One of the nice things about being blacklisted by a large segment of the atheist community is that I don’t have to be shy about criticizing…oh, hey, wait a minute, I’ve always been a pain in the ass. OK, I can be even more obnoxious now.
The latest troubling event in the world of atheist leadership is that Edwina Rogers has amended her lawsuit against the Secular Coalition of America. She’s now suing Richard Dawkins directly.
Lynna is your curator. I don’t think this thread will run dry for a long time.
Amanda Marcotte rips into stupid gotcha by Marco Rubio.
When Rubio appeared on CNN after Thursday night’s Republican debate, he kept insisting that this vague entity called “science” has declared that human life begins at conception. (Actual biologists, for what it’s worth, argue that life is continuous and that a fertilized egg is no more or less alive than a sperm or an unfertilized egg.) CNN host Chris Cuomo vainly tried to point out that “science” says no such thing, and Rubio got a little excited.
“Let me interrupt you. Science has—absolutely it has. Science has decided… Science has concluded that—absolutely it has. What else can it be?” he asked. Then Rubio reared up for what he clearly intended as his wowza line: “It cannot turn into an animal. It can’t turn into a donkey. The only thing that that can become is a human being.”
It would be such an improvement over what American schools teach now!
Although…it doesn’t really get around to teaching about sex much, does it? It’s mainly about how stupid and destructive sex ed policies are. We need a second video. It doesn’t need to be very long — when you get right down to it, the basics of sex are simple. Any suggestions?
Ben Seewald, whose only claim to fame is that he’s married to Jessa Duggar, tries to stake out his own domain of stupid in a conversation with Dante Berry, another evangelist. He does not do well. But in the topsy-turvy world of American fanatical Christianity, that might mean he succeeded.
“If you check it out, what they’re trying to do with America, is basically have us going against each other while the Devil can sneak in real clearly and destroy what he’s trying to destroy,” Dante explains to Ben, adding that “if we’re fighting against each other, the Devil can sneak in and do what he want to do.”
“That’s right,” Ben agrees, “there’s no room for racism in Christianity. That all comes from the Devil. That all comes from, like, this false religion out here, evolution, that stuff? Teaching that, like, some people are ‘more evolved?,’ and different stuff.”
He’s making YouTube videos! Lots and lots of YouTube videos, several per day, it appears. If you’re concerned about the volume — how will we ever keep up? — don’t be. It’s all exactly the same old tired Young Earth apologetics and Bible babble that he’s always done.
His latest topic is WOE: What On Earth is about to happen? He expects Jesus to return in 10-15 years. Right.
I saw this video and that description, and my first thought was “siphonophore”.
That’s all I can say. The University of Minnesota athletic director has resigned. Why, you might wonder.
Since coming to the university, Teague had presented himself to the media as someone who was a good source and not afraid to get blunt. For a reporter, that was extremely valuable. After he arrived, and before Dec. 13, 2013, he and I had drinks five to seven times, all but one of those occasions in a group setting. I also attended several cocktail parties at his house. I was happy to have such a useful window into the program. We talked about basketball, coaches and his plans for the department.
So I agreed to have that drink. But this December night was different. Teague asked me about my longtime boyfriend, as he often did. My mistake was acknowledging that we had just broken up. The switch flipped. Suddenly, in a public and crowded bar, Teague tried to throw his arm around me. He poked my side. He pinched my hip. He grabbed at me. Stunned and mortified, I swatted his advances and firmly told him to stop. He didn’t.
“Don’t deny,” he said, “our chemistry.”
Several members of my family back home attended the Bernie Sanders rally in Seattle, and my niece took a few pictures.
I have also been chastised for saying I’d be willing to vote for Hillary Clinton in the election. I find myself in the strange position of being the conservative member of my family. I’m almost afraid to go back to visit next week: have I become the cranky old right-wing uncle who makes a nuisance of himself once a year at family reunions?
There’s this fellow, Guy Windsor, who’s about as much an expert in sword-fighting as anyone can be in an era in which it’s pretty much unheard of for anyone to have to fight for their life with a long sharp piece of steel.
I am a swordsman, writer, and entrepreneur. I research and teach medieval and Renaissance Italian swordsmanship, blog about it, write books about it, have developed a card game to teach it (which involved founding another company, and crowdfunding), and run The School of European Swordsmanship.
So here’s Windsor talking about the things movies and books get wrong about swords.
