Find out more about the Ghost Orchid.
(Mary bobs a curtsy to SEF for finding this one)
We have further information from the University of Ottawa about Coulter’s non-appearance last night.
Last night, the organizers themselves decided at 7:50 p.m. to cancel the event and so informed the University’s Protection Services staff on site. At that time, a crowd of about one thousand people had peacefully gathered at Marion Hall.
So…no word of violence at all, just a peaceful protest. Ann Coulter simply chickened out, and the decision was entirely hers and the organizations that invited her.
Never mind, there was no infringement of open discussion here, just another example of right wing cowardice.
Oh, wait — it gets worse. Here’s Ann Coulter’s description of the event.
The police called off my speech when the auditorium was surrounded by thousands of rioting liberals — screaming, blocking the entrance, throwing tables, demanding that my books be burned, and finally setting off the fire alarm.
I don’t know. Setting off a fire alarm after that chaos of rioting, screaming liberals sounds a bit anticlimactic, you know. As that link also reveals, most of the people in that mob were her fans, politely lined up to attend her lecture.
We also know it wasn’t the police who shut down the talk — it was the organizers. Her people.
The Templeton Prize is going to be awarded soon, and they’ve found a venue for it: the National Academy of Sciences. Please note that last word, science — the Templeton Prize has no connection to that subject. Previous winners include Mother Theresa, Chuck Colson, and Billy Graham — professional frauds. Richard Dawkins has an excellent piece on the subject.
The US National Academy of Sciences has brought ignominy on itself by agreeing to host the announcement of the 2010 Templeton Prize (see below). This is exactly the kind of thing Templeton is ceaselessly angling for – recognition among real scientists – and they use their money shamelessly to satisfy their doomed craving for scientific respectability. They tried it on with the Royal Society of London, and they seem to have found a compliant Quisling in the current President, Martin Rees, who, though not religious himself, is a fervent ‘believer in belief’. Fortunately, enough Fellows made a stink about it to ensure that the Royal will not flirt with Templeton in future. Now Templeton are apparently trying the same trick with the US National Academy. If you know any officers, or elected members, of the Academy, please write in protest.
That’s not my favorite part, though. The Templeton Foundation has invited people to guess who’s going to win.
Well, let’s all guess away to our heart’s content. Which leading scientist has done the most to betray science in favour of his imaginary friend? You can rule out the people they’d privately like to honor (such as Intelligent Design “theorists”) because that would go against the official policy of courting respectability among scientists. Nowadays they target genuinely good scientists (like Freeman Dyson, winner of the 2000 Templeton Prize), whose subversion provides more bang for the (mega)buck than primarily religious figures who happen also to be scientists. In the early days they didn’t even make a pretence of finding a scientist at all: the 1982 winner was the notorious creationist Billy Graham!
“Which leading scientist has done the most to betray science in favour of his imaginary friend?” is exactly the criterion they’ll use. In that case, the shoo-in would have to be Francis Collins. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ken Miller is solidly in the running, though, and if he doesn’t get it now, he probably will in the next few years.
I bet Michael Ruse lusts after that prize, but his drooling is just a little too obvious.
Nikki Owen is “a practitioner of neuro-linguistic programming and TV commentator who is described as Britain’s leading charisma expert.”
Let that sink in. You just know she’s got to be an utterly astounding dingbat, and you wouldn’t be wrong.
Anyway, she has made an incredible claim that is testable (that last bit is probably the most astonishing part of it all — these gomers usually run away from anything that can be evaluated as fast as their little legs will take them). Owen says that if you slice an apple in two and talk lovey-dovey to one half, and spiteful meanness to the other, the loved half will stay prettier longer…or the hated half will decay faster. And what’s more, because faces are just like apples, you can make yourself prettier just by sweet-talking yourself in a mirror. Now I think that confidence and cheerfulness can improve your attractiveness, unsurprisingly, but this claim that it is a physical effect that can even impinge on non-sentient vegetables is a bit much.
Rebecca Watson is taking Nikki Owen on. She’s going to replicate the experiment, with blind assessment and a control.
This is excellent. Some people are complaining about the deviation from the Owen protocol by the addition of mustaches on the jars, but that’s irrelevant, since all of the jars get them — since we know already that mustaches make one youthful, lovely, and sexy, all they’ll do is uniformly preserve all the apple slices for a bit longer. No worries.
Rebecca also has a facebook page on the experiment. You can join in!
