Religiosity is Proportional to Economic Disparity

Why, we all wonder, is America alone among the "First World Nations" to have such a high proportion of science-denying religionists, and even in high offices? According to Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman in Why the Gods Are Not Winning (that I found via this summary by Pharyngula) religiosity is…

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The Supreme Court restores habeas corpus

In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against the government in the case of Boumediene v. Bush, finding that the detainees at Guantanamo Bay have the right to file habeas corpus petitions in federal court. This decision strikes down a key section of the Military Commissions Act,…

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Historical Contingency Proven in Labs, then Behe blathers.

In brief, Stephen Jay Gould proposed the idea that evolution is truly stochastic (a particular technical kind of random), that if we started evolution over as of a million years ago, we probably wouldn't be here in our current form. That is, any evolutionary step is contingent on the history…

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Pagan Picnic 2008

As the mercury rose past 90 on this sunny Sunday, I biked over to see the Pagan Picnic in Tower Grove Park. I attend this event regularly, and it gets a bit bigger each year. There are many booths selling fair foods and drinks, and psychic readings, acupuncture, massage, crystals…

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Fearing the Campaign

I was reading my daily dose of blood pressure spike (creationism news) when I found this tidbit on TheConservativeVoice.com: It is my strongly held belief as a conservative, pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-family, pro-creationism vs Darwinian Evolution believer that there is no way in God's green earth that that old white…

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