Australian stuff Unbelievers aren’t quite human, part 2 29 Nov 2010 Cardinal Fang, exemplar of all that is moral, has declared that people without faith have ”nothing beyond the constructs they confect to cover the abyss”, and “people without religion… are frightened by the future”. “”Australian society will become increasingly coarse and uncaring … if Christian principles are excluded from public… Continue Reading
Biology On abortion 9 Nov 2010 A fertilised fetus is a collection of cells that will, if all goes well, and it doesn’t in a large percentage of cases, become a baby. As much as 70% of all pregnancies may abort in the first 20 weeks, due to genetic or developmental defects. But up until a… Continue Reading
Politics Tone wars 31 Oct 2010 There are a group of critics of religion, of pseudoscience, of regressive politics – all excellent targets for criticism – who think that if you in any way seek polite, civil or reasoned discourse with the targets of your criticisms, you are weak and accommodationist. I call these “tone warriors”… Continue Reading
Humor Unnecessary people 10 Oct 2010 I was kind of musing on the road to ruination we are all skipping merrily down the other day when it occurred to me that there are some well-defined classes of people whose activities are the major reason why things are a mess. And the next thought was: who could… Continue Reading
Censorship Do not pity progessives 17 Sep 2010 From an article at Truthdig entitled “Do not pity the Democrats” by Chris Hedges, this opening paragraph: There are no longer any major institutions in American society, including the press, the educational system, the financial sector, labor unions, the arts, religious institutions and our dysfunctional political parties, which can be… Continue Reading
Politics A bridge to nowhere 17 Sep 2010 The title of the head of the Roman Catholic Church is “pontiff”, which means, basically “bridge-builder” (in Latin: pontifex; I gather it’s thought by some that the Roman priests would bless new bridges, and the bishop of Rome inherited the term when ROme was Christianised). Evidence that the title is… Continue Reading
Politics 9/11 12 Sep 2010 They hated our freedoms, so we instituted warrantless wiretapping, electronic surveillance and denied habeus corpus. They hated our lack of religious control, so we redoubled our efforts to make discussing religion a crime, and to impose particular religious values on all, irrespective of their beliefs or commitments. They hated our… Continue Reading
Education Dicks, niceness and evil: a rant 29 Aug 2010 The ongoing blogbattle over whether to be nice or a dick skeptic continues. Phil Plait gave a speech suggesting that niceness works better. There was blowback, of course, which he discusses here and here. The Great Tone Debate seems to resolve down to those who think that minds are changed… Continue Reading
Australian stuff EFA Summarises Australian Party policies on censorship 10 Aug 2010 Here: Continue Reading
Administrative Australian internet filter dead in water 6 Aug 2010 Forners may not be aware of an extremely boring federal election in Australia right now. Indeed, few Australians seem aware of this. This is as it should be. Elections that are Interesting usually turn out to be Dangerous. But there is one good that has come out of this. The… Continue Reading