VOTE!

I'm coming out of hibernation here!

After a long period of inactivity (caused mainly by my new job and a general lack of time), I'm planning to return to blogging sporadically. Today was too important to pass up. 

VOTE.

ScienceDebate 2008 update

I just received this update from the ScienceDebate 2008 team:

...after declining our invitation to debate science in Pennsylvania, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton yesterday agreed to attend "The Compassion Forum," a forum of "wide-ranging and probing discussions of policies related to moral issues." CNN will serve as the exclusive broadcaster of the "presidential-candidate forum on faith, values and other current issues" at Messiah College near Harrisburg, Pa., April 13 at 8 p.m. You can read more here.

Perhaps among the moral issues discussed should be whether they have a moral obligation to more fully engage on science issues, since the future viability of the planet may hang in the balance, for starters. Is there a larger moral imperative? How about the future economic health of the United States and the prosperity of its families? Science & engineering have driven half our economic growth since WWII, yet but 2010 if trends hold 90% of all scientists and engineers will live in Asia. Then there are the moral questions surrounding the health of our families with stem cell research, genomics, health insurance policy, and medical research. There's biodiversity loss and the health of the oceans and the morality of balancing destruction of species against human needs and expenses, there's population and development and clean energy research, there's food supply and GMO crops and educating children to compete in the new global economy and securing competitive jobs. Science issues are moral issues.

I would encourage you to write letters to the editor, emails to the campaigns, and blog postings pointing this out. And if you can, support our ongoing effort to turn this country around.

I second these comments - I find it incredibly disturbing that the candidates are more than happy to debate their relative positions on fairy tales, yet refuse to engage the public in meaningful debate on the future of the country's pre-eminent position in science and technology, which will be critical as we move deeper into the new century.

Sign me up!

I know this is an April Fool's joke, but a part of me would love for this to be real.Where do I sign up?

Stupid AND Poor.

Here's something interesting. Religious people, on average, are less wealthy than non-religious folks. Probably has something to do with them not being as smart as rational people, I would have thought. Let's face it, if you believe in a magical malevolent sky fairy, I'm sure it's pretty easy to be taken in by pretty much any old scam, I would think.

The study examines why conservative Protestants are dramatically overrepresented at the bottom of the U.S. wealth distribution and concludes that the cultural understandings that accompany conservative Protestant beliefs influence wealth ownership directly and indirectly.

But there is a reason for it, it seems. According to Lisa A. Keister, Duke professor of sociology and author of “Conservative Protestants and Wealth: How Religion Perpetuates Asset Poverty,” published in the March issue of the American Journal of Sociology,

The direct influence stems from conservative Protestants’ unique approach to finances -- in particular the belief that people are managers of God’s money and excess accumulation of wealth should be avoided.

In addition, conservative Protestants have tended to be less educated and have large families beginning at younger ages; and fewer conservative Protestant women work, all of which indirectly contribute to slow asset accumulation.

A couple of the reasons made me laugh out loud. Apparently, conservative christians tend to ask for

...Divine advice, advice from clergy and other religious advice about money and work...More conservative Protestants than other people surveyed are likely to pray about financial decisions, for example.

Clearly, it's not helping. Let's be real here, you can't trust your kid with a priest, so why would you trust him on money matters also? And, not surprisingly, low educational attainment is a factor too:

Education is one of the strongest predictors of wealth, and conservative Protestants have significantly less education than members of other faiths.

So there you go. Christians: Stupid and poor.

Late Easter....

I know it's a little late for Easter, but I thought since it was a festive time, I'd add a few quotes from George Carlin (courtesy of the "Orgy of George" desk calendar for last weekend):

I have as much authority as the pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it

Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Billy Graham will lead a nationwide prayer vigil and ask God to do something about America's moral climate. God will promptly strike all three of them dead.

(Note - Jerry met his maker, or not, depending on your viewpoint, last year)

Religion at work.

According to CNN, religion in the workplace is on the rise:

Religion, like sex and politics, once was considered inappropriate watercooler talk. Not anymore. Prayer sessions, religious diversity groups and chaplains..., along with rabbis and imams, have become more common across corporate America in the past decade.

This makes no sense. Work is for, well, work and religion is for Sundays. Please keep the two separate. I may just have to start a pink unicorn or yellow bunny (appropriate for Easter) worship group just to keep things fair. I like the last quote though:

There are more places to pray in America than (there are) pizza parlors. Go to them.

