The Eternal Gaijin

Or not ... Just another great moment in Canadian relations....

What can you not prove with a little mathishness? A good question. About a month ago there was a little coverage about a pharmacy put up its online calculator that tells you the number of indirect sexual partners you've had. What is an indirect sexual partner it's someone you've not had sex with but one of your sexual partners has. Which basically is that old urban myth twaddle about you're not just sleeping with someone, you're sleeping with everyone they've ever slept with, only with a place to modify the numbers. People take some stuff really seriously. Like these guys: The Independent . The Christian Institute . This dude . And at the risk of channeling Ben Goldacre form a moment, the common factor is that they lazily breathlessly copied the press release without even so much as a challenge to the basic assumption or the execution. So let's whinge for a moment. First execution. You enter your current age, number of sexual partners and your gender. Then y...

A justice in the US regularly quizzes couples to make sure they aren’t mixed race before issuing marriage license; if they are they don’t get one. Fuckin’ fuck. In 2009 how the fuck does this happen? And in a stunning show of cognitive dissonance these two quotes : Keith Bardwell, of Tangipahoa Parish in Louisiana, denied racism but said mixed-race children were not readily accepted by their parents' communities. snip… He said: "I try to treat everyone equally." I had a great-uncle who said this sort of thing: "There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage," he said "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it." I was 10 and though it was a specious argument. But he was old and from a different time…And he was a sign painter, not a fucking justice. This guy should be run out of town, but it being Louisiana he’ll end up with a memorial plaque or something.

The universe is not "fine-tuned" Not really sure what else to say about this. Clear and well presented.

That’s cause they’re different fucking words. Now get on with the vaccinations .

Nope . Continue your day.

As long as I've been reading Bad Astronomy I thought I'd seen most of the arguments against the moon landing. They're nuts but they're based on some misperceived reality. Through Steven Novella of the NESS , I learned of a whole new form of crazy: Man On The Moon–A Colossal Hoax that Cost Billions of Dollars | Hare Krishna Community Although many believe man first reached the moon in July, 1969, we have information from a very reliable source, the Sanskrit Vedic scriptures, that the astronauts never actually went to the moon. The manned moon landing was a colossal hoax. Now I know what you're thinking - that makes sense. How do we know that the books tell the truth? Because  they're perfect. And they're perfect because they tell the truth...You know the drill. And they lead to the inevitable conclusion: Despite the tremendous volume of propaganda proclaiming the “conquest of outer space,” we have information from a very reliable source, the Sanskrit Vedic sc...

Rick Mercer's rants on politics and foolishness are one of the things I miss about living overseas for most of my adult life. I'm sure they're not as good as they used to be. Nothing is. My, don't the police look young these days. But in this article he nails why Canadians are ceasing to give a shit about national level politics. Why no one wants an election - The Globe and Mail

Religiousil You may inconsistently feel the need both oppose health care reform and to berate others about charity and human decency.

It's not just some place I've been hiding for a couple of weeks while we're trying to sell the flat and move a little further into the 'burbs. No, it's also the subject of a good Radio 4 programme that's still available on iPlayer that goes a nice way to setting the record straight. BBC NEWS | UK | Bermuda Triangle plane mystery 'solved'

There is just almost nothing I can say that covers my feelings at reading these things. I don't think I can plumb the depths that this pulls the soul down to. The fact that a) someone, anyone, can defend torture b) there exists no political will to do anything about it and, not least, c) that it could happen in a modern first world democracy, such as the US just beggars belief. There are others with me on this: A reminder that torture is bad : The Uncredible Hallq What every American should be made to learn about the IG Torture Report - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com Thomas Paine v. the Right's torture defenders - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com America Lost

How about some fucking handrails here and there. Like right next to the gaping chasms you have all throughout the inside of your Death Star? Star Wars Design Flaws The new Star Trek movie, good as it was, has the same huge-drop-no-handrail problem.

This is like a catalog of unalloyed stupidity . I really couldn't want for more. HT to Dispatches .

