Search Content

Displaying results 80501 - 80550 of 87950

The Runner

John Branch has an absolutely fascinating and beautifully told article in the Times today on Diane Van Deren, one of the premier ultra-runners in the world. Last year, she won the Yukon Arctic Ultra 300, which follows the treacherous trail of the Yukon sled dog race for hundreds of miles. (She was the first woman to ever complete the 430 mile version of the race.) This weekend she's participating in a race in Colorado that has a total elevation gain of 33,000 feet. But here's the neuroscientific twist: Diane is missing a chunk of her right temporal lobe, which makes it easier for her to…

Self-Control Questions

Over at the New Yorker website, I've answered a few questions from readers about the marshmallow task: Do you think the future results of success would be different for a sample of kids born in the twenty-first century considering the decades of behavioral, economical changes in the society? Hassan Patwary San Jose, Calif. I think it would be hard to replicate the marshmallow task now, if only because it's gotten much tougher to feed hundreds of preschoolers sugary snacks in the name of science. There are allergies, peculiar diets, and all sorts of food issues. So you'd have to find something…

Harold Pinter takes a pause

Playwright, Nobel Prize-winner, and peace activist Harold Pinter passed away yesterday. Pinter was most famous for the Pinter pause, a stage-directed delay which allowed actors to reorganize themselves, and for the audience to take in the events on stage. It also contributed to the disquieting nature of his pieces. More recently, Pinter took a role as one of the great proponents of peace, both in his literary work and as a public intellectual. In his 2005 Nobel acceptance speech, he explored the importance of speaking truth, and confronting those in power with truth, true sentiment, true…

On Roosevelt's experimental approach to government

Comparisons between President Obama and President Franklin Roosevelt are becoming common, and for good cause. Both swept to power amidst a collapsing economy, and both came to Washington with newly strengthened Democratic majorities – majorities elected on a promise of change. One lesson I hope that Obama will learn from FDR is the idea of government through experimentation. Roosevelt's New Deal was an age when the administration enacted a wealth of new programs, some seemingly at odds with others. Roosevelt brought in a team of smart young staffers, and let them see which programs worked…

Palin-spastic: What is it with her and the predators?

Sarah Palin was interviewed by Katie Couric: Couric: Would you support a moratorium on foreclosures to help average Americans keep their homes? Palin: That's something that John McCain and I have both been discussing - whether that (pause) is part of the solution or not. You know, it's going to be a multi-faceted solution that has to be found here. Couric: So you haven't decided whether you'll support it or not? Palin: I have not. Couric: What are the pros and cons of it do you think? Palin: Oh, well, some decisions that have been made poorly should not be rewarded, of course.…

Creationist Kenneth Willard likely to run national school board org.

The New York Times and Paul Decelles point out that wingnut Kansas Board of Ed. member Kenneth Willard is running unopposed to be president of the National Association of State Boards of Education. Willard's faults include voting for and strongly promoting the atrocious science standards last year. He beat Jack Wempe and Donna Viola in last year's elections. Paul Decelles explains the problem: Willard says that his disagreement with Darwin has nothing to do with the association's work. And personally if I felt that Willard could be impartial and genuinely interested in education, OK. But…

Sick bastards

Steve, formerly the Whole Wheat Blogger, is confused. He reads an article about people in Austria trying to get a chimpanzee declared to be a person for legal purposes, and wonders: On pondering this, I was wondering what possible reason these people could have for doing this. Do they desire something that is taboo unless it's with another person? Which is to say, "to remove the taboo of bestiality." I don't know why that's what he thinks first. After all, the news account he links explains: Hiasl's supporters argue he needs that status to become a legal entity that can receive donations…

The Mark of the Beast will be foiled by Republicans!

