TOPEKA, KS—In response to a Nov. 7 referendum, Kansas lawmakers passed emergency legislation outlawing evolution, the highly controversial process responsible for the development and diversity of species and the continued survival of all life.

“From now on, the streets, forests, plains, and rivers of Kansas will be safe from the godless practice of evolution, and species will be able to procreate without deviating from God’s intended design,” said Bob Bethell, a member of the state House of Representatives. “This is about protecting the integrity of all creation.”

The sweeping new law prohibits all living beings within state borders from being born with random genetic mutations that could make them better suited to evade predators, secure a mate, or, adapt to a changing environment. In addition, it bars any sexual reproduction, battles for survival, or instances of pure happenstance that might lead, after several generations, to a more well-adapted species or subspecies.

Source: The Onion

100% accurate astrologer... teehee!

“100% accurate” and “astrologer” are to my mind not two items that should appear in any sentence that makes any kind of sense, but I’m willing to allow someone claiming such things to try to demonstrate it, especially when I don’t have to pay for their woo 100% accurate predictions.

“Jenna”’s credentials appear to quite impressive indeed:

I do like the discovers precise dates & times bit, but I tried sending the form without any information apart from my email address, but apparently she’s not psychic enough to already know my name, gender, date of birth, occupation and marital status.

If you’re sceptical and bored and looking for some woo to experiment on feel free to give “Jenna” a whirl.

Digiguide describes the series:

In 1859, English naturalist Charles Darwin published his masterpiece On the Origin of Species. In it Darwin put forward his theory - that everything on this planet has evolved by natural selection rather than by God or a higher being. The book caused outrage at the time, but radically changed perceptions of our existence.

Nearly 150 years later, Darwin’s theory remains controversial, despite overwhelming evidence backing it up. Richard Dawkins — ethologist, scientist and one of Britain’s best-known atheists … — examines the theory in our programme of the week, The Genius of Charles Darwin. A strong three-parter, Dawkins retraces Darwin’s journey aboard The Beagle and re-examines the evidence of the natural world, showing how the ongoing process of sex, suffering and death drives evolution on as the fittest survive and the weakest perish. But although the evidence seems irrefutable, Dawkins has some tough critics to convince — a class of intelligent but sceptical British teenagers. Can he convince them that Darwin’s theory is true?

Screenings on Channel 4 and S4C

Watch clips from the series

Update: There’s also a BBC Radio 4 interview with Dawkins about the series available on his web site.

Sarika Watkins-Singh, 14, was reprimanded for breaking the “no jewellery” rule at Aberdare Girls’ School in South Wales last year.

In court, she said wearing the slim steel bracelet was as important to her as it was to the England cricketer Monty Panesar.

Sarika, who is Punjabi-Welsh, claimed she was the victim of unlawful discrimination when she was first taught in isolation and finally excluded last November.

The school, at which Sarika was the only Sikh among 600 girls, does not permit jewellery other than wristwatches and ear studs.

But Mr Justice Silber ruled that the bangle - known as the kara - was a symbol of her Sikh faith and not a piece of jewellery.

He said that the school was guilty of indirect discrimination under race relations and equality laws.

Right. That’s it. Fuck it.

I have a religion. It’s a lack-of-faith-based “faith”, and it’s called “Realityism”. It doesn’t have any gods, but it does have beliefs (based on good evidence). I will hereby quote the entirety of the scripture of Realityism here:

The Big Bumper Book of Realityism

Chapter 1

¹ The cosmos, and everything in it, simply is.

² The universe, and everything in it, are the tacit and explicit symbols of your “faith”. ³ Carry any symbols that you want to, to demonstrate your acceptance of your “faith”. ⁴ Nobody can tell you that you are wrong in your choice of symbol - it is they who are wrong.

⁵ Let reality, through evidence, be your guide.

⁶ Enjoy life.

There. Dead easy to remember and live by.