BBC NEWS | UK | Embassies plead 'big issues only' British Embassies are pleading to Brits abroad to take them more seriously. Or at least try a tiny, tiny amount to sort their own asses out before calling the mission. The problem is Brits asking stupid, irrelevant or outrageous things of staff and calling it an emergency. When you look at the list of calls in this article remember one thing: your friendly gaijin here has heard things you people wouldn't believe. That list is the very least of the calls. They couldn't print the stupid ones because you wouldn't believe them.

Somebody finally said it. TheStar.com | Opinion | Harper consistently embarrasses Canada abroad Well in the MSM, anyway. These guys have been on it the whole time.

I currently live in the country that coined the phrase "cleanliness is next to godliness." Coining a phrase and living up to it are two different things. Shower-shy Britons prove a washout - Home News, UK - The Independent Britons do not scrub up well with two in five men and a third of women failing to have a daily shower, research revealed today. Just over one in ten (11.5%) people in the UK only have a proper wash once or twice a week, a poll for tissue product manufacturer SCA found. This puts us behind France, Mexico and Australia in the cleanliness stakes. When my father was with the Mounties a group of British police came over for one or another training course. During the lunch break they would remove their ties, play whatever sport fits into the story and available equipment at N Division then put their ties back on and head back for the afternoon session. My father was stunned by this, not least because he could see the faces of the people unfortunate enough to be ...

Today's lesson: when in doubt, vet who you sponsor a bit more thoroughly. Tim Hortons backs out of anti-gay marriage event Tim Hortons has reversed its decision to sponsor a Rhode Island rally held by a U.S. group that opposes same-sex marriage, after encountering fierce criticism for the move. The August 16 event, organized by the National Organization for Marriage, is billed as a "Celebrate Marriage & Family Day." Held in suburban Providence, the rally is to include speeches, a cookout and a ceremony in which married couples are invited to renew their vows. The National Organization for Marriage is a non-profit organization "with a mission to protect marriage and the faith communities that sustain it," according to its website. It was formed in 2007 "in response to the growing need for an organized opposition to same-sex marriage in state legislatures," the site says. when criticized, they looked into who they were getting involved with and walke...

First the bullshit. Then the smackdown.

I haven't mentioned our favourite Flintstone Paleontologist, Kent Hovind, recently; not least because he's serving years and years in PMITA prison for tax evasion. Well, small update. Looks like he's still got a few debts to the government that he needs to pay off, in addition to that big ol' debt to society. So resolving those monetary type debts means that his Dinosaur Adventure Land has been seized. As I keep saying: couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Bye Bye, Dinosaur Adventure Land | Friendly Atheist by @hemantmehta Update: This video from the Colbert Report. The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Yahweh or No Way - Dinosaur Adventure Land & Black Market Kidneys www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Meryl Streep Related articles by Zemanta: Dinosaur creationist theme park seized by government Church, state and dinosaur dollars Even More Christianity Creationist Dinosaur Adventure park being seized over tax fraud

We’ve been back in the UK for a while now. And for some reason the confluence of Canadian and British politics has shined fairly bright to me. The overall story arcs have followed similar tracks, though the Dominion has pulled slightly ahead this lap. Years ago, there was a Tory government in power that brought in massive changes, privatized several major publicly held companies, pushed the free market as a panacea for everything, cosied too tightly to the US, and truly wore out their welcome. This Tory leader overstayed their time and got dumped by their party. Mulroney walked before being pushed; Thatcher was pushed but when she walked away her cabinet was able to retrieve their knives. The replacement was a placeholder and little more. Their interregnum time may or may not have had its successes but at the election they managed to take their multi-majority winning party and use their guile to begin “the Wilderness Years.” Campbell and Major disappear. Red signs go up everywher...

It's a weird thing watching TV in Japan. There's the endless tarento (talents) who may or may not be the most ironically named thing since the UK got a newspaper called the Sun. Then there are the endless repetitive dramas, often set in a traditional neighborhood, with their derivative story lines. And then there are the commercials. But, sometimes you see a commercial that hits a new low for somebody's career. Like these ones . The only one missing is Jodi Foster's Mt Rainier coffee commercial.

