May 2007
What makes an effective carbon trading scheme? →
With a federal election fast approaching and with a poor showing in the polls, the Australian Government is finally looking at ways to address Climate Change. Top of the list is a carbon trading scheme, which the Government is expected to soon announce.
In this article Clive Hamilton of the leftie think-tank The Australia Institute outlines what he thinks makes an effective trading scheme;...
Australia's approach to abortion advice is killing... →
Australia has had a ten year ban on funding to organisations that give advice to women on abortions. A group of cross party policticians is now calling for the ban to be lifted because it has led to the deaths of women and an increase in the rate of HIV/AIDS infection.
The ban was first put in place 10 years ago by the current Government to appease the then independent Senator Brian Harradine, a...
Poland backs down! Tinky Winky not gay! →
The Ploland’s child rights ombudsman has backed down from its earlier position that Tinky Winky, a character on The Teletubbies, was gay. They obtained the opinion of a leading sexologist who come to the startling conclusion that the purple puppet is not a homosexual.
15% of Australian schools seek funding for a... →
The Australian Federal Government has received 1,503 applications to their chaplains in schools program. This represents about 15% of all Australian schools.
Given that many schools are short of teachers, support staff or working toilets this can only be viewed as a gross waste of tax payers money.
Gardasil makes girls "promiscuous". →
Two religious schools in South Australia are refusing to give their female students the cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil. The reason? They think it will encourage promiscuity.
The Australian Federal Government is taking the usual tack when dealing with obstruction from religious sectors and plans on doing nothing.
Once a Muslim, always a Muslim →
Malaysia’s top court has rejected a women’s appeal to be recognized as a Christian. The reason is that she was previously a Muslim and the Islamic Shariah courts do not allow Muslims to leave their religion. And in Malaysia only the Shariah courts have the power to remove the word “Islam” from the countries identity cards.
"Islam is a totalitarian doctrine" →
Ayaan Hirsi Ali claims that “In Islam, women come off the worst.”
Private schools a waste of money. →
What’s wrong with education in Australia? Catherine Deveny explains we lack the leadership, commitment, courage and vision to become a world leader in high-quality schools.
Conscience vote on NSW stem cell bill. →
New South Wales (Australia’s premier state) politicians will soon be voting on a bill to allow Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer research in NSW.
Leaders of both major parties have said that their members will be allowed a conscience vote on the issue; that is they won’t be penalized if they don’t vote the party line.
Write to your NSW pollie today requesting that they support...
Unselfishness is only natural. →
Researchers discover that the brain is wired to be unselfish. The experiment suggests that altruism is not a superior moral faculty but rather is very “basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.”
Falwell lives on! In Poland! →
Polish government bans the Teletubbies, a children’s show featuring sexless toy like characters, because they feel it promotes a “homosexual lifestyle”.
Jerry Falwell is the late US Christian evangelist who was ridiculed for holding similar views.
Miranda, you know you want to ...
Given Miranda Devine’s recent attempts to promote the airing of controversial documentaries in Australia we can only hope she gets behind the BBC Panorama documentary “Sex, Crimes and the Vatican.”. It currently hasn’t be shown in Australia an obvious disservice to the well being of Australian children.
I look forward to Miranda’s article on this topic and will...
And these people have The Bomb! →
New American museum depicts Noah’s ark complete with dinosaurs, and claims the universe is only 6,000 years old.
Crude - the incredible journey of oil →
Australian ABC’s documentary on crude oil, where it came from, what we’ve done with it, what’s the future.
Miranda Devine, the Australian Stephen Colbert!
For satire the US has Stephen Colbert but we have nothing to match it in Australia.
We used to have very good TV political satire but not any more. We had greats like BackBerner , but they burnt out. Then there was CNNNN, but they have now degenerated into a Jackass clone. Now all we have is The Australian Idol and Big Brother.
But all is not lost. Political satire in Australia has instead...