I learned something odd this morning. Three US states have laws on the books, created by Republican legislators, making it illegal to insert microchips into people. Virginia has even declared them to be the mark of the beast from Revelation. And now Georgia is hoping to join the ranks of the crazy states. There is a bill pending, SB 235, the "Microchip Consent Act of 2009; prohibit requiring a person to be implanted with a microchip", which is symptomatic of the problem. This nice opinion piece summarizes why it is nuts. In Gov. Roy Barnes' stump speech, the bill has become a routine example…

Friday Sprog Blogging: insects.

Younger offspring: (Singing, to the tune of "Head and Shoulders") Head and thorax, abdomen, abdomen. Head and thorax, abdomen, abdome-e-e-en. Bulgy eyes and antennae. Head and thorax, abdomen, abdomen! Dr. Free-Ride: Let me guess: you've been learning about insects? Younger offspring: Uh huh! Dr. Free-Ride: So what do you know about insects besides the names of the parts of their bodies? Younger offspring: They have six legs. And they lay eggs. Dr. Free-Ride: What kind of insects did you guys study? Younger offspring: Walking stick. They camouflage so nobody can catch them. Dr. Free-…

Friday Sprog Blogging: the proper care and watering of plants.

A conversation while walking home from school with the elder Free-Ride offspring: Elder offspring: (Veering off the sidewalk toward a bougainvillea) Hello! How are you today? Dr. Free-Ride: Hey, what are you doing? Elder offspring: I'm just talking to the plants. Dr. Free-Ride: Why are you doing that? Elder offspring: Some people think talking to plants is good for the plants. Dr. Free-Ride: Child, you'd be amazed at what some people think. Elder offspring: I don't see what's wrong with talking to plants. They are living things, you know. Dr. Free-Ride: I didn't say you couldn't talk to…

The future of humanity?

It's "Ask a ScienceBlogger" time again, and the question of the week is whether the human race will be around in 100 years. Folks, I don't want to get all Clintonian on you (William Jefferson, not George), but I'm going to have to say, it depends what you mean by "human". Certainly, it's possible that nuclear mishap, poorly scheduled meteorite, or disease (ask Tara) will take us out in the next 100 years. My predictive powers in such matters aren't so good. Yours probably aren't either. It wouldn't surprise me if the coakroaches are the ones left to tidy up, but 100 years seems relatively…

Beware the gay stormtroopers!

The American Humanist Association is making a push to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy of the American military. They want you to write a letter to your representatives supporting the repeal. Here's another reason besides simple common decency to end a discriminatory practice: It will drive Bryan Fischer insane(r). Fischer is the unpleasant Idaho bigot who thinks homosexuals should be imprisoned, and he's got his own peculiar take on gays in the military. Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six…

Twins

In the new New York Review of Books, there is a fascinating review of Nancy Segal's new book on twins. (Caveat: I haven't read the book yet.) The review is full of choice anecdotes like these: The "Fireman Twins" were adopted by separate families living just thirty miles apart and who both grew up to become volunteer firemen. The last two twins were reunited in their mid-thirties after one of them was mistaken for the other at a firemen's convention. The resemblances were uncanny. Beside both being volunteer firemen, they each had a loud, staccato-like laugh; liked to issure one word…

No More Menstrual Cycle?

Wyeth is currently waiting on FDA approval for a new birth control medication that stops women from menstruating. It's called Lybrel, and it delivers an uninterrupted flow of hormones (there is no week of placebo pills). As Sarah Richards notes, Wyeth isn't the first pharmaceutical company to reimagine the menstrual cycle. In 1992, the FDA approved Depo-Provera, an injection that is repeated every three months. In 2003, Seasonale rescheduled the monthly period to four times a year. And in July, the government gave the go-ahead for Implanon, an implant that delivers a steady hormone stream for…

The Science of Poverty

Neuroscience now knows that chronic stress and impoverished environments - the two hallmarks of human poverty - are debilitating to the primate brain. Stress releases glucocorticoids which, if they hang around long enough, turn into poison, while impoverished environments diminish the growth and density of our dendrites. As I wrote in my profile of Elizabeth Gould: The social implications of this research are staggering. If boring environments, stressful noises, and the primate's particular slot in the dominance hierarchy all shape the architecture of the brain--and Gould's team has shown…

