To quote Michael Shermer, I “investigate paranormal claims, pseudoscience and fringe groups, and cults and claims of all kinds between science and pseudoscience, and non-science, and junk science, voodoo science, pathological science, bad science, non-science, and plain old nonsense.”
1. Another atheist ad is vandalized – This time it was in Boston. The Boston Coalition of Reason ad read: “Good without God? 40 Million Americans are.” Sadly, the faith of some Christians is so fragile that even that posed a serious threat to them.
Although plants have the ability to sense and respond to other plants, their ability to recognize kin and act altruistically has been the subject of few studies. The authors explored kin recognition in Impatiens pallida (yellow jewelweed). By moving their resources into leaves, these plants not only positively affected their own growth, but also negatively affected their competitors’ growth. This is the first instance where researchers demonstrated that a plant’s response to an aboveground cue is dependent upon the presence of a belowground cue.
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.
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.
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.
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!
“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.”
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.
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:
1. Atheists help the homeless - On Sunday, atheists in the Austin, TX area are giving away free toiletries to homeless people. You can donate the items or money to the cause by going to their homepage. Or if you’re in the area and would like to help, they’ll be under I-35 at 7th Street in Austin at 8:00 a.m.
3. Like with California’s Prop 8, we lost Maine’s Prop 1 – Once again, the Religious Right has stolen the civil rights of gays to marry. Fortunately, as Greta Christina explains, there is reason to stay optimistic.
There is no real “War on Christmas.” Like the holiday itself, this was just a made-up marketing ploy. In this case, it was one invented by Fox “News” for ratings and fear-mongering. The idea was to find any case they could find where public institutions were choosing or being politically pressured to promote multiculturalism instead of promoting the establishment of any particular religion (you know, like it says in the Constitution), and then claim that it’s all just an elaborate conspiracy by the liberal devils to organizae in an elaborate plot to steal Christmas.
I have to say that like numerous other ads brought to us by the FFRF, I’m not a big fan of this one. While I’m all for aggressive challenging of religion, I don’t think public ads are the place for it, especially not during the holiday season. I prefer the ads that say things like “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone”, “Beware of Dogma”, “Imagine No Religion”, and “A million New Yorkers are good without God.” And during the holidays, I particularly encourage a more inclusive message such as the Tree of Knowledge display from the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia, where the covers to numerous religious, philosophy, and atheist texts were hung on a large tree. Once again, this one just seems in poor taste and fairly impossible to defend, especially at this time of year.
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).
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.
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.
1. Walt Disney refunds parents for not making their kids geniuses – Disney is refunding parents for all those “Baby Einstein” videos. Come to think of it, my niece watched them. I wasn’t aware that these videos promised to make kids smart anymore than I was aware Baby Van Gogh promised to turn kids into great artists.
2. The zombie apocalypse has been prevented. . .for now – An Iowa man accused another man of being a zombie, and then punched him…twice. I can only imagine this was because he was following Rule #4, which calls for a “double tap”:
3. Felicia Day does a NASA PSA – Felicia Day, best known for her role in Joss Whedon’s hit internet musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and less known for her starring role in the never-aired episode of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse (and possibly the show’s best episode), has now she’s managed to somehow up her geek cred even more:
I’ve previously mentioned the Big Apple Coalition of Reason’s coming NYC subway ads that have been getting massive media attention. Since then, the brand new and constantly updating BigAppleCoR.org website has been flooded with traffic and the campaign’s made both national news as well as international, with my friend Michael De Dora, of the Center For Inquiry being contacted, if I heard correct, by even Italian press. Just some of the press its been getting can be found here.
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!
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 (threeparticulararticles 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.”
Today, if you live in the NYC area, you almost couldn’t escape the news about the oh, so controversial atheist ads that will be popping up in NYC subway stations starting next week. The NY Times wrote about it. The local Fox website wrote about it. The Gothamist wrote about it. On TV, the local ABC news briefly talked about it at six o’clock and eleven o’clock. My friend Michael De Dora, who heads up the Manhattan branch of the Center For Inquiry, is being quoted left and right about the super-duper controversial NYC atheist subway ads.
So what does a controversial advertisement have to say in order to get some serious media attention?
“A Million New Yorkers Are Good Without God. Are You?”
The horror. The horror. Okay, those militant atheists have gone too far now. Next they’re going to be telling us that you can be black and a good person all at the same time. When will it end?!
Seriously though, all this press its getting is great. The ads are promoting the website BigAppleCoR.org, which lists numerous local groups affiliated with the Coalition of Reason, the umbrella organization that coordinated the campaign. And even though the ads won’t even be up until next Monday, I wouldn’t be surprised if the BigAppleCoR.org site has been seeing a massive rise in traffic. The Friendly Atheist also blogged about this story.
Like the last NYC bus campaign from a few months ago, the $25,000 that paid for this ad was paid for by an anonymous donor. So I wonder if once again, the anonymous donor will enrage Keith Olbermann like it did last time because apparently, few things piss off Keith Olbermann more than selfless generosity. How dare someone give money to a cause they believe in and not reveal their identity? What kind of sick monster would do such a thing?!
1. Another atheist ad is vandalized – This time it was in Boston. The Boston Coalition of Reason ad read: “Good without God? 40 Million Americans are.” Sadly, the faith of some Christians is so fragile that even that posed a serious threat to them.
2. Can a plant be altruistic? -
3. If you get vaccinated, unicorns will impale you – Okay, this is a satire. But is there really anyone who thinks the claim is beneath Jenny McCarthy and Generation Rescue?
Posted by mjr256 
Posted by mjr256 
Posted by mjr256 
3. 
