While searching online for a book as part of my research for my own book, I stumbled across another one with the provocative title How to Be an Atheist: Why Many Skeptics Aren’t Skeptical Enough by someone named Mitch Stokes whom I had not heard of before. But what struck me was that a book that, at least from its title, purported to be advocating atheism advertised a foreword by J. P. Moreland, someone whom I had heard about.
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I have expressed before my distaste when journalists use the phrase ‘moderate’ Republicans because there seems to be no effort to define what that category consists of that distinguishes them from the other Republicans in Congress, all of whom seem to be intent on pushing a hard-right pro-wealthy, anti-women, anti-gay, anti-minority, anti-science agenda.
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Given their recent successes in the courts in getting ceremonial prayer allowed at town council and school board meetings, we see that religious people have been emboldened to try things that have already been deemed unconstitutional, such as Bible classes in schools. In 1948, Vashti McCollum fought her local school district in Illinois when it required her young son Jim to attend Bible classes in school during regular school hours. The teachers would try to pressure the young child to attend the classes despite the wishes of his freethinking parents.
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Advertisers are fleeing Bill O’Reilly’s show following reports of massive settlements with women who claim he harassed them. Over 50 sponsors have fled and a recent show had just seven advertisers and ended abruptly 15 minutes early, maybe because there were not enough ads to fill the time, though one would have thought that he would have been able to bloviate to fill that time since talking is what he does best.
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When reports emerged on April 4 of what seems like a ghastly tragedy in Idlib, Syria, the key questions should have been: What exactly happened? Who were the victims? Who were the perpetrators? What was their motive? Was it a deliberate and targeted attack on the victims or had something gone badly awry? What should be the appropriate response? As with any investigation of deliberate killings, identifying means, opportunity, and motive become paramount. Means and opportunity exist for a wide variety of agents in the region, including the Syrian government and the ISIS-affiliated the rebels fighting against them. That leaves motive as a key discriminant.
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Much of the time, synchronized swimmers are under water and upside down. So what happens if you film them underwater and then invert the film? You get a strangely weird result.
The Intercept website was started by Glenn Greenwald and others following the whistleblowing by Edward Snowden. It has a page where they encourage other whistleblowers to come forward but also provides them with suggestions as to how to do it while minimizing the risks of exposure.
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As the Trump administration lurches from one awful policy to another, some are hoping that his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner will serve as some kind of moderating force. It is incredible that we have arrived at this stage of politics, a reversion to a form of medieval fiefdom where people who have no claims to any expertise whatsoever are now in positions of great influence merely because they are family members of the ‘ruler’ and thus have his ear.
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I have written before about the problematic nature of romantic relationships between college faculty and students. The college campus is a place of great ambiguity when it comes to these kinds of relationships. Since college students are adults who also have more freedom than secondary school students, it lacks the clear boundaries that one finds in secondary schools. Since the college classroom is not a workplace, it lacks some of the rules that have become the norm there.
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