Dawkins in the Independant Remember, Dawkins’ credentials make Hitchens look like the poseur he is.
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Below is the top story on Reuters: it shows a recent trend where Greenspan has had to repeatedly warn against government spending and yet the markets and the party favored by the markets doesn’t react… There was a point when the government and markets would quiver if Greenspan looked like he had got out of bed on the wrong side. Nowadays, idealogy and faith seems to be driving capitalism too – a dangerous thing. Greenspan Warns Deficits Endanger Economy “Much of the Fed chairman’s testimony echoed prior cautions he has made to Capitol Hill lawmakers. He stressed that steps to fix the problem were essential. “As the latest projections from the (Bush) administration and the Congressional Budget Office suggest, our budget position is unlikely to improve substantially in the coming years unless major deficit-reducing actions are taken,” the Fed chief said.” Latest Business News and Financial Information | Reuters.com
Ars Technica takes apart a story in the Independant that has spread widely on blogs, which claimed that a huge number of ancient texts by people such as Sophocles were about to be deciphered. The “classical holy grail” or unholy hype? The Original Story pre-fisking: “Decoded at last: the ‘classical holy grail’ that may rewrite the history of the world. Scientists begin to unlock the secrets of papyrus scraps bearing long-lost words by the literary giants of Greece and Rome… In the past four days alone, Oxford’s classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod… They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels…Academics have hailed it as a development which could lead to a 20 per cent increase in the number of great Greek and Roman works in existence. Some are even predicting a “second Renaissance“. “. Ars…
Today’s Financial Times has a piece announcing the trial of 4 men for the murder of a senior Vatican banker, who had threatened to blow the whistle on corruption linked to the Catholic Church with details he said were enough to provoke ‘the third world war’. This announcement comes more than twenty years after the murder happened – on the exact day that the first election of a new Pope commences. The Shady Deals of God’s Banker Over twenty years ago, after being arrested on corruption charges involving dissapearance of $1 billion, on a trail that lead to the Vatican, and possible funding of right wing governments in South America, Roberto Calvi was found hanging under a bridge in London. His death was deemed to be suicide but was later deemed to be murder. Against the backdrop of the Vatican banking scandal, Pope John Paul II was appointed as the…
Home schooling has traditionally been given to kids whose parents are on the extreme fringes of society, hippes on the left and bible bashers on the right. Because of the growth in religious extremism, there has been a similar growth in home schooling, meaning that some schools have had their budgets cut as they lose pupils and per pupil funding. To woo pupils back, a school in Oregon is changing its curriculum to include creationism in science classes and biblical texts in English literature classes, leading to a crappy science and boring, one-dimensional art education for everyone. So for those that do point out that the US is by and large moderate, here is a concrete example of how the passion of a mindless minority over the apathy of the majority leads to an undemocratic situation where the minority view is enforced rather than tolerated. Oregon District Aims to Woo…
Great post by Ryan at ‘You Know what Part’ that shreds my last post on the US becoming a theocracy. You Know What Part: Religion, politics and my ticket to Hell Things that Ryan is right about: 1. I did invoke Godwin’s law. Godwin’s law is useful when ranting. 2. The US is not really becoming a theocracy. In actual fact as the Economist pointed out, most people have centrist, moderate beliefs and politics, but the margins are where elections are won. 3. Progressive circles have their fair share of hypocracy and there is something even more irritating about liberal self-righteousness – because they should know better. 4. As my friend Alex pointed out – as a founder of an Internet genealogy company, I have a vested interest in the Earth being older than Biblical claims. But… There are a bunch of religious nutters whose voice tipped the margins in…
The Toronto star carries an edited version of a Financial Times editorial on the threat of Creationism:TheStar.com – Creationism’s assault on science The article points out a valid analogy. There is overwhelming evidence that the Holocaust was real, yet a minority of ideologically driven historians still deny it. The consensus amongst historians as to the reality of the Holocaust is statistically equivalent to the consensus amongst scientists in support of evolution, yet a particular sect of militant protestant Christianity, which is popular in the US and Brazil is enforcing the irrational belief of the minority on the majority. Sure, it can be argued that it is part of the scientific process to encourage debate and look at alternate theories, but some theories are better than others. Suspicion should be aroused when theories are in fact hypotheses masking as theories and when those hypotheses are things that are driven not by…
delicious! on Flickr Fred Wilson, Howard Morgan, Clay Shirky, Esther Dyson, Peter Gadjokov…
Tagging Tagging, i.e. on-the-fly user generated keyword categorization looks like it is becoming the standard way to categorize weblog content, replacing things like fixed pre-set categories. In other words items are categorized at the point of posting, at the level of individual posts rather than according to a pre-existing taxonomy. Linkblogging and bookmarking In addition it looks like the there is an intersection between bookmarking and weblogging, where
Excellent resource listing the various projects underway to create 3d models of Manhattan: VTerrain: New York City
Sin City is a well made adaptation, a blend of digitally enhanced comic art, Sky Captain style, and high contrast silvery tones, Leni Riefenstahl style. Unfortunately, it is as morally bankrupt as the work of the latter. Sin City creates baddies that nobody will defend, child killers and child rapists, complete with a nod to catholic priest involvement, and demonizes them to the extent that we are supposed to be entertained by the revenge that is coming to them. This is nothing new, although it does tend to be the terrain of low-brow film making such as ‘Death Wish’. The difference in Sin City, is that having been spurred on by the acceptance of caricature ultra-violence in Kung Fu inspired Tarantino films, Sin City chooses to linger on the elimination of the bad guys. In other words Sin City shows the bad guys being tortured to death. So here was…