Water discovered on the moon or creationists foiled by science again

Sorry to have to tell you this again, Shawn, but you’re. . .

Because we’ve now found a “significant” amount of water ice on the moon.

News From Around The Blogosphere 10.23.09

1. 800 Nigerian scam websites shut down -

In a statement EFCC, which has previously relied on raiding cyber cafes and complaints from the public to clampdown on the crime, said it has now adopted smart technology working in conjunction with Microsoft, to track down fraudulent emails.

When operating at full capacity, within the next six months, the scheme, dubbed “eagle claw” should be able to forewarn around a quarter of million potential victims.

2. Health insurance companies declare past rape a pre-existing condition - After 2 men slipped her a knockout drug, Christina Turner feared she’d been raped. As a precaution, her doctor prescribed a month’s worth of anti-AIDS medicine, which turns out to have made her virtually uninsurable. Several months later, she lost her health insurance. But although she never developed HIV, when considering whether or not to cover her, health insurance companies decided the HIV medication raised too many health questions and told her to come back in 3 years. Where’s the outrage, Sarah Palin?

3. Happy birthday, Creationist Earth -

. . .in 1658, Archbishop Ussher determined that the world was created precisely at 9am, 23 October, 4004 BC, making today the official creation day, and the earth 6012 years old.

4. FDA and FTC go after Andrew Weil – Weil is one of the most notorious “alternative” “medicine” conmen working today. Now the FDA and FTC have sent him a warning demanding he stop selling bogus herbal flu remedies containing astragalus on his website. And of course leading Quack Profiteer Mark Adams is very grumpy about this no doubt because he suspects he might be next.

5. Mumps epidemic in Brooklyn -

The outbreak was traced to a child who went to Britain – where the illness is more common because of lower levels of vaccination – and then attended a summer camp upstate, apparently infecting dozens of kids.

Thanks anti-vaccinationists!

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/21/insurance-companies-rape-_n_328708.html

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/21/insurance-companies-rape-_n_328708.html

News From Around The Blogosphere 10.22.09

1. Man ran down “too Westernized” daughter – An Iraqi man alleged ran down his daughter and her friend with a car because he believed she’d become “too Westernized.” The man, Faleh Hassan Almaleki, was last seen in a gray or silver Jeep Grand Cherokee, which I assume was the same car used to run down his daughter, so apparently it still drives. Now if that doesn’t raise sales, I don’t know what will. Too bad the Cash For Clunkers program ended.

2. Can a Japanese algorithm predict when you’re going to die? – I wouldn’t bet on it, but you gotta love the headline.

Does it work? Well, according to the team’s paper, published online here, the doomware has achieved “a moderate level of accuracy”.

3. Orac a shill for Suzanne Somers? – I guess this is the conclusion that Jake Crosby over at Age of Autism must accept since her book was advertised on Orac’s blog.

4. Whose side is Susan Hutchison? -According to her profile:

She is the executive director for the Charles Simonyi Fund for the arts and sciences which among other things, supports the work of atheist Richard Dawkins. She’s also served on the board of the Discovery Institute, which promotes the idea of intelligent design…

5. Atheists already donate 6% of Secular Student Alliance’s goal to raise $50,000 – It’s a great start but there’s still a long way to go. I urge anyone who can afford to donate to do so, even if it’s only a little bit.

6. Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson faces possible charges – I always hate when I have to defend the rights of Holocaust deniers, expecially ones who are also religious authorities, but sometimes protecting freedom of speech means having to defend horrible people. Even though not about his arrest, I highly recommend Chris Hitchens’ superb defense of David Irving’s work being published because of his passionate defense of even the worst kind of speech.

News From Around The Blogosphere 10.10.09

1. Newly re-elected Albuquerque city councilperson Don Harris apologizes to atheists – Then again, that’s not really an apology so much as a promise to remain in denial of our existence.

2.California Science Center renegs on – After receiving a ton of criticism for their total thoughtlessness in granting creationists permission to screen their propaganda film Darwins Dilemma, the California Science Center cancelled the screening, citing contract violations. Though the creationists suspect that was just an excuse. And for once, I agree with them. But as long as the California Science Center isn’t screening creationist propaganda, I’m happy.

