Monthly Archives: November 2011

Cassandra 2012

___ I’m feeling increasingly bleak about the human future going into 2012. I say this without the least pleasure because I have two small children (one is five, the other is eight). I don’t want anything I point to here … Continue reading

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Beware, Seriously: The Buffalax Will Get All Over Your Trousers

Duck!

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Let Freedom Sing: Feminism Under Fire in Israel

The intellectual and cultural rot of religious fundamentalism continues its 21st century spread. This is in Haaretz today: Secular and religious cabinet members engaged in a heated discussion over the issue of women’s rights in Israel on Sunday, forcing Prime … Continue reading

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Life Perspective

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Shopping Rage: Black Friday’s Competitive Shopping Road Rage

From the Los Angeles Times today comes this disturbing little item worthy of a scene from Dante’s Inferno: In Porter Ranch, a woman pepper sprayed customers at a Wal-Mart in what authorities say was a deliberate attempt to get more “door … Continue reading

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On Evolution, Women Scientists Weigh In

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Michelle Bachmann Conflates the Bible with the Constitution

In a recent interview with Christianity Today, Michelle Bachmann dodged a tricky question embedded in a larger question by conflating the Bible with the Constitution. Here was the tricky question: If the people want government to do something that goes … Continue reading

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The Old In and Outputs: Neuroscientist Tom Chivers Doesn’t Think We Have Free Will. Is He Right?

A stunning tidbit from an interview, in The Telegraph, with neuroscientist Tom Chivers: [I]f we are part of the universe, and obey its laws, it’s hard to see where free will comes into it. What we think of as freedom, … Continue reading

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Polyamory: Don’t Try This at Home?

JT Eberhard tried out the polyamory scene and lived to tell about it. The husband of the woman Eberhard slept with, for example, didn’t decide to change his mind about his consent, get jealous hearing his wife screwing another man … Continue reading

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Iran vs. Israel in 2012: Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0?

The Jerusalem Post today quotes Wim Kortenoeven expressing concern over Israel’s ongoing existence should Iran acquire nuclear weapons. Kortenoeven, described by the Post as “a leading expert on the Middle East” and an official of Holland’s Party of Freedom, is … Continue reading

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Links Worth Exploring Today

David Carr’s reporting on Twitter and the Tribune Company. A Catholic priest wants to bar humanists from being chaplains in the U.S. military. An Intelligence Squared debate on the health of mainstream media outlets (such as the New York Times). The Vice website looks interesting. Here’s the site itself, and here’s the Wikipedia article … Continue reading

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Inflate the Debt Away: Why Are Italian Interest Rates Climbing?

Italian interest rates are climbing because it’s feared that, should Greece leave the euro, Italy might follow suit, making the value of Italian bonds held by investors zero. That’s right, zero. Wolfgang Munchau at Spiegel Online explains: If Greece leaves … Continue reading

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American Cop Pepper Sprays Nonviolent Occupy UC Davis Protesters

____ Since when is it okay for an American police officer in full riot gear to step up to nonviolent, hunkered down, university students and use pepper spray on them as if they were insects in need of insecticide?  

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Paul Krugman’s Advice to Italy and Spain: Inflate and Stimulate

Paul Krugman continues to think that what’s going on in Greece, Italy, and Spain says nothing—nothing!—about the political culture surrounding welfare statism in Europe and everything about the way the euro ties the hands of those making monetary policy: Japan is much more deeply … Continue reading

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Incivility Watch: Ted the Atheist Debates a Beach Preacher I’ll Call “The Proclaimer”

In the below video, I love Ted the Atheist’s rational take-down of The Proclaimer. And Ted the Atheist was right to decline a handshake with The Proclaimer. When you hunker down, as The Proclaimer did, and refuse to offer reasons for what you believe, that’s … Continue reading

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On Earth as It Is on Mars: Curiosity Mars Rover is Heading for the Grand Canyon of Mars, and May Provide Strong Evidence Against Young Earth Creationism

Are you curious about Curiosity, NASA’s new Mars rover, scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., this month? Here’s part of a report in the Los Angeles Times about it: Curiosity will take 8.5 months to travel the 354 million … Continue reading

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Carl Sagan Day: Three Historians Reflect on Carl Sagan’s Life

For “Carl Sagan Day” (which is today), this extended reflection on Carl Sagan’s life seems fitting to post.

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Today is Carl Sagan Day!

Bet you didn’t know that. But it’s true. Here’s the Center for Inquiry promoting November 12, 2011 as “Carl Sagan Day”: An all-day event at Broward College near Ft. Lauderdale, FL in celebration of the life and teachings of Carl … Continue reading

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All-American Muslim on TLC: Do These People Represent the Future of Islam?

This new reality series seems hopeful: ___ I’ve long thought, and still think, that American Muslims represent Islam’s future (which I take to be the religion’s gradual but definite liberalization and rapprochement with western Enlightenment modernism). I’m betting that a century from now the … Continue reading

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A Ten-Year-Old Boy is Raped; Penn Students Show Outrage at Joe Paterno’s Firing

To focus the mind, let’s point to just one of the things Joe Paterno did (or, rather, failed to do) as coach at Penn State. In 2002, one of his coaches sodomized a ten-year-old boy in a university locker room shower. Assistant … Continue reading

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