Monday, March 31, 2014

Atheists Are .07% of the Federal Prison Population, a Threatening Fact for Christian Fundamentalists | Alternet


It's worth reminding them that if every atheist left, America would lose 85 percent of its scientists -- not that the fundamentalists love science exactly -- and a fraction of one percent of its federal prison population

---Steve

Southwestern egg rolls with avacado dipping sauce (Copycat of Chili's)

http://www.instructables.com/id/Southwestern-egg-rolls-with-avacado-dipping-sauce-/


---Steve

Sean 'Stanley' Leary dies at 38; mountain adventurer - latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-sean-leary-20140330,0,6981230.story#axzz2xZPqCWCc


---Steve

Professor teaches wrong course entire semester, students shocked when they do poorly | Death and Taxes

Professor teaches wrong course entire semester, students shocked when they do poorly | Death and Taxes:

I think I was in a class like this once...



'via Blog this'

Pastor says he tried to save man swept out to sea during baptism - latimes.com

Pastor says he tried to save man swept out to sea during baptism - latimes.com: ""A big wave came and took Benito," Cervantes said. "I tried to take him out -- he was heavy -- and then another big wave came.""



'via Blog this'

Have You Signed Away Your Right to Sue? | Mother Jones

Have You Signed Away Your Right to Sue? | Mother Jones: "Judges have another reason to love arbitration: The growth of private justice has created for them a new and lucrative job market. U.S. district court judges earn $165,200 a year, less than some second-year law firm associates. Private arbitrators can make $10,000 in a day. Some judges now even seek coaching on how best to tailor their résumés for future arbitration jobs. Lucie Barron, the founder of Action Dispute Resolution Services in California, encourages judges to keep lawyers' business cards for use in marketing their arbitration services to the legal community later on. "



'via Blog this'

Theory and Observation in Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Theory and Observation in Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy): "t laws and theoretical generalization seldom if ever entail observational predictions unless they are conjoined with one or more auxiliary hypotheses taken from the theory they belong to"



'via Blog this'

-::RefinedCustom::- landscape

http://www.refinedlandscaping.com/


---Steve

Slate: “There Is No Question That We Live in a World Already Altered by Climate Change.”

I thought you would like this article from The Slate Magazine for iPad


"There Is No Question That We Live in a World Already Altered by Climate Change."
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/03/31/new_ipcc_report_the_planet_is_warming_and_it_s_going_to_get_worse.html


---Steve

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Track Track (3/29/14, 7:48:56AM) from GaiaGPS

I made a track named Track (3/29/14, 7:48:56AM) in GaiaGPS. You can view a map of it on GaiaCloud.


Sent from my iPhone

Palm's Jeff Hawkins is building a brain-like AI. He told us why he thinks his life's work is right • The Register

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/29/hawkins_ai_feature/?page=1


---Steve

Alan Sokal highlights the incompatibility of science and religion « Why Evolution Is True


And here, it seems to me, is the crux of the conflict between religion and science. Not the religious rejection of specific scientific theories (be it heliocentrism in the 17th century or evolutionary biology today); over time most religions do find some way to make peace with well-established science. Rather, the scientific worldview and the religious worldview come into conflict over a far more fundamental question: namely, what constitutes evidence.

---Steve

Thursday, March 27, 2014

The American Scholar: Treachery - Anne Matthews


Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. … Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.

—Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, 1965


---Steve

The American Scholar: Loving Animals to Death - James McWilliams

http://theamericanscholar.org/loving-animals-to-death/#.UzT76Se9KK0


---Steve

The American Scholar: Ten Best Sentences - Our Editors

There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.

—Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby



---Steve

Putin and Segal

Right wing fascist stick together. Hmm, where is John Boehner and Ted Nugent?
---Steve

Vaccine safety studies - thimerosal

http://www2.aap.org/immunization/families/faq/vaccinestudies.pdf

IJERPH | Free Full-Text | Thimerosal Exposure and the Role of Sulfation Chemistry and Thiol Availability in Autism

http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/10/8/3771


---Steve

Corporations and religious liberty

The New York Times takes the moral high ground while the Wall Street Urinal lives up to their greed-based heritage:

