shrimp, which is nearly blind, of danger. At any sign of danger — a diver coming too close, a passing predator — the goby darts into the burrow. If the goby zooms in, the shrimp hastily retreats deep inside. And before the shrimp emerges from the burrow, it touches the goby’s tail with its long antennae. To show it’s safe to come out, the goby gently wiggles its tail. When the shrimp is out of the burrow, it keeps one antenna touching the goby. If the goby suddenly retreats, so does the shrimp.

Ancient serpent shows its leg
A fossil animal locked in Lebanese limestone has been shown to be an extremely precious discovery - a snake with two legs.

Scientists have only a handful of specimens that illustrate the evolutionary narrative that goes from ancient lizard to limbless modern serpent.

Researchers at the European Light Source (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, used intense X-rays to confirm that a creature imprinted on a rock, and with one visible leg, had another appendage buried just under the surface of the slab.

At first, he couldn't see the Moon



Sexism
Explaining (Away) Women Geeks
The article on Mayer follows this pattern, simultaneously overexposing her - a female Google VP must take some explaining! - and erasing her, attributing her success to powerful male associates and focusing on her looks and "womanly" hobbies. Thus, she can be celebrated even as she is diminished. In the end, we need not be threatened by her; she is an aberration, she's still a real woman despite that odd love of technology, she didn't really do that geeky stuff all herself anyway. Technology remains firmly enshrined as a masculine domain, and Real Women don't do technology.

Skeptics
The Skeptologists



Sociology
The Divergent Brain
I mean, consider some simple facts about the current state of our civilization. We can solve problems with computers billions of times faster than we ever imagined possible. We can create a means by which we leave our planet, venture out beyond gravity’s reach, experiment in the weightlessness of space, and return home safely. We can load a thousand jukeboxes worth of music onto a device the size of a matchbox and listen to the studio-quality sound through earphones the size of pinto beans. We can organize hundreds of thousands of jet take offs and landings everyday without major incident. We can track storms and predict the weather with great accuracy. We can generate and regulate the energy flowing through entire countries. We can develop vaccines that cure little buggers that only a few short decades ago would kill us. We can stand in Houston, Texas and talk to someone on the other side of the globe with a wireless phone no bigger than a box of Tic Tacs. And we can pipe high quality pornography right into our homes over satellite feeds, cables, and telephone wires.

Yet there are many millions of people in the United States that, though they’ve seen the monumental successes of science, and though they proudly use the applications of those successes every single day, refuse to turn loose archaic ideas of how we came to be here and where we might be going.