1. A slow but certain demise

Comment #277029 by Telic on November 3, 2008 at 3:00 am

#274807 by Chris Davis on October 30, 2008 at 11:44 am

One small pedantic point: it's not a 'giant stone' at all, but a small building.

Astonishingly, given its apparent religious importance, the Kaaba's structure is quite open information. I think there's even a plan drawing in Wikipedia.

2. Swatting attacks on fruit flies and science

Comment #277022 by Telic on November 3, 2008 at 2:42 am

I think what's going through Sarah Palin's head is the same as what's going through a fruit flies head when it hits your windscreen...

3. Memories Selectively, Safely Erased In Mice

Comment #273017 by Telic on October 28, 2008 at 3:23 am

I don't think the human mind is disciplined enough to undergo this kind of treatment.

I'd start the treatment and then I'd suddenly start to panic and say "OK, I mustn't be remembering what my name is while the treatment is active. Doh! I mustn't be remembering where I live while the treatment is active. Doh! I mustn't be remembering what I look like while the treatment is active. Doh!"

By the time I finished, I would have no idea who the person in the mirror was.


And besides, how can you guarantee its selectivity. After all, by definition you wouldn't be able to remember what you'd forgotten, in order to be able to report that you'd forgotten something you shouldn't have....

4. Dare we stand up for Muslim women?

Comment #271371 by Telic on October 25, 2008 at 2:33 pm

Seems like women's rights, although obviously a much welcomed end in itself, might also be the path to an islamic reformation.


(Mr. Pedantic : did the author really intend the final question mark in the article')

Telic: the final sentence of the article is a question, so it requires a question mark.

5. Dare we stand up for Muslim women?

Comment #269579 by Telic on October 23, 2008 at 6:44 am

Seems like women's rights, although obviously a much welcomed end in itself, might also be the path to an islamic reformation.


(Mr. Pedantic : did the author really intend the final question mark in the article')

6. Why Evolution is True

Comment #264282 by Telic on October 14, 2008 at 3:52 am

"...creationists can lie faster than anyone can rebut them, so the best strategy is to focus on the real evidence and force critics to address it directly. "

7. Heavy Metal-Eating 'Superworms' Unearthed in U.K.

Comment #263000 by Telic on October 10, 2008 at 3:30 am

Some people seem to be concerned that this discovery isn't actually useful, and so what if plants can now take up the chemicals and be harvested... particularly Vinelectric

9. Comment #262808 by Vinelectric


Wouldn't it be more sensible to try to avoid the extrication of these metals from the Earth's crust in the first place?

8. Beetles get by with a little help from their friends

Comment #260793 by Telic on October 6, 2008 at 3:35 am

I believe it was called Bernard.

9. Comedian Sabina Guzzanti 'insulted Pope' in poofter devils gag

Comment #246247 by Telic on September 12, 2008 at 2:52 am

As usual I'm sure I'm missing something, but shouldn't the Pope step forward and 'publicly' say he forgives her ?

10. Teachers should tackle creationism, says science education expert

Comment #246245 by Telic on September 12, 2008 at 2:42 am

Well, I say we cave in to all the pressure and agree to teach Creationism as long as 'they' can meet one condition. The Muslims and Christians and Jews (& etc.) must all go off together and decide just whose God it was that created the world, and then we will agree it can be taught.

Problem solved.


(Other than that I'd agree with many other posters in that it should only be discussed in science class in terms of how it fails to meet any criteria that would qualify it as a genuine scientific theory in the first place)

11. Faith schools may be Blair's most damaging legacy

Comment #243054 by Telic on September 5, 2008 at 3:25 am

This is one of the few things that makes me embarrassed to be British. Its probably the single most worrying trend in the country today (giving rise to a lot more worrying trends...), and Blair should be ashamed of himself.

Britain isn't often jealous of France, but in this instance we should be.

12. McCain's VP Wants Creationism Taught in School

Comment #240781 by Telic on September 1, 2008 at 3:13 am

Asked by the Anchorage Daily News whether she believed in evolution, Palin declined to answer...