I have to admit that I’ve been doing a slack variant of this experiment for a while. I’ve got this stash of consecrated crackers in a baggie, and every day I tell them how much I hate them, taunt them with a nail, and tempt them with dominion over the earth, and creepily, they have stayed exactly the same. Lo, behold the power of preservatives, or perhaps the complete absence of nutritional value. Not even bacteria or mold wants a bit out of Jesus.
Dear Friends and Freethinkers,
The Freethought Association of Canada, the charity that brought you the wildly successful Canadian Atheist Bus Campaign, is having its 2010 annual general meeting!Everyone interested in the FAC and its future is welcome to attend the meeting and participate. We will be voting both on our 2010-2011 Board of Executives, and on a number of very exciting changes to the mandate and bylaws proposed throughout this past year. We will also have a Year in Review report from our current President, Kaiti Kish, as well as our yearly financial report. Finally, a discussion regarding the future of the FAC will be held, where any and all ideas are more than welcome!
Nominations will be held for: president, vice-president multimedia, vice-president special projects, treasurer and secretary. There will be a vote for the creation of two new positions (vice-president external and vice-president internal) if this motion is passed we will carry on with the voting for these positions.When: Saturday, April 17 2010
Where: Center for Inquiry – Ontario (216 Beverley St. Toronto, ON) however if you are not in Toronto but still want to be involved in the Freethought Association we strongly encourage you to contact us! We would like to expand our executive board across Canada and therefore welcome national participation.
Nominations for the Board positions will be accepted until: Saturday, April 10 2010
Please send all nominations to: president@freethoughtassociation.ca (please include the full name of the nominee, your full name, and the position you would like the nominee to fill)
NO NOMINATIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED AFTER THIS DATE.Please see our Facebook event for descriptions of the duties of each position and further information.
http://tinyurl.com/y8b4alkIf you have any questions, feel free to contact us at:
president@freethoughtassociation.ca or call (647) 267-5780
Some sneaky slams against ID here…
A Lutheran church in Wisconsin runs a school (unfortunately). The school council has ‘doctrinal issues’ with the fellow they hired as principal — he seems to think that the idea that men have authority over women is invalid. So they had a meeting to fire John Hartwig, and something at the meeting shocked the audience.
Supporters of Hartwig said they were shocked to learn that women church members would not be permitted to speak during a meeting to decide Hartwig’s fate.
I’d be shocked, too. Except that I’d also be shocked by this, which everyone there seemed to take for granted.
Females do not have voting privileges, but are generally allowed to speak at meetings, according to Klaetsch. Sunday’s meeting was the first time in recent history that St. John’s Council President Don Finseth exercised his authority to prevent females from speaking, church members say.
Please, women of St John’s Lutheran Church of Baraboo, Wisconsin, WAKE UP. Leave that awful institution. Why are you continuing to wallow in a poisonous environment that treats you like scum?
Wow, I thought Cardinal George Pell was thick…but his second-in-command, Bishop Porteous, sounds like he could be even crazier. They’re hiring an exorcist for Australia, and he’s full of ominous warnings about evil things.
The appointment of a new exorcist by Sydney’s Catholic Church precedes a warning by a senior clergyman that generation Y risks a dangerous fascination with the occult fuelled by the Twilight and Harry Potter series.
Julian Porteous, the auxiliary bishop of Sydney, warns that pursuing such ”alternative” relaxation techniques as yoga, reiki massages and tai chi may encourage experimentation with ”deep and dark spiritual ideas and traditions”.
Twilight isn’t magic — it’s just badly written and mindless. Those spritiual ideas aren’t “deep and dark”, they’re just stupid. And I put exorcism in the same category, as a ridiculous, ignorant practice based on rank superstition. We gain nothing by replacing reiki massages and sparkly vampires with old geezers waving censers and chanting at demons.
And Porteous has been doing just that.
Exorcism is no fantasy according to the church, with the Sydney archdiocese last month appointing an as-yet unnamed priest, suitably ”endowed with piety, knowledge, prudence and integrity of life” to conduct exorcisms, as required by Catholic canon law.
In Rome, the Vatican is preparing its first official English translation of the rite of exorcism, which was promulgated in 1614 and reissued in 1999. Its chief exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth, claimed this month to have carried out 70,000 exorcisms. Bishop Porteous – who has stood in as exorcist for the Sydney archdiocese over the past five years – warns that yoga, reiki massages and tai chi can lead to people being in the grip of ”demonic forces”.
These people are just nuts.
Word.