Shock, Horror! Religious person doesn't agree with... →
Cheryl Lawrie, Uniting Church member, thinks that what Dawkins says about fundamentalism is correct. However, his remarks don’t apply to her religion and Dawkins is just too ignorant to notice the nuance.
Young philosophers get to grips with life's big... →
New South Wales primary school experiments with teaching philosophy to kids. Much more practical than teaching them scripture.
BOINC if your an Atheist!
The people at the Richard Dawkins Foundation of Reason and Science are encouraging everybody to consider donating CPU time to a BOINC project. When you sign up for a BOINC project they would like you to also show your support for the Richard Dawkins Foundation (RDF) by joining the RDF BOINC team; specify “Richard Dawkins Foundation of Reason and Science” as the team name when joining...
John Howard fans get investigated by Police.
The Exclusive Brethren is a religious cult which doesn’t allow its members to vote in political elections. However, this doesn’t seem to prevent them from placing political advertisements for the conservative politicians they happen to like.
It appears that the Brethren spent up big in the last federal election in support of John Howard. The Australian Election Commission is...
Dawkins is a "dangerous man".
Professor Margaret Somerville, who is currently in Sydney for the Sydney Writers Festival, in a recent article in The Sydney Morning Herald has described Richard Dawkins as a “dangerous man” and somebody who givers her “disturbed, and sleepless nights”.
Dawkins isn’t the only man who disturbs Prof Somerville’s sleep. Men who love other men seem to get the good...
What's wrong with education in Australia?
Well the funding system for a start! 70% of students attend secular Public schools in Australia but 70% of the Federal funding goes to religious based private schools; and the lion’s share to the most wealthy ones at that.
Ross Gittins of the Sydney Morning Herald describes it as “More privilege for the privileged”. While Catherine Deveny down at the Melbourne Age tells people...
Blown wheel makes for good Science.
One of NASA’s Mars rovers, Spirit, had a breakdown of sorts recently when one of its six wheels stopped turning. But given the rover was only designed to work for 3 months and now almost 3 years later, it can still drag itself around nobody was too upset.
One of the effects of the stuck wheel was to gouge a tench into the Martian surface, revealing something odd; silica. Apparently this...
Christian logic.
To prevent protesters from disrupting the funeral of Jerry Falwell this good Christian wanted to blow them up! Didn’t he realise that the bangs might just disrupt proceedings just a bit more than a few waving banners?
Good news is that he was caught before he could hurt anybody and hopefully will get the medical treatment such a disturbed mind needs. But in the case of some of the actual...
Italy row over Church abuse film →
Italian politician tries to block the airing of a BBC documentary into the use of the Roman Catholic’s Crimen Sollicitationis document in covering up the sexual abuse of children by Priests.
"God is not Great" →
Three excepts from Chistopher Hichens’ book “God Is Not Great”.
Brits move ahead on Stem Cell research.
Britain has cleared the way for the use of animal eggs in human stem cell research.
One of the issues with current therapeutic cloning is the source of human eggs to be used in the research. Eggs left over from IVF treatments is one source and the other is egg donations from female volunteers. The donation of eggs is not with out risk to the volunteer.
Because of scarcity of supply some...
Right wing prats, have their myths busted.
We have some rather strident self-righteous, right wing, commentators in Australia. They seem to think that climate change is a left wing conspiracy which aims to do them out of their 4WDs. Yes, I’m talking about you Mr Bolt, Ms Divine, and Ms Albrechtsen;to name just a few.
In fact everything to them seems to be a left-wing conspiracy. I suspect they even complain that the...
AIDS fight blocked by religion. →
Australian High Court judge Michael Kirby while launching a new book “Civil Society, Religion and Global Governance” said that religion was hindering the UN’s efforts in combating the spread of AIDS.
Fairly obvious I would have said.
Farewell to Falwell
US evangelist Jerry Falwell has died. Our condolences go to his family and friends.
He will be remembered as an educator, being the founder of Liberty University which prides itself on the teaching of non-Darwinian science and placing the Bible before fact:
“The Bible is inerrant … word of the living god. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith...
NRA to arm Blastocysts!