"These companies are not religious organizations, nor are they affiliated with religious organizations. But the owners say they are victims of an assault on religious liberty because they personally disapprove of certain contraceptives. They are wrong, and the Supreme Court's task is to issue a decisive ruling saying so. The real threat to religious liberty comes from the owners trying to impose their religious beliefs on thousands of employees."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/opinion/sunday/crying-wolf-on-religious-liberty.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=1

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/03/26/wall-street-journal-discovers-a-love-for-an-evo/198633


---Steve

Bile acids

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.323.1620&rep=rep1&type=pdf

FXR is a molecular target for the effects of vertical sleeve gastrectomy : Nature : Nature Publishing Group

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13135.html

Here we demonstrate that the therapeutic value of VSG does not result from mechanical restriction imposed by a smaller stomach. Rather, VSG is associated with increased circulating bile acids, and associated changes to gut microbial communities.

---Steve

Intel to ditch its Hadoop software and support Cloudera instead | VentureBeat | Big Data | by Jordan Novet

http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/26/intel-cloudera-hadoop/


---Steve

Camping Near 86336.

http://freecampsites.net/#!86336


---Steve

Creationist Wisdom #411: Education Professor | The Sensuous Curmudgeon

It's creepy when we get a peek into someone's mind and see nothing but a mass of writhing maggots.

---Steve

Monday, March 24, 2014

With Robin Dean Salmon, it's either heaven or hell - KudosAZ.com Arts and Entertainment News Guide - Sedona, Az.

http://kudosaz.com/main.asp?SectionID=14&SubSectionID=13&ArticleID=36616


---Steve

meta analysis all-cause mortality veg diet

. Further categorization of diets showed
that, in comparison with regular meat eaters, mortality from
ischemic heart disease was 20% lower in occasional meat
eaters, 34% lower in people who ate fish but not meat, 34%
lower in lactoovovegetarians, and 26% lower in vegans.
There were no significant differences between vegetarians and
nonvegetarians in mortality from cerebrovascular disease,
stomach cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer,
prostate cancer, or all other causes combined.

http://www.direct-ms.org/sites/default/files/Veg%20vs%20non%20veg%20mortality.pdf

PLOS ONE: Nutrition and Health – The Association between Eating Behavior and Various Health Parameters: A Matched Sample Study

PLOS ONE: Nutrition and Health – The Association between Eating Behavior and Various Health Parameters: A Matched Sample Study: "Our results revealed that a vegetarian diet is related to a lower BMI and less frequent alcohol consumption. Moreover, our results showed that a vegetarian diet is associated with poorer health (higher incidences of cancer, allergies, and mental health disorders), a higher need for health care, and poorer quality of life. Therefore, public health programs are needed in order to reduce the health risk due to nutritional factors."



'via Blog this'

Saturday, March 22, 2014

The real goal of all those anti-Obamacare ads

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/03/21/the-real-goal-of-all-those-anti-obamacare-ads/

the hyping of all these alleged Obamacare victims is about furthering an anti-government, anti-tax, anti-regulatory agenda designed to protect the bottom line of the very wealthy

---Steve

Lawrence E. Walsh, Iran-contra special prosecutor, dies at 102 - The Washington Post

In his book "Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up" (1997), Mr. Walsh maintained that the architect of the coverup was Meese, abetted by Bush, White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, CIA Director William J. Casey, Weinberger and other top administration officials.

"What set Iran-contra apart from previous political scandals," Mr. Walsh wrote, "was the fact that a cover-up engineered in the White House of one president and completed by his successor prevented the rule of law from being applied to the perpetrators of criminal activity of constitutional dimension."


---Steve

Friday, March 21, 2014

The 20 Best Small Towns to Visit in 2014- page 8 | Travel | Smithsonian

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/20-best-small-towns-to-visit-in-2014-180950173/?page=8&no-ist


---Steve

Anne Graham Lotz: Missing Airplane Just A 'Small Snapshot' Of What The World Will Experience Following The Rapture | Right Wing Watch

"Because the Bible is clear. There is coming a moment in time when Jesus will come back to gather to Himself all those—dead and alive--who have put their trust in Him. And on that day, the world will be asking, Where have all the people gone?"
- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/anne-graham-lotz-missing-airplane-just-small-snapshot-what-world-will-experience-following-r#sthash.XHVcsvLU.dpuf

We hope the looney tunes like Lotz go quickly and leave the rest of us in peace.


