September 2009
Egypt anger over virginity faking →
Conservative Arab societies have a stigma about pre-marital sex; specifically females having pre-marital sex. So a number of clinics in the Middle East offer hymen repair surgery.
Now an Egyptian “scholar” is demanding that people caught importing female virginity-faking devices into the country be put to death.
The device which releases a liquid imitating blood is to be used by a...
Pew Science Knowledge Quiz →
Are you smarter than the average American? Take this science test and find out.
For the record I got 12 out of 12 correct, but I’m not bragging.
“With data aggregated at the state level, conservative religious beliefs strongly...”
– Conclusion of a recent research paper, “Religiosity and teen birth rate in the United States” published in the Reproductive Health Journal.com
Basically the more religious teens are the higher the teen birth rate.
“The AVN [Australian Vaccination Network] provides incorrect information about...”
– Australian Skeptics
Australia’s ABC promotes child deaths →
Every year in Australia children die of preventable diseases because they weren’t vaccinated against the disease. Now you’d think that everybody would be doing their damnedest to get that number of deaths down. Well you’d be wrong.
A group calling itself the Australian Vaccination Network is telling parents not to vaccinate their kids. Their claims are based on ignorance and...
China's Potent Wind Potential →
China has doubled its installed wind power capacity every year for the past five years and this year will likely overtake the US as the world’s largest market for new installations.
Researchers claim that China has barely scratched the surface of its wind power potential. And that China could satisfy all its electricity demand with wind power until at least 2030. Bad news for countries...
Advanced Solar Panels Coming to Market →
New factory could be the beginning of low cost, mass produced solar panels.
Is the hydrogen car dead? →
At this week’s Frankfurt motor show everybody and their dog was showing off electric concept cars (some companies had up to 4 models to choose from), hydrogen cars were conspicuous by their absence. So is the future electric?
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“For every man or woman who has been led to goodness by a church, and I know...”
– Philip Pullman (via Times Online )
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"Creation" May Cause Big Bang in U.S. →
Despite earlier articles reporting that no US distributor was interested in the movie Creation it now seems there is a bidding war for rights to distributing the film in the US …
“Carrie Prejean said God chose her to give that answer at the pageant this year...”
– Bill Maher (via soupsoup) (via emmanuelnegro)
How To Handle "Bibliolaters" →
(via savagemike)
About half way thorough this article are a number of pointers on how to get bible thumpers to leave you alone … basically you’ve got to crazier than they are.
“Both Faith and Terror are instruments for the elimination of individual...”
– Eric Hoffer | The Passionate State of Mind (via retropolitics)
Charles Darwin film 'too controversial for... →
The movie Creation was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival, and has done extremely well at box offices around the world. However, American distributors won’t touch it with a barge pole.
The reason? The film deals with Darwin’s struggle between faith and reason as he wrote “On The Origin of Species” and US distributors don’t want to upset the 61% of Americans...
Onward Christian Soldiers: The Religious Right... →
The US health care wars and the role of the religious right.
Why do so called religious people not want the poor to have access to health care? Is it because they believe the poor just aren’t praying hard enough?
“Even more children will die as a result of climate change deniers. Making the...”
– Michael Le Page, “Better world: Get real” (via New Scientist
“Climate change is happening and will shape the future world. It is unlikely that...”
– James Lovelock independent scientist and originator of the Gaia hypothesis
Early Life On Earth Due To Salt Crusts? →
German scientists have found that in the Earth’s early oceans amino acids could have been ‘cooked’ into many other important chemical building blocks of life when embedded in salt crusts.
Molecular Evidence Supports Key Tenet Of Darwin's... →
New Japanese PM's wife 'rode to Venus on UFO' →
Ms Miyuki said the “event” happened about 20 years ago. When she told her ex-husband he said that she probably had a dream. But not so her current husband, who is soon to be the new PM of Japan, he thinks it’s just great that his wife has been to Venus.
Wonder if this pair personally know Godzilla?