13. No atheist burials in Co Donegal

Comment #240761 by Telic on September 1, 2008 at 2:32 am

So can you be converted after you're dead?

"I hereby babtise you John Smith deceased....May you rest in peace."

14. Beetle drive

Comment #240750 by Telic on September 1, 2008 at 2:20 am

11. Comment #239180 by Cartomancer on August 29, 2008 at 8:01 am

Wouldn't the optimal solution be to have great big horns that also function as penises? Or is there some limitation on the insectoid body pattern that would prevent this from ever happening?

15. Museum in censorship row over Darwin sign

Comment #239085 by Telic on August 29, 2008 at 3:15 am

Well, fankly that thrid paragraph really is badly worded. So I have no problem with it being covered until someone can re-write it and put a new sign up.


Perhaps someone just pointed out how bad it was, and someone has assumed it was a criticism on religious grounds?
Perhaps we're all getting het up about nothing.


Then again, if you can cover it with blank card, you can cover it with a re-written sentence that better expresses the intended meaning....
Providing you have someone who knows enough about evolution to decipher and clearly express the intended meaning.

16. B.C. health official says mumps outbreak began with unimmunized religious group

Comment #239071 by Telic on August 29, 2008 at 2:35 am

Obviously, some of those people in B.C. need to join the rest of us in the A.D.

17. Why Dawkins is right and his critics are wrong

Comment #235382 by Telic on August 23, 2008 at 12:08 am

There's no doubting that RD's name now elicits something of a knee jerk response amongst people.
I'm continually irritated by my sister's refusal to read TGD, based on her 'hearsay' opinion of the author and his attitude.


Time for an experiment.

It's time for RD to ghost write the script for a proof of evolution series, but let David Attenborough present it.

Watch the plaudits rain.

And then reveal the Creator.


P.S.
It's a little strange referring to someone in the third person, only to find they posted a comment just a couple of minutes before your own.

I feel as if I have been vaguely rude.

Hello Mr. D, and thanks for the all your work.
Currently reading "The Ancestor's Tale" and finding it an excellent and informative book.

18. Pastor Rick's Test

Comment #234780 by Telic on August 22, 2008 at 2:46 am

J Mac

"Would flouting the spirit of the first amendment constitute grounds?"

How is participating in a debate flouting anything?

19. Pastor Rick's Test

Comment #234345 by Telic on August 21, 2008 at 8:17 am

Can candidates be impeached before they take office?


Would flouting the spirit of the first amendment constitute grounds?


Oh, of course not, Bush has been blurring the edges in order to make way for more of the god squad...

20. Central Texas Man's Death Sentence Upheld Despite Bible In Jury Room

Comment #234342 by Telic on August 21, 2008 at 8:04 am

The fact that he has been sentenced to death by crucifixion is neither here nor there.

21. Catholic leaders block contraceptive advice for 30,000 Scots girls

Comment #233033 by Telic on August 19, 2008 at 3:33 am

There was a recent channel 4 Dispatches documentary about this vaccination that was very interesting.

There do seem to be valid reasons for not rolling out this vaccination; For example, it only protects against two strains of HPV, from some score of potential strains. Admittedly, these 2 strains are the most common causes of cervical cancer, but as has been mentioned above, 3 out of 10 women will still be at risk.

The main issue in the UK seems to be that we already have the best cervical cancer screening any where in the world, and a vaccine may lead to women taking smear tests less seriously; And paradoxically leading to more of those 3 out of 10 women not discovering their infection until it is too late to treat, resulting in more deaths.

Unfortunately, the stance of the Catholic church may lead to this outcome becoming more likely, as surely it has been proven that ignorance does not stop teenagers from having sex, and not acknowledging the important information that women will still be at higher risk from certain strains of virus without condoms.....


There are also financial arguments about where best to spend NHS funding, and this is a VERY expensive virus; Given the excellent screening process that is already in place, and the calculation that this might only save 1 in 1000 of the numbers currently diagnosed, there do seem better ways to spend the money.


p.s. the 1 in 1000 figure should be taken with a pinch of salt, as my memory is failing me... but you get the gist of the argument.

