I want to live on Counter-Earth
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I lived in Philadelphia for seven years — it’s a great city, and it’s also an amazing ethnic patchwork. The residents are proud of the fact that the city’s neighborhoods have so much character, although it also means that there is a bit more racial tension lurking in the city, and there are also extremes of poverty and wealth. One other thing you notice living there is that some neighborhoods are extraordinarily Catholic, and that Catholicism just soaks into the area.
I imagine that there’s some deep anxiety in those neighborhoods right now: the Catholic church has just announced the suspension of 21 priests in Philly on suspicion of child sex abuse. And this is after several had been indicted on charges of rape and assault on minors.
A list has been released. I didn’t know any of the priests, of course — I recognize some of the churches, but I’d never have so much as stepped inside one. The Glenside church was right near where I lived while I was there.
Unfortunately, I’ve also heard from a few correspondents in Philadelphia who report that there’s a kind of studied blindness going on.
I don’t know why I am surprised but all the presiding priest said was
that they diocese would have a steady rotation of priests to fill in
untill a replacement is named. NOT ONE MINUTE was spent addressing the
issue. He only asked to pray for everyone involved… I was offended
for anyone hurt by what these guys did. He didn’t even take the time
to denounce the alleged actions… He didn’t mention how future kids
would be safe guarded, he did mention that the church has come a long
way in the process of their investigations.
Apparently, the church is treating this as a minor problem in staffing church functions instead of a sign of corruption and failure. I guess that’s typical.
It’s good that the church is actually doing something to remove child-rapists, but shouldn’t it be regarded as more profoundly systematic problem when you find scores of abusers working in your organization? This isn’t just one aberrant perv, it’s endemic!
It’s a real shame. Forty million years ago, this pair of mites, Glaesacarus rhombeus, had just buckled down to a happy grind, when plop, a drop of tree sap fell on them and entombed them in flagrante delicto. Also, coitus interruptus. And as long as we’re slinging around the Latin, Perfututum!.
Notice that they mate butt-to-butt. This is probably the preferred position when your partner has a face like an arachnid.
Benjamin mentioned this evil little ditty in the last iteration of the chatty thread, so now I shall inflict it on you.
(Current totals: 12,009 entries with 1,304,491 comments.)
Don’t you know it’s my birthday? There’s supposed to be some happy news to lighten my evening. But no, instead I learned that Wisconsin Rethuglicans made an end run to approve their governor’s union-busting bill.
Phil Neuenfeldt, president of the state AFL-CIO, said Wednesday night’s maneuver “shows that Scott Walker and the Republicans have been lying throughout this entire process.”
“None of the provisions that attacked workers’ rights had anything to do with the budget,” Neuenfeldt said. “Losing badly in the court of public opinion and failing to break the Democratic senators’ principled stand, Scott Walker and the GOP have eviscerated both the letter and the spirit of the law and our democratic process to ram through their payback to their deep-pocketed friends.”
This is what happens when we weaken labor — the rich have free rein to milk the middle-class even further.
This is unbelievable. James O’Keefe, he of the Acorn fraud, of the aborted seduction, the unimaginative weasel whose sole game is staging bogus scenarios with his ideological opponents and trying to catch them saying embarrassing things, has done it again, teasing an NPR executive into saying disparaging things about the Tea Party lunatics. I saw the recording; it was tame, I’d say stuff a thousand times more disparaging about those racist morons while knowingly on the air.
But it worked. NPR caved in, suspended the administrator, and now another one has resigned. Why? I don’t know. Because the cowards at NPR are afraid that the Republicans are going to kill all their funding, so they are running away from any confrontation with the political party that wants to destroy them, as if that will help.
Don’t think for a minute that this craven behavior will stay the budget axe, though. All it has really accomplished is to destroy any interest I have in supporting the organization. Why should I? They’ve already surrendered to the deranged right wing. Their usefulness as a non-propaganda news source is dead.
Worse, they’re giving the Breitbartian vermin a little thrill of power. This isn’t the end. How many more news organizations are going to fold in fear before these stupid bully-boys?