Religion, Obama and McCain

Religion is once again rearing it's ugly head in American politics. Barack Obama has been forced to distance himself from the words of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright. It's possible that it may be enough of a "scandal" to ensure Hillary Clinton's victory in the democratic race for President. And that's sad.

The culture here in the US is one where even the slightest whiff of scandal can drag down even the best candidates. We have to stop focusing on minor issues - here, it's what someone close to a campaign (not the candidate, note) said a few years ago that is controversial. We need to be listening to the candidate's views on the big issues of the day - the economy, the war for example, rather than the scandal of the day.

It's worth noting that associating with anyone religious can get you into this kind of trouble. If it's not Obama, it's McCain with John Hagee, who has preached that Hurricane Katrina was the result of God's wrath against gay people, and that he's happy about the Iraq war because it will hasten Armageddon. And McCain is "proud" to have his support.

Candidates are caught in a quandary. They need to pander to the religious nuts, but come off just looking stupid. They have to decide whether stupidity will get them more votes than rationalism. Unfortunately, it looks like it does.

Talk Like a Physicist Day

Who knew?

Today is Talk Like a Physicist Day.

It's also Einstein's Birthday

Oh! and International Pi Day.

Enjoy!

Right, I'm off to go do some physicsy things, like sending streams of electrons through cyberspace.

Teh Stupid - it's spreading!

...let us count the states where teh stupid is spreading....

• Florida (although we won a battle there, there's still unrest amongst the nuts)
• Texas (again, one battle won, but it's certainly not the war)
• New Mexico: "Academic Freedom" which is defined as teaching anything but the facts of evolution. Of course, academic freedom doesn't extend to creation myths beyond the bible.
  
• Oklahoma: An "Academic Freedom" bill that would protect students who give answers based on their religious beliefs, and not the facts:

  Students may be evaluated based upon their understanding of course materials, but no student, in any public school shall be penalized in any way because the student may subscribe to a particular position on scientific views.

  At least there are some in Oklahoma who are vehemently opposed -from the Edmond Sun:

  On Monday the Oklahoma House of Representatives Common Education Committee took direct aim at the integrity of science education in Oklahoma’s public schools, and thereby threatened the economic prosperity that Oklahoma so desperately needs. Intelligent Design is a false theory. It contains no testable hypotheses; it has proposed none. Intelligent Design is not science, and teachers who propose it to their students as science, and as a legitimate alternative to evolution, are violating the sacred trust they have with society, with their employers, with their students, and with themselves to practice academic responsibility, that all important correlate of academic freedom.

• Delaware: This story is incredible - I can't believe school board members are this backward. Here's a quote:

  During the meeting, Doe said, "a guy stood up and said the last one to oppose school prayer was [atheist leader] Madalyn Murray O'Hair and she disappeared never to be seen again." (O'Hair was abducted and murdered). Hearing that, Doe said, "sent chills down my spine. But people laughed, and they hooted and hollered, and applauded this guy" Doe said, adding, "He used to be a school board member."

• Minnesota: Another "academic freedom" bill that's anything but.
  

Just keeping track. I'll keep adding to the list. Note that this is just in the last couple of weeks - I'm sure there's more insanity out there. Let me know if you spot anything.

7 More Deadly sins.

OK - let's see what the Catholic Church has come up with to add to the list of the worst things possible:

“You offend God not only by stealing, blaspheming or coveting your neighbour’s wife, but also by ruining the environment, carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos,” he said.

Bishop Girotti said that mortal sins also included taking or dealing in drugs, and social injustice which caused poverty or “the excessive accumulation of wealth by a few”.

He said that two mortal sins which continued to preoccupy the Vatican were abortion, which offended “the dignity and rights of women”, and paedophilia, which had even infected the clergy itself and so had exposed the “human and institutional fragility of the Church”.

The mass media had “blown up” the issue “to discredit the Church”, but the Church itself was taking steps to deal with it.

Alrighty then. So we've got:

1) Ruining the Environment (Don't litter!)
2) Running morally debatable scientific experiments (Nanotechnologists - watch out!)
3) Messing with DNA (that's just too sciency, and science is bad)
4) Taking drugs (aspirin excepted, I assume)
5) Causing poverty or getting rich (er...isn't the church one of the wealthiest organizations on the planet? And, I thought avarice was covered already)
6) Abortion
7) Pedophilia (although the media has blown up the issue of clergy sex abuse, apparently.)

