Comedian Ricky Gervais has engaged in a debate about theology with the Archbishop of Canterbury – confessing at the end that he might have “blown his image” by taking life seriously.
Gervais is more concerned that religious indoctrination is a form of brainwashing, and he has an interesting reason for thinking this. Continue reading WOC Update: Riky Gervais Gets Serious
The uneasy alliance between Atheists and Wiccans in the War on Christmas paid off this week as a skirmish unfolded in Green Pay, Wisconsin. Continue reading WOC Update: Wiccans Advance in Green Bay
He’s no Bing Crosby. No, he’s better.
Continue reading Richard Dawkins Debunks “Christmas Delusion”
He’s no Bing Crosby. No, he’s better. Continue reading Richard Dawkins Debunks”Christmas Delusion”
THE front-running candidates in the 2008 US presidential election have released Christmas ads to voters, following the lead of one Republican hopeful who copped heavy criticism for his TV spot.Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher and state governor running for the Republican nomination, was the first candidate to release a holiday message to voters in state holding early primaries.His offering drew criticism for having a bookcase in the background that formed a Christian Cross as the camera panned across. Mr Huckabee laughed off the criticism.Now other candidates have followed suit. Republican contender Rudy Giuliani has released an ad that has him joking with Santa, while Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have also produced Christmas-themed ads.[source]
The AH Trust intends to spend seven million dollars to build a theme park and studio to “promote the account of the creation recorded in the biblical book of Genesis and to combat what it sees as the malign influence on society of Darwin’s theory of evolution” and to produce Christians films and TV shows. Continue reading More on Euro-Creo Themepark
Little battles are forming everywhere on the internet. Some wacko nutbag who just noticed the War on Christmas for the first time gets all spitty and spatty on the blog. This is picked up by our intelligence services and passed on to a ration, thoughtful atheist blogger, who humiliates the self righteous moron. It is a little like the early days of the Evo-Creo debate.Here’s an example. Continue reading WOC Case Study: Enlightened Atheist vs. Wacko Nutbag
Yet another missing link has been found! This new find links whales to quadrupedal land mammals.
Thewissen et al. report in Nature new fossil material from the Middle Eocene of Kashmir, India. This species (in the genus Indohyus is represented by a remarkable set of remains, including cranial and post cranial material. Previous studies using DNA had linked whales to the artiodactyls (even-toed ungulates such as deer, antelope, and bison). However, there is a great deal of uncertainty, and some contradictory evidence, as to where exactly in this group the whales arose.
Aepyceros melampus. This is one of the more widespread antelopes. Impala can be either grazers or browsers. They are pretty and they taste good.This herd is located at De Wildt’s Reserve very near Johannesburg
A SiCortex SC648 supercomputer and a Linux cluster of 648 CPU’s and a TB of main memory woudl draw about 1,200 watts. That’s gotta widen your Carbon Footprint! Continue reading Computers Need Not Contribute to Global Warming
“After going premium and suffering some community fragmentation, the OpenOffice.org open source office suite is being taken in a new direction by a company named Ulteo. A brainchild of Gael Duval, founder of Mandriva Linux, Ulteo’s mission is to serve as a platform for putting applications onto the web. Using this approach, Ulteo has released a public beta of Online OpenOffice.org, which quite literally puts OpenOffice.org inside a browser.”[source]
African American children may have reduced verbal ability compared to other children to a degree that is roughly equivalent to missing a year in school, according to a recently published paper. Is this evidence of a racial difference?The study by Sampson et.al., published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences included more than 200 children aged 6-12 living in Chicago, and followed these children over seven years. The study controlled for poverty, and interestingly, poverty was not found to be a good predictor of differences in verbal ability. Continue reading Reduced Verbal Ability in African American Children