When it’s got a squid in a top hat on it. I could wear this one to the ritziest of places.

Simon Singh, the science writer who had the temerity to say that chiropractic treatment for ear infection was “bogus”, and who was found guilty by a British court of libel, has decided to appeal the decision. That takes real guts — libel law over there really stacks the deck in favor of frivolous complaints of libel — but if he wins it could help enable future open criticisms of quackery.

Oh, how I despise PETA. Now they’re putting up new billboards in Kansas —can you guess why?

Lindsay Rajt, campaign manager for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said the billboards were prompted by the recent shooting death of abortion doctor George Tiller, who was killed Sunday at his church.

“The discussion of the value of life is front and center right now in the public conversation,” Rajt said today.

“We think we would be irresponsible if we don’t talk about how we’re all guilty of extreme cruelty to animals every time we sit down to a meal that includes meat.”

They have two billboards: one that says “Pro-life? Go vegetarian” and the other says “Pro-choice? Choose vegetarian”. PETA reminds me of the undertaker in Yojimbo: a town is tearing itself apart, and the only one prospering is the ghoul who’s happily selling coffins to both factions. I can only hope their ham-handed campaign repulses both sides.

This is a sad story: Dahl’s daughter Olivia, to whom he had dedicated James and the Giant Peach and The BFG (I remember reading both of those to my kids when they were little) died at the age of 12 of measles encephalitis. He wrote a short piece urging everyone to immunize their children 20 years later, after a reliable vaccine had been developed.

We’ve benefited in these recent years from good medicine that prevents serious childhood diseases. It wasn’t that long ago that children were dying fairly often from illnesses that nowadays parents cavalierly expose their children to in ‘exposure parties’, rather than using good medicine.

(via Goldacre)

Frank Schaeffer, who with his father was one of the aggressive peddlers of anti-choice ideas, has commendably accepted part of the blame for the Tiller murder, admitting that he and his kind contributed to the atmosphere of hate. Unfortunately, he fails with this bit in the middle.

Contributing to an extreme and sometimes violent climate has not only been the fault of the antiabortion crusaders. The Roe v. Wade decision went to far, too fast and was too sweeping. I believe that abortion should be legal. But I also believe that it should be re-regulated according to fetal development. It’s the late term abortions that horrify most people. And for the sake of keeping abortion legal adjustments need to be made. Roe is far too all or nothing (as I explain in my book Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All — or Almost All — of It Back). As I say in my book today I believe that abortion should be legal but more regulated than Roe allows. I also think that we should do what President Obama calls for: use sex education and contraceptive distribution and programs to help women and children in a way that results in less abortions.

No, not good enough. Abortion must remain a decision between a woman and her doctor…crazy evangelists (or ex-evangelists) and senators have no part in it. And the late term abortions? I am so fed up with the oh-so-concerned “pro-lifers” being “horrified” by them — those abortions are carried out when the pregnancy is threatening the life of the mother. Those are specifically decisions from which some patriarchal relic should be ejected. Does he really hope to place more obstacles and more stress in the way of frightened and often grieving women?

And speaking of not-pologies, look at Randall Terry’s.

“George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller’s killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.

Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.”

Randall Terry is available for comment at FUK-YOU-TERY

He’s more concerned about the government response to a murder by zealots like him? And he’s afraid the government will close down his most effective actions…like what, murder? Or is he afraid his ability to terrify frightened women and harass health care professionals might be limited? Way to place your priorities, man.

As for being available for comment, I hope no one bothers with the grandstanding ghoul.

A few years ago, the creationist organization Answers in Genesis launched an ill-conceived ad campaign that featured kids with guns; the message was “If God doesn’t matter to him, do you?”. They were trying to hop onto the fear bandwagon, so popular among conservatives now, of trying to convince people that you must support their aims, or some Other will kill you.

That sign and the whole aborted ad campaign (it died away fairly quickly after AiG started it) has everything backwards. We start with the recognition of and respect for the right of every person to live, and then…it doesn’t matter whether you believe in gods or not. There are Christians and atheists who are sincerely appalled at the murder of anyone, whether they share the same political views or not, and there are hateful, callous enablers of death who cross all religious lines. And yes, I’ve noticed some presumed atheists ranting about “justifiable homicide” and murdering anti-abortionist families in the comments here, and I deplore it. The only reason I am not deleting those vile comments right and left is that I think they are useful warnings: do not become the monsters you despise.

There’s another place where you can find people arguing for “justifiable homicide”. It’s what Scott Roeder, the killer of George Tiller, believed in. He’s a so-called “Christian Patriot” — a double scoundrel, in other words — who has a history of fringe beliefs, a criminal record of association with violent anti-government groups, and a paper trail in which he wraps himself in religious sanctimony and advocates death for abortionists.

In many ways, though, his religiosity is going to be a distraction. It simply doesn’t matter, and the strongest conclusion we can draw from it is that religion fails to provide a reasonable framework for morality, since it is so easily and regularly subverted to rationalize evil. Focus instead on the root of the problem: Roeder was an amoral, obsessed nut who found support for his delusions among a particularly ugly American subculture. Gods don’t matter. And when you think gods do, you lose sight of the truth: other people matter.

Feministe has an excellent list of pro-choice charities. Want to do something to infuriate the women-hating anti-choicers and do something positive in honor of Tiller’s work? Donate!

While we’re all feeling a bit shocked at the horrible event in Kansas, we can all turn to the Reagan legacy. Mike Reagan is giving away free copies of a book, Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation, written by (or more likely, ghost-written for) his father, Ronald Reagan. The title is wonderfully ironic, since these people clearly don’t have much of a conscience. Everyone order a copy, they’re free; suck the money away from these enablers of killers, and put another copy of their trash into the trash.

These are the people who fuel the kind of self-righteous ignorance that encourages people to picket reproductive health clinics, treat ob-gyns as public criminals, and incite murder. The heroes are the doctors who sacrifice so much — privacy, security, and in this case, their life — to provide essential services to women, the women in whom Reaganites find so little value, unless they are pregnant. One of the tragedies of this recent killing and the conservative tradition is that it will be increasingly difficult to find heroes brave enough to step into this role…exactly as these narrow-minded, puritanical enemies of human liberty want.

New Hampshire is working on legalizing gay marriage, and has a bill pending…unfortunately, it is being compromised.

The new version, which is expected to come up for a vote Wednesday, adds a sentence specifying that all religious organizations, associations or societies have exclusive control over their religious doctrines, policies, teachings and beliefs on marriage. It also clarifies that church-related organizations that serve charitable or educational purposes are exempt from having to provide insurance and other benefits to same sex spouses of employees.

Lovely. The first part is fair — I don’t think churches should be compelled to endorse gay marriage — but the last part is odious. It’s basically a loophole that says religious groups can be as bigoted as they want to be. In another decade or so, when gay civil rights are accepted as matter-of-fact and we look back on these years with the same disbelief and disgust that we look back on the days of racial segregation in the 50s now, remember that religion actively lobbied for the right to cling to discrimination and the denial of civil rights to a segment of society.

Read his own words and see what he thinks is “the most important part” of the announcement of a major scientific milestone. He’s welcome to his own religious beliefs; the problem is that he has the arrogance to think they need to be trumpeted as part of the science.