News From Around The Blogosphere 11.12.09

1. MILF cleared of abduction charges by Irish priest – Okay, get you minds out of the gutter. Of course I’m talking about the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). In the Philippines, Irish Fr. Michael Sinnott was held hostage for 31 days and after being freed, said that his abductors were the original lumad of Mindanao who lost their homeland and everything else when the merchants came in, but not the MILF. In fact, the MILF Central Committee are credited for effecting his release.

2. Nanotechnology kicks cancer’s ass -

Led by Elena Rozhkova, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago’s Brain Tumor Center have developed the first nanoparticles that seek out and destroy glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) brain cancer cells without damaging nearby healthy cells.

Nanomedicine, an offshoot of nanotechnology, refers to highly specific medical intervention at the molecular scale for curing disease or repairing damaged tissues, such as bone, muscle, nerve, or brain cells. Nanoparticles – anywhere from 100 to 2500 nanometers in size – are at the same scale as the biological molecules and structures inside living cells. Cancer detection using nanoparticles shows great promise as a therapy for certain types of cancer. And the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) is taking nanoparticles very seriously. The NIH has established a national network of eight Nanomedicine Development Centers, which serve as the intellectual and technological core of the NIH Nanomedicine Roadmap Initiative.

3. South Carolina rules religious license plates unconstitutional - The smoking gun of the case seems to this:

When State Sen. Yance McGill was asked by the Associated Press in May 2009 whether he would support a Wiccan tag, he said, “Well, that’s not what I consider to be a religion.”

When asked about a Buddhist tag, he said “I’d have to look at the individual situation. But I’m telling you, I firmly believe in this [Christian] tag.”

Rep. Bill Sandifer also backed the “Christian” plate, but emphatically asserted that he would never do the same for a plate featuring Islamic symbols and language.

“Absolutely and positively no,” he said.

And, let’s not forget, [ed: Lt. Gov] Bauer himself also said no to the same question.

“I would not [support a tag for Islam] because that is not the group I support,” he said.

Oops. Thanks guys.

4. Rhode Island governor vetoed domestic partners burial bill – This bill would have allowed a same-sex partner to make funeral arrangements for a dead partner. Governor Carcieri, have you no decency, sir? Have you no decency?

5. Catholic Church gives Washington D.C. an ultimatum – The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington threatened to pull aid to homeless if the state doesn’t change a proposed same-sex marriage law. Yay extortion!

6. Cincinnati Coalition of Reason billboard taken down due to death threats -  And while extremely unfortunate, it both illustrates why these completely unoffensive ads are so important in the first place and on the plus side, the billboard was just moved to a new location. And this will no doubt generate more publicity than the billboard itself.

7. Alabama Atheists and Agnostics get publicity - Last month, they went around chalking their university to advertise their upcoming meeting. Then it got erased and so they chalked everything again, only to have that erased to. And now the story has gotten them some great new publicity, which like the Cincinnati billboard incident, will likely reach a much larger audience than originally intended. Thanks assholes!

8. 10-year-old refuses to stand for Pledge for gay marriage – 10-year-old Will Phillips refuses to stand for the Pledge of Allegience to show support for gay marriage:

“I’ve always tried to analyze things because I want to be lawyer,” Will said. “I really don’t feel that there’s currently liberty and justice for all.”

…

At the end of our interview, I ask young Will a question that might be a civics test nightmare for your average 10-year-old. Will’s answer, though, is good enough — simple enough, true enough — to give me a little rush of goose pimples. What does being an American mean?

“Freedom of speech,” Will says, without even stopping to think. “The freedom to disagree. That’s what I think pretty much being an American represents.”

9. Why chimps can’t speak -

Scientists suspect that part of the answer to the mystery lies in a gene called FOXP2. When mutated, FOXP2 can disrupt speech and language in humans. Now, a UCLA/Emory study reveals major differences between how the human and chimp versions of FOXP2 work, perhaps explaining why language is unique to humans.

Published Nov. 11 in the online edition of the journal Nature, the findings provide insight into the evolution of the human brain and may point to possible drug targets for human disorders characterized by speech disruption, such as autism and schizophrenia.

