And on the other hand, there’s yet more of the fake meme bullshit directed at Dawkins himself. That is not ok.
@RichardDawkins Curious if this is your actual quote as there is a debate among friends as to its accuracy. Thank you
I find myself having to disagree with something Richard Dawkins said on Twitter, again.
In reverse order, so in chronological order:
Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins · 6h
‘If someone tells me that I’ve hurt their feelings, I say, “Well I’m still waiting to hear what your point is”.’ Christopher Hitchens.‘I’m very depressed how in this country you can be told “That’s offensive” as though those two words constitute an argument.’ C. Hitchens.
@mharrelson79 I have no wish, nor did he have, to hurt people’s feelings. He simply meant feelings don’t constitute a logical argument.
Oh yes, this is a permanent wish / gripe / dissent of mine – Robert Reich’s suggestion that we Just Imagine If People Were Paid What Their Work Is Really Worth to Society. Well yes. Teachers, farmers, people who clean hospitals and hotels and schools, bus drivers, garbage collectors, as opposed to people who massage money or market harmful shit or sell cigarettes.
What someone is paid has little or no relationship to what their work is worth to society.
Does anyone seriously believe hedge-fund mogul Steven A. Cohen is worth the $2.3 billion he raked in last year, despite being slapped with a $1.8 billion fine after his firm pleaded guilty to insider trading?
Update:
Go to 3 minutes to watch the Nicholas Brothers dance. Fred Astaire said it’s the greatest dance ever filmed. I think I’ve seen it before, and it’s the kind of thing one should see often.
Time explains today’s Google doodle celebrating the 180th birthday of John Venn.
Correlation has never looked this cute. Google created an interactive illustration in honor of the 180th birthday of logician and philosopher John Venn — best known, of course, for inventing the circles known as the Venn diagram. The doodle allows you to choose from five different subjects (mammals and sea life, for example) along with five descriptors (thrives in cold, has wings, etc.) and then see the resulting correlation.
I’ve been playing with it, with much amusement.
The WHO reports new numbers on the Ebola outbreak.
The World Health Organization says the death toll from the worst outbreak of Ebola on record has reached 887.
That’s an increase of 158 since the global health body released figures on July 31.
WHO said in a statement on Monday that there now have been more than 1,600 cases of Ebola since the disease emerged in Guinea earlier this year.
According to WHO, there now have been a total of 358 deaths in Guinea, 255 deaths in Liberia, 273 deaths in Sierra Leone and one in Nigeria.
The news comes as Nigeria announced Monday that it now had confirmed a second case in Africa’s most populous nation. Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said the case is a doctor who had helped treat Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American man who died July 25 days after arriving in Nigeria from Liberia.
Three other people who treated Sawyer are showing symptoms, and are being tested.
The BBC has discovered American Atheists.
Atheists in the US are rallying together, launching a new TV programme and providing support for those who go public with their beliefs.
“Sometimes things need to be said, and fights need to be fought even if they are unpopular. To the closeted atheists, you are not alone, and you deserve equality.” [Read more…]
The cops in Alhambra, California nabbed a tortoise yesterday. They told us about it on their Facebook page, in hopes of reuniting tortoise with human or humans.
It wasn’t your dime-store tortoise.
Aug. 1, 2014 – A study of 1,400 ancient and modern human skulls suggests that a reduction in testosterone hormone levels accompanied the development of cooperation, complex communication and modern culture some 50,000 years ago.
The research, published in today’s issue of the journal Current Anthropology, “uses craniofacial evidence to propose that lowered testosterone levels could explain the relatively sudden origin of modern behavior about 50,000 years ago,” says University of Utah biology graduate student Robert Cieri.
It’s good to see that everyone sees the point of the joint statement and has decided to avoid the more childish ways of responding to disagreements like attacks on appearance and photoshops and caricatures and similar. Well maybe not quite everyone…
Haw haw.
CNN notes that being a big noise in the Catholic church provides some pretty comfortable lodgings.
There’s Timothy Dolan’s cottage on Madison Avenue, for instance.
From Google [Read more…]