22. We need to stop being such cowards about Islam

Comment #230180 by Telic on August 14, 2008 at 11:57 am

We need to stop being such cowards about Islam

etc........

23. Evolution as Described by the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Comment #229973 by Telic on August 14, 2008 at 5:51 am

I'm with atp, in that I understood evolution did not violate the second law of thermodynamics simply because the earth is an open system.

And I'm also not convinced by this attempt to turn the argument on its head, and invoke the second law in favour of evolution instead.

Let's hope that there isn't some inevitable driving force towards thermonuclear war and an attempt to increase entropy in one glorious big bang ;)

24. Camp Offers Training Ground For Little Skeptics

Comment #228407 by Telic on August 12, 2008 at 3:06 am

Surely people are confusing 'scared of being dead' with 'scared of dying' ?


I honestly have never understood why someone would thing the thought of not existing is scary.

Now the thought of the process of dying itself, and the potential pain and suffering it entails is scary.

Besides pain and suffering however, I think there is a psychological fear of dying that is grounded purely in our biology, and is the culmination of our drive to continue to exist. But I would still make a distinction between fear experienced in anticipation of the process of dying, and the fear of eventually not existing.

25. Saudi Arabia Bans Dog Walking in Capital

Comment #228395 by Telic on August 12, 2008 at 2:32 am

Having lived in Riyadh for 3 years, I have to say this story strikes me as odd.


Not only do I not remember ever seeing anyone walking a dog in public (plenty of feral dogs being run over), but religious laws are already much more strictly enforced there than in Jeddah for example.

So the idea of walking up to a female stranger in order to 'hit' on her seems pretty unlikely. Not only do you not know what she looks like because veil wearing is STRICLY enforced in public, but you're likely to get her punished for being some kind of 'whore', and you'll probably be given a few good whacks yourself.


I had a New Zealand friend out there who got seriously whacked on the back of his legs simply because his hair was considered to be too long by the religious police.


noamzur is also mostly correct in that women are always supposed to be accompanied by men; But the exception is where there is a group of women of say 4 or more in which case they don't have to have a male with them necessarily when they go to the shopping mall for example.

Even so, trying to hit on a group of women with your toy dog seems like a highly risky thing to do.
I'd be as wary as a male spider afraid of being eaten.


EDIT:
Makes me laugh to see that McDonalds in the picture. Riyadh had one on nearly every city block (or at least Burger King, or KFC instead).
So much anti-american rhetoric while they stuff their faces with more burgers than an Elvis convention. I've honestly never seen any other city in the world with more McDonalds than Riyadh - I reckon it should be renamed to McRiyadh.

26. Camp Offers Training Ground For Little Skeptics

Comment #226920 by Telic on August 8, 2008 at 10:50 pm

Smart kids indeed.

It would be interesting to organise some kind of anonymous internet debate between these kids and some 'respected' theologian; And then only reveal at the end that, no it wasn't Christopher Hitchens that handed the theologian his ass on a plate, it was some free thinking teenagers :)

27. Praying for health

Comment #226415 by Telic on August 8, 2008 at 3:56 am

I can't remember the last time I read a worse article.

Science by 'joining the dots'.

May as well just scatter some conclusions you'd be interested in finding across a table, and then use a oiuja board to find things out.

28. Call to teach biblical creation as science

Comment #226405 by Telic on August 8, 2008 at 3:41 am

Yup, Creationism and more fundamentalist versions of Religion are just what Northern Ireland need.

29. More than 100,000 rare gorillas found in Congo

Comment #224940 by Telic on August 6, 2008 at 3:40 am

The added bonus for demonising smokers.

The world just doesn't need a quarter million more ash trays.

30. Do they really think the earth is flat?

Comment #224262 by Telic on August 4, 2008 at 11:46 am

I vote we throw them over the edge.