I wonder what my choice of symbol can be. I’ve always fancied a ninja outfit. But that’s not enough, I really need to show people how sincere I am in my “faith”. I know, why not something like sikhs do with their knives kirpan’s or this kid does with her jewellery symbol.

What I choose to carry won’t be jewellery or a weapon either, it’ll be a symbol just like these people have. And I will of course be free to carry it where something very very similar might otherwise be prohibited in a secular environment. But, of course, as a symbol, it’s completely different, isn’t it?

What do you mean to say that I can’t carry a 30″ blade or a crossbow or a shotgun in public? They’re not weapons, you heathen, they’re SYMBOLS! Don’t you understand, it was recently ruled in the High Court that one can happily flout societal norms when “faith” is involved?

DON’T OPPRESS ME OR MY RELIGION!

Source: The Telegraph: Sikh teenager wins bangle discrimination case.

/hattip: Pharyngula

…an authoritative article about a specific topic.

knol.google.com

Taking a look through a few of the articles (e.g. infertility, diarrhea (sic), athlete’s foot to get a feel for the place, some of them read more like layperson-friendly entries into journals.

The content does appear to be of a good quality, and topics don’t seem as narrowly defined as they do in Wikipedia. I do think, perhaps, it would behove article maintainers to not only make the article friendly in terms of language to non-specialists, but also make it presentable: the layout of some of the articles is, frankly, attrocious.

At the moment, most of the articles appear to deal with medical topics, although I’m sure that when those who are passionate about their areas of expertise are aware of Knol (especially if they have a bit of an ego) it’ll quickly fill up with some good quality content.

From the articles I’ve taken a look at I get a sense that there’s a lot more personality behind this than Wikipedia has; someone human, someone that actually cares, has written this. Wikipedia—at least the English version that I’m most familiar with—always gave me the impression, with it’s strict NPOV philosophy (which I do appreciate on one level), that it was written for and by emotionless alien robots who want nothing but facts, facts, facts. Knol seems far more personal, almost as if there’s advice being given, not just information.

One of the issues that I can see immediately is that referring to Knol articles is a pain. Look at this URL:

http://knol.google.com/k/nikki-levin/athletes-foot-tinea-pedis/saclI5Bh/f9HbJg#

That’s what people see in their address bar in their browser, and are going to want to send to people and say “hey! check this out!”. But the URLs are, frankly, shite. What’s that crap in the last two fragments at the end? And why the need for the persistent /k at the front? Yeah, I know that Wikipedia does this with /wiki, but it doesn’t make any damned difference if everything has it, does it? The sooner they sort this out, the better.

I’ve yet to take an in-depth look at Knol, but I’m going to spend a little time doing so today, and keep my eye on it in the future. It does though have a long way to go before even dreaming of catching up with Wikipedia. But it looks interesting, and any easy way of getting the mainstream public interested in knowing rather than ignoring (or simply making shit up) is good in my book.

Personally, I can’t wait to see who they come up with as ‘experts’ (and their “authoritative” articles) when it comes to those topics that we know and love.

Caveat: the comments, as always, are something of a different matter.

/hattip: PhotoBasement

More excellent cartoons over at See Mike Draw.

Another petition has since arisen against his petition to show support for the BBC and friends in not having the licence fee payer have to pay for Green’s ridiculous and frivolous action.

At the time of writing, Green’s petition had 1051 signatories (which includes a large number of messages *not* in support of him), and the anti-petition has 579 signatures.

Go and sign (BBC licence fee payers only).

/hattip New Humanist blog

My main reasoning here is that, as a bloc, these types of christians would be more effective as a unified force when demanding specific additional entitlement of the state than as two or more sub-cults. As it stands, anglicans, with their especial relationship to the machinery of state in the UK, currently enjoy more particular privileges when compared to any other cultural sub-group.

This isn’t surprising when the UK is actually a de jure anglican theocracy even if it is, in more practical terms, a secular democracy.

