Curiosity … touchdown looms

Hopefully you know all about “Curiosity” … well, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft and its Curiosity rover are in the final stages of preparing for entry, descent and landing on the Red Planet at 10:31 p.m. PDT Aug. 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT Aug. 6). -Translation for UK folks … that will be 06:31 on Monday … Read more

Believing Crazy stuff costs lives: 13 year old girl dies during Islamic exorcism

I’m happy for people to believe  whatever they wish, but I am not content to leave such nonsense unchallenged because it often leads to utterly tragic consequences. The latest example of this concerns the utterly pointless death of a 13 year old girl, Salma, in Pakistan. The story is that her parents became convinced that … Read more

Parents of Shafilea Ahmed jailed for her Honour Killing

In 2003 17-year-old Shafilea Ahmed (pictured here) went missing from her home in Warrington, then six months later her body was found in the River Kent in Cumbria. Today her parents, Iftikhar, 52, and Farzana Ahmed, 49, have been declared guilty by the jury at Chester Crown Court. Mr Justice Roderick Evans said they would both serve a minimum of … Read more

Claim: Michael Phelps is the greatest Olympian of all time

So is Michael Phelps the greatest Olympian of all time? Well the problem here is how you define the term “Greatest”. Now please do not misunderstand where I am going with this, because last night, he did something truly amazing. With the help of his teammates in the 4x200m freestyle, he won his 19th Olympic … Read more

Freedom of Speech vs Common Sense

Twitter is still finding its feet within our culture and so there tends to be a lot of weird reactions that pop up. We have already seen the Twitter joke trial of Paul Chambers, a chap who when faced with an airport delay due to lack of snow tweeted, “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. … Read more