So here’s another one. A West Virginia newspaper poll asks,
Should local governmental bodies be allowed to open their meetings with a prayer?
You know the answer to that one.
It’s an event that caused more than 10,000 dead in Myanmar, and who knows how much devastation.
All we have to do, though, is wait a few days, and it will disappear from the news.
Did you all catch Keith Olbermann’s Worst Person in the World segment? Ben Stein almost made the top of the list — he was beaten by Ann Coulter, though, so the competition was fierce.
The other “almost”…what prompted the nomination was Stein’s claim that listening to me reminded him that science is all about killing people. Alas, Olbermann only mentioned me as a generic scientist, not by name. Oh, well.
I’m confused by the consequences of the Virginia twisters.
Brenda Williams, 43, returned Tuesday to the shopping center where she was buried beneath a collapsed ceiling in a manicure shop during the storm. She was pulled to safety by a stranger, she said.
“I’m not lucky, I’m blessed,” said Williams, who had a 2-inch gash stitched above her left eyebrow and stitches on her right forearm. “I’m fine. I’m here. I’m in the land of the living.”
She retrieved possessions from her car, which was flipped on its roof and destroyed in the parking lot.
Why was Ms Williams praying to be buried beneath a collapsed building, to be gashed and mauled, and to have her car destroyed? I think her insurance company ought to scrutinize her claims very carefully; she’s too danged cheerful, and I suspect she prayed to some thug god to trash her possessions so she could collect on her policy.
A lot of people got hurt with this reckless prayer stuff, you know.
Looking at the photos of the aftermath, I think god must have got his copy of GTA4 early, and he got carried away. Those video games are bad for you, especially if you’ve already got a rather impressionable and infantile personality.
The infamous proposed Christianist license plate for the state of Florida, the one that said “I believe”, is dead. The supportive faith rays emanating from the prayerful public were apparently not strong enough to overcome the ass-suing beams radiating from the likes of the ACLU.
Boy, so far this day of prayer seems to be working out well for us godless, prayer-free heathens. God must be working in his mysterious ways again.
A reader reminded me of a good corrective to the awful little man who claims that science leads to killing people: a dose of Jacob Bronowski.
“When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.”
My students in introductory biology will be watching this whole episode next week — I wish there were a way we could spare the time to have them watch the whole series … which, come to think of it, would make for an excellent framework to discuss the history of science.
Warning: this is an extremely disturbing video. It’s of an unpleasant and rather personal surgery, in which a man had a can of perfumed body spray stuck in a certain orifice, requiring a medical extraction. The circumstances and the graphic operation are distressing enough, but what’s most horrifying are the medical staff — the room is packed with non-essential personnel who are laughing uproariously and mocking the patient, and of course, there’s the other inappropriate circumstance, that someone taped this and then uploaded it to youtube. Keep that in mind if you’re ever hospitalized in the Philippines, and find yourself in Vicente Sotto Memorial Hospital; you may leave to discover your privates are now public.
The hospital seems to be responding in the appropriate way, with censure and warnings, and there is a possibility some of those involved may lose their licenses. I can’t say as much for the Catholic church in the Philippines — the archbishop is blaming the victim, instead.
The whole thing is a ghastly breach of medical ethics, and the church is compounding the problem…but isn’t that supposed to be one of those mythical virtues of religion, that they have a hotline to morality?
For a guy who has been dead for 126 years, he’s pretty lively. You must see the result of a contest to caption a photo of Darwin’s statue and the odious Ben Stein: trust me, Stein gets less than he deserves.
You just can’t keep a brilliant man down. Charles Darwin also has a blog.
Here’s a generous idea: if you join the NCSE, this blogger will match your donation, up to a total of $500. If you aren’t already a member, take this as further incentive.
I don’t usually think of Australians as particularly prudish — brash and outspoken are more common stereotypes — so this story about the Anglican Church Grammar School banning gay partners at their dances seems a little out of character. I know we’ve got some Australian commenters, so I expect they’ll correct my misunderstanding and explain that their compatriots are all fussy little schoolmarms who faint at the slightest whiff of ribaldry.
Anyway, the headmaster tries hard to justify the decision. There are “protocols and decorums,” he says. Another school follows suit; they want to maintain “gender balance” (that one’s easy: invite lesbians as well as gay boys!)
They haven’t yet brought out the most powerful excuse. These are all boys schools, and as everyone knows, there is never any homosexual activity among randy young teenagers cooped up in a school in which no members of the opposite sex are ever allowed to be present.