The Catholic Church - breaking its own rules since 64AD

Seems to me to be a rather ad hoc list (and just the teensiest bit hypocritical), like they came up with it sitting round in Starbucks one Friday afternoon. I would have thought they could have come up with a couple hundred more if they were really trying. How did they come up with the list? Who voted? Which sins didn't make the cut? Staring at computer porn maybe? Listening to Marilyn Manson? I can just imagine the debate in the Vatican "....well, his music is pretty nasty, but I just love the makeup!"

The Pope also complained that an increasing number of people in the secularised West were “making do without God”.

...and quite happily too, I might add.

Newsflash: Earth Not 6000 Years Old!

This may come as a bit of a surprise to the Young Earth Creationists out there, but we have a pretty good handle on the age of the universe, and it's not 6,000 years old. Nope. It's 13.73 billion years old, give or take 120 million years.

It's the 120 million number that amazes me - we know the age of the universe to fantastic accuracy. What's more, we also know the age of the Universe when recombination occurred to within 3,100 years ( Recombination happened when electrons were first able to be captured by protons, forming neutral hydrogen for the first time after the big bang) just 375,938 years after the big bang.

How do we know this much cool stuff? It's all in the five year report of NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), measuring the Cosmic Microwave Background - the photons that are left over from the big bang. Phil Plait has an excellent overview of the process:

It’s those photons WMAP sees. After 13.7 billion years, the expansion of the Universe has cooled the light, stretched its wavelength from ultraviolet to microwave. Another way to think about it is that the temperature associated with each photon went from thousands of Kelvins down to just a few, less than 3, in fact. That’s -270 Celsius, and -454 Fahrenheit.

That light emitted just after recombination tells us a vast amount about the Universe at that time. By carefully mapping the exact wavelength of the light and the direction from where it came, we can tell the density and temperature of the matter at that time. Incredibly we can also tell how much dark energy there was, and even the geometry of the Universe: whether it is flat, open, or closed.

Truly incredible. The important thing is that these results agree with the theory to an amazing degree - we can have high confidence that our theories of the beginning of the universe are not too far off the mark. That's what science is all about - generating testable theories that are either supported or knocked down by direct observational evidence. It's a process that has brought us incredibly far in our understanding of nature, and continues to build our knowledge.

Testable: what science is, and what religion isn't.

Score one for the good guys

Actually, score two.

Not only did Mike Huckabee finally bow out of the race for President last night (so I won't have to move to Canada), but a creationist was defeated for a spot on the Texas school board also. Barney Maddox, an avowed creationist, would have tilted the board of education towards insanity (see Time for more details), but his challenge was held off by the moderate incumbent, Patricia Hardy, according to the Fort Worth Star Telegram:

Social conservatives failed in their attempt to take control of the State Board of Education on Tuesday when incumbent Pat Hardy of Fort Worth retained her seat against a challenge from Cleburne's Barney Maddox.

Hardy, a career educator, has been a moderate voice on the board. The 15-member body still shows a close ideological split, but Hardy has helped keep it on a straight path.

Maddox's entry in the race had set the stage for debate over the scientific theory of evolution, which he has described as "fairy tales." Hardy took a better course: Teach kids about all theories, she said, from creation to evolution, and give them enough information to make up their own minds about what to believe.

She's wrong about teaching all theories especially where one has no evidence to back it up and one has the full support of the entire scientific community, but it does preserve the teaching of evolution in the state, which had been under fire, and it's better than the alternative.

Avalanche on Mars!

This is just an incredible picture. the HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took a picture of an avalanche in progress. Here's the shot:


The Bad Astronomer has more info on an amazing piece of luck.

Bible and a Pinhead

Oh, sorry - that should be "bible ON a pinhead". Silly me.

Following up on my post from a week or so about folks in the US being "morally against" nanoscience, maybe this story will help to raise the numbers a little. According to Ananova,

Israeli scientists say they've created the world's smallest Hebrew Bible - on a gold-coated silicon chip smaller than a pinhead.

Scientists at Technion, Israel's Institute of Technology, were able to pack the 308,428 words on to a 0.5mm square of silicon by etching its surface with particle beams.

He said he now wanted to take pictures of the nano-Bible and blow it up to a seven-by-seven metre poster, which will make it "possible to read the entire bible with the naked eye".

