This documentary by Penn and Teller characterizes the "War on Drugs" as "The new prohibition." The documentary is a no-holds-barred presentation that includes some coarse language. Here is Part II and here is Part III. The statistics are compelling. Alcohol causes 50,000 deaths per year. Tobacco causes 440,000 deaths per…
Not very well, according to this article from Salon.com. Here's an excerpt: Perhaps most troubling, the Army seems bent on denying that the stress of war has caused the soldiers' mental trauma in the first place. (There is an economic reason for doing so: Mental problems from combat stress can require…
Today is the first anniversary of my dad’s death. Yesterday I came home from the crematorium “with me dad took’d under me arm,” to badly paraphrase the children’s song about Ann Boleyn. Death doesn’t frighten me in an abstract way. I grew up with Tom Lehrer music, Charles Addams cartoons, Hitchcock short story books, and other foils to the timid mortal. This package of charred and calcined particles I carry in the crook of my arm is merely a transient monument to the man in whom they once dwelled.
Although my father died a year ago, his ashes just now returned from the medical school circuit. He was first and foremost an educator, and this seems a fitting final use for his corporeal remains. It was also was his expressed wish.
“Ashes to ashes” is a lame phrase to someone whose head was usually far beyond the clouds. I grew up perfectly aware that my body was made up of ashes from the remains of a supernova, as is the rest of our solar system. The even my cell nuclei are literally composed of decayed nuclear waste!
Not all of the mass of these coarse ashes was actually part of his body during his life. Cremation binds oxygen to any atom that will have it, increasing the total mass from the proteins being torn apart and vaporized by the process. Sort of like how 6 lbs (a gallon) of gasoline produces 30 lbs of greenhouse C02
It doesn’t …
The following remarks were delivered by Bernie Sanders to the National Conference for Media Reform. Sanders is the junior United States Senator from Vermont. He is an independent, but caucuses with the Democrats. Amy Goodman describes Sanders’ speech as an “alternative State of the Union.”
The full text to Sanders’ speech can be found here. Video of his presentation can be found here. Here are excerpts of Sanders’ speech to the NCMR in Memphis:
…[W]e will not succeed unless you are there, unless there is a strong grassroots media, which demands fundamental changes in media today and the end of corporate control over our media. We’ve got to work together on that.
Now, you are going to hear from a lot of folks who know more about the details of the media than I do, but what I do know a lot about is how media impacts the political process, what media means for those of us who day after day struggle with the major issues facing our country and a goal of trying to improve the quality of life for all of our people.
And I want to spend just a minute in telling you what I suspect most of you already know. If you are concerned, as been said, about healthcare, if you are concerned about foreign policy and Iraq, if you are concerned about the economy, if you are concerned about global warming, you are kidding yourselves if you are not concerned about corporate control over the
Here’s a site for scientists looking for help in presenting the need to vigorously teach evolution, when confronted by anti-science types.
I keep falling into the trap that this should be easy to convince people to study evolution in light of the abundant evidence in support and the elegance of natural selection. On the issue of whether the Earth is 6,000 years old, how about this: If you believe in God, the universe would (it seems to me) to be God’s elaborate “clock.” Dozens of physical and biological mechanisms are commensurate in suggesting that the Earth is far more than 6,000 years old. Why deny these numerous testable clock mechanisms in order to pursue a narrow inquiry-ending view (one of many) of an ancient book of aprochraphal (un-testable) origins?
But, alas, presenting well-established scientific facts don’t convince Creationists. In fact, no evidence convinces them that the version of the Bible that they bought at Wal-Mart is the one true inerrant version, despite an avalanche of evidence to the contrary. To me, it is a red flag when non-experts reject the experts when virtually all of the experts (those trained and practicing in a field) speak in unison.
Certainly, then, announcing broad-minded scientific principles is not enough to pry open most of those closed minds. In fact, the terms “science,” “academic” and “intellectual” make many creationists bristle and turn away. Turn on any 24-hour Christian AM radio show for confirmation.
This new site is sponsored by the Federation of …