The story is famous and might be just a bit apocryphal, how Galileo turned his new telescope on the sky and offered to show many important people what he had found. They refused to look, afraid to compromise the world view that bound them to their place and time. Afraid,…
I just finished watching a video on how to dissect a human corpse in order to learn about skin, cutaneous nerves and lymph nodes (warning to the squeamish: There's no sugar-coating here--it's a highly graphic lesson on how to do a human dissection). I thought to myself: "This is incredible. …
Do you remember when CNN brought us 6 hours of live coverage of a war before the White House admitted that we were in one? Gulf War I forced a change in the relationship between official truth (Pravda) and media observation. Now, in the aftermath of Son of Gulf War,…
Here is a link to an excellent essay by two of my best friends. It talks about how labeling plays out in both art and real life and how labels are both irrelevant and destructive. I attended that workshop they refer to, Clarion, and that's where I met them. That…
…but do I give a toss?
Recently, atheist bus ads have popped up in the UK and the US to much acclaim from freethinkers and much tiresome bitching & moaning from the usual suspects. Buses are so hot right now! However, an attempt by an Aussie atheist group to have their own ads on our buses has been unsuccessful. The Atheist Foundation of Australia wanted to buy ad space, the ad company, APN Outdoor, refused to sell it to them. And it seems they didn’t explain why. I certainly don’t see the harm in slogans like “Sleep in on Sunday mornings” or “Celebrate reason”, but I guess APN have their reasons. Such as – they’re a pack of bastards with double standards higher than Israel’s separation wall. So, yes, it’s disappointing. Even annoying! And refusing to take someone’s freely-offered money is just damned un-Australian.
Not to mention that glaring double-standard: the article explains that APN had buses in Adelaide plastered with the Bible verse John 3:16 – that’s the one about God loving the world so much that he had himself (in the form of his hippy son) tortured & executed to forgive us all of our sins, especially the original sin committed by Adam & Eve, the guilt of which apparently extends several millennia onto every last one of us, from birth – conception – no less, giving us no damn choice but to accept the hippy as our saviour. Nice. World’s oldest protection racket – “Say, that’s …
