Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
I’m sure that I need not tell you about “Conservapedia”, the degree of craziness is well-known, but just in case you don’t (yet) know, its the home website for all the right-wing theist kooks. Everything you might expect is there, for example …
An apology has been offered for the Spanish Inquisition.
Can you actually apologise for the actions of others? It is debatable, but to a degree perhaps yes, for example some corporate representative says or does something inappropriate, then later when discovered, a career is terminated, and another representative for the same organisation steps in to grovel, apologise, and explain that such behaviour is not part of their culture. Ah, but what happens when somebody starts to apologies for actions that took place centuries ago?
The latest example of this is reported in today’s telegraph, “Jews receive apology over Spanish Inquisition execution“. It reads …
Hat tip to PZ for this one.
In the UK, the Thames Valley Health Protection Unit has issued a letter to the parents of every single child via the local Education Authorities because there has been an increasing number of cases of measles during 2011, especially among children. A similar rise has been observed in other countries in Europe, especially France, but also including Spain, Romania, Bulgaria and Germany. What has been happening is that folks have been away on vacation, and as a result their unimmunised children have been picking up measles, and then bringing it back.
In the US it is a similar story, they are on course to have its worst outbreak of measles in more than a decade. Travellers are catching the highly contagious illness while on vacation, then bringing it back to the U.S.
What is going on here?
Apparently its not just an Archbishop, but plain old run of the mill Bishops, that are now stepping into the public arena to suggest that taking out Osama, the utterly contemptible psychopath on a self-appointed mission to murder by devine appointment, was not a good idea.
You can read press stories on that here.
So how can one possibly respond to that? perhaps with satire like this …
Archbishop’s ‘discomfort’ at Hitler suicide
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has expressed ‘deep discomfort’ over the suicide of Adolf Hitler.
‘One cannot help but feel the man was driven to it,’ Dr Williams told a London press conference. ‘It can’t have been much fun to have all the armies of Europe and the Americans on your bunker doorstep shooting at you.’
Science News reports that Astronomers watch as wake-up call rouses slumbering monster … It’s unclear whether it was a stellar meal or simply gas that woke the sleeping giant. But astronomers say the ongoing outburst recorded by a spacecraft since March 28 is the first time scientists have witnessed the sudden activation of a dormant … Read more