Obesity and Pleasure

There's something poignant about the possibility that one of the reasons obese people eat too much is because they are unable to take pleasure in the taste of their food. But according to a new study published in Science, that's exactly what happens: The dorsal striatum plays a role in consummatory food reward, and striatal dopamine receptors are reduced in obese individuals, relative to lean individuals, which suggests that the striatum and dopaminergic signaling in the striatum may contribute to the development of obesity. Thus, we tested whether striatal activation in response to food…

The Genetics of Stress

Razib calls my attention to this new Nature study on the genetic variation underlying the stress response. The researchers focused on neuropeptide Y, an endogenous anxiolytic (it's like an anti-anxiety drug naturally produced by the brain) which is released in response to stress. They focused on a single nucleotide polymorphism (aka SNP) which "alters NPY expression in vitro and seems to account for more than half of the variation in expression in vivo." The pertinent question, of course, is how they measured variation in vivo. The researchers used a few different, and quite interesting,…

Happiness and Children

Ronald Bailey looks at the data and concludes that having children doesn't make us happy: "Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people's overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact," reports Harvard psychologist and happiness researcher Daniel Gilbert. In addition, the more children a person has the less happy they are. According to Gilbert, researchers have found that people derive more satisfaction from eating, exercising, shopping, napping, or watching television than taking care of their kids. "Indeed,…

Prozac and Placebos

Lots of attention has been paid to the latest review/meta-analysis demonstrating that popular antidepressant medications don't seem to be that much more effective than placebos. While this certainly isn't the first time someone has demonstrated that Prozac is only mildly more useful than a sugar pill (unless, that is, you fall into the "severely depressed" category), this review was noteworthy because it consisted mainly of previously unpublished studies done by the drug makers before the drugs were put on sale. As Time magazine notes, this allows the researchers to "avoid a bias that often…

Abusing Adderall

Molly Young has a really interesting article on the rampant abuse of Adderall in elite universities in n+1. Essentially, Adderall is a composite of several different amphetamines, which are digested by the brain at different rates. So many kids are prescribed Adderall nowadays that virtually every university has an excess supply, which is then sold or bartered to kids sick of using Diet Coke to pull all-nighters: It is probably surprising that the drug backfired only once, when I stayed up on Adderall for 72 hours before a philosophy final. My appearance in the testing hall the next day was…

The Fourth Culture

In my recent Seed article on science and art, I wrote about how we need to foster a new cultural movement: If we are serious about unifying human knowledge, then we'll need to create a new movement that coexists with the third culture but that deliberately trespasses on our cultural boundaries and seeks to create relationships between the arts and the sciences. The premise of this movement--perhaps a fourth culture--is that neither culture can exist by itself. Its goal will be to cultivate a positive feedback loop, in which works of art lead to new scientific experiments, which lead to new…

New Hampshire and Political Punditry

Needless to say, the political pundits were hilariously wrong about the New Hampshire primary. I won't hypothesize about what actually happened, other than to say that I think many voters here wanted a longer primary. They didn't want an Obama coronation in the beginning of January. This says less about Obama and Clinton and more about the over-hyped press coverage and shortened primary schedule. I voted for Obama, but I'm looking forward to a drawn out race for the Democratic nomination. This whole democracy thing is pretty entertaining. But back to the failures of the political pundits.…

The War on Drugs

Ben Wallace-Wells, in Rolling Stone, recently wrote a fantastic and tragic article on America's War on Drugs: All told, the United States has spent an estimated $500 billion to fight drugs - with very little to show for it. Cocaine is now as cheap as it was when Escobar died and more heavily used. Methamphetamine, barely a presence in 1993, is now used by 1.5 million Americans and may be more addictive than crack. We have nearly 500,000 people behind bars for drug crimes - a twelvefold increase since 1980 - with no discernible effect on the drug traffic. Virtually the only success the…