 

News From Around The Blogosphere 11.9.09

1. Cancer Boy is now cancer-free – As Carl Sagan once wrote, science delivers the goods. Many months ago, I blogged about the continuing saga of Daniel Hauser, the boy with Hodgkin’s lymphoma whose crazy anti-medical mother kidnapped to keep him from being poisoned by his court-ordered chemotherapy, but who later returned home with him. Unfortunately, while the boy was receiving real medical care, he was also being given bogus “alternative” medicine” products, which pretty much guarantees that the medicine denialists won’t give science the credit its due. But what’s most important is that Daniel Hauser is cancer-free and the chemotherapy didn’t poison him to death like the medicine deniers predicted.

2. An economic collapse didn’t occur today, so the world won’t end on Wednesday! – Cause I know you were all worried that it would. Ever since September, I’d been blogging about the constantly moving doomsday goalpost of one really delusional website. First, it predicted the world would end on September 21st. Then that turned into October 21st. Then October 23rd. But now whoever’s running it is wising up and adding conditions. Yesterday, the prediction was that if an economic collapse occured on November 9th, The Rapture would come on November 11th. Well, the Dow Jones went up over 200 points today, so I guess we’re all safe. Phew! That was a close one.

3. Iran to execute 3 men for being atheists? – 3 Iranians are charged with apostasy, or leaving Islam:

Habibollah Latifi, Ehsan (Esma’il) Fattahian and Sherko Moarefi have all been sentenced to death for “enmity against God” in unconnected cases over the last two years. They are believed to be on death row in a prison in Sanandaj, the provincial capital of Kordestan.

Everything you’ve come to expect from “The Religion of Peace.” Please sign this petition to the Iranian government.

4. Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry definitively and demonstrably defeat the Catholic Church in debate – At the start of the debate, 678 people in the audience thought that the Catholic Church was a force for good in the world while 1102 disagreed and 346 were undecided. But by the end, only 268 thought the Catholic Church was a force for good in the world while 1876 disagreed with only 34 left undecided.

 

Update on the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago/Sunsara Taylor debacle

The other day, I blogged about the controversy that broke out at a weekend meeting of the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago, revolving around Sunsara Taylor, who’d originally been invited to give a lecture there but, for whatever reason, was disinvited. And somehow a brief speech she gave at their Sunday meeting expressing her unhappiness about being uninvited led to a cameraman being forcibly arrested by police.

Since writing the previous blog about this incident, I actually received a lengthy response comment from someone calling themselves Evan Kane, who says he’s a member of the EHSC, who gave their side of the story. It was a cut-and-paste response that was posted in the comments section of numerous other blog articles discussing this incident. This was soon followed by three more cut-and-paste response comments from Sunsara hereself; her Volunteer Tour Coordinator in Chicago, Sue B; and Attorney Martha Conrad, who claims to have witnessed the events too. Sue B. and Martha Conrad, who are both associated with Sunsara, are backing up her position.

Well I wasn’t going to blog about this again but because of the comments left in that last blog, and because two other bloggers who’d written about this incident and then received similar (if not identical) comment responses from all four of the aforementioned parties also wrote great responses, I figured that it made my job really easy.

First, there was Hermant Mehta, who very briefly quoted from the three comments on Sunsara’s side on his Friendly Atheist blog and simply concluded with:

I’m not sure if there’s any resolution to be had between Sunsara and EHSC. But at least both sides have had a chance to explain themselves in a public setting.

Then there’s PZ Myers, someone far more known for being invited to give talks, who went a different way.  PZ came out very strongly in support of Sunsara. Now while I’m not going to necessarily just say I agree 100% with PZ (though I’m also not necessarily saying I don’t either), I think PZ makes a lot of great points.

1. Sunsara’s communist philosophy is so far from being hidden. On the two occasions I’ve seen her at panel discussions addressing the very same topic she was invited to discuss in Chicago, I don’t think she went five minutes without citing Bob Avakian’s book, “Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World” and its communist philosophy. If this was something the EHSC didn’t know about ahead of time and she just sort of sprung it on them, which didn’t relate at all to the topic, then I’d understand the EHSC’s position more. But it’s pretty much the thing she’s known for the most. So if they invited her without knowing this was going to come up, then they exercised complete incompetance when vetting her as a speaker. In which case, it’s their fault.

