Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your Brain
Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your BrainI realize that is has been blogged about before, by bloggers much more capable than myself, but it has been a while since I visited the website for the upcoming movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and I see that there is now a good deal more information available on it. It's coming out in February 2008, and stars everyone's favorite Nixon speech writer and former second-banana to Jimmy Kimmel, Ben Stein. Tongue firmly in cheek, Stein stars as a "rebel" student at "Big Science Academy" who, from what information I can gather, claims that "Big Science" is keeping "smart ideas" out of the classroom. Translation: scientists won't allow intelligent design to be taught in classrooms because they say it's not science, and that's just mean!read more »
Richard Dawkins: Richard Dawkins Foundation now officially a charitable organizationWhile I have my quibbles with Richard Dawkins' every now and then I was extremely pleased to read at Richard Dawkins' site that after a year has passed the Richard Dawkins Foundation For Reason And Science is now recognized as a charitable, tax exempt organization in both the US and UK. While every now and then I find the way Dawkins' chooses to phrase something in regards to atheism, religion or (more recently) pseudoscience and the paranormal cringe inducing I can not help but think that he is fulfilling a vital role. Sometimes I'm just not sure what that role is.read more »
However, the Richard Dawkins Foundation does have a clearly defined role and goals and the very first one mentioned is something that I believe to be of the utmost importance
The Carnival of Feminists is held on the first and third Wednesday of every month, aiming to showcase great feminist posts from the blogosphere. The Carnival particularly welcomes posts which celebrate women's lives and female contributions to society across history to the present day. Founded by Natalie Bennett a Green Party (England & Wales) activist in Britain, the blog carnival is already upto No.39 which will be held at Laurelin in the Rain on June 6.
It is worth a read if you're like me a feminist, and/or if you are interested in reading about contemporary feminism thought at the grass roots. If you're producing blog posts of your own which are relevant to the experiences of women in a patriarchal society then please get your submissions in and get the word out about your blog!
We don't see very much overt, officially sanctioned, top-down racism anymore. There's no separate drinking fountains for people of color, the schools are (at least on paper) integrated and discrimination against people of color in the workplace can get your company in serious trouble (again, at least on paper). What remains though are the sorts of soft bigotry that are hard to erase because they're culturally transmitted. We can't legislate against a perception. We can try to educate, and Spotted Elephant over at The Bipolar View does an excellent job at doing just that by telling us about racism she found for sale (cheap!) in a mail order catalog. Hey gang, you have to see this!
John McKay over at Archy notes a post on Margaret Kane's blog at C-Net which rightfully takes to task 22 year old Mark Zuckerberg, one of the founders of the popular social networking website Facebook. Zuckerberg displayed rather blatant ageism in a recent speech:
"I want to stress the importance of being young and technical," he stated, adding that successful start-ups should only employ young people with technical expertise. (Zuckerberg also apparently missed the class on employment and discrimination law.)
"Young people are just smarter," he said, with a straight face, according to VentureBeat. "Why are most chess masters under 30?" he asked. "I don't know...Young people just have simpler lives. We may not own a car. We may not have family."
Bigotry aside, the idiocy in Zuckerberg's statements is beyond measure. read more »
Josh Rosenau has a post on the nature of equality in a free society that is absolutely required reading. So why are you hanging around here? Go read it now!
Vote Different maybe but
the same old paranoid fears
A couple of weeks ago a parody of Apple's famous 1984 Super Bowl ad appeared on YouTube and other video sharing sites and, perhaps because of the mystery surrounding its' origin, became something of an overnight internet phenomenon. Now we know the creator of the parody but a larger mystery is revealed and some serious questions are raised. More after the fold.read more »
I'd like invite you all to Blog Against Theocracy. This is a little blog swarm being put together by everybody's favorite panties blogger Blue Gal for Easter weekend, April 6th through the 8th. The idea is simple. Just post something related to, and in support of, the separation of church and state each of those three days. Something big, something small, artistic, musical, textual or otherwise. The topic is your choosing. Whether your thing is stem cell research, intelligent design/Creationism, abortion rights, etc., it's all good. Separation of church and state impacts so many issues and is essential.
Blue Gal is still putting the finishing touches on everything and tying up loose ends so check in regularly with her for updates. In the meantime, if you need a little information to tickle your muse then you'll want to check over at First Freedom First for a ton of excellent resources. FFF is a partnership of two very cool groups; Americans United For Separation of Church and State and the Interfaith Alliance Foundation. Also, I can personally recommend this interview on CFI's Point of Inquiry podcast with Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. The Center For Inquiry is just one of many supporters of the FFF project.
