Daily Archives: September 5, 2009

A Curious Parallel Between Genesis and the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish

Biblical scholars see parallels between the creation story of Genesis chapter 1 and the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish. Here’s an example: Parallels like the one above suggest that Genesis 1 was written by a Jew living in Babylonian exile, and that the story … Continue reading

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Stephen Hawking: Another Frickin’ Atheist Who Doesn’t Believe in UFOs!

Stephen Hawking thinks that the universe made itself from nothing and that there are no intelligent civilizations within several hundred light years of our own. In short, Hawking basically shoots down, in ten minutes, two recent speculative obsessions of this … Continue reading

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Today’s Number: 168,178,719

That’s the number of book titles in the world (according to Google’s cataloging project). And Geoffrey Nunberg is worried about how the translation of these titles into an electronic data base is going to be handled and managed: Whether the Google … Continue reading

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Utensils Crossed, Eggs Broken, Bread Broken, and Cracks

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1968 UFO or UF-NO?

This UFO photo looks rather intriguing, don’t you think? It’s in black and white, which is what you might expect of a photograph if it were taken in 1968, and the image was captured on a sunny day in Southern … Continue reading

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The Kindle, George Orwell, and the Future of Censorship?

Electronic books just got more creepy. Earlier in the summer, Amazon.com unceremoniously removed (remotely) “unauthorized” copies of George Orwell’s 1984  from people’s Kindles. Amazon customers had purchased copies of the electronic book through the Amazon store, and they thought that … Continue reading

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Atheist Groupies: What Do I Think of Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne Fandom?

I think it is an admirable human trait to love and admire someone who has done a lot of good in the world, and so I don’t begrudge the fanzine style atheist followers that sites like RichardDawkins.net and Jerry Coyne’s blog … Continue reading

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