Regarding Richard Mourdock’s “rape babies are a gift from God” comment… It’s fun to see people all over the internet making fun of Mourdock saying that a pregnancy which results from rape should be considered a gift from God, because that life is something God intended to happen. They can see the obvious dishonesty of … Read more
This is a bit old, but I just came across it– an article in Time reports on a study which says that money can buy you happiness, but it reaches diminishing returns past $75,000 or so. That is, people whose yearly salary is around $75,000 seem to have reached the point at which money can … Read more
Joe Biden seen here impersonating the debate’s audience. Been watching the presidential and vice-presidential debates? Yes? What’s wrong with you? Just kidding, so have I. And there may be many things wrong with me, but I don’t think being curious to see how the people aspiring to rule the country handle themselves when faced with direct … Read more
If you had to vote for one of two hypothetical candidates for president, and one was a liberal Christian and the other was a conservative atheist, and that’s all you knew about them…who would you vote for? This question, originally posed at Atheist Revolution, has been labeled a stupid question and an easy question by … Read more
I’ve taken the ISideWith quiz before with similar results, but that time I basically zipped through it and this time I actually expanded all of the questions using the “see more” function on each one, and then decided from all possible answers. And this was the result: Generally speaking, I vote. I don’t consider it … Read more
https://www.facebook.com/events/440034722701608/ Blasphemy. Noun: The act or offense of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things; profane talk. In other words, the act or offense of speaking about religion as though you are not religious. Speaking about a religion as if you are not an adherent of it. And all of us are at least non-adherents … Read more
Recently I finished listening to Jesse Bering’s book Why is the Penis Shaped Like That? And Other Reflections on Being Human. The book is a compilation of his essays posted at Scientific American so it ranges in subject all over the place, but his introduction states an interest that essentially ties all of them together– … Read more
I received an email this morning from Change.org: “Yeah, I killed him, but he did worse to me.” In 1997, a man in Queensland, Australia killed a gay man who he claimed flirted with him by bashing his head into a wall and stabbing him to death. Today, “gay panic” is still a legal defense for murder … Read more
From Jason Foscolo’s blog Food Law: At the NYT, Bittman evokes Mrs. Lovejoy in his support of the Bloomberg Soda Tax. I tend to stay away from policy on this blog, but Bloomberg’s soda ban perfectly crystalizes the absurdities of our food system. We pay farmers to overproduce the raw materials for our sweets, then … Read more
Now, I’m sure that pastors denouncing homosexuality from the pulpit isn’t a new thing. It’s impossible to know how often this happens. But it’s hard to escape the notion that the recent three occasions of pastors doing so, so vehemently, are related to Obama’s recent profession of personal support for gay marriage. And for that … Read more