So get involved in a little blogactivism and help raise awareness on the need to preserve separation of church and state and protecting the First Amendment. Your help in recruiting bloggers for Blog Against Theocracy is needed and appreciated too.
Ann Coulter: Making a career out of hate speech. Image credit: AllHatNoCattle.net.With no visible signs of remorse after calling Presidential candidate John Edwards a "faggot" in a speech on Friday, and only days after accusing Edwards' campaign manager U.S. Rep David Bonior of "fronting for Arab terrorists," the Coultergeist continued to spew her vile hate speech on Saturday. OK, that's not so surprising since Ann Coulter pretty much makes some moronic bigoted remark every time she opens her mouth. This time however she managed to top even her more widely reported anti-gay slur. At a speech Coulter gave on March 3 at a Center for Reclaiming America conference in Fort Lauderdale, FL, Coulter dismissed the murders of doctors who perform abortions:
“Those few abortionists were shot, or, depending on your point of view, had a procedure with a rifle performed on them. I’m not justifying it, but I do understand how it happened....The number of deaths attributed to Roe v. Wade about 40 million aborted babies and seven abortion clinic workers; 40 million to seven is also a pretty good measure of how the political debate is going.”
And if that weren't enough, Coulter repeated the slur against Edwards.
The Center for Reclaiming America was founded by D. James Kennedy, Pastor of the Coral Gables Presbyterian mega-church. The Center opposes legal abortion, gay rights and routinely bashes public education. The Anti-Defamation League accused Coral Gables Ministries of "trivializing the holocaust" with a neo-creationist documentary produced by Kennedy's church that attempts to link the theory of evolution to Hitler. One can only assume Coulter's remarks played well with her audience.
The Reverend Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State called on The Center's executive director to publicly repudiate Coulter's remarks:
“Ann Coulter’s statements can only be described as loathsome,” said Lynn. “It is astounding to me that this type of vitriol was unleashed before a religious organization that claims to be ‘reclaiming’ America for Christ. This rhetoric must be repudiated immediately.”
While newspapers, blogs and talking heads continue to express shock and outrage over Coulter's remarks about John Edwards and David Bonior, Coulter's tacit condoning of murder goes unreported. When are people in this country going to stand up and say to far right-wing nutcases like Coulter that this kind of hate speech is intolerable? When are the religious faithful going to stand up and spurn Coulter for spewing hate and intolerance from a church pulpit! Seriously, how much more hate and hypocrisy are we going to take?read more »
I don't know about you, but I've had enough.
There just seems to be something about theistic belief that causes people to feel the need to tell other people what they do or don't believe. Naturally this takes the form of casting everybody else in the shadow of the theist's own religious beliefs. And should the person whose beliefs are being defined for them choose to say, in the politest way possible, "No. I'm pretty sure that's not what I believe," then there invariably ensues much stammering on the part of the theist to tell the party being defined exactly how they couldn't possibly know their own beliefs and any protestation to the contrary is a direct affront to the theist doing the defining, and possibly religious persecution.
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After flying off to warmer climes for January, one of my favorite blog carnivals is back and packing a punch. Well, actually it's Abe Lincoln packing a knockout punch against robo-Hitler, but... Aww hell. This metaphor's going nowhere, but there really is a robo-Hitler in Carnival of Bad History #13 at Old is the New New. Go read.
At least that's what Texas state Rep. Warren Chisum and Georgia state Rep. Ben Bridges say. As reported in the Dallas Morning News (via Right Wing Watch):
“Indisputable evidence – long hidden but now available to everyone – demonstrates conclusively that so-called 'secular evolution science' is the Big Bang, 15-billion-year, alternate 'creation scenario' of the Pharisee Religion," writes Mr. Bridges …
Mr. Bridges also supplies a link to a document that describes scientists Carl Sagan and Albert Einstein as "Kabbalists" and laments "Hollywood's unrelenting role in flooding the movie theaters with explicit or implicit endorsement of evolutionism."
Chisum used Texas House time to deliver a memo from the Georgia lawmaker on Tuesday. Bridges is the author of bills in the Georgia legislature designed to undermine the teaching of evolution in Georgia schools. In his memo he refers Texas House members to the website fixedearth.com which offers up Bridges'
anti-evolution bill as a model for other lawmakers to use to stem the tide of the evil 'secular evolution science' which decries everything from the heliocentric solar system to the Big Bang as lies:
The Bible and all real evidence confirms that this is precisely what He did, and indeed:
The Earth is not rotating...nor is it going around the sun. …
Today’s cosmology fulfills an anti-Bible religious plan disguised as "science".
