Ban this course!

The indecency in public schools is out of control:

“…during school hours in a classroom with an experienced teacher present, two sixth graders completed the act of intercourse…at least ten students were witnesses. No disciplinary actions were taken against the teacher… All teachers were told to keep quiet.”

The class that incited these students to publicly engage in illicit sex acts? Shop. Those mortise and tenon joints sure are provocative, and I guess the shop teacher wasn’t named Mr Adler.

(Yes, I know this is a serious issue, but I think the school was right to avoid addressing it — although they certainly should discourage and stop such inappropriate distractions — and what they should have done, and I hope they did, was to inform the parents and let them deal with the behavior.)

Fascinating letter to the editor

Comments on this one are a little superfluous, don’t you think? Alice says it all.

It’s time to stomp out atheists in America.  The majority of Americans would love to see atheists kicked out of America.  If you don’t believe in God, then get out of this country.

The United States is based on having freedom of religion, speech, etc., which means you can believe in God any way you want (Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, etc.), but you must believe.

I don’t recall freedom of religion meaning no religion. Our currency even says, “In God We Trust.” So, to all the atheists in America: Get off of our country.

Atheists have caused the ruin of this great nation by taking prayer out of our schools and being able to practice what can only be called evil.  I don’t care if they have never committed a crime, atheists are the reason crime is rampant.

Alice Shannon
Soldotna

What is science?

Vox Day asks a question: what is my definition of science? It’s a bit weird coming from him — he is not usually that lucid or civil — but OK, I’ll take it seriously.

Unfortunately, “science” is one of those hugely polymorphic terms that carries a tremendous amount of baggage, and any one definition is going to be inadequate. This is one of those subjects where a smart philosopher (Janet? John?) could go on at amazing length, and even then, everyone will argue with their summaries. I’ll just charge in, though, and give a couple of shorter definitions off the top of my head.

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It’s like learning that the underpants gnomes are actually making money

There’s money to be made in crap. Who would have thought MySpace was so profitable?

Rupert Murdoch has told an industry conference that MySpace make $25 million per month on advertising.”It’s extraordinary, the advertising has gone from basically nothing to, on a net basis, $25 million a month and growing every month — almost 30 per cent every quarter,” he told the Digital Hollywood conference, in New York.

There’s an evolutionary lesson in there, I think. The part of MySpace that represents what people want and value — the social networking, the easy customization — is a tiny fraction of what is displayed on a MySpace page. Most of what I see over there are ads being pushed at me aggressively; simply logging in presents me with half the screen filled with a scantily clad woman promising me a date. Just looking at the ugly, clumsy pages and the hideous, distracting clutter and noise, you’d think that no one in their right mind would want to use the thing—but obviously, it’s thriving.

Too bad it’s throwing more money into the pockets of the wretched Rupert Murdoch.

Of course this is the result I’d get

My score on The Cowboy-Ninja-Pirate-Knight Test:

a Pirate
(You scored 3 Honor, 4 Justice, 4 Adventure, and 13 Individuality!)

i-1d56d62c1b18fa022abec60ba38d707b-pirate.jpg

Arr matey. You may believe in honor, and justice, and you certainly have a sense of adventure. But mostly, you play by your own rules. Your code is your own and you are flexible in most situations. Dress flamboyant and look into a parrot. I think you’ll do fine.

Link: The Cowboy-Ninja-Pirate-Knight Test
(OkCupid Free Online Dating)

(via Cowboy Tikistitch)

The Geopolitical Strategist

I received a strange letter in the mail (the kind with paper and stamps, not the electronic kind) today. It was nicely and formally printed, and looked like something professional…but as soon as I read the first sentence I knew it was junk.

Evolution is defined by the Encyclopædia Britannica (CD Rom Version, 2002) as the process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state [this process is also called growth].

That’s a humdinger of an opening line; it’s completely wrong, of course. The silly book seems to have confused “evolution” with “progress”, since evolution makes no presupposition of a direction in the process. But wait! That’s only the beginning! As I read the rest of the first page, it was incredibly inane…but when I turned the page, it got even worse.

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Are you wiki’d out yet?

Here’s another special interest wiki: Athpedia, die säkulare Enzyklopädie. It’s a wikipedia for secularists, and as you might guess from the description, it’s so far all in German. There isn’t a lot there right now, so make it grow; a moment’s browse with my slow and clumsy recollections of German suggests that it isn’t a bad site—at least the articles don’t read like they were scribbled by third-graders and cribbed from some bottom-tier homeschool rag—but it clearly needs more contributors. More English would be helpful, too, but I mustn’t be a language imperialist, I know.