The Political Brain

Just a quick note on the liberal/conservative psychological study that everyone is talking about. (Dave Munger has a thorough write-up here.) Color me dubious. My own bias is to distrust any experiment that tries to collapse extremely complex cognitive categories - such as political belief - into a simple and quantifiable experimental paradigm. The research is certainly interesting, but I'd find it more trustworthy (and more interesting) if it got a result that contradicted the conventional wisdom. And then there's the fact that it contradicts some of the work of Philip Tetlock, who found…

The Great White Sort

I suggested below that though on average whites did not move toward the Democrats, regionally there might be differences. I inferred this from the fact that areas where blacks are thin on the ground in the South it looks as if John McCain did better than George W. Bush in 2004. So I compared the voting patterns of whites in the 2008 and 2004 elections; and there are regional differences. 2008 Democratic presidential white vote declined 15% or more vs. 2004 2008 Democratic presidential white vote increased 15% or more vs. 2004 2008 Democratic presidential white vote 10 pts or more below…

The executive class supports John McCain

A survey of 751 CEOs shows that 80% support John McCain while 20% support Barack Obama. Remember, wealthier white people still tilt Republican. That being said, I think there is something to the dichotomy between professional class vs. business class. The former are affluent and educated, but may be on career tracks where regulatory constraints on labor mitigate capitalist competition (e.g., lawyers, doctors and other licensed and certified professionals). In other words, their affluence is not tied to market conditions in a 1:1 manner, and a non-trivial proportion of their income might be…

Elites more firm in their opinions (just)....

In response to my post below, Are the elites more polarized? Yes!, a comment: The high "moderation" of low-income voters tends to make me think that what's measured is low-information voters instead, people don't take an active interest and who answer in harmless generalities. And maybe people who feel totally helpless, as though their input cannot make any difference. This seems plausible. How to figure this out? First, one thing to remember is that there is a correlation between measures of intelligence/knowledge and socioeconomic status. Here is number correct on the vocab test out of…

Active volcanism in the Caucasus Mountains

Mt. Elbrus in southern Russia, one of the active volcanoes in the Caucasus Mountains. (Note the prominent flow levees sticking out of the snow cover on the dacite lava flow in the middle of the image.) Most people (including myself) aren't fully aware of the active volcanoes in the Caucasus Mountains, but sure enough, there are volcanoes that have erupted fairly recently (geologically-speaking). One of the active volcanoes in the Caucasus Mountains of Russia is Mt. Elbrus, just north of the border with Georgia, and it has erupted as recently as ~50 A.D., which for a volcano is the blink of…

(Late) Wednesday Whatzits: Hawaiian lava flows, more Katla mongering and a possible eruption at Ruiz?

Kilauea lavas on the move near Kalapana. Image taken July 17, courtesy of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. Some news over the last few days: The lava flows from Kilauea are moving with a vengeance right now, damaging roads and heading for some structures. The lava flows near Kalapana have moved almost 200 meters since Sunday, closing within 100 yards of homes in the area. The lava is moving to the east along Highway 130 and 137 - and tourists are making it difficult to get around as they park to watch the lava - upwards of 2,000 people! A number of people (and dogs) have had to be…

Updates on the Saudi Arabian earthquakes

Al-Baidha volcanoAl-Qider volcano in Saudi Arabia. Image courtesy of Ahmed Al-Hussaini. I've been searching for more information on the Saudi Arabian earthquake swarm reported last week. A number of Eruptions readers have also added some on-the-ground info as well. UPDATE 12:30PM Pacific: Here is a brief update via Reuters India. They mention that five villages are being evacuated as a precaution. Beyond that, not much new information and it does feature this line that makes me shudder: "The region lies on a fault line, according to SGS, which declined to comment on current magma levels,…