The tiny Bible was developed as part of an educational drive to increase interest in nanoscience among teenagers.

So, there you go. Increasing nanoscience interest amongst teenagers.

Sheesh. There must be a better use of resources.

Bill Maher on Religion

I've been meaning to post this for a while now. Last month, comedian Bill Maher appeared on Larry King live to promote his new movie "Religulous". I only caught the last few minutes (I can't stand Larry King - it's clear he usually has no idea who he's talking to or what he's talking about - time to retire Larry!!), but have looked for the video clip ever since. Well, here it is:

In the clip, Bill responds to Catholic League president William Donohue's criticism of him. Now, I've blogged about Donohue before - here and here, and it's clear he's as nutty as a fruitcake, but I was impressed by Maher's response - he articluates what a lot of us have been saying about faith - why put it on a pedestal? Why can't we criticize faith? Here's the transcript:

KING: Back with Bill Maher. Catholic League President William Donahue says that you really have it out against Christians and he would love to duke it out with you in the ring. He's a very, very passionate Catholic, as you know.

MAHER: Oh, yes. Aren't they all? I used to be a Catholic. I saw that on Keith Olbermann's show, and I thought he had the right response after the man threatened to beat me up, just as Jesus would handle it. I hope we can avoid a fight. If I'm attacked, I will defend myself.

KING: Do you suspect when "Religulous" comes out to get a lot of flak?

MAHER: Yes, but I get a lot of flak anyway. That's been their trick for hundreds of years. They say the word faith and somehow we all have to back off and pretend that what they believe is not destructive, and I won't do that. And there are millions of people who won't do that. The minority that is what I would call rationalists, that is people who don't believe in something supernatural, something that was obviously fables that were written by men before men knew what a germ or an atom was. OK?

Yes, we're rationalists. That's like 20 percent of people under 30. That's a bigger minority than lots of minorities. They just don't speak up. I'm hoping this movie and this movement will encourage people to speak up about this. They accuse me of being a Catholic bigot. First of all, I don't have it out especially for the Catholics. I think all religions are coo-coo. OK? It's not just the Catholics.

I'm not a bigot. Just because I wish for the demise of an organization that I think is entirely destructive to the human race, that doesn't make me a bigot. I also wish for demise of Hamas and the KKK. Not that on every score the Catholic Church is the same as those two organizations. But to me they are destructive organizations. I'm not a bigot because I root for their downfall.

KING: But you can offend them?

MAHER: I have been doing it for 15 years. They're perfectly within their rights to be offended. But they're not going to shut me up. They're not going to do it by saying the magic word, faith. This is what I believe. Yes, you believe it. I'm going to say why it's dumb. (emphasis mine)

I think this is critical - we need to start to speak up and let everyone know that faith in God is just as crazy as faith in pink unicorns, or, praise his noodly appendages, the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Dissatisfaction with Religion Growing

According to the latest opinion poll from Pew Research, dissatisfaction with religion seems to be growing in the US:

More than one-quarter (28%) of American adults have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion -- or no religion at all.... In addition, about 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.

One of the most interesting aspects of the survey is the fact that young people are less likely to be religious than older people.

The survey finds that the number of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith today (16.1%) is more than double the number who say they were not affiliated with any particular religion as children. Among Americans ages 18-29, one-in-four say they are not currently affiliated with any particular religion.

There's a couple of takeaways from this survey. While the US is still far more religious than most of the other western democracies, especially those in Europe, we may be starting to see a turning point. As the population ages, it's clear that religion will become less of a factor in public life. Young people today are less likely to be religious, and less likely as they grow up to pass that onto their children.

With all the disturbing news about science education and creationism, religion in politics and the intolerance of many of the more fundamentalist christian churches here in the US, it's refreshing to note that time is on our side.

Mapping light pollution

An astronomy post, for a change!

A majority of people now live in cities, so they have not seen all the wonders of the night sky from a truly dark environment. I live in the middle of nowhere, so it's less of a problem here, but there's still pollution from nearby streetlights and the town.

Well, now there's an effort underway to quantify how much light pollution is affecting stargazers around the world. The GLOBE project is asking for your help. It's pretty straightforward:

1) Find your latitude and longitude.

2) Find Orion by going outside an hour after sunset
(about 7-10pm local time).


3) Match your nighttime sky to one of their magnitude charts.