---Steve

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Another Birth Control Myth Debunked » Dispatches from the Culture Wars

http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2014/03/12/another-birth-control-myth-debunked/


---Steve

An atheist can be pro-life only by lying about the science » Pharyngula

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/03/12/an-atheist-can-be-pro-life-only-by-lying-about-the-science/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+freethoughtblogs%2Fpharyngula+%28FTB%3A+Pharyngula%29

we already implicitly recognize that there is a pattern of change over time; children do not have all the same privileges as adults. Third trimester fetuses have fewer still. First trimester embryos? Even less. We all understand without even thinking about it that there is a progressive pattern to human development.

---Steve

Monday, March 10, 2014

Spicy Palomitas » Fit, Fun & Delish!


Ingredients
  • ½ tablespoon kosher salt
  • ½ tablespoon sugar
  • ½ teaspoon garlic powder
  • ½ teaspoon cumin
  • 1 teaspoon ground chipotle chile
  • 1 tablespoon ground ancho chile
---Steve

Discount Cruises, Last Minute Cruises, Cruise, Cruise Line, Cruise Vacation

http://www.vacationstogo.com/


---Steve

Saturday, March 08, 2014

Why Isn’t Anyone Talking About Matthew McConaughey’s Bizarre Oscars Acceptance Speech? – Flavorwire

http://flavorwire.com/443043/why-isnt-anyone-talking-about-matthew-mcconaugheys-bizarre-oscars-acceptance-speech/

While McConaughey started off in the normal acceptance speech fashion of thanking his director Jean-Marc Vallée and his costars Jared Leto and Jennifer Garner, his speech slowly (and I mean slowly, because the whole thing was about three minutes long) devolved into a convoluted mess. He profusely thanked God. He went on a tangent about how his father was probably watching him from heaven with a pot of gumbo, a lemon meringue pie, and a can of Miller Lite by his side. He said he sees himself as his hero — a future version of himself, that is. Throughout his speech, he fiddled with the buttons of his coat, shifting from one foot to the other, unable to focus on anything. He was jittery and twitchy and jumped from thought to thought, rambling on and on, with a few passing moments of clarity. And let's not forget that he didn't even bring up the real-life people who were actually affected by the pharmaceutical mess that was the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. (He must have been too busy thanking himself.)

---Steve

Thursday, March 06, 2014

Quote by Steven Pinker: Challenge a person's beliefs, and you challenge...


"Challenge a person's beliefs, and you challenge his dignity, standing, and power. And when those beliefs are based on nothing but faith, they are chronically fragile. No one gets upset about the belief that rocks fall down as opposed to up, because all sane people can see it with their own eyes. Not so for the belief that babies are born with original sin or that God exists in three persons or that Ali is the second-most divinely inspired man after Muhammad. When people organize their lives around these beliefs, and then learn of other people who seem to be doing just fine without them--or worse, who credibly rebut them--they are in danger of looking like fools. Since one cannot defend a belief based on faith by persuading skeptics it is true, the faithful are apt to react to unbelief with rage, and may try to eliminate that affront to everything that makes their lives meaningful."


― Steven PinkerThe Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

---Steve

High protein diet not as bad for you as smoking - Health News - NHS Choices

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/03March/Pages/high-protein-diet-may-be-harmful-for-middle-aged.aspx


---Steve

Slate: It’s a Trap!



---Steve

Monday, March 03, 2014

The Secret Auden by Edward Mendelson | The New York Review of Books

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/mar/20/secret-auden/?insrc=hpma

He observed to friends how common it was to find a dedicated anti-fascist who conducted his erotic life as if he were invading Poland.

---Steve

Saturday, March 01, 2014

This Is the Most Shocking Thing About HBO's 'True Detective' - Speakeasy - WSJ

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/01/30/the-most-shocking-thing-about-hbos-true-detective/

I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in human evolution. We became too self aware; nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, a secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody's nobody. I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.

---Steve

Arguments Against God - NYTimes.com

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/25/arguments-against-god/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=2

Why do theists care so much about belief in God? Disagreement over that question is really no more than a difference in philosophical opinion. Specifically, it's just a disagreement about ontology — about what kinds of things exist. Why should a disagreement like that bear any moral significance? Why shouldn't theists just look for allies among us atheists in the battles that matter — the ones concerned with justice, civil rights, peace, etc. — and forget about our differences with respect to such arcane matters as the origins of the universe?

---Steve