What is it with the asshats who come up with these policies? Twenty years later they're always sorry they did the thing that everyone else knew wasn't even going to work. Hit & Run > "Legal Age 21 has not worked." Yes, we know. - Reason Magazine "Legal Age 21 has not worked." Of course, any 20-year-old could, and probably would, tell you that. But the quote in question was written by Dr. Morris Chafet, a psychiatrist who served on the presidential committee that pushed to have the legal drinking age raised to 21. That push paid off on July 17, 1984, when President Ronald Reagan signed the new drinking age into law.

Beware the spinal trap This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association. Click here for the latest news about the case from Sense About Science or view their Twitter updates here. Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results – and can even be lethal, says Simon Singh. You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body. In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally s...

Bloggers around the world are reprinting Simon Singh’s artical critical of the BCA . Support you local Simon Singh.

I like the fact that the Guardian just thinks this shit is crazy. In this Republican dystopia, Obama's not even a citizen | Michael Tomasky | Comment is free | The Guardian Last Friday, Orrin Hatch, the veteran Republican senator from Utah, announced that he would vote against the confirmation to our supreme court of judge Sonia Sotomayor. Hatch is a devout conservative, and Sotomayor seems pretty liberal, so on the face of it, you might say, so what? Here's what. ... Hatch's decision reflects the degree to which, during the Obama era, American conservatism – already fiercely ideological and obstructionist, operating according to sets of "facts" produced and paid for by oil companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers and other corporate interests – has contrived to go completely barmy. Birthers embarrass the Republicans | Thomas Noyes | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Not all terror threats are created equal. This we know from the right wing whack-a-doodle blow up some months back about Bush-era created, Obama-era published report on right wing extremist groups. We know this from the easy time the media have given the re-born militia movement in the States. And we know this from the actual use of terror laws in the UK, where the more Caucasian, and thus more acceptable, face of terrorism is handled with kid gloves and reduced charges. Our double standards on terrorism | Mehdi Hasan | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk The Guardian's Slow Torture series rightly highlights the government's powers to impose a wide array of illiberal and often draconian restrictions on Muslim terror suspects, without a proper trial and often on the basis of secret evidence. In contrast however, there is a growing group of terrorists who are treated with kid gloves by the British state and by the media – white terrorists of the far-right, neo-Nazi variety.

Commissioner who refused to marry same-sex couple loses appeal And well he fucking should. Now do your job or find another fucking one...

CTV Ottawa- CTV Ottawa legend Les Lye passes away - CTV News, Shows and Sports -- Canadian Television Actor and broadcaster Les Lye passed away on Tuesday at the age of 84. Born in Toronto, Lye came to Ottawa after graduating from Lorne Greene's Academy of Radio Arts in 1948. He joined CFRA Radio, where he served listeners for more than a decade. It was at CFRA, that he worked with Rich Little and they collaborated on a comedy album, 'My Fellow Canadians' - a spoof of the Diefenbaker years.

toothpastefordinner.com

Hit & Run > Congressman Says 'Super-Marijuana' Gives You the Munchies for Brains - Reason Magazine

Really, does it come as a surprise that the police might not 'properly' use the extensive, pervasive, intrusive CCTV systems in the UK? BBC NEWS | UK | Police 'not using CCTV properly' The police are failing to use CCTV to catch as many criminals as they could, a senior officer has told the BBC Just for a perspective, here's a link telling you about CCTV density. CCTV density-maps of the UK - Boing Boing

Even mathematicians run scared of our libel laws now | Nick Cohen | Comment is free | The Observer "Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument: but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it," said John Stuart Mill. But the average British judge does not believe that free debate in the marketplace of the mind will expose "wrong opinions and practices". He believes they must be suppressed because he retains the fear of the old European aristocracy that the masses cannot see through dangerous ideas and bad arguments. To speak plainly, if I may, the judiciary has an elite suspicion of democracy and the price of its elitism is becoming too high for this impoverished country to bear.

Kent Police clamp down on tall photographers • The Register Kent Police set a new legal precedent last week, as they arrested a photographer on the unusual grounds of "being too tall". What is making this ridiculous in the extreme is the fact that there's never a suspicious action or any other form of reasonable cause. Worse yet, the police overstep the very guidelines that keep getting quoted when the apologies come. Related articles by Zemanta: Amateur UK photographer arrested for "prevention of terrorism"

Birther follow-up at Canadian Cynic .

