What have scientists learned about religion in 2010?

Tom Rees at Epiphenom has put together a brief review of the results of scientific papers published on religion this year.  Here’s an excerpt: We learned some more about what religion can do for you. Religious people are less likely to smoke, but more likely to be overweight. Religion can […]

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Dog botherers

Quoth Tucker Carlson on Tuesday: “I’m Christian. I’ve made mistakes. I believe fervently in second chances. Michael Vick killed dogs in a heartless and cruel way. I think, personally, he should have been executed for that. The idea the president of the United States would be getting behind someone who […]

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Dog botherers

Cross-posted from State of Formation. Quoth Tucker Carlson on Tuesday: “I’m Christian. I’ve made mistakes. I believe fervently in second chances. Michael Vick killed dogs in a heartless and cruel way. I think, personally, he should have been executed for that. The idea the president of the United States would be […]

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Who do you admire?

At The Daily Dish, Conor Friedersdorf contemplates the results of a recent Gallup poll asking Americans which men and women they most admire.  Barack Obama won out for men, whereas Hillary Clinton came out on top for women.  Friedersdorf thinks the fact that politicians make up the majority of people […]

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Factoid from The Omnivore’s Dilemma that I learned today

Pigs raised in factory farms have their tails docked (i.e., cut off) because they are weaned from their mothers at about 12 days.  They would normally wean at about three weeks, but the feed they are given causes them to grow at a much faster rate than their mother’s milk […]

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So the Fort Worth transit authority made a decision…

…ban all ads relating to religion.  Well, that’s one way of going about things.  I suppose this could be called an exercise in not rocking the boat.

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“Survival and reproduction are in fact most definitely amoral.”

This was a remark made in the breeder comment thread. An odd one, I thought.  It sounds sensical at first– surviving is something we all need to do individually, and reproducing is something we at least need to do as a species, so how can someone apply “right and wrong” […]

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This makes me happy

Constitutionally protected tattoos  “The tattoo designs that are applied by me are individual and unique creative works of visual art,” the tattoo artist Johnny Anderson claimed in a 2006 lawsuit. They are therefore constitutionally protected speech, he argued, so the courts should strike down a ban on tattoo parlors within […]

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The ecological morality of breeding….or not.

This and the other card can be found here. When I saw Reason magazine tweet about an article entitled “Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been a ‘Breeder’?” and clicked through to see an image of the “breeder bingo board,” I expected to see a commentary on how harshly […]

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An exercise in getting the last word

So now a Christian group in Fort Worth has hired a “mobile billboard” truck to follow around the buses with the “Millions of Americans are good without God” ads on them.  The truck’s billboards read “I still love you – God” and “2.1 billion people are good with God.” One […]

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