2. While I have no experience of what it’s like to be personally invited to give a public talk (though I plan on probably registering to give a talk at next month’s NYC Skepticamp), PZ Myers has a great deal of experience in that area. And he says that if he was told to water down his talk to leave out anything that audience members might find objectionable, that this would be an unacceptable condition. So according to someone who knows the lecture circuit etiquette  far better than me, it’s inappropriate for the hosts to micromanage the speakers’ talks:

Just the fact that they invite her and then tell her to revise her talk to remove stuff some people might find objectionable is a telling mark against the society. It’s insane to invite Taylor and then ask her to not talk about the communist position; if they got Al Gore to give a talk, would they suggest that he avoid that scary global warming topic, and perhaps not bring up Democratic politics? Please don’t jump on a high horse and sniffily proclaim that you are following your democratic principles, either. The society was not bringing in Sunsara Taylor to decide how the society budget should be spent, or to lay down a plan for the group’s volunteer efforts for the year. She was brought in to explain one person’s position on moral issues, which she agreed to do, and which she summarized for them in a written description. Accurately, near as I can tell; Taylor does not shy away from expressing herself. Apparently, the society wanted a talking parrot who would say only what they already find agreeable…that is, agreeable to a democratic majority. Minority views are not to be spoken aloud, I guess.

That is bullshit. That makes for a lame speaking series; if inoffensive pablum that reinforces what they already believe is all they want, then they should just go to church.

I’m inclined to largely agree.

3. PZ points out that there seems to be conflicting accounts coming from people on the side of the EHSC as well as a vagueness when describing the most relevant details of the incident such as about the provocation for the cameraman’s arrest. And though, again, I don’t agree with Sunsara’s communist views, it’s hardly off-topic. One thing that all sides can agree on is that she was asked to talk about “Morality without gods.” And even though that was the very same topic and title of the TWO panel discussions she’d done in NYC some time ago (and presumably has addressed this exact topic elsewhere already), I think the EHSC was for some reason expecting her to just give the pat answer they wanted to hear, that religion holds the monopoly on blame for society’s ills. But it seems as though once she expanded her criticism to include other factors that she considers also contibute to society ill but which the EHSC disagrees with, they called it “off-topic.” But whether you agree with her or not (and I don’t), that doesn’t make it off-topic.

Ultimately, again, I wasn’t there and I don’t have all the facts. And I don’t necessarily think Sunsara was entirely blameless. I’m not naive. In my previous post I called Sunsara Taylor a bit of a rabble-rouser. I certainly think she’s a contrarian and a passionate revolutionary who thrives on controversy and it wouldn’t necessarily surprise me if at some point after she was disinvited, she and others saw this as an opportunity to get a lot of attention and orchestrated at least a small portion of what went down.

And maybe it’s because I interact with so many wacko conspiracy theorists but I’ve come up with an even wilder possible explanation. Since news of this incident broke, both parties seem to have been behaving identically. First came Evan Kane’s lengthy treatise defending the EHSC, which was posted in the comments section of every blog discussing the matter that I’d come across. Then Sunsara, Sue B., and Martha’s lengthy comment responses followed about two days later all at once on everyone’s comments sections as if they were all sent by the same person instead of each person individually going around pasting the same response in every blog about this story. So my really, really out there theory that almost certainly isn’t true is that this is all one big manufactured controversy to get publicity.

But unfortunately, I have a feeling that the truth is far less interesting.

Religious attack atheist billboards verbally and illegally

1. I blogged about the atheist billboard that was vandalized in Moscow, Idaho about two weeks ago:

Though I have to smile at the fact that they couldn’t even vandalize the thing right. Millions are good God? What?! Now an intelligent vandal might have just blackened the second half of the word “without” forming the slogan:  “Millions are good with God.” That would at least be a sentence. Oh, stupid, easily offended vandals!

Well, the replacement billboard went up and it seems like it didn’t take long at all for the vandals to strike again, this time taking my grammar advice:

2. Then there’s the billboard that went up in Nashville with the incredibly inoffensive slogan:  “Not religious? You’re not alone.” It turns out that somehow even that ad offended some people, so much so that they called up the number on the billboard and left some unintentionally hilarious voicemail messages:

News From Around The Blogosphere 11.3.09

1. Atheist wins NC City Council seat – The other day, I blogged about Cecil Bothwell, the Asheville, NC City Council candidate who was being attack by his opponent because of his atheism and his scathing attacks on Rev. Billy Graham. Well, he won. Congratulations!