Should the anglicans split into, say, two factions — one of a liberal persuasion and one of a more fundamentalist and bigoted creed — that would to my mind significantly weaken the tenacious hold that they have over the established government than they enjoy at present while together. This in turn would also weaken their ‘right’ to demand the maintenance of, or additions to, the privileges they already hold, and would very likely lead to some or all of those privileges being eventually removed, just as the rest of us mere mortals are constrained.

However, the anglicans seem hell-bent on trying to keep themselves as a single entity, to the extent of having signed up the evangelical faction as a ‘church within a church’.

What this means is that they will be able to maintain the incommensurate grip on the state that they already possess and, as they do at present, be further able to express their shared prejudices in the public sphere with more authority than they deserve, while only having to squabble over, as they have done for centuries (and I’d wager for centuries hence), the internal rules of their cult which otherwise doesn’t affect John Q Public.

I support a split in the anglican church, because I’d rather see two churches, a smaller one of a liberal attitude, and another smaller one of bigotry and intolerance, rather than one large bigotry-tolerating church with a state-provided leg-up to power that allows them to make life difficult for the rest of us, especially those of us that don’t subscribe to the baseless and most fundamental claims of their dogma and, it seems, one of the few things they otherwise agree on: the magic man of yore.

A study to be published in August’s Journal of Archaeological Science by Danish archaeologists describes how monks engaged in copying biblical and other religious texts may have been poisoned by mercury in a red ink used in illustrating these manuscripts.

Since the monks, who were buried in the cloister walk of the Cistercian Abbey at Øm, did not have these diseases but contained mercury in their bones, scientists believe the monks were either contaminated while preparing and administering medicines, or while writing the artistic letters of incunabula, or pre-1500 A.D. books.

Kaare Lund Rasmussen, a University of Southern Denmark scientist at the Institute of Physics and Chemistry, suspects that ink used in the abbey’s scriptorium was the culprit.

He told Discovery News “it is very human to lick the brush, if one wants to make a fine line.”

Even today “one should really not touch, or much less rub, the parchment pages of an incunabulum,” Lund Rasmussen said, adding that mercury “was used in the first place because cinnabar (a type of mercury) has this bright red, beautiful color.”

Source: Discovery Channel

/’alfinched from IslamicTube (yeah, that’s what I thought)

As (hopefully) with most people, I don’t generally tend to buy things from spam emails, but this one was particularly interesting as it seems to have been addressed directly to me and hence, presumably, sought to appeal to my vanity in being a “freethinker”. However, instead of taking Senchenko up on his kind offer to buy his wares, I wrote a blog post. Normally I wouldn’t give such credence to spam, but I had had a bit to drink that evening.

I made a rather lack-lustre comment, and thought no more of it, but it seems that Senchenko has taken it upon himself to know me better than I know myself and takes great pains, and in no undercertain terms, to tell me about me. However, the appeal to vanity of the original spam is well gone and this email seeks to shame me into buying his book.

I should thank you for publishing my initial Press Release emailed to you by the volunteers on my media team.

It is also the same guys who had just recently trawled across your site again, bringing your commentary to my attention. Because of that, on 12-6-08 you were sent another Press Release: this one giving a different perspective of the same intent: to provide confirmation that gods not only do not physically exists [sic], but that they are not even physically required by all that physically exists to physically exist.

I was indeed sent another press release. This time I just marked it, rightly, as spam. Again I thought no more of it. I was hoping that Google Mail’s spam filter would take care of the rest. Apparently it hasn’t.

Now, as a human, you may feel that you have all the right to scorn information sent to you, simply because you feel that you don’t have to examine it for yourself before you publicly reject it. The frightening element of this is that you actually present yourself as an intellectual liberal freethinker, while being the very opposite: a repressive rejecter: nothing more than an intellectual coward, who tolerates no unusual claims, simply because they are unusual claims. So listen to your prejudices, Nullifidian – a person having no faith or religious belief – when given an opportunity to gain knowledge that you are right than [sic] gods do not exist:

“Yeah, I didn’t give him the satisfaction of a link. So sue me.