An eruption brewing in Saudi Arabia? - UPDATED

The Harrat Khaybar volcanic field in Saudi Arabia. Image courtesy of NASA, taken in 2008. Now, I might take this report with a Volvo-sized grain of salt, but I've seen a few reports lately of an earthquake swarm going on in Saudi Arabia, near the Harrat Ash-Shaqqah in Al-Eis region (apparently near Madina, but I'm not 100% sure). I might normally just chalk this up to the tectonics of the Arabian Plate, however, the latest article I read this morning, Saleh Al-Muhawis, Director General of the Civil Defense in Madina Region mentioned this as the cause of the seismicity: ... magma (molten…

The Social Ramifications of Volcanism

Manam in Papua New Guinea erupting in 2004 Five years ago, Manam volcano in Papua New Guinea erupted. The volcano is located on a 10-km island of the same name and when it erupted in 2004, it produced pyroclastic flows and lava flows to the tune of a VEI 4 eruption. It was decided that the 9,000 inhabitants of the island had to be evacuated but even so, five people died due to the eruption. However, there are still thousands of people in temporary care centers on the main island of Papua New Guinea. Tensions have flared with the local inhabitants, to the point that four former islanders have…

The nature of the supernatural

Astronomer Phil Plait notes a webcomic addressing testability and the supernatural, and makes an odd endorsement of this position: there's no such thing as the supernatural. Either something is natural -- that is, part of the Universe -- or else it doesn't exist. If you posit some thing that has no perceivable or measurable effect, then it may as well not exist. And as soon as you claim it does have an effect -- it can be seen, heard, recorded, felt -- then it must be in some way testable, and therefore subject to science. Not quite. The issue with the supernatural is not whether it's part…

Skeptical Bay Area events

Tomorrow (Wednesday), Bay Area Skeptics will be hosting the excellent Rebecca Watson for a Skeptics in the Pub Quiz. Watson is a founder of Skepchick, a host of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, and a force for skepticism and sensibility in a world that is too frequently senseless. As a member of the Bay Area Skeptics board, I'm pretty jazzed about this event. You can play alone or, to improve your chance of winning awesome prizes, you can form a team of 5 or fewer. All questions will relate to science and skepticism, so there's no need to memorize obscure baseball stats prior to playing…

Disco. ain't dead

Bruce Chapman, whose Disco. institute is still playing the greatest hits of the 1880s, writes that San Francisco is New Capital of California: as a result of the recent election the state electorate apparently decided to be governed in its top leadership almost exclusively by San Franciscans. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to decipher that sentence's syntax. I think he means "in the recent electionsâ¦," but you never know. The elections were 4 weeks ago, which is stretching the normal usage of "recent." He continues with this trip down memory lane: The newly recycled governor,…

Post-racial

During confirmation hearings for Justice Alito, conservatives pooh-poohed his sketchy record on race by arguing that race wasn't an issue the Supreme Court would have to face any more. When the Voting Rights Act was challenged in the Supreme Court a little later, conservatives argued that its stronger provisions should be declared unconstitutional, and suggested that the Act was outdated anyway. We're post-racial and post-racism, they insisted. Not so much: A federal court has ordered the Walthall County, Miss., School District to eliminate policies that have resulted in significant racial…

They're onto us!

Michael at "The Bible is the Other Side" is upset. He's been reading about the suppression of research on evolution acceptance among the American public, and doesn't like what he sees. In particular, he doesn't like yours truly, and the way people like me talk about science literacy: There is a myth propagated by radical left leaning evolutionists that you can have a PHD and have papers published in mainstream science journals and have discoveries that save lives but if you doubt evolution then your an illiterate in science. Oh my stars and LOLcats! This is so adorable that if I had a…

HCR

Just watched the House pass the Health Care Reform bill. It's history at work, an achievement on the scale of Social Security and Medicare, a civil rights bill of a sort we haven't seen since the 1960s. President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and indeed Majority Leader Reid all deserve to take a bow. Even without the reconciliation sidecar, this is a massive improvement for millions of Americans â those with health insurance and those who wish they had it. And when the Senate takes up the reconciliation bill, it'll be an even bigger improvement. This isn't just a tribute to the President and the…

Pi Day!