Apparently in some states in the US you can get gun licenses for your 10-month old child! In fact there is no age limit on getting the required ID in some US states.
Don’t beleive me, well then check this article out.
Not only does the baby get the ID, but Dad uses the ID to get the bub a 12-gauge shotgun! Luckily in this case the Dad is sensible and he’ll put the gun away until...
Bullets not Guns
In an earlier scrapbook entry I suggested that it was bullets and not guns that killed people.
Well it appears that some person in the US, where else, tried to demonstrate just this idea by shooting himself without the aid of a gun!
Either that or it was a poor attempt at being considered for the Darwin Awards.
BBC reporter barely survives Scientologist's brain... →
BBC reporter John Sweeny spent several days with the Scientologists before he snapped.
Mr Sweeny claimed he felt like he “was being brainwashed” and this had led to him behaving so badly.
In a video segment he can be seen screaming at a Scientology member who keeps repeating “Brainwashing is a crime against humanity” over and over again.
Even though he apologized and...
1.5 million Turks heed Pope's Message →
Recently the Pope suggested that Priests should stay out of politics seems this message went down well in Turkey where 1.5 million Turks protested against their religious based government.
Arrival of European Priests "purified" the... →
The priests did such a good job it’s amazing there are any indigenous people left.
The Pope also gave out some really good advice during his tour of Brazil by advising Priests to stay out of politics. A good message there for all men and women of the cloth.
The Dawkins' Code →
God is so convinced by Dawkins’ arguments that he is now an atheist! The proof is in The Book.
Cross promotion →
Free maps for a religious shrine, Sanctuary of Fatima, in Portugal have adverts for sex aids and aphrodisiacs printed on the other side.
Pope wants supporters of abortion excommunicated. →
Pope calls for a resurgence of church core values on his tour of Brazil.
Less well reported was the Pope’s attack on condom use. Obviously he thinks the Roman Catholic church’s approach to HIV/AIDS prevention worked so well in Africa he wants to bring the scheme to Brazil.
Condoms and sex education are an effective and cheap way to limit the spread of HIV/AIDS. While the RC church...
Lord is our stockman. →
A new Australian Bible drops the sheep metaphor for one based on cattle; wonder if the Welsh Hindus had any input?
This changing of metaphors has happened before in the history of the Bible; for instance the metaphor of a young women was changed for one of a virgin. Or the jealous god for a loving god etc., etc.
What a Shambulls, Boyo! →
Welsh Hindus want to prevent the slaughter of a bull which has tested positive for tuberculosis.
It appears that the Welsh Hindus would rather put their superstitious beliefs ahead of human welfare.
BTW, the name of the bull is Shambo,which is one of the many names of Lord Shiva, a Hindu deitiy. Shiva also goes by the name of Shiva the Destroyer. If the Hindus have their way Shambo will do its...
Nigerian Archbishop installs "missionary bishop"... →
Nigerian Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola installs a bishop to head a diocese for those American Anglicans who want to discriminate against Homosexuals.
Banning stem cell research prolongs suffering. →
Bernie Tuch director of the Diabetes Transplant Unit, director of the NSW Stem Cell Network and professor of medicine at the University of NSW argues the case for continued research into all types of stem cells. Professor Tuch points out that medical research can be a slow process. For instance it took 15 years of solid research before the first person could stop injecting insulin after receiving...
Read all about it!
To track all the news that a sceptical atheistic person might want I’m in the process of setting up a shared page on PageFlakes.
The AtheistRamblings PageFlakes page is very simple, just listing a number of RSS feeds. But PageFlakes itself has many different types of modules, called flakes, that you can add to your page.
Apart from flakes to handle news feeds and podcasts. There are...
Cool it, on climate change: Lomborg
Bjorn Lomborg, of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” fame, is now promoting his new book “Cool it! The Sekptical Environmentalist’s guide to Global Warming”.
Despite what his critics claim Lomborg actually does belive that human induced climate change is taking place. The problem he has is that he doesn’t believe that spending billions of dollars a year to...