“Frankly, this sounds more like a scientologist than anything else but, then again, even without the Xenu nonsense, I think they’re barking.

“Oh, and guess what? I’m very probably not going to buy his book, even with the rather tempting reward of a refund of the cover price for his generous offer. Fancy that.”

Fancy what? No doubt, you were so proud of yourself when you expressed these sentiments. Simply because you were so pissed – by your own words – your lack of conscious rational prevented you from recognizing that which you had always have been seeking.

I have a right to accept or reject anything that I see fit. Usually I try to have a good reason for rejecting things, and things being advertised by spam raise red flags to me. Pride had nothing to do with it.

I do not present myself as an intellectual liberal freethinker, I present myself as a concerned citizen. Whatever attitude Senchenko seeks to impose on me, I reject unless I explicitly claim it for myself. I consider myself as liberal (in terms of liberty over tyranny) when compared to social norms. I don’t consider myself an intellectual, but I do consider myself someone who values thinking.

Seeking? What have I been seeking? Proof that gods do not exist? If Senchenko really thinks so, he doesn’t know me anywhere near as well as he thinks he does. And, even in my state of mild to moderate intoxication (rather than being so pissed as Senchenko claims) I was still able to read and write quite coherently.

After all, did you ever presume that proof of god non-existence would come from current science? Pigs would fly first. For current science – especially physics – are the stream of the most delusionary [sic] fabrications that continue to dupe humanity – including you – in believing that ‘time’ physically exists; that ‘dominant males’, such as kings and emperors, have a god given right to rule, because gods, supposedly, gave them that right to rule. Should you consider me currently naïve, just consider Mugabe’s claim that “only god can oust him”. Then consider the same current situation over the rest of this planet.

No, I didn’t presume that proof of god non-existence would come from current science. And apparently Senchenko thinks that I think “time” physically exists (I don’t) and that kings have a ‘right to rule (I’m a [small 'R'] republican).

Senchenko doesn’t know me at all…

Frankly, I’m embarrassed for you, atheisrt [sic], for you are the worst example of humanity: that which pretends to be the best of human understanding, but which, in actual fact, is nothing but a sham, a fraud, a liar.

Oh, really? What exactly have I lied about? Please, Senchenko, tell me, and I’ll retract it if it isn’t true. If it is true, then I’ll expect an apology for this libel.

By your own admission, you had not bothered to read the book in question, prior to mocking it. If this is what you were taught to assess knowledge – and I know it was not – then you had failed the first test of any basic principle of knowledge acquisition: examine it for yourself first-hand, if possible. For only then – and only then – can you possibly make an informed judgment. The key word here is: ‘informed’. Instead you chose to show your lack of professionalism of any scientist: to mock in ignorance. A shameful and undignified behavior, to be chastised by any pedagogue.

No, I freely admit to not having read Senchenko’s book. This isn’t really surprising: I haven’t read most of the books ever written, and indeed I still have about fifteen books on my bookshelf that I have still to read. Does Senchenko expect me to drop everything to read his?

And, apparently, I’m now an unprofessional scientist.

You had chosen to belittle the knowledge offered to you, without personally assessing it. An act of an ignorant intellectual cowardice.

Senchenko seems to be under the mistaken apprehension that I belittled his claimed knowledge. I didn’t belittle it as I have no knowledge of it. However, his spam made claims that I am dubious of, and it was because, and only because, I was unwilling to trust Senchenko and his spam that I refused to partake of his offer. However, more on this below.

Senchenko should, of course, have sent his spam press release to the relevant news agencies and journals, not to a lowly and relatively obscure blogger. They have vastly more resources available and experience to investigate his claims.

Are you now going to retract? Or are you going to read the book, and then, having become INFORMED, either still crap on it, INFORMEDLY (an absolute right you shall have, with me being the brunt of it), or acknowledge that you had learned all that current humans do not know, just as the Press Release claims?