2. Dark Matter, Dark Energy: 95% Of Universe -

A detailed picture of the seeds of structures in the universe has been unveiled by an international team co-led by Sarah Church of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, jointly located at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, and by Walter Gear, of Cardiff University in the United Kingdom. These measurements of the cosmic microwave background — a faintly glowing relic of the hot, dense, young universe — put limits on proposed alternatives to the standard model of cosmology and provide further support for the standard cosmological model, confirming that dark matter and dark energy make up 95% of everything in existence, while ordinary matter makes up just 5%.

3. Speed Limit To The Pace Of Evolution? -

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a theoretical model that informs the understanding of evolution and determines how quickly an organism will evolve using a catalogue of “evolutionary speed limits.” The model provides quantitative predictions for the speed of evolution on various “fitness landscapes,” the dynamic and varied conditions under which bacteria, viruses and even humans adapt.

 

The Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago disinvites Sunsara Taylor

Sunsara Taylor is a very interesting character. I’ve seen her speak at New York University on two panel discussions with Massimo Pigliucci and Paul Eckstein, both of which were titled “Morality Without Gods.” All three parties are non-believers on gods. Although both were recorded, I can still only find the first of those panel discussions on YouTube.

What was particularly unusual about those panel discussions was that two of the debaters either identified themselves as Communists or as arguing from a Marxist perspective, one of which was Sunsara Tayler. My impression of her was that she was extremely intelligent and was spot on in her criticism of religion, reminding me a little of Christopher Hitchens. But whenever she turned the conversation to Communism, I found her unconvincing. She’s definitely a rabble-rouser who will happily step head-first into controversy but ya gotta love anyone who has the honor of being called a “lunatic” by Bill O’Reilly.

But the reason I bring Ms. Taylor up is because of an incident that occurred in Chicago this past weekend. The Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago (EHSC) invited her to speak at one of their meetings also called “Morality without God.” Sunsara had made the appropriate travel arrangements and everything was all set to go until the EHSC disinvited her at the last minute. According to her publicist, it was because they were uncomfortable with her social/political views such as her Communism as well as beliefs that she doesn’t really hold.

Sunsara initially responded with a letter:

This attempt to cancel my talk has clearly been driven by political and ideological disagreements with me by some on the EHSC program committee. This is shameful for any organization, but coming from [an] organization that prides itself on ethical action and promoting intellectual, philosophical and artistic freedom it is all the more disturbing.

I have to agree. Now I don’t know all the facts here but it seems very shady for a freethought society like the EHSC that prides itself on its ethics and diversity of views to reject certain views from speaking simply because they don’t agree with them. I don’t agree with Sunsara’s Communism either but I think it’s a big mistake to exclude her for that reason as I think she’s a great asset to the atheist community. It’s a rare thing to find an atheist activist who can so move an audience with both intelligence and emotion. I don’t agree with Libertarianism either. So are we going to start disinviting Michael Shermer and Penn and Teller to speak too?

Sunsara’s letter even included several quotes of support from numerous individuals like:  Massimo Pigliucci, Chris Hedges, and Hemant Mehta, to name a few. And today I first heard about this incident from Brian Sapient of the Rational Response Squad, who also wrote an article supporting her. So she’s got “Friendly Atheist” Hemant Mehta and the far less friendly atheist leader of the Rational Response Squad all supporting her. It seems like support is coming from across the board on this one.

And even one member of the EHSC offered to host her at his own home after the EHSC’s normally scheduled meeting time. Then on Saturday, Sunsara was running an unrelated workshop at the EHSC, where she directly addressed this issue:

Okay, she goes a little over the top towards the end there, but she’s not wrong. And while she was not re-invited, she attended the Sunday meeting and made a statement similar to the one she made the day before in the video while standing near her seat.

Then the story got weirder. A man videotaping her statement with her permission got attacked by cops who were called in by the EHSC:

Sunsara’s recounts the incident in her blog:

… plainclothes and uniformed police who had been called in earlier by officials of the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago (EHSC) dragged out, maced and arrested a man for videotaping Sunsara Taylor as she stood near her seat and made a statement before the start of that morning’s program about the shameful cancellation of her long planned talk to EHSC that day on the topic “Morality without Gods.”