4) Report your observation.

5) Compare your observation to thousands around the world.

GLOBE will then be able to compare pollution levels to last year, when they had 8491 observations. They're hoping for more this year. It's a great excuse for you to go out and look at the stars - and, if you can, encourage others to do the same, especially kids. Generating an interest in Astronomy now will pay off down the road with more educated people in all aspects of science.

So, go out and enjoy the sky. They're accepting observations from now until March 8th.

When Garfield goes missing..

..what you end up with is:

an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?

according to Garfield Minus Garfield. Some of the strips are great. My favorite at the moment could easily apply to creationists:


Some others that make me laugh are here and here.

I got a Big Word!

Just started up is a new site aiming to redefine every word in the English language. For a small fee ($1 per letter), you can own a word in The Big Word Project's dictionary, and have it linked to your site.

The Big Word Project is redefining words. You pick a word and link it to your website. Your website is then the new definition. Simple.

How cool is that!

You have to act fast, because words are being snapped up pretty quickly. Good news though!

I scored "atheist"!!

Losing the Faith

As I recounted in an earlier post, my wife and I lost a child at the end of the year, stillborn at 22 weeks into the pregnancy. It's been difficult getting over the loss, and we're still not there yet.

We're undergoing bereavement counseling, and attend regular support group meetings to help us through, and it's been comforting knowing that we're not alone in this process.

But, onto the point of the post. One of the things I've noticed as we attend counseling and the meetings is that there's a lot of people in similar situations to us who've lost the faith that they've had. To be sure, there are some whose faith has been strengthened, but they're certainly in the minority from what I can tell.

Many people are dealing with anger with God, and, from my perspective, it's just one more level of pain to deal with that I, as an atheist, don't have to worry about. I hear constantly "Why did God do this to us?", "What did we do wrong?" and so on.

The bottom line is that people are rationalizing that they believed in a God that is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent, but the horror of losing a child indicates that God directly caused their suffering if he is such a being. So, the theory goes, he is not omnipotent, or if he is, he is not omniscient or if he is both, he's not benevolent. So why worship and pray if it's not going to do any good? What follows is a loss of faith, compounded by a church that frequently doesn't know how to deal with child loss. As a case in point from our own example - two weeks after our son died, my wife's church sent us additional offering envelopes for our other children as if to say "Sorry for your loss - please give more".

It seems to me that this loss of faith has not been a bad thing in many people's lives - indeed, it has been freeing to an extent. I know for a fact from my personal experience that not having to worry that some psychopathic sky fairy was out to get me reduced the weight of the loss.

Science Education in the US

While we're on the subject of ignorance (see the last post), The Washington Post had an editorial this week on the "Dumbing of America":

Americans are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

They posit a number of reasons for this (and to my mind, they focus a little too much on the internet killing newspapers, but they are a little biased!), but the bottom line is correct.

Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism. (emphasis mine)

So what do we do about it? Well, the presidential campaign isn't helping - candidates are pandering to the lowest common denominator, as usual. We need to elevate the debate, focus on where we're losing out as a nation, where we're letting down today's kids - tomorrow's scientists who will drive the future of this country. Sciencedebate2008 is one place to start, but we also have to push at the grassroots level - at the local school board level, at the state government level to make sure that we're not left behind.

There was one glimmer of hope this week - Florida adopted new science standards that include the word "Evolution" for the first time, despite the pleas of the religious right who pushed to have creationism taught alongside science:


There's a story on the vote here.

We're behind again. Big Surprise.

This time, it's nanotechnology, which it seems is "morally unacceptable" to the majority of Americans, according to a University of Wisconsin study, reported in the Wall Street Journal.

In the study, just 29.5% of the 1,000 or so interviewed found nanotech research morally acceptable.

My guess is that 70% of the country don't know what nanotechnology is, due to the abysmal state of science education here. It's clear that there's an obvious anti-science, anti-reason movement in the US right now so anything equated with the "evil science" has to be against religion.

Interestingly, Europeans don't appear to have that problem, not surprisingly.

I swear, if we don't get our act together as a nation, we're going to be left behind in the race for the future.

ScienceDebate 2008 update

I've blogged about ScienceDebate2008 before - it's an opportunity for the presidential candidates to let the country know what their science policies would be as President. Well, the invites have gone out!

Science and technology are responsible for half our nation's growth in GDP over the last half century, and have changed every aspect of our lives, our economy, our health, and our environment.