They've found a good formula -- Fucktard + lawyer = Bullshit notoriety. Soldier: Obama not U.S. born, can't send me to Afghanistan - Politics AP - MiamiHerald.com

If you haven’t heard of the recent child abuse reports in Ireland, hit the Googles. We’ll wait. Pretty fucked up, eh? It’s a mess. On the other side, it seems that there is a forming backlash against the power of the Catholic Church in Ireland. Part of this backlash is a movement to leave the church . It seems that this is belied a bit by the recent passing of the Blasphemy Law in Ireland. We can take it as read that this is a massive step backward from freedom of expression. And all for a victimless crime. The nice thing is that there is a backlash against this as well with commentary and with Irish atheists promising to test the law out. It boggles the mind that there’s even a debate about this sort of crap.

Warning, uses the word horseshit a lot.

Ah, the tanuki , that strange little creature you see on shelves, in gardens and standing on their own balls outside an izakaya. What are they like ? But more importantly, what can they do with their ballsacks ? A lot, apparently.

Okay, I swear a lot. Which is why I'm glad to see this headline in the Independent . Swearing outbursts 'can lessen pain' - Science, News - The Independent There could be a good reason why hitting one's thumb with a hammer is likely to unleash the Gordon Ramsey within, say scientists. F-word outbursts, like those the celebrity chef is famous for, can actually lessen pain, according to the researchers. Swearing may be a good recipe for coping with physical knocks, their study suggests. Scientists at Keele University in Staffordshire wondered whether swearing might have a psychological effect that increased pain tolerance. To test the theory they asked 66 volunteer students to submerge a hand into a tube of iced water for as long as possible while repeating a swear word of their choice. That's all fine and well except for this problem with accuracy between the Independent and the Guardian. (HT to Lay Scientist ) Revealed: Brown's secret plan to cut Afghanistan for...

Speaking of the BNP, Jeremy Hardy said that you don't want to give them the oxygen of publicity, nor do you want to give them the oxygen of oxygen. This is why.

Steorn perpetual motion machine, amazingly, may not work: independent jury resigns – Bad Science

London bombings memorial unveiled No further comment needed.

Delivered with a British accent it sounds even more authoritative.

Tim Hortons may be coming home .

Weird. Apparently all the years of army worship in the States has reached over and seeped into the religious community. Behold, the 21st century version of the Salvation Army .

Somewhere along the way I stumbled on this old article at Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes and looked though it. One thing struck me - Chinese characters prove the Bible. Sure. But, as a former Japan resident, I feel I can comment on this and I will. Bullshit! To elaborate. Some whack-a-doodle decided that he as a non-Chinese/Japanese speaker could prove that the elements that make up kanji actually encode Bible stories. I, as a Japanese speaker, differ. Let's check some of the examples that Bing McGhandi cites. 沿 - The whack-a-doodle says this character means ' hand down ,' and is made up of water , the number 8 and mouth . In Japanese, it is pronounced so(u) and means ' follow along (side) ' or ' abut against .' In Chinese, (checks dictionary) it is pronounced yan and means much the same as it does in Japanese. So no points for meaning. What about the components, known as - follow the jargon here- radicals ? Well, buddy gets half points. This character ...

Um, yes. You claim that Leonardo Da Vinci created the Turin Shroud and made the case recently in the TV documentary . Could you give an explanation of why the Shroud has known, documented provenance from 1357 , where Da Vinci was born in 1452 ?

Homeopathic A&E That Mitchell and Webb Look: Homeopathic A&E

after you try some of that delicious, delicious cock . HT to Rebecca Watson . (if memory serves.)

Facts that cannot be supported sprout up everywhere. Sometimes they get debunked .

The current meme around these parts is to say that 1 in 20 drinks in bars is spiked with something or other, leading Andy Parsons to opine that it's a great excuse for bunking off work the next day as statistically speaking one of your drinks must have been spiked. But, like the pissy peanuts in a bar studies, no one knows where these numbers come from. They just seem to have shown up one day in the manner of a stray cat and now you have to feed it and acknowledge it as your own. And then some one checks it out. Drink spiking a myth: WA study : thewest.com.au Drink spiking is largely a myth and far more likely to be an excuse young women use after they become heavily intoxicated, according to WA research. A Perth study of suspected drink spiking victims found claims of being given sedatives or illicit drugs without consent are exaggerated and that alcohol is often the real culprit. [snip] On average, people in the study had a blood alcohol concentration of .096 and reported havin...