3. It’s been over 36 hours after I received my seasonal flu vaccine and so far I’m not an cancerous, autistic, Gulf War Syndrome-infected participant in the zombie apocalypse. Of course, you never kn–BRAINS! BRAINS!

This Week In God 10.4.09

1. Supreme Court Justices attending ‘Red Mass’ - Six of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices, John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, and Samuel Alito all attended Red Mass — a special service for law professionals that has been held since 1953. Stephen Breye, who is Jewish, has attended this service before and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, also a Jew, attended once but will never attend again:

… Ginsberg said she grew tired of being lectured to by Catholic officials.

“I went one year, and I will never go again, because this sermon was outrageously anti-abortion,” Ginsburg said in the book “Stars of David: Prominent Jews talk About Being Jewish” by author Abigail Pogrebin.

Clarence Thomas, the sixth Roman Catholic on the court, also didn’t attend.

2. Missouri high school’s banned band t-shirts now on sale on the internet – A little over a month ago, I blogged about Smith-Cotton High School’s banned band shirts because of the use of the famous Ascent of Man image on it. Take that, uptight, uneducated parents of Sedalia, Missouri! To purchase the shirt, contact the store here and let them know! You can also support them on Facebook.

3. Faith-healing is a WMD in Oregon City, Oregon -

“Mothers and their newborns in an Oregon City church that practices faith healing routinely died during or shortly after birth because medical help was not sought…”

4. And speaking of “faith-healing”, Benny Hinn is banned from the UK -

Benny Hinn, from Texas, who draws large crowds to his Pentecostal revival rallies, was turned back at Stansted airport under new rules on visiting ministers of religion.

Many thousands of Pentecostal Christians travelled from across Britain and Europe and booked long weekend breaks in the capital’s hotels for his mission at the ExCeL exhibition centre in Docklands, East London, which had been due to begin on Thursday night.

They were left disappointed after Border Agency officials turned him back when he landed with his private jet because he had failed to obtain a “letter of sponsorship” from a church.

Instead, Mr Hinn flew on to Paris and tried to enter Britain at Luton airport but was again turned back. He was on his way back to France last night.

Maybe now would be the appropriate time for the U.S. to adopt the same policy to keep him out of our country too.

PZ Myers incidentally plugs my Examiner article

I suppose part of the credit goes to Bill Frische, an easily offended creationist who sent hate mail to PZ Myers because apparently he just heard about the Legend of the 300 now. This was of course the army of atheists and scientists from the Secular Student Alliance who organized a massive group trip to the Creation “Museum.” Well this Bill Frische also wrote his complaint to the Alumni Association at PZ’s school insisting that he’ll never donate to University of Minnisota ever again. I surmise he never did before either.

Well in his email, Frische included 2 examples of articles written about the event. One of them was the Answers in Genesis article and the other Frische seemed to think was “a more balanced report” (not necessarily more than the AiG one, since that link appeared after this one). That “more balanced report” was my Examiner article.

Even better, this was one of the hate emails PZ got that he decided to post in its entirety on his blog with its gigantic readership, links included. The Pharyngula readership is so large that PZ’s infamous for using it to crash online polls. There’s even a verb in the Urban Dictionary “pharyngulate“:

1. verb: to skew results of an online poll, usually having to do with religion, science, or politics, in order to reflect a more rational result.

from the blog of the great PZ Myers

Dude, we totally pharyngulated that ridiculous Texas-based poll about creationism being taught in schools. Count that a win for science.

This morning my brother called me and told me that his friend (all 3 of us are Atheist Examiners) saw that PZ Myers had linked to my site on Pharyngula.

And I have indeed seen a spike in readers today, though so far it hasn’t been as much of a spike as I expected. But maybe the PZ Bump will continue for awhile.

So I’d just like to thank PZ and Bill Frische for helping to draw massive amounts of traffic to my Examiner site.

Kirk Cameron & Ray Comfort to take their lies to college campuses

The latest despicable tactic from the duo who practically invented despicable, Kirk Cameron and Ray “Banana Man” Comfort, is to give away free copies of their own version of Darwin’s Origin of Species with a 50-page introduction filled with creationist nonsense.