The next president of the United States will face unprecedented scientific and technological policy challenges and opportunities, three classes of which poll at the top of voter concerns: the economy and economic competitiveness; healthcare; and the environment. Candidates should have ideas about what kinds of policies will best address these issues, and should inform the voters of their views.

There's been no response from the campaigns yet (Obama, Clinton, McCain and Huckabee were invited), so make sure you contact your representatives, or the campaigns themselves to urge them to attend.

Happy Darwin Day!

Couldn't pass up the opportunity to wish the big guy, over there on the right hand side of this blog, a happy birthday. He's 199 today!
From the Darwin Day Website:

Darwin Day is an international celebration of science and humanity held on or around February 12, the day that Charles Darwin was born on in 1809. Specifically, it celebrates the discoveries and life of Charles Darwin -- the man who first described biological evolution via natural selection with scientific rigor. More generally, Darwin Day expresses gratitude for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity.

There's plenty of events being run around the world, so go ahead and party - but don't forget to leave something in reserve for his 200th next year!!

Please no...

I know it's unlikely, but stranger things have happened, especially here.

If Mike Huckabee wins the presidency, I'm moving to Canada.

Apples vs. Pearls

So, I got an iPod Touch for Christmas (yay me!). It's amazing. And, the $20 update notwithstanding, a marvel of technology. I'm constantly blown away by the multitouch interface, and the intuitive control scheme.

What prompted me to write this post though, is that a family member just got a new phone - a Blackberry Pearl. It's very pretty. The first thing I did when I played with it? Tried to touch the icons on the screen. Nothing. Amazing. I'd expected the thing to just work, intuitively, by touch. I was surprised and confused when it didn't - it took me a little while to readjust to the notion that not everything was as easy to use as an iPod Touch/iPhone.

OK, I say to myself, it should still be easy though, right? It's got email, like my Touch, and a web browser, and other cool stuff too. I'm smart. I like technology. How hard can it be to get it to work?

You figure it out. How do I get to the browser? Check my email? Listen to some tunes?
I defy you to do it without looking at the manual . Here's the iPhone equivalent:

Believe me folks, this is the future.

Someone needs to stop Huckabee...

...for the sake of the country.

Here's the latest words of wisdom from the Baptist minister posing as a sensible candidate for the presidency:

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."

Oh my.

Looks like stoning will be making a comeback under President Huckabee.

If you think a Huckabee presidency is unlikely - two words:

George Bush.

Twice.

(OK, that's three, but you get my point).

Dealing with loss...

This past moth has been a pretty traumatic one in my family, as my last post indicated. We lost a son, stillborn at 22 weeks into the pregnancy. As you can imagine, dealing with that loss is very difficult. We're coming to terms with what happened now, but it's going to be a long, long process.

Along the way, we've gotten the usual platitudes from friends and family.

"It's for the best"

"It's God's will"

"He's in heaven now"

"God had a plan for him"

Bullshit. We have enough on our plates to deal with at the moment, without having to worry that some half-crazed magical sky fairy is out to get us.

Like it or not, and as emotionally difficult as it is to deal with at times, the rational side of me understands that some pregnancies just don't make it to term. Some are lost early, and some later, but the reason for all these losses is physical, not some spiritual hyper-being deciding it wants one more baby to complete its collection and increase the level of suffering on earth.

Each of us needs to heal in our own way, and I don't begrudge those who seek solace in ancient myth. If it helps to make the process easier, I'm all for it. Just don't sign me up for the plan - and think a little before you say "It was God's plan", because that makes no kind of sense.

Why I love Lewis Black

Lewis Black is one of my favorite comedians. Here's why:

Happy New Year!

Welcome to the new year, same as the old year (apologies to The Who).

Actually, I hope it'll be significantly better than the old year - as you may have noticed, I've been away for a couple of weeks. We've had a tough couple of weeks as a family, coping with a wrenching bereavement.

Things like this really put into perspective the utter mindlessness of much of today's culture, with people obsessing over every Britney move while ignoring the bigger issues. I haven't been able to even pick up a People (or similar) magazine since. It all seems so shallow. I'll be blogging more on this in the future.

With that said, this year this blog will refocus on what's really important to the world - moving the human race forward (not back into the dark ages of religious intolerance) and where rational thought and discussion win the day.

Happy New Year!