31. Embracing goodness, without God

Comment #224255 by Telic on August 4, 2008 at 11:38 am

.....he was denied $40,000 in federal funding to study whether intelligent design was hurting how science is taught in schools.

The committee reviewing his application said there was inadequate "justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of evolution, and not intelligent design theory, was correct."

32. To beat extremism we must dissolve religious groups

Comment #221973 by Telic on July 30, 2008 at 11:43 am

48.

Fair enough. I thought you didn't look particularly semitic. I am an arab, thoroughly westernised, and usually get taken for a bit mediterranean.

33. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #221114 by Telic on July 29, 2008 at 10:48 am

I did have a girlfriend who said she knew when I'd been eating red meat.

And who put me on a regime of copious amounts of pineapple juice for some strange reason.



Interestingly, there's an article in the New Scientist this week about how the taste of food in a mother's diet can be found in breast milk. Testing with Bananas, liqorice, menthol, and something else.

It didn't go in to details of exactly how they knew what the breast milk tasted like... :)

34. Write to UCF

Comment #219296 by Telic on July 26, 2008 at 3:48 pm

Including pages of TGD was a stroke of genius :)

How's about that for "fair" ?

How'd ya' like dem apples !



Although I thought the point of being catholic was that they DID believe that communion translated the wafer in to the body of christ ?

Having been raised a catholic, at catholic schools, I remember having an argument when I was 14 or so where I accused a friend of being "virtually" a protestant because he thought the "wafer-into-christ" business was just symbolic.
(While already knowing that I was neither protestant, nor catholic...)

Either way, I'm pretty certain that you'd find a lot of confusion about this issue amongst catholics themselves.
"Wow, was I NOT meant to take that bit literally? Mmm, but the resurrection, now that was literal?"

Paradoxes, and squirming rationalisation, ad infinitum, while they retreat before modern science and modern moral values...

35. Sydney brothels say Pope's visit will give business a leg-up

Comment #219286 by Telic on July 26, 2008 at 3:24 pm

"That's right Bishop. Get down on your knees and ..... say what now ?"




Now there's an episode of "Neighbours" I'm glad I missed.




And thank Dog thewhitepearl put her finger away.
Yes, I did find it offensive.
You never know where it's been.

36. Cardinal accuses Anglican Communion of 'spiritual Alzheimer's'

Comment #217389 by Telic on July 24, 2008 at 10:06 am

Bishop bashing is such fun.

37. Antony Flew reviews the Index of The God Delusion

Comment #214518 by Telic on July 20, 2008 at 3:01 pm

Antony Flew reviews the Index of The God Delusion

38. Pope confirms sexual abuse apology

Comment #210141 by Telic on July 14, 2008 at 2:28 am

Err, I know its off topic slightly, but people have been posting limericks and it mentions rear ends, and the land of Oz so :

There once was a lass from Australia,
Who painted her ass like a dahlia,
The brush work was fine,
And the colours divine,
But the aroma, well that was a failure

39. Pope confirms sexual abuse apology

Comment #209696 by Telic on July 13, 2008 at 3:27 am

Comment #209668 by Laurie Fraser

... mooning the Pope, that sort of thing. ...

40. An Irishman's Diary

Comment #209130 by Telic on July 11, 2008 at 3:52 pm

Try this quiz and donate food while you play :

Free Rice



# You scored 93% on Beginner, higher than 32% of your peers.
# You scored 100% on Intermediate, higher than 48% of your peers.
# You scored 93% on Advanced, higher than 38% of your peers.
# You scored 80% on Expert, higher than 47% of your peers.

41. Bisexual Species: Unorthodox Sex in the Animal Kingdom

Comment #209092 by Telic on July 11, 2008 at 3:08 pm

P-p-p-pick up a penguin !


You may need to be British and of a certain age to get this "joke"

42. IT'S A GODDAMNED CRACKER!

Comment #208575 by Telic on July 11, 2008 at 3:35 am

I was brought up as a Roman Catholic in the UK, and attended a Roman Catholic primary school attached to a Church in which the school would often attend mass.

