SGU is still an excellent podcast, of course (and by the way, they’re being sued by a quack and could use your support), but Rebecca Watson has amicably left the show. It was a smart move on her part — she has an identity that isn’t defined by SGU, so she didn’t need it anymore.
Members of the Morris City Council agreed with the assessment of Morris City Manager Blaine Hill: the chimes at Summit and Calvary Cemetery need to be play less often and at a lower volume to respect the rights of neighbors.
I haven’t heard the chimes this morning, or for the last couple of days. I’d fling my windows wide open and revel in the silence, except that it’s cold and snowy out there.
Like rice paper, I guess. Neil deGrasse Tyson made a couple of light-hearted tweets on Christmas that prompted an awful lot of whining. From the reaction, you’d think he’d posted this joke:
I don’t even think that’s particularly offensive, but Tyson’s jokes were tame, even compared to that.
Several years ago, I attended one of Kent Hovind’s seminars in St Cloud — it was genuinely the worst talk I’ve ever heard. It was over-long, it was shallow, it was a succession of lies, and it was full of really bad cornpone jokes — some of which were anti-semitic or marginally racist. It was terrible.
It seems the nut doesn’t fall far from the tree. Kent Hovind’s son, Eric, was affiliated with a pair of clowns spawned from Creation Science Evangelism, in something called The T.R.U.T.H. Group. They put out YouTube videos, including this one from several years ago. These are really bad YouTube videos. Prepare yourself for some astonishing trash.
It’s not just the Christians who have a persecution complex, but also other religions? Say it ain’t so! But read this remarkable whine about poor, picked-upon Hinduism — did you know that only Hindu beliefs get mocked?
…why is it that only Hindu practices and traditions are targeted for censure and ridicule? How is what Smriti Irani did more superstitious or unscientific than a Muslim kneeling to pray to a black stone in Mecca or a Catholic imbibing bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ?
Here, I’ll make Ms. Aditi Banerjee feel a little better: all of those practices are absurd, superstitious, ritualistic baloney.
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
The stars are not quite right, so he has not risen…yet. Hope is not appropriate, but you may continue your pointless day-to-day activities with a slight diminution of despair, and may resign yourself to the ongoing prolongation of your existence.
I think that means the party is at my place.
Sony is making The Interview available on the internet — you can watch it for $6 on your computer screen via YouTube, which is 50 cents more than the price of a ticket at my local movie theater (yes, I know, my small town movie theater is not representative of ticket prices elsewhere in the universe).
Oh, joy. David Brooks has blessed us with a Christmas column this week, titled The Subtle Sensations of Faith. You can tell already that it’s going to be a lump of drivel in your stocking, can’t you?
