Glenn Beck is going to salvage Santa Claus. He wants to reinvent the whole story.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Glenn Beck is going to salvage Santa Claus. He wants to reinvent the whole story.
Every year in my intro biology course, I try to do one discussion of bioethics. One lecture is not much, but this is a course where we try to introduce students to the history and philosophy of science, and I think it’s an important issue, so I try to squeeze in a little bit. So we spend one day talking about eugenics and the Tuskegee syphilis study, and I have them read Gould’s Carrie Buck’s Daughter, and I try to provoke them into arguing with me, or at least questioning a few default assumptions.
This semester, though, I’m going to have them read something with some subtler concerns. I’m going to ask them to read about the invention of the modern speculum. It was surprisingly problematic.
Every time I hear these stories, I’m horrified: parents who are so besotted with their dumb-ass religion, that they watch and pray and do nothing more as their children die of easily treated diseases. Type I diabetes symptoms go away with a shot of insulin; appendicitis can be quickly treated with a simple surgery; food poisoning leads to vomiting leads to a ruptured esophagus leads to painful death; childhood cancers are not so easily treatable, but dying slowly of blossoming tumors strangling your organs, without even so much as palliative care, is a misery. But the parents watch, and are no doubt suffering themselves, but the suffering of their children is less important to them than doubting the power of their nonexistent god to cure them. Strangely, never in the history of the world has a god magically intervened to make a cancer disappear, or an acute infection to vanish, or diabetes to simply go away.
So here’s a heart-rending and familiar story of ignorant faith healers betraying their own children, in the name of God.
People still want to discuss the ongoing ghastliness in Ferguson, MO, but the thread dedicated to that in Good Morning, America is getting old…and as a spam defensive measure, commenting on posts older than three months is automatically shut down. No exceptions allowed.
So here’s a fresh new post to accumulate comments!
It takes courage to make such a big change, and to be open about it.
There’s something deeply wrong in the world. The New York Times is reporting that the rich are stratifying into the merely obscenely rich, and the absurdly pornographically rich.
Philip Rushton has been selling private jets to the global rich for more than three decades. In just about every economic cycle, sales of small jets and big jets tended to move together — rising and falling with financial markets and fortunes of the wealthy.
Now, however, the jet market is splitting in two. Sales of the largest, most expensive private jets — including private jumbo jets — are soaring, with higher prices and long waiting lists. Smaller, cheaper jets, however, are piling up on the nation’s private-jet tarmacs with big discounts and few buyers.
This year, Skepticon is hosting a prom on Saturday night — there will be dancing and music, and all that usual stuff. In addition, they’re selling off tickets to dance with various speakers, so if you’d like a slow dance with Matt Dillahunty, pay up $20 to get on his dance card, or if you want a fast dance with Surly Amy, cough up $10.
It’s a nice fundraising idea. But you may be wondering why I am not on the roster of eligible dancers.
Do you have your guns locked up? Do you only bring them out when you have a very specific purpose, like target shooting at a range or hunting? Do you own fewer than a handful? Then you might be OK. I might look at you suspiciously, but I won’t actively despise you, like I do the obsessed gun-fondlers.