The shocking incident took place at the insistence of the president of EHSC. About 40 people witnessed the videographer being brutalized by the police in the foyer of the facility. An attorney demanded that the police stop brutalizing him when five officers piled on him as he lay face down on the floor. 6 police cars arrived within minutes.

Ethical? Again, I don’t know all the facts here and have only heard one side of the story. But I think the EHSC has some splainin’ to do.

News From Around The Blogosphere 11.1.09

Oops! Wrong photo.

1. LAPD dissociates from the Boy Scouts – The Los Angeles Police Dept. no longer wishes to continue their Explorer program for youths because the group responsible, Learning for Life is linked to Boy Scouts of America, which bans gays from becoming members:

A department official told the Police Commission Tuesday that the Boy Scouts policy is “inconsistent” with the city’s policy of non-discrimination. He suggested that the department manages the Explorer program itself.

I have a better idea. Tell the Boy Scouts to stop being such bigoted assholes.

2. Asheville, NC city council candidate Cecil Bothwell attacked for his atheism – I know all’s fair in politics, but at the risk of sounding too much like Bill Donohue, would we tolerate this sort of bigotry for other minority groups? I know atheism isn’t a race, nationality, gender, or a sexual orientation. But anyone who resorts to these sorts of shameless hate-mongering tactics belongs nowhere near government. Fortunately though, Bothwell isn’t complaining as the mailer his opponents created that expose his atheism are accurate and are helping his book sales. One of those books is an unauthorized biography of Rev. Billy Graham titled “The Prince of War.” I think I love you, Cecil Bothwell.

3. Scientists put a leash on HIV? -

Researchers have shown how an antiviral protein produced by the immune system, dubbed tetherin, tames HIV and other viruses by literally putting them on a leash, to prevent their escape from infected cells. The insights, reported in the October 30th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, allowed the research team to design a completely artificial protein — one that did not resemble native tetherin in its sequence at all — that could nonetheless put a similar stop to the virus.

4. Billy Corgan is a vampire. . .sent to draaain! – After only a week since Star Trek’s Brent Spiner announced his growing interest in anti-vaccine quackery, now it seems the lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins has been turned into an anti-vaxxer vampire too:

“I do not trust those who make the vaccines, or the apparatus behind it all to push it on us thru fear,” Corgan explained in his critique, which can be read in its entirety here. According to him, the virus is not yet an emergency and he believes it’s ridiculous that “our American President Obama” has declared it so.

If that’s not enough, Corgan, struggled with the notion that the government can require people to take the vaccine. He’s also of the opinion that the “virus was created by man” writing that he has “read reports from people who say (as doctors) that there is evidence to suggest this.”

Finally, Corgan stated, “If the virus comes to take me Home, that is between me and the Lord.” But that’s not to say he expects fans to follow his logic.

“I am not a doctor, and I am in no way suggesting that you should follow any medical advice from me,” he wrote early in the essay, adding, “I am willing to question anything: the existence of God, the existence of me or you or Robert Zimmerman [aka Bob Dylan].”

No Billy, you’re clearly not a doctor. And quite frankly, I find it somewhat disingenuous to use your celebrity influence to take such a public anti-scientific stand on this issue and then tack on a little disclaimer at the end saying you’re not necessarily suggesting anyone follow your “medical advice,” of which is based on your ZERO medical training. Seriously, even in 1979, you’d have no excuse to be this bloody ignorant of scientific facts. This whole story is just giving me nothing but melancholy and infinite sadness.

News From Around The Blogosphere 10.29.09

1. 69% ain’t afraid of no ghosts – A new survey found that 69% of people would live with ghosts for significantly reduced rent. And 51% would live with a ghost in exchange for free rent. Now given that my status as a skeptic gives me 100% ghost-haunting immunity, if anyone knows where I can get free or reduced rent in NYC because the place is haunted, let me know (I’m serious. Let me know).

2. Church posing as councelling center is shutting down -

The ABC understands that the consumer watchdog ACCC has been investigating Mercy Ministries, after media reports that young women seeking psychological and medical support were instead essentially enrolled in a Bible program.

