Cosmos is coming back

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Do you remember Cal Sagan on Cosmos? Well, plans are afoot to bring it back in 2013. Sadly Carl is no longer with us, so it will be Neil deGrasse Tyson leading the charge. He is truly a great choice to do this. At one point Sagan himself went out of his way to recruit Tyson. During an interview with writer Daniel Simone (in the November 2, 2007 issue of Dan’s Paper here) Tyson said,

“Interestingly, when I applied to Cornell, my application dripped of my passion for the study and research of the Universe. Somehow the admissions office brought my application to the attention of the late Dr. Sagan, and he actually took the initiative and care to contact me. He was very inspirational and a most powerful influence. Dr. Sagan was as great as the universe, an effective mentor.”

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Islamic Justifications – apostates from Islam must be killed

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Challenge an Islamic cleric regarding their immoral “compulsion”, and they will argue that there is no compulsion, because no one is forced to enter Islam (yea right, I’m  skeptical about that claim, but let us take it at face value for the moment).

If you then make the observation that they do indeed believe that apostates from Islam (folks who used to by Muslim, but renounce it) must be killed, then in what universe is this not “compulsion”? Well, the answer, which happens to be one used by many clerics to justify this insanity, goes like this …”after somebody chooses to enter Islam, they cannot be allowed to leave. To attempt to leave Islam is akin to treason, and every country in the world punishes treason by death.”.

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39 held for violating Ramadan ordinance in Pakistan

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Once again Islam is breaching very basic human rights by imposing itself by force upon people … it is in Pakistan, a country where the very concept of any human rights simply fails to exist. Remember, these are the same folks who feel that murder is fine as long as the murderer can chant the right belief and claim that the victim was guilty of being un-Islamic.

Here is today’s news (found here)  …

The owners of 39 hotels, canteens and eateries in Pakistan’s Punjab province were arrested and sent to jail for violating an ordinance that bars eating and serving food in public during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, officials said on Sunday.

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Debt and the downgrade – some claim it is all Obama’s fault

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I’m reading a story in the UK’s Telegraph, that claims, “America’s debt downgrade is a damning indictment of President Obama’s Big Government disaster“.

According to this Torygraph story, it is all Obama’s fault; it is “a massive blow to the credibility of the Obama administration, and a damning indictment of its handling of the economy“, and has all been caused by an “unprecedented increase in government spending and borrowing“.

This is such a silly factually incorrect claim to make; is the author of this article, Nile Gardiner, really that moronically stupid? Well, I note that he appears frequently on Fox News, so I can only conclude that the answer to that is “Yes”.

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Why do facts get distorted?

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Understanding the dynamics and pressures can often help you to appreciate why you cannot trust statistical “facts” you find quoted in the papers.

As an example, consider the latest weather story about the appalling drought and heatwave that has engulfed the southern states of the US. Apparently it is the worst on record …

  • here claims that “Today and Friday are expected to be hotter than any time since 1950”
  • here claims “the worst in Texas history”

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