The Annals of Irrational Fear, GMO Division. The New York Times reports:

ONE bright morning this month, 400 protesters smashed down the high fences surrounding a field in the Bicol region of the Philippines and uprooted the genetically modified rice plants growing inside.

Had the plants survived long enough to flower, they would have betrayed a distinctly yellow tint in the otherwise white part of the grain. That is because the rice is endowed with a gene from corn and another from a bacterium, making it the only variety in existence to produce beta carotene, the source of vitamin A. Its developers call it “Golden Rice.”

FrankenFoods. Playing god. It ain’t natural. Yuck. [Read more…]

MSF reports neurotoxic symptoms in hospital patients in Syria, according to the BBC.

Medecins Sans Frontieres says hospitals it supports in Syria treated about 3,600 patients with “neurotoxic symptoms”, of whom 355 have died. [Read more…]

So having mentioned the Sourland mountains (and laughed at their diminutive size) I looked them up, half thinking it might be just a family name for that tiny rise on the western horizon – but no, it’s a real thing. Sourland Mountain.

Sourland Mountain is a 17 miles (27 km) long ridge in central New Jersey, extending from the Delaware River at Lambertville to the western end of Hillsborough Township near the community of Neshanic, through Montgomery Township and into Hopewell Township in Mercer County.^[1] It comprises the largest contiguous forest in Central Jersey, nearly 90 square miles (233 km²) in area. The highest point is only 568 feet (173 m) above sea level, but the way it rises steeply from the surrounding farmland has earned it the title of ‘mountain’. The ridge itself sits within a larger area of rough terrain called The Sourlands.

568 feet! Hahahahahaha – the hill I live at the top of is 500-something feet, and nobody calls it a mountain, even though it does rise steeply enough that the east and west sides of it are mostly green belt.

But it’s New Jersey. Where the mountains are short and the license plates don’t (yet) say ATHEIST.

It’s always a guy with three or four or six wives. Why not the other way around for a change? Well, in Kenya, three people have chosen that option.

Two Kenyan men have signed an agreement to “marry” the same woman.

The woman had been having affairs with both men for more than four years and apparently refused to choose between them.

The agreement sets out a rota for Sylvester Mwendwa and Elijah Kimani to stay in her house and states they will both help raise any children she bears.

It sounds very sensible.

I think I’ve figured out the rules now, with help from Tim Skellett aka “Gurdur” who explained it to Avicenna on Twitter. They go like this:

When someone talks shit about “FTB” that doesn’t actually mean Freethought blogs, it means “core” bloggers. Tim Skellett to Avicenna:

BTW, once again you name a peripheral FTB blogger (yourself), not a core one. Again, *cough* revealing. [Read more…]

The Times of India picked up a tweet on blasphemy by Taslima.

She makes us proud.

Via Taslima – in Pakistan, a cleric cut his wife into pieces because she refused to wear a niqab and she sent their children to school.

Ahmad Aziz, father of the deceased Farzana Bibi, 36, said that she married Muhammad Sharif, 42, a resident of Bakkhal Bhir in Mumtazabad Colony.

They had three children. [Read more…]

Because it came up in a Twitter conversation (with Vlad Chituc and Michael Payton) and because sometimes a good polemical response is called for, I thought we should revisit Hazlitt’s Letter to Gifford. (I say revisit because I did a post on it back in 2004.)

SIR, You have an ugly trick of saying what is not true of any one you do not like; and it will be the object of this letter to cure you of it. You say what you please of others : it is time you were told what you are. In doing this, give me leave to borrow the familiarity of your style : for the fidelity of the picture I shall be answerable. [Read more…]

A friend on Twitter shared some flatulence de guerre:

Well all right then! We’ve got precedent.

Much more at io9.