All forms of birth control are immoral, according to many Christian conservatives. We’ve previously written about this absurd position here and here. The Chicago Tribune recently reported on a formal conservative effort to prohibit all forms of birth control: Emboldened by the anti-abortion movement's success in restricting access to abortion, an increasingly vocal…
Assume you were the president of a company that made a lot of money selling the electronic voting machines used by 10% of U.S. voters. Assume also that a Princeton professor and two young grad students ran their own security analysis of your voting machines and determined the following:
If you want to see a video showing how incredibly easy it is to infect a Diebold machine, click here. Warning: Don’t watch this video just before going to bed. You’ll be too angry and it will keep you up.
Since many states are relying on your machine for the integrity of upcoming elections, you (as president of Diebold) would doubtless write something like this to the three guys at …
"Macaca," that is. Salon.com is reporting that Sen. George Allen is denying the claims in a separate Salon article by three of Allen’s former football teammates that Allen used a racial epithet and demonstrated racist behavior during college. Within hours of Allen's denial, though, two additional acquaintances of Allen's had…
In this lively 9-minute interview, Dawkins discusses his new book, The God Delusion. The interviewer, Jeremy Paxman, asked Dawkins what he intended to accomplish with his book. Here’s Dawkins’ answer: I hope to persuade . . . a substantial number of middle of the road people that there’s nothing wrong…
Worms are fascinating critters. There’s no getting around it. Or maybe they’ve just seemed fascinating, ever since I first read Gary Larson’s hilarious 1999 book, There’s a hair in my dirt! A Worm’s Story.
Now, though, worms have made it to the big screen. Last week I took my two young children to a movie called “How to Eat Fried Worms.” We all enjoyed the movie, which provided some lessons on eating earthworms, as well as a lesson or two on getting along. Click here for more information on the movie, which features a large cast of youngsters, along with Tom Cavanagh and Kimberly Williams.
There’s an interesting side story here. I was surprised that the book on which the movie is based has been the target of censors:
Because of the novel’s content, the idea of eating worms as part of a bet is thought to be disgusting by some, it has been the frequent target of censors and appears on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000 at number ninety six.
Amazing, eh? But back to the main topic of my post. I’d like to tell you the story about how I ate worms . . . but I can’t. I didn’t even come close.
Watching “How to Eat Fried Worms” reminded me of the time I was visiting Guangzhou, China in 2001 with my wife and our newly adopted daughter. We were traveling with a large group …