Flowcharting the gay marriage debate - Boing Boing

Your complete guide to obfuscating weaseldom. Hullabaloo

Just go read this . Too much panic on the dance floor if you ask me.

Google has been getting itself in occasional trouble a lot with Google Maps. First there were the nude sunbathers that obsessives found in various back yards. At my lowest points, I've never had the kind of free time that would allow me to search every green space on the planet in search of low-res boobs. Then came StreetView with its car-mounted cameras zooming around getting photos of men walking in and out of Soho sex shops or chundering up their last few pints outside the pub. With Google around it's coming to the point where you can't have a balcony wank any more without people looking in. The latest controversy, or controversy as the English would pronounce it, has to do with Japan. A while back Google allowed some historical maps to be layered over GoogleEarth, normally just a tool for discovering if your parked car is visible from orbit. The Japanese ones could be layered over Kyoto, Tokyo and Osaka. For me it's a fun way of seeing how neighbourhoods have change...

Bogus , dude.

HT to Canadian Cynic

At last, the internet can give you the answer:

And Simon Singh . Bogus, dude.

Several years ago during my university days, a lady I knew got married and seemed happy, at least in the short term. Then my girlfriend and I didn't see her for some amount of time. I ran into her waiting for an OCTranspo bus and we got to talking. In the few months she'd been married to her husband, they'd come to a crisis of some form or another. She got out of it by becoming a born-again christian. Born-agains were a fairly rare species in Canada in those days. We re-established contact and the four of us got together a couple of times, but she'd become so annoying that we couldn't spend any time around her. Her personality had disappeared, replaced by platitudes and doctrine. Fast forward to a few weeks ago. The Athiest Bus campaign had been going on here for a little while. Most people didn't seem to notice outside some mild interest in the media. In one of our local pubs I spotted a couple with a button from the campaign. We had a pleasant chat and the wom...

Good analysis of Darth Cheney and his inability to STFU and enjoy his Haliburton millions. Foreign Policy In Focus | World Beat | Vol. 4, No. 21 | Nightmare on Cheney Street Horror movies usually follow the same script. The monster — whether genetically modified, abused as a child, or flown in from Alpha Centauri — picks off the frightened teenagers one by one. After many thrills and chills, the hero drives a stake through the heart of the beast. Finally, just as we're finishing off the last of our popcorn in relief, the not-quite-dead monster makes one last attempt to dispatch the hero. It fails, but not before we've dumped popcorn all over our laps. If Wes Craven decided to make a horror movie out of the last year of U.S. politics, he would definitely cast Dick Cheney as the monster that can't be silenced. The former vice president is Leatherface, Jason, and Freddie Krueger all rolled into one: lawless, methodical, and unpredictable with firearms.

Thunderf00t strikes again. H/T Too Many Tribbles Why do people laugh at creationists? (part 30)

Every so often my mum sends me an email giving me some kind of scare about health or the Moozlims ! or some fucking thing. In return I send her a link to Snopes or Just Fucking Google It . There is a dearth of facts and truthful reflection on both sides of the aisle these days. As you may have notices when checking your blogs or email. (I will say this, in the last several years the right has had a more tenuous grip on the truth) Everyone who has something to sell or shill is prone to alarmist proclomations and those whose bias it confirms are happy enough to take it as fact. It behooves all of us to take it easy and figure out what is true and false before we jump all over something. Otherwise we're all going to run ourselves into the ground. JAMES EVANS: Truth essential element | montgomeryadvertiser.com | Montgomery Advertiser Recently I received an e-mail message warning me about a dangerous and vile movie called "Corpus Christi." According to the message, this movie ...

A nice CNN video between a drug warrior and drug realist. Milk: The Gateway Drug - Boing Boing It does make you ask the following questions: Have you ever met a drug user who didn't drink alcohol? How many drug users started up by smoking? Why a re those two gateway drugs illegal? Awaiting your answers.

