£20,000,000! For what?

That’s some houseguest. The Pope invited himself to visit England, and asked the British government to pay for it — that takes some gall right there — and is now revealing that the bill for his visit will be at least £20 million. They’re dropping all that cash to fête a ringleader for child rapists…it makes no sense. What are people doing over there?

There ought to be a flat declaration that if he wants to visit England, he’s doing so as a private citizen — all costs to be paid by the Catholic church — and that there will also be no protection against being served any legal papers. He’s head of a criminal organization, and that shouldn’t warrant any special privileges.

Mike S. Adams, bad professor

The Supreme Court recently decided that campus student groups do not have to be subsidized by the university if they discriminate — so, for instance, the campus Christian club can’t refuse to admit gays and also collect university money. Perfectly reasonable, to my mind.

It’s driving flitterbrained conservatives mad, though. They can’t discriminate? Injustice! Perhaps one of the craziest is Mike Adams, who has announced his intention to abuse the ruling at UNC Wilmington.

…when I get back to the secular university in August, I plan to round up the students I know who are most hostile to atheism. Then I’m going to get them to help me find atheist-haters willing to join atheist student groups across the South. I plan to use my young fundamentalist Christian warriors to undermine the mission of every group that disagrees with me on the existence of God.

What a coincidence — I’m hoping to restart the UMM Freethinkers group this August, too. I can’t quite imagine bringing together students interested in atheism/agnosticism/secularism and telling them our plan is for them to join Christian groups instead, and become pests and troublemakers. That plan is just bizarre, and a disservice to the honest discussion of the issues…and a disservice to the students. Mike Adams doesn’t care!

That means an invading group can turn a smaller, weaker group into second class citizens on campus. That’s what I intend to do to those groups who do not believe in God.

This could get really interesting. It’s not just the students who’ll be annoyed; there’s this little thing called ‘collegiality’, where we have to work together with our fellow faculty. And those faculty may be advising some of those other groups. I can just imagine what would happen if I tried to turn freethinkers on campus into militant disruptors of other organizations: their faculty advisors would descend on me in fury. I might even suddenly find myself nominated and elected to serve on some of the more tedious committees on campus.

And here’s the kicker:

I do not seek robust debate. I seek power over the godless heathen dissident.

This guy actually works at a university? Madness.

By the way, if any Christians or Muslims want to join the UMM Freethinkers, they’d be welcome. We like debate. It would make the meetings lively.

Speaking of ridiculous…

…it’s books about how our pets go to heaven.

Author Ptolemy Tompkins tracks the history of the relationship between humans and animals in the new book, “The Divine Life of Animals.” Prompted to write by the death of his pet rabbit, Angus, Tompkins looks to the ancient past for the best models of animal-human interaction.

Och, Angus, ye cain’t be daid!

What of Mr McGregor? Burnin’ in hell where no wee bunny goes, no doubt.

Homöopathie rebuked

The last time I was in Germany, I was surprised at the pharmacies — they all had big displays of homeopathic ‘remedies’ in the shop windows. I suppose it made some sense, since the profit margins on water have to be tremendous. There is some good news, though: Der Spiegel has a cover story on the homeopathy illusion (horrible google translation to English).

i-523b04473a9b908fdaae631674023fb3-spiegel.jpeg

The Germans are also talking about removing homeopathic snakeoil from the list of supported medicines under their national health plans. Oops, there goes the profitability…

It’s the faculty who define a university

Unfortunately, it’s the administrators who shape the faculty, and they too often lose sight of the purpose of their institution. Here’s Eva von Dassow trying to remind the UM regents of their job.

Uh-oh. Von Dassow is in one of those liberal artsy departments, Classics and Near East Studies at the University of Minnesota. Now somebody up top is probably scrutinizing that academic unit and measuring its revenue generation, which, of course, is the true measure of a scholarly endeavor.

(via Left of Centre.)