I really don’t have any idea as to what I am supposed to retract. My refusal to promoted his spam with a link? My opinion that it reads like a Scientology manual? My refusal to buy his wares? I will retract none of these.

The choice is yours, of course. But do understand this most seriously: my site is more than capable of exposing intellectual cowards. I have no fears of exposing people like you for being what you are: a gutless crow; an intellectual coward.

Now then, buddy, you think I’m being harsh? I dare you to post all this on your blog. I have no problem of doing the same on my site, even if you don’t.

While I’m not Senchenko’s buddy, especially when he has then threatened to “expose” me, I have accepted his challenge by publishing his email in full.

Of course, you may choose to read the book for yourself and inform me of this fact. In which case I shall reserve my online judgment of your attitude until you can provide an INFORMED opinion of the book, which I promise to post in full.

Kind regards,
Victor Senchenko

Kind regards? What an interesting choice of closure.

Senchenko, if you’re reading this, I call your bluff. I’ve posted this email in full.

And, if you really want me to read your book, I have a counter offer: send me a copy of the book and I will read it with as much rigour as I’m able. Should I be so convinced then I will undertake to pay you the full cover price and write a fair review of the book. If I’m not convinced, then I shall return the book to you and write a fair review of the book.

As you appear to be so very confident that you have the knowledge and arguments that the rest of us are not party to, shall we put the onus of risk onto you and place the mantle of trust onto me? It seems only fair, don’t you think?

Svarthöfði á vegum félagsmanna í Vantrú

In other Icelandic news, the first gay couple has married in a church.

In a “press release” on his its web site, Green Christian Voice spins his its persecution complex thus:

In a hearing a fortnight ago, Mark Thompson and Jonathan Thoday were awarded costs totalling £90,000 against Green, who is the National Director of the prayer and lobby group Christian Voice. The BBC’s solicitors were awarded £55,000 and Olswangs Solicitors, who acted for Thoday, got an order for £35,000.

The costs order is better than it could have been; the BBC originally demanded almost £78,000 after instructing David Pannick QC, probably the most expensive barrister they could find, while Thoday wanted over £58,000.

The money is due to be paid today, but Stephen Green doesn’t have it.

He has written to both Mark Thompson and Jonathan Thoday inviting them to waive their costs in the interests of goodwill and justice.

This of course would be the exact same goodwill and justice that Green showed towards Thompson and Thoday when he tried to have them jailed for showing a tv show that Green happens to dislike?

In the same release, Green also calls the court awarded costs vindictive, and that they should just be happy that they got away with blasphemy.

The defendant’s lawyers who are pressing this case have also threatened to follow Green’s donors who initially financed his frivolous lawsuit, but Green has responded that he would, even if he were able to remember who they were, refuse to reveal the names of these donors, and would happily perjure himself and face jail time to keep those names secret.

If he could remember them. Because he doesn’t have a clue who paid him money to take someone else to court. Because it’s so easy to forget things like this.

The release concludes:

Human Rights barrister Paul Diamond said the case raises issues under the European Convention of Human Rights about access to the courts.

Stephen Green concluded: ‘How are people with limited means expected to bring actions of public importance against public bodies or wealthy people? It is outrageous that a public-spirited individual should be dissuaded from upholding standards of public decency in a public body because of the fear of adverse, grotesque costs orders.’

What Green doesn’t seem to understand is that he lost. He lost because the case he presented was poor. Because blasphemy is a ridiculous notion. Because he can’t demonstrate any offence taken by his god (although there was plenty of self-imposed righteous indignation by proxy through Green himself). Because he’s an idiot with too much time on his hands and a loud mouth that has gotten him into trouble on more than one occasion. And this time he bit off more than he could swallow.

Besides, if his donors have money to throw away on Green’s pathetic suits, why are they so quiet now?

I believe this is called “Schadenfreude”.

Source: National Secular Society

No tithing required. All confessions subject to the discretionary whims of the catholic church. Confessions may be recorded for quality and training purposes. No speeding. No diving. No heavy petting. No refunds without a valid receipt. Your ’soul’ may be at risk if you do not keep up repayments.