I give you: Tucker Carlson's right-wing HuffPo killer. "Tell the truth, and be accurate," Carlson said of the venture's goals. "It's very important to live up to the basic standards of journalism." I wish you luck, Tuck. With a mission statement like that how could you not live up to it?

New Humanist reports that New Scientist has reinstated the article it pulled down previously. Good for them. BTW, support your local Simon Singh .

they've already come after geology and biology, now they're coming after astronomy. Texas is as fucked as the little guy in the prison shower. 'Texas is only 6000 years old' by Phil Plait - BadAstronomyBlog - RichardDawkins.net

Mr Magoo could have seen this one coming from the horizon. If you give the police, or anyone if we're honest, the power to stop and search without cause, warrent or reprisals they're going to use it. BBC NEWS | UK | England | London | Capital sees rise in terror stops Somebody in London is stopped and searched every three minutes, according to new figures obtained by BBC London. The Metropolitan Police used section 44 of the Terrorism Act more than 170,000 times in 2008 to stop people in London. The best parts? That compares to almost 72,000 anti-terror stop and searches carried out in the previous year. and Of all the stops last year, only 65 led to arrests for terror offences, a success rate of just 0.035%. Related articles by Zemanta: London cops catch and search a potential terrorist every three minutes Police accused of abusing powers as antiterrorism stop and searches treble Two-thirds of UK terror arrests not charged Anti-terror case to be reviewed - BBC News

Oprah has jumped into bed with Jenny McCarthy. Let me rephrase that...nasty image. Oprah is now working with Jenny McCarthy to give her a platform to spout off on her anti-vaxx bullshit. It's nice to see someone stand up and call bullshit on that one. Why is Oprah Winfrey promoting vaccine skeptic Jenny McCarthy? - By Arthur Allen - Slate Magazine Celebrities take on all kinds of causes. They campaign for presidents, and they rally to save the women of Darfur and the hungry masses of Bangladesh and Africa. Some of these appearances may do some good, while others are merely benign grandstanding. But wealthy, toothsome, vivacious, and sexy Jenny McCarthy's impassioned campaign is actually harmful. Why? Because she is spreading dangerous misinformation—and that could bring some once-controlled diseases back into play. Slate will necessarily lose. It's Oprah, after all. We will all lose with them and with any of the brave who stand up to bullshit. But we'll lose bigger ...

Watch a guy avoid a question with all his heart and still get some praise for intellectual honesty. Chris Matthews 'Destroys' GOP Rep. Mike Pence On Evolution/Science Question HT to Canadian Cynic

SMAP are huge. SMAP are everywhere. SMAP are an entertainment industry. SMAP was, one of them anyway, wandering around drunk and naked in a park. Singer of Japanese pop band Smap arrested on suspicion of public indecency | World news | guardian.co.uk

Drug decriminalization has reared its head again. Hit & Run > Recently at Reason.tv: Glenn Greenwald on Civil Liberties, David Post on Jefferson's Moose, Matt Kibbe on Tea Parties - Reason Magazine

Comedians in the UK are a skeptical lot. It seems that the average comedian here is atheistic and enjoy showing their science and rationality chops. Marcus Brigstocke, Eddie Izzard, Robin Ince, Ricky Gervais all do routines you might want to swot up for. Below, Dara O'Brian gives it to homoeopathy and psychics. Look around for his "mixed marriage" routine. Dara OBriain Talks Funny 2008 Part [3/9]

If Atheists Ruled the World

BBC NEWS | England | Berkshire | Programme teaches pupils to think The headmaster of an independent school has employed a thinker-in-residence and a philosopher-in-residence to teach pupils "to think and reason". Dr Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington College in Crowthorne, Berkshire, believes the teaching of reasoning and philosophy is a "basic right". [snip] Pupils will learn how to construct arguments, understand reasoning and also be taught the basics of the philosophy of knowledge, as part of the programme involving teachers, parents and governors. It was prompted by Dr Seldon's concerns about the state of the national curriculum. "We have allowed ourselves to believe it is all about exams and testing," he said. "Education is about teaching the whole child and this involves being taught how to think and reason independently. This may be the most favourable thing I've seen start up in education in a long time. Here in the UK the entire fo...

