I’d been having an annoying problem in iTunes 7.0.2: although I’d set the podcast preferences to “Keep: Last 5 episodes”, it was still keeping old episodes around, long after they should have been deleted. After rooting around in Apple’s discussion fora, the solution turned out to be: Select “Podcasts” in the left bar Select everything with Apple-A Right-click (or […]
On Monday, a new post appeared on Kent Hovind’s weblog, describing life in jail. As you might expect, he plays the Christian persecution card. He also has a list of reasons God allowed him to be sent to jail. Oddly enough, neither “I’m guilty” nor “there are no gods” is on the list. He also writes, If the case […]
Consider: Either God exists, or he doesn’t. If God exists, and you have a child, then that child will wind up either in Heaven or in Hell. If God doesn’t exist, then your children won’t go to either. Therefore, if God exists and you have children, then you risk letting a soul go to Hell for eternal torture. Therefore, it’s […]
Daniel Dennett has proposed what he calls the intentional stance, which is basically the way that when we interact with other people or animals (and sometimes things), we act as if there’s a mind there that intends to behave in a certain way. If confronted with an angry dog, we behave as if that dog is […]
The Baltimore Sun reports that after the vote-counting was completed, right-wing homophobic religious nutjob assclown and reanimated corpse Don Dwyer was reelected to the state legislature by 28 votes. I don’t live in Anne Arundel county, so I couldn’t make that 26. (Update: Can someone explain why the first Google result for “reanimated corpse” points to State Farm’s site?)
I’ve started hearing the phrase “actionable intelligence” being used as a five-dollar synonym for “useful information”, particularly in the context of the debate on how to rebrand torture to make it seem acceptable. Am I the only one to have noticed the irony here? In case everyone forgot, the first definition of “actionable” means “something you can get sued over”. […]
Feel free to steal, though if anything comes of it I’d be interested in hearing about it: Neurobiologists investigate the biological causes behind religious ecstasy, and geneticists and developmental biologists identify the genes involved in building this phenomenon and the areas of the brain responsible for it. A CAT or PET scan can reveal people in […]
Today’s Washington Post has an article about three Christian groups who’ve come out and taken a courageous stand against equality, tolerance, and understanding: The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops, meeting in Baltimore, declared Tuesday that Catholics who minister to gays must firmly adhere to the church’s teaching that same-sex attractions are "disordered." Catholics with "a homosexual inclination" should be […]
Let’s define the Ultimate Plague as the deadliest plague imaginable. You can no doubt imagine some terrible bacterium that can kill the entire population of the earth, humans and animals, in a matter of hours. Now, if two diseases are identical except that one is imaginary and the other is real, then clearly the imaginary […]
Someone on talk.origins asked how dinosaurs had sex. One of the replies pointed to this Straight Dope column, which mentions a painting by Luis Rey of carnotaurs having sex, which I’ve reproduced here for your enjoyment and edification. (See also this article in Cosmos.) Apparently the late paleontologist Beverly Halstead did some research in the area of dinosaur […]