The whole scheme from Copernicanism to Big Bangism is a factless lie. Those lies have planted the Truth-killing virus of evolutionism in every aspect of man’s "knowledge" about the Universe, the Earth, and Himself.
To be fair to Chisum he does say he doesn't totally agree with Bridges' views, but still supports the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in science classes.
Those of you who know me personally and from other sites that I take part in know that I've been increasingly concerned with the incursion of anti-semitism into the dialog on the left. On the left, anti-semitism mostly slips in via two avenues. Many liberals and progressives want to express solidarity with Palestinians and sometimes uncritically read propaganda put out by decidedly unprogressive states such as Iran. Also, there has been a fairly successful far right-wing subversion of the 9-11 Truth movement. Yet as nasty as some of the stuff I've seen on the left has been, one just can not beat religious fundamentalist Southern lawmakers when it comes to advancing ignorant and bigoted causes.read more »
Halfway There posted a nice roundup of links and information concerning yesterday's 10th anniversary of Carl Sagan's death. I can't tell you how much I admired and respected Carl Sagan for his work in promoting not just science but also the naturalistic worldview. Sagan masterfully conveyed science and skeptical ideas but he also communicated a very powerful human understanding that enriched all our lives.
Every year, when the Butterflys gather for the winter holiday known as Christmas, a hunt ensues for a plastic pile of shit hidden somewhere in the Christmas tree. My younger cousins, and now their children, keep up this tradition. They think it's some strange German/Russian thing. But the real story is tasteless and disturbing.read more »
Where will kids go now to learn how to hate anyone who's different from them!? Ah well, I'm sure they'll manage somehow.
The summer camp "Kids on Fire" where children would tearfully beg God to end abortion and bless President Bush, will shut down for at least several years after a documentary about the camp.
The film, showing young evangelical children steeling themselves for spiritual and political warfare, includes scenes with pastor Ted Haggard, the evangelical leader accused of gay sex and drug use.
The very brief article in the Toronto Daily News seems to credit the documentary Jesus Camp with instigating the Devil's Lake, ND camp's closure, but I wonder how much the decision might have been due to Pastor Ted Haggard's recent scandal.
Updated: The Christian Post reported on this on October 28. The Haggard scandal broke on November 2 when escort Mike Jones originally made his allegations against Haggard on the Peter Boyles Show.
Is it possible that we are seeing the start of a new realignment of American politics since Nixon's Southern Strategy and the rise of the New Left, as well as an end to a Republican attempt of social engineering?
It took the events of September 11 2001 to allow the philosophy of neo-conservatism to come to the unopposed forefront in the Republican Party. The philosophy dictated that the financial and military apparatus of the U.S. nation-state be aimed towards eliminating perceived foreign threats to American interests, and to raise U.S. power and prestige. However, there was indeed an interesting domestic agenda to go along with it. The modern conservative economic philosophy of 'small government' and fiscal balance had long been in decline but the neoconservative-dominated Republican Party gave it the last shove in the back off the GOP wagon. read more »
There's way too much in David Brin's last collection of thoughts before the election, so rather than even trying to summarize them I'm going to make them your obligatory reading for morning. They should both incite and encourage you. Here's one in particular you may have missed in the news:
And more: Bechtel, the giant engineering company, is leaving Iraq. Its mission — to rebuild power, water and sewage plants — wasn’t accomplished: Baghdad received less than six hours a day of electricity last month, and much of Iraq’s population lives with untreated sewage and without clean water. But Bechtel, having received $2.3 billion of taxpayers’ money and having lost the lives of 52 employees, has come to the end of its last government contract. (And, mind you, they are absolute pros compared to Haliburton!)
You can read more about Bechtel in last Saturday's Baltimore Sun.
According to the latest Gallup poll, 14% believe that the Republican Party is too liberal! However, what may be the more interesting number to me is that 42% believe the Republican Party is too conservative while 41% feel the Democratic Party is too liberal. This would indicate to me that there are still a very large number of moderates in the U.S. and despite successful efforts by the Republican Party to polarize voters, it might not be difficult to bring more people back to the center.
The particular finding of this poll that Gallup has been pushing and that you will see repeated all over the media and blogosphere is that 59% of the people polled believe the Democrats are more competent at running government than the Republicans, and this is up 16 percentage points from 1994. It would seem that the values voter is highly over-rated.
The large number of moderates, coupled with the majority who feel Democrats are more competent than Republicans suggests a very clear strategy for Democrats to follow in the next two years, regardless of the outcome in November.