Robinson, a born-again christian (apparently she didn’t quite get it right the first time) is quoted as saying that homosexuality was an abomination when being interviewed by the BBC.

Using such words, I suspect that she has pulled this wholesale from her bible and not actually given the matter much thought which, considering the shit that some people come out with when using scripture as a basis for opinion, really doesn’t surprise me whatsoever.

She was also recorded as saying that she has a very lovely [christian] psychiatrist that works in her offices, and that both she and he would be glad of the opportunity to cure any homosexuals.

Police have confirmed that they’re investigating a complain made about Robinson’s statements on homosexuality.

[Edit: this is the conversation that has been reported to the police]

The portion of Mrs Robinson’s radio interview that was reported to the police as a hate crime was the following:

Stephen Nolan: Do you think for example that homosexuality is disgusting?
Iris Robinson: Absolutely
Stephen Nolan: Do you think that homosexuality should be loathed?
Iris Robinson: Absolutely
Stephen Nolan: Do you think it is right for people to have a physical disgust towards homosexuality?
Iris Robinson: Absolutely
Stephen Nolan: Does it make you nauseous?
Iris Robinson: Yes
Stephen Nolan: Do you think that it is something that is shamefully wicked and vile?
Iris Robinson: Yes, of course it is, it’s an abomination.

Source: Pink News

[/end of edit]

A petition to have the PM issue a reprimand has appeared on the 10 Downing Street web site.

Various news articles linked from this Facebook group.

This also leads me to wonder if we should take a leaf from The Little Book of Popular Mealy-Mouthed Sanctimonious Apologist Soundbites for Christians: they have “love the sinner, hate the sin”, so shouldn’t we of a more liberal (as in freedom) have something similar? “Love the bigot, hate the bigotry” has a nice ring to it.

Saying that, I don’t love this — or any other — bigot. I detest her and others of that ilk precisely because they are bigots.

A->(11)A+->(24)A++->(29)A+ : TR(B,T,FSM,DST,QUA,UNI,WIC) : r(B%100,K%80) : RI(p0,s0,u0) : ex(Fam(1.0),Wk(0.9),Fr(1.0) : SO(A+) : FB(RD,DD+,MS,SH,PJ,JR+,CS++,RI++) : M(blg) : MS(o,l+,n+) : GCD : [gc-0.2]

Godless Code 0.2 (and v0.1 for reference).

Here are some other suggestions for muslims:

• food taster at Pork Farms
• fruit machine engineer
• loan arranger
• whisky quality control
• sex worker
• porn actor
• gossip columnist
• bikini model
• spy
• tobacco farmer
• tattoo artist
• cosmetic dentist
• bingo caller
• nightclub compere
• off-licence retailer
• male model
• beautician
• croupier
• wig maker
• sculptor
• exotic dancer
• movie critic
• masseuse

You only have to suffer the very vaguest of “hurt feelings” and there’s no usury involved whatsoever. Easy money! Just remember to initially ask for a ridiculous payout first though, as they tend to haggle you down to something more reasonable.

I wonder if I should see if I can get a job as an imam…

/hattip The Freethinker

Darwin exposed!

/hattip Sneer Review

Saturday 14 June : ‘The Encyclopedia of World Religions’ Part 1
Sunday 15 June: ‘The Encyclopedia of World Religions’ Part 2
Monday 16 June: Christianity
Tuesday 17 June: Islam
Wednesday 18 June: Judaism
Thursday 19 June: Hinduism
Friday 20 June: Buddhism
Saturday 21 June: Sikhism

If you’d like to take part, copy these questions, and answer them in your own words on your own blog.

Q1. How would you define “atheism”?

“A lack of belief in gods.”

Q2. Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition?

My parents didn’t try to convince me that there was or wasn’t a god — it was never brought up. This doesn’t appear to be too unusual in the UK.

Q3. How would you describe “Intelligent Design”, using only one word?