Some young women say they could not leave the treatment centre and that staff would “exorcise” them.

But Mercy Ministries denies those claims.

According to its website, Mercy Ministries is a Christian organisation that helps young women suffering from eating disorders, self-harm, abuse, addictions or an unwanted pregnancy.

3. Religious vandals again prove not to be very bright – Last week I’d posted about the poorly thought out vandalism to the atheist billboard in Moscow, Idaho in which, instead of just crossing out the “out” in the slogan “Millions are good without God,” they crossed out the whole word “without.” Amateurs. Well now another billboard put up by the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) has been vandalized by equally inept vandals:

I don’t know what offends me more, that they vandalized the billboard, which can be viewed as a hate crime, or that they didn’t put the word “FAGS” over the crossed out “Religion” as to change the sign to read:  “Keep fags out of government.” Just sloppy work. But the FFRF isn’t laughing. They’re offering a $1000 reward to anyone with information as to who’s responsible.

4. Daren Lee of “The Zeitgeist Movement” wins a grammar contest – I suspect that it was his misuse of the word “ironic” that really tipped the scales ultimately in his favor.

 

News From Around The Blogosphere 10.25.09

1. The Deity’s Nightmare – The other day the Atheist Foundation of Australia and Global Atheist Convention websites suffered a Distributed Denial of Service attack. In retaliation, they’ve called on all non-believers and advocates for freedom of speech to unite in a “global co-ordinated minute of prayer with the aim of inundating God.”

2. And speaking of the Aussies, , the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission dismissed a chiropractor’s complaint against the Australian Skeptics because they reprinted Simon Singh’s damning article against the chiropractic syndocate.

3. Richard Dawkins announces the details for his next book, which he’s promised in the past would be geared for children:

Due out in autumn 2011, What is a Rainbow, Really? will take on topics including who the first man and first woman were, why there are seasons, what the sun is, how old the world is and why there are so many animals, first answering the questions with myth and legend, and then with “lucid scientific explanations”.

And definitely check out his latest book, The Greatest Show On Earth.

News From Around The Blogosphere 10.20.09

1. Christians inadvertently help popularize atheism on Twitter – The #1 hot topic on Twitter today was “No God”. The reason was because lots of Christians re-tweeted the expression, “Know God…Know Peace. No God…No Peace.” Then some atheists tweeted just “no god.” Then to counter this problem, a bunch of Christians who don’t understand how this who process works came up with the ill-conceived plan to re-tweet the same stupid slogan again many times, frantically. But of course it just had the same effect as trying to fight one’s way out of quicksand, especially as atheists decided to do the same thing they did before, which is just re-tweet “no god.” LOL. I think we can call this spike in atheist popularity on Twitter the result of an unholy alliance between theists and atheists alike.

2. SuperFreakonomics authors are super-freaks – It turns out that Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner latest follow-up to Freakonomics is full of Global Warming denialism. Fortunately, Eric Pooley at Bloomberg.com has taken the time to refute their nonsense.

3. Manufactured atheist schism – I know I’m way late in talking about this but as has been pointed out by just about every atheist blogger already, Barbara Bradley Hagerty’s article on the alleged schism among the atheist community is more than mildly exaggerated. While there are some big disagreements among us over how aggressive we should be promoting atheism or whether we should be promoting it at all, we’re more than capable of working together. And as the Friendly Atheist points out in the link above, on virtually every point Hagerty gets it wrong. And contrary to the impression created by Hagerty, this community has never been stronger.

4. Scientists alter fruit fly sexuality – While lately I’ve been a bit disappointed with Amateur Scientist’s blog (three particular articles in the last few weeks, where I strongly disagreed with him), more often than not it’s still a superb blog and he’s the only one I’ve seen cover this interesting story:

The flies were altered so that they could no longer produce the cuticular hydrocarbon pheromone, and the boners came pouring in. Flies without the pheromone attracted horny followers from both sexes, regardless of sexual orientation history. And some of them even tweaked the nipples of other species.

5. Chicago Coalition of Reason puts up a billboard – It’s very similar to the slogan being used in the BigAppleCoR’s NYC subway ads that have been plugged on every single local news source around:  “Are you good without God? Millions are.”