Given this background, I am still confused as to why I never took religion seriously, even at such an early and impressionable age, but my attitude was perfectly captured by a 'cracker' incident of my own.

Basically, a school mate dared me to go up to communion but to refuse to accept it.

I was not a particulary daring child, but this just didn't seem like a big deal to me.

One of the rules about communion was that you were supposed to fast for at least an hour before mass, so that presumably you wouldn't still be tasting ketchup while eating the body of christ... So, I just swanned up to communion, and then made an excuse that "Ooops, sorry, but I remembered I had something to eat, so can't accept it".

The priest didn't make a fuss, and seemed genuinely confused, from which I can assume this was probably the first "refusal" he had ever encountered.

And I turned away and went back to the adulation of my class mate who seemed truly astonished that I hadn't been struck by lightening.


Did I get off scot-free ?

Well, nope.

My Granny, who was (and will hopefully remain) the hairiest woman I have ever known, had been in the back of the church congregation and had seen the whole incident, and when I got home later that day, I got the beating of my life, along with one of the most unintelligible rants about christ I have had the privelige of not understanding.


I never have fully understood what the fuss was about - although, of course I have to admit to lying to the priest, in a Church, standing at the altar, in front of a bunch of people who obviously 'believed' in this stuff more than I thought we were meant to...


Now I've forgiven my Granny, but in no way did I deserve my hirsuit haranguing.

43. Atheist soldier sues Army for 'unconstitutional' discrimination

Comment #208535 by Telic on July 11, 2008 at 2:40 am

"Right Hall. You go investigate the abandoned vehicle.

We'll back you up by forming a prayer circle and singing Kumbaya."

44. McDonald's Makes Jesus Cry

Comment #206984 by Telic on July 9, 2008 at 3:48 am

"...Maybe there are enough homos around to keep your arches open."

45. Christians challenge teaching of evolution

Comment #204474 by Telic on July 5, 2008 at 3:39 am

Oops, me being too US/UK-centric ;p

46. Christians challenge teaching of evolution

Comment #204466 by Telic on July 5, 2008 at 3:31 am

This article seems to imply that the only way teaching is governed and restricted in US schools is by restricting the teaching material that public schools can purchase ?


So if some wack-jobs with some extra cash can produce 'teaching' material saying the earth is flat, and send it to schools for free - then the teachers can introduce it in to the class room ?


Is it basically the case that the teachers can teach what they like, unless school governors rein them in.



I have to admit that I'm also a little confused how Creationism is taught in the UK where the national curriculum is surely meant to define what can be taught as science.


How do British pupils who are taught creationism pass science exams ?


Do Academy schools get to define their own curriculum and have custom exams that only their pupils would pass ?

47. Does the Pope wear Prada?

Comment #204459 by Telic on July 5, 2008 at 3:10 am

Yup, I'm sure Prada would jump at the chance to accessorise the pope.

Who wants Angelina Jolie to show off your stuff on the red carpet at the oscars, when you could have a pedagogical, cross dressing, octagenarian, who once belonged to the Hitler Youth....

God's Rottweiler -
"That Prada bag is fantastic. I hope there are no condoms in it."

48. New Zealand man sells his soul to 'Hell'

Comment #203801 by Telic on July 3, 2008 at 4:17 pm

So when we die ........ we're all going for pizza and beer in NZ?

Sounds all right to me ;)

49. Obama Wants to Expand Role of Religious Groups

Comment #203491 by Telic on July 3, 2008 at 2:58 am

Nah, I've given up on my health care reform ideas already. I'll squander the money away instead by buying votes from people who will redirect it toward promoting religion.

Come back Hillary, all is forgiven ;P

50. Evangelical Christians sign up to a 'Church within a Church'

Comment #203484 by Telic on July 3, 2008 at 2:38 am

Mmm, so no gays or women in higher office in the CofE.


And the head of the CofE is a Queen the Queen.



I'm not so sure we should be worried about a schism making one or the other faction more religiose - as long as they spend all their energy squabbling amongst themselves.