Dishonest.

Q4. What scientific endeavour really excites you?

Astronomy. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with the night sky. And the sooner we’re probing Europa, the better (thanks, Arthur C Clarke!)

Q5. If you could change one thing about the “atheist community”, what would it be and why?

I’d like to encourage more “in the closet” atheists to make their voices heard. At the moment, I don’t think that our suggested numbers are anywhere near accurate.

Q6. If your child came up to you and said “I’m joining the clergy”, what would be your first response?

“That’s nice, dear. Would you like a cup of tea?”

Q7. What’s your favourite theistic argument, and how do you usually refute it?

The argument from personal experience. Not that there’s any refutation, but because it’s the last refuge of a scoundrel. Once you’ve got them there, there’s nowhere else they can go.

Q8. What’s your most “controversial” (as far as general attitudes amongst other atheists goes) viewpoint?

Most likely that I’m not completely convinced of anthropogenic climate change, which in turn in is probaby because I haven’t investigated it too deeply.

Q9. Of the “Four Horsemen” (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris) who is your favourite, and why?

Harris — he has a brilliant way of getting straight to the heart of an argument.

Q10. If you could convince just one theistic person to abandon their beliefs, who would it be?

Probably Tony Blair. It might humble him into evaluating his arrogant conviction that he can single-handedly put the world to rights (starting with the Middle East).

Now name three other atheist blogs that you’d like to see take up the Atheist Thirteen gauntlet:

1. Why Don’t You Blog?
2. The Freethinker
3. Pyjamas in Bananas

[it] can’t be published in China because some content is not accordant to Chinese regulations, for example, some content about religious, soul. [sic]

Whatever one might accuse the Chinese government of, freethinking obviously isn’t part of the problem.

Note to self: you still haven’t got around to buying this one yet, have you?

Time (ha!) will tell.

Unlikely? Not so much. I can think of a couple more things they agree on…

DANIEL proceeds to vanish from the movie almost entirely. NICOLE KIDMAN convinces DAKOTA BLUE RICHARDS to live with her without consulting her uncle, which nobody seems to mind.

*chortle*

Read the full thing over at The Editing Room.

/hattip Pharyngula

/hattip Humanistdad

I always get quite conflicted when I hear about Jehovah’s witnesses and their literalist attitudes to medical practises. On the one hand, I’m glad that they see fit to remove themselves from the gene pool and not have the world further support them in their idiocy. On the other hand, the humanist is me is both saddened and sickened that people with attitudes like this exist, that they cause harm and suffering not only to themselves but to those that they are responsible for, that real practical and tangible help is available, if only they examined their superstitions and found them as wanting as everyone else who doesn’t hold that particular element of dogma as true. But there doesn’t appear to be helping some people - they crave, nurse and hold on to their beliefs as true no matter what evidence or argument is presented to them.

I guess it’s the equivalent of a DNR for them; if they don’t want their life saved against their will, I can’t and won’t argue against it. That doesn’t mean that I think that a line from an old story is a good reason to refuse medical assistance if they would otherwise accept it.

Books

If you know me personally, then one thing that you should already be aware of is that I love reading, and not only that, I love reading actual honest-to-betsy pulped wood books. However, the past six months has, for various reasons, seen me buy hardly any books.

It’s not that I thought there weren’t any worth buying/reading, but simply a case of needing to manage my cash-flow in a rather diligent manner. However, my finances are returning to a more reasonable level of sanity and, while not going overboard, I did have a little bit of an accidental splurge after making the mistake of popping into Waterstone’s.

Today’s purchases are The Rough Guide to the Brain by Barry J Gibb (I presume not of BeeGee fame, but am happy to be corrected), and The Tipping Point and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.

The latter two, while by the same author, were bought otherwise independently. I’d had Blink recommended by a friend, and I just happened to like the look of The Tipping Point and didn’t actually notice (or care) who the author was.