House passes bill too gross to talk about - OregonLive.com The proposed new law nobody wants to talk about would make it a second degree sex abuse crime to propel "a dangerous substance at another person." That substance being semen or other bodily fluid flung out of sexual desire. Via Reason this is just another of those WTF moments I get when I read the InterToobz.

Mercilessly scrapped from Jack of Kent . The issue of the Tomlinson death at the G20 remains contentious here. The problem is that there aren't a lot of facts to go on -- and they keep changing. The basic outlines have more or less come out, with some extra facts floating around and some "facts" being endlessly hammered into you with dubious or no provenance. There is a pretty well established pattern to these events, though. Allegations emerge against the police. The police say that nothing out of the ordinary happened and everything was by the book. The police claim that there is no CCTV. The police claim the victim was at fault. A video emerges that that appears to incriminate the police The police blame the videographer for taking video. Public outcry leads to calls for a political inquiry. The inquiry finds no need for prosecution and while there were discrepancies in the police statements and outright fabrications, there is no need for further action. In the event o...

Bring Your Own Crazy .

No . Now get on with your life.

Cool results from an experiment. How Does the Brain Form Sentences?: Scientific American

It looks like Radio 4's "Thought for the Day" will now take advice and contributions from humanists. This has been a long standing chicken bone in the throat of UK humanists and atheists, but I just can't see the point.

Would this come across as racist?

It’s a trope that I hear repeated a lot – Americans love science. When this came up again and again during the panel discussions and presentations at TAM in Vegas back in June, it may have been Neil deGrasse-Tyson who held up his iPhone and declared it so. I commented to Friend DEG in a bit of a stage whisper, “They don’t love science; they love engineering.” And I think that this is crux of the problem plaguing skeptics in the States and all over the world. How do we reconcile the fact that people love science with the fact that they are reluctant to engage with it, to accept even its most well supported findings, avoid in droves learning anything about it, and reject without evidence any part of what makes them uncomfortable? People love gadgets. There’s no way to dispute that. From the iPone, iPod, and Blackberry to the netbook, X-Box, and DVD player people love stuff. We get DVDs for our cars, we text friends to meet at the pub, and we nuke ready meals in our microwaves. Do peo...

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Good News and Bad News in Texas And my favorite bit of stupidity from the whole thing: 12:41: McLeroy: "I disagree with all these experts. Somebody has to stand up to these experts. I don't know why they're doing it."

The Japanese scam called Wan-giri (from One and Cut ) has crossed the water according to the Ceeb. Basically you get a call that rings once then hangs up. You call back and get an outrageous charge on your phone bill for erotic call services. 'Missed call' scam could put erotic chat charges on your phone bill

The other day the Fora.tv daily podcast was Dinesh D’Souza . I should have deleted it right away. I’ve seen him in debates a few times and he gives me aneurysms. He tends to think that louder is more logical and his over-reach in crediting Christianity with everything good that’s ever come along. This particular eye crosser was a flagrant case of special pleading and conflations that left me wishing for a sprained nutsac to relieve the pain. The title was that D’Souza credited Christianity for India’s successes. Well listen to it for yourself. Some part of me just keeps saying what the fuck? One: How does this universal dignity of all men, white or brown, square up against the general pattern of history in India, or anywhere where the Portugese had a colony? Two: Flock. Really? People flocked to Christianity? Currently 2.3% of the Indian population is Christian.The three states with a Christian majority (Nagaland, Mizoram, and Meghalaya) are all Northeastern, and were neve...

I'm not entirely sure what I think of this: Debaptise Yourself! It seems like tacitly asking for the approval of a church and a god that you don't actually believe exists. As someone who was born and baptised as a Catholic, I can say from my own experience that it's something you can get over -- much as you would get over a cold. Removing yourself from baptismal records seems like allowing the church to which you won't submit to still have a hold over you. Still no harm, I just think it's a bit irrelevant. I certainly can't be arsed to trail myself all the way to Sydney to expunge myself from the records. More here if you're interested.