The next time someone gets all misty-eyed when talking about the saintliness of Mother Teresa, have them read this post by Ebonmuse at Daylight Atheism. Here's an excerpt: Teresa was a friend to vicious dictators, criminals and con men. As Christopher Hitchens documents in his book The Missionary Position, Teresa…
David Horton asks "How do you recognize a civilized country?" He has a list of 25 criteria so far. Here are the first six: 1. The military-industrial complex plays no role in government. 2. Religion plays a very small role in society, not forbidden, but not compulsory. 3. Scientists, teachers,…
I was meandering in cyberspace, and stumbled onto this column by Australian Michael Ruse: The struggle between evolution and creation: an American problem. This appeals to me after all the news about Australian Ken Ham and his Creation Museum here in the U.S. The muse of Mr. Ruse is that…
That's the message of Audrey Schulman, writing in Orion Magazine. Her article is entitled, "How to be a Climate Hero." Schulman describes psychology experiments where the subject is surrounded by stooges, everyone in the room doing a mundane task. Eventually, something untoward happens. For instance, smoke starts pouring out of…
In the April 24, 2008 edition of Nature (available online only with a subscription), it is reported that the Swiss Federal Government has issued guidelines to help granting agencies "decide which research applications deeply offend the dignity of plants." Those studies that fail to treat plants with "dignity" won't be…