While none of these new titles have any particular focus that is directly apropos of this blog, they are concerned with science and critical thinking respectively and do have something of an oblique relevance.

I have, however, had a chance to read a number of the titles on my to-read pile, and so will be shortly updating my book list. Feel free to drop a comment with your own recommendations for new titles that you don’t see there. For any ‘helpful’ theists out there, yes, I already have a couple of bibles and a koran (as well as various others bookmarked on the web) so there’s no need to suggest those.

Updating

As some of you may have noticed (if you haven’t already completely abandoned reading this blog) I’ve been a bit slack on keeping the place up to date and otherwise generally ship shape.

Sorry about that.

Well, not really. I do realise that this is my blog, and I’m free to update (or not) as often (or infrequently) as I desire (or are able).

By way of (a rather weak) explanation, I’ll iterate as to why I’ve been a bit crap in this regard over the past few months.

1) Time, or lack thereof. I’ve been very busy recently with a variety of things. One of the primary ones was studying with the OU. Another was catching up with a social life that I’d all but neglected for far too long. Yet another was a need to take on extra freelance work (mostly to pay for the studying and social life).

I remained as a low-key activist for secularism and humanism in the background, but my “public” persona in the form of this blog lost out. Things have somewhat improved on this front, and I now have a little more free time.

2) Competition, too much of. Well, not really, but I’ll make this a bit clearer. Over the past couple of years since I started this blog, the atheist community of the web has grown at a rate that I would never have foreseen. This is A Good Thing™ in my book, and I’m most certainly not complaining. However, there’s only so much news about religious privilege and other wingnuttery impelled on the UK citizenry to go around, and the number of peer blogs (which I still read, when I can) has exploded.

Aggregators like Planet Atheism seemed to be filled, it has to be said, with several observers to the exact same phenomenon, and I didn’t feel like I was contributing anything new to the mix. So I let others post to their blogs, and kept my own counsel, more often than not because I agreed with them, and “I agree” posts or comments to me seem inadequate and insipid. I lost a fair chunk of my blogging mojo.

Yet, over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed things that seemed to have slipped through the general atheist/humanist/secularist radar, or at that part of it that I keep a beady eye on. So, as I have a bit more time to devote, I plan to update this blog more often, picking up the slack where I see it. And you can expect me to be, as I was previously, pointing and laughing at stupidity, denouncing undeserved religious privilege, vilifying bad science and other woo and generally making a nuisance of myself to the otherwise magically inclined.

For some reason, I have the immortal words of Randy Quaid’s character in Independence Day in my head: Hello boys, I’m back!

One of the benefits of working where I do, I have access to some really interesting sources of research. And one of those is physicist Professor Peter Higgs, author of a number of papers on symmetry, gauge fields and massless particles in the 1960s where he first postulated the Higgs field and what became known as the Higgs boson, thought to be the elementary particle responsible for mass and hence gravitational fields, and to complete the Standard Model of particle physics.

However, Higgs is a bit of a recluse and doesn’t crave media attention, but the forthcoming activation of the Large Hadron Collider makes it quite difficult for him to avoid completely, especially when his predicted particle has the (IMO) careless and irresponsible sobriquet of ‘the god particle’ (which Higgs, an atheist, isn’t too keen on either).

So, Higgs recently made a rather low-key (considering the media attention that the facility has otherwise attracted) visit to the LHC facility at CERN, and a number of up-to-date photographs were taken of him posing with the (at the time unfinished) particle accelerator thought to be capable of providing direct evidence of his eponymous predicted particle.

Higgs appears to look much healthier, despite his age, than he did in the most recent photographs previously available. Perhaps leading the shy life is good for you.

The LCH is planned for activation later this month, with the first collisions taking place a couple of months afterwards, although sifting through the mountains of data generated could take a little time. This should still be interesting.

And, of course, I couldn’t close this post off without a few related cartoons…

• XKCD
• Welcome to the Future
• User Friendly

Apologies to Baroness Orczy for the strained pun in the title of this post. ;-)