From UCB:

The web site pertaining to the following video is HERE. Click through to participate.

Ooops, I may have put on the wrong video. Sorry about that NRA.

Scene: Berkeley, California, April 1986. A bar. Five conference attendees, myself included, grabbing a hamburger and a beer in a fern-bar on or near Telegraph.

All eyes are on the TVs mounted over the bar, where we watch footage of an air strike against Libya. This is the retribution by Ronald Reagan against Insane African Leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. The White House was issuing statements about al-Gaddafi’s involvement in bombings in Europe, the OPEC oil ministry kidnapping, linkage to the infamous Jackal, and so on. Nikki, a friend and colleague, said something, and I remember asking her to repeat it. Nikki is a low-talkier. You’ve got to lean in really close. So I leaned in and heard her say, “Lybia is the only country in Africa where the people get to share in the national wealth. They love Gaddafi. Others should take a lesson from him.”
Continue reading Pan Am 103 from Frankfurt →

American Atheists and two co-plaintiffs today filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Kentucky a lawsuit demanding that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) stop giving preferential treatment to churches and religious organizations via the process of receiving non-profit tax-exempt status under the Internal Revue Code (IRC) procedures and definitions.

“American Atheists receives tax-exempt status under Internal Revenue Code 501(c)(3),” said American Atheists President David Silverman, “but because the organization is not classified as religious it costs American Atheists, along with all other secular non-profits, significantly more money each year to keep that status. In this lawsuit, American Atheists and the other plaintiffs are demanding that all tax-exempt organizations, including those characterized as religious by the IRS, have the same requirements to achieve tax-exempt status.”

For example, in order to qualify for nonprofit tax-exempt status, any religious or secular organization must demonstrate it exists to benefit the public. After that basic element is established, religious non- profits are almost always declared automatically tax-exempt under the current IRC rules and definitions. However, secular non-profits face a lengthy application and a fee, which can be as high as $850.

Read the rest here.

1) The number of people who care more about gun control than about the 2nd amendment has been greater for some time now, and it has shifted even further. This is according to a new poll by Pew Research Center: After Newtown, Modest Change in Opinion about Gun Control
Most Say Assault Weapons Make Nation More Dangerous

2) NASA has a new design for their next generation space suit, and it looks familiar. Have a look. NASA’s is the one on the left:

3) Facebook is going to start charging one dollar per message for certain messages. They say it is for your own good.

In a statement posted online, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based social site cited research showing that “imposing a financial cost on the sender may be the most effective way to discourage unwanted messages and facilitate delivery of messages that are relevant and useful.”

Facebook already lets members send messages to those outside their network of contacts, but those messages are routed to an often-overlooked “Other” folder. This new feature would let users send messages directly to a user’s main “Inbox”—for a small fee.

Each message sent will initially cost $1, though Facebook plans to continue tinkering with prices.

That article is from a source that is regarded at least in the science community, as highly unreliable so if you need to know more about it you may want to check out other sources.

4) Matt Ridley, the author of a handful of pretty good but uninspired science books, also famous for being in charge of a bank or something that he ran into the ground due to utter incompetence, tuns out to be a Climate Science denier. Here’s an article about that.

5) Hey, I have an idea, let’s make sure, instead of limiting the number of guns out there, that there are numerous highly well armed and trained professionals around to stop shooters safely in their tracks without anyone getting injured. Like this.

Funny moment at 2:15 by the way:

He made a gingerbread slave house. A gingerbread plantation!

A handful of us in the science-skepticism-secularism blogosphere have been saying roughly the same things for a few years now about gun ownership, regulation, and safety. (Here’s 67 posts of mine on this topic. Oh, and here’s another 60 on a different blog.) While we were busy with this issue as well as other pet projects, the rest of the bloggers and writers were busy with their own important and interesting projects. But when the “Dark Knight” shooting in Colorado happened, I noticed a lot of other bloggers who had not touched on the gun issue before at all to my knowledge chimed in and started saying things. In may cases they went through the same process as those of us who had long ago begun to address gun ownership. The same sorts of pro and anti gun comments made by a roughly similar group of people wafted back and forth, arguments started general and get more specific, eventually certain roadblocks one may or may not have seen coming were encountered, and finally, everyone potentially ended up with a roughly similar knowledge base and similar understanding of the social, cultural, and political forces involved in the online version of this discussion. (Or at least, that would be the case for those who stuck with it long enough.)

But only a few of my bloggy colleagues did that, and it didn’t change anyone over to a gun-issue blogger. They went, as is appropriate, back to their usual issue.

Then Sandy Hook happened. Sandy Hook is starting to look like one of those events that changes things: a tipping point, if you will. And those bloggers and writers and more are back in the game, more prepared and more intent. A wonderful example of this relates to my friend and admireee Maggie Koerth-Baker. Maggie, who often blogs about energy issues and wrote one of the most important books ever for the general public on that topic, underwent a very important revelation that everybody who writes about gun ownership from a scientific, logical, or skeptical perspective eventually runs into: The knowledge we have to make informed policy decisions is less than adequate in large part because the gun lobby has intentionally and successfully damaged efforts to carry out the appropriate research, with the full complicity of elected members of congress. Here’s Maggie’s post: Gun lobby has opposed research on effects of gun ownership/gun laws.

I can’t tell you how happy I am that Maggie and others like her are delving into this very important social, political, and health-related issue. The more voices like her’s the better. And me saying that is NOT a Minnesota Passive Aggressive way of saying “Jeesh, it’s about time other people started paying attention to this issue that I’ve been pointing to and talking about for years… what does it take, a massacre?” … well maybe a little. But mostly, seriously, not. I am sincerely glad.

Another friend and top writer, Tom Levenson indicated the other day that he thought it was completely unrealistic to think about the 2nd amendment being changed or removed. But you know what? Six months ago it would have been hard to imagine a widespread and (potentially) sustained conversation about this topic across all known media produced or consumed in the United States. It would have been impossible to imagine a Republican Governor not signing a pro-gun law because he wants to think about its implications a bit further, or a famous conservative talking head suddenly expressing non-NRA approved opinions, or the President of the United States saying that it is time to have a conversation about doing everything differently.

So, Tom, you are probably right. But maybe, just maybe not 100% right.

Let’s be optimistic that this conversation will go forward, expand, and result in change.

During this time of great tragedy, American Atheists along with the Society of Open-Minded Atheists and Agnostics (SOMA, a SSA affiliate and University of Kansas Student Organization) and We Are Atheism, have decided to come together to raise funds for the children and their families affected by the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The families that have been hurt did not plan for their child’s funeral, no parent does. None of us would have ever thought to have money saved for the great expense of a funeral for any of our children. The money you donate will go directly to the Sandy Hook Elementary families for funeral expenses and counseling for the survivors of the shooting and their families. Now it is your turn to show that there are more of those who love and care for their fellow community members than those who would kill mercilessly.

Click through to help