What’s amazing is that Kirk couldn’t go even 10 seconds before lying his ass off. Of course kids can pray in public. That’s absurd.

Fortunately, there is a strategy to counter this repulsive tactic. Those students who know better can collect as many of these free books as they can and can remove the offending introduction. In which case, those copies can then be donated elsewhere so that Cameron and Comfort will have unwittingly helped promote Darwin’s work. And that thought makes me smile.

News From Around The Blogosphere 9.16.09

1. Sam Noble Museum of Natural History apologizes for hosting creationist film premiere. . .sorta – Actually, it’s more like an excuse. . .and they’re still going ahead with the premiere. . .because of free speech. Funny, but I don’t remember anything in the First Amendment saying museums can’t discriminate regarding who they rent out their space too. Maybe David Irving should try and book a Holocaust denial lecture there. After all, they don’t discriminate.

2. What’s the harm in believing in reincarnation? – It turns out that some Hindus believe that if your organs are removed, you may be reincarnated with them missing. So lots of them are deciding not to donate organs!! Ugh!

3. The atheists of Liberal, Missouri – It seems that there was once a town in Missouri that was founded as an atheist-only community. For countless reasons, the experiment failed, not least of which being that it wasn’t a very good idea in the first place.

4. Ten Commandments tablet goes up in Louisiana park – It’s right across the street from a public high school and allegedly the tablet and its installation was paid for by a former city councilman, A.T. Furr:

Mayor Harold Rideau supports it, adding “We’re a Christian-based community.”

He’s in for one hell of a lawsuit.

News From Around The Blogosphere 9.15.09

1. Federal Trade Commission bringing the hammer down on Kevin Trudeau – I’ve talked about Trudeau before. I call refer to him as a professional murderer, which, while seeming hyperbolic, is close to being true. His bogus health advice gets people killed. And the government’s had a hell of a time trying to put the man out of business permanently by squeezing a lousy few million dollars out of him even though that’s only a drop in the bucket given how much he’s made off of getting people killed. As an example of his amazing health advice, he promotes a diet plan, which he claims is easy, that involves eating no more than 500 calories a day. He calls it a cure “they don’t want you to know.” I call it the Auschwitz Diet.

2. New creationist film premieres at Sam Noble Museum of Natural History – The film is called Darwin’s Dilemma, and it’s another creationist mockumentary. Its focus is to attack the Cambrian fossil record. Of course it will no doubt be a whole load of crap but the real story here is that a reputable science museum agreed to host a showing of the film. Hey, maybe PZ can get expelled from another creationist film screening.

3. Darwin film fails to get distribution in U.S. until a bidding war started – First, it was looking like the film Creation, about Darwin wasn’t going to get distribution in the U.S. because evolution is controversial in the U.S. as opposed to the rest of the civilized world. But the latest update on this story suggests that there’s a bidding war for the film’s distribution rights. There was also a brief myth going around that that Mel Gibson’s distribution company (the same company that distributed The Passion of the Christ) bankrolled the film. This turned out to be not true.

Get your BS at Schizophrenia University

La Sierra “University” is a Seventh Day Adventist college that officially supports a literalist interpretation of the Bible and a 6-day creation. Shockingly though, they have an actual Science Dept. with a professor who actually teaches real science, including a 4.5 billion-year-old universe:

Bradley says he’s felt no pressure to change anything about his course, and says bluntly that he doesn’t plan to turn his class into a theological seminar, or to present evolutionary theory only to then dismantle it for students. While he’s fine with helping students work through struggles of faith, Bradley says he won’t undercut decades of peer reviewed scientific research in the interest of religious consistency.

“I am not OK with getting up in a science course and saying most science is bullshit,” he said.

The school, however, has other plans. The administrators want the scientific evidence taught to the students so they can reject it, because the school’s official mission is to eventually lead them back to biblical superstition. So they want to undermine their own teacher’s teaching by brainwashing the students to reject science. In the above link, PZ Myers links to one of the creationist students’ actual papers where he attempts to debunk major chunks of accepted science. The student says he intends to get a PhD in Molecular Biology. With his incapacity to understand basic science, the only degree I see him getting is a BS.