You may not want to know. Only read this heartrending article about the Collinwood School Fire in 1908 if you can handle a tragic tale — but if you do, you won’t complain about those annoying fire drills ever again.
We’ve finally received some information from the overlords about the recent problems. We’re being attacked.
We have been forwarding reports from bloggers and users to our hosting service, Rackspace, over the past few days. After monitoring our traffic and these reports, Rackspace has determined that ScienceBlogs is experiencing a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack and has blocked a range of IP addresses involved. While this means that ScienceBlogs is now loading correctly for most users, the attack is still ongoing and other users may still encounter sporadic loading problems, or be blocked entirely if they were incorrectly included in these preventative measures.
We’re still working with Rackspace to determine how and why this has occurred, and to get the site 100% accessible again, but in the meantime, we’d like to collect IP addresses from users who are still experiencing problems. Please ask anyone who has brought this problem to your attention to send their IP address to webmaster@scienceblogs.com. If they have trouble locating their IP address, you can send them to this site: http://whatismyipaddress.com/
Who did I annoy now? Crazy astrobiologists? Fans of Ray Kurzweil? David Brooks? Every Christian, Jew, and Muslim on the planet?
There is a virtue to Christian prudes. They make me aware of ideas I might otherwise have missed. Conservative evangelical groups in the UK are whining about sex ed books that are too ‘explicit’ for their taste.
Children as young as five are being shown “explicit” images to teach them about sex, an evangelical Christian pressure group has claimed.
The Christian Institute has complained that at least 10 books or teaching packs used in English primary schools for lessons on sex and relationships, contain images or descriptions that are “obviously unsuitable”.
Its report, Too Much, Too Young, criticises, among others, a BBC teaching pack for its images of a nude man and woman and the children’s book Mummy Laid an Egg, by Babette Cole, for its child-like drawings of a man and woman having sex on a skateboard and wearing red noses. The book won British Illustrated Children’s Book of the Year.
Wait…sex, on a skateboard? I have never tried that, but it looks like great fun. I suspect that I’m not supple enough or coordinated enough to try it, though, but I could probably manage the sex while wearing red noses (not shown), however. I’m a little embarrassed that at my advanced age I can still get sex tips from a children’s book.
So thank you, Christianity! Once again, you lead by negative example. If you want more hilarity, though, check out the Amazon reviews.
I was disgusted when I read this book! One could very easily pick this up and start reading it to a child or a child pick it up and start looking at the pictures because the illustrations at the beginning of the book appear to be very innocent and cute!
A few pages into the book, one discovers very graphic and detailed crayon drawings of anatomically correct males and females and how their parts fit together and even positions in which they can fit together. This book should be snatched from all library and bookstore shelves. It’s intent could be nothing more than to … children’s innocent minds. I believe in … education for children, but this is going a little too far
This book written to explain reproduction to little children states that mothers have eggs in their belly buttons and daddy’s have seeds in sacks. It also has silly illustrations of people copulating on skate boards, bouncy balls, and wearing clown hats. I would not recommend this book on any level.
With reviews like that, it’s going straight onto my wishlist.
Today, you may notice people wandering about with strange smudgy marks on their foreheads. You may also know that today is my birthday. And you might be wondering if those two observations are related.
Yes, they are. I traditionally celebrate my birthday by punching god-botherers in the forehead. Some of those people may have been victims of my fists, and are badly bruised. Others, more cunning, put the marks on their heads so that when they see me coming, they can say, “Hey, you already got me!” Either way, the appropriate remark to individuals you see with these smudges is, “I’m sorry, I hope you get better soon.”
There are alternative explanations. You can also say “Praise Odin” to them, and point them at the nearest monastery to sack and burn. Another possibility is that they’re credulous, brain-damaged nitwits, but I think it’s kinder to pretend they’ve been punched in the head by PZ Myers. It’s a gentler, more accommodating belief, and as we all know, tone and sucking up is so important.