Let it be said, before explaining the lore of Pi Day, that we're planning to have pie, not cake, at my wedding in August. I adore pie in its many forms. I like eating it and I like baking it. Every year, I get to celebrate pie at least twice. First on March 14, ideally just before 2 o'clock. That'd be 3/14 1:59. The second celebration, favored more by European pie fanciers (fans of tortes and so forth), is July 22, or 22/7. In the states, or at least at NCSE's offices, we celebrate that as Pi Approximation Day, while 3/14 is pie day, a day hallowed by tradition and transcendental…

A new ally for the DI

The BBC's Joe Boyle ponders Nigeria's 'Taliban' enigma: They have launched co-ordinated attacks across northern Nigeria, threatening to overthrow the government and impose strict Islamic law - but who exactly are the Nigerian Taliban? Since the group emerged in 2004 they have become known as "Taliban", although they appear to have no links to the Taliban in Afghanistan.⦠The group's other name, Boko Haram, means "Western education is a sin" and is another title used by local people to refer to the group. ⦠their mission appears clear enough: to overthrow the Nigerian state, impose an…

Who can "pass" as white

When I was reviewing the paper on skin color and ethnic ancestry a few days ago I saw a peculiar figure in a related paper which I thought I would highlight. The paper is Skin pigmentation, biogeographical ancestry and admixture mapping. The samples were 232 African and African-American individuals living in Washington, D.C., 173 British African Caribbean persons, and 187 individuals of European-American ancestry living in State College, Pa. The goal was to compare the ancestry of individuals to see how it related to their complexion. The African ancestry of these populations was: African…

Talent, hard work, genes and luck

David Brooks has a column out where he mulls over the role of time invested in amplifying talent: If you wanted to picture how a typical genius might develop, you'd take a girl who possessed a slightly above average verbal ability. It wouldn't have to be a big talent, just enough so that she might gain some sense of distinction. Then you would want her to meet, say, a novelist, who coincidentally shared some similar biographical traits. Maybe the writer was from the same town, had the same ethnic background, or, shared the same birthday -- anything to create a sense of affinity. ... The…

Scientists play economic Paul Revere?

Jake Young has a skeptical take on the contention that science can save the economy. He ends: In short, I think the suggestion, while well-meaning, is misguided. If all that would happen in this project was that more brains would be applied to the problem, I would support it. It would probably be harmless even if it was ineffective. However, I think it may be worse than that. Given the dismissiveness bordering on contempt with which most scientists hold economic problems, I think their participation would be actively unhelpful. What would result is a lot of acrimony and very little progress.…

One-Stop Shopping for the Framing Science Debate

You may be aware that there is a huge discussion about framing science going on in the blogosphere. It has gotten out of hand. But, for those who want to dig in, or want to analyze the posts and comments (that is a lot of data!), here is the comprehensive list of links (excluded are links to Creationists' sites). Most of the posts also have long and interesting comment threads as well, worth reading through: First, the source metarial, i.e., the stuff that appeared in non-blog media, and some background resources (which, if everyone have read them, would have reduced some of the…

Dances with Bulls

Last night as I went about my chores, I was mulling over a possible post on how farming is actually easier than most people think it is. I'm winding up a stretch of time where Eric and the boys have been in NYC visiting Grandma, while I stayed at home to tend the farm. While Eric and I don't have a very gendered division of labor, we do have our customary tasks. Eric does floors, I do roofs, He does engines, I cut wood, I can, he bakes, when we had babies, I did input (nursing) and he did output (diaper changes). I got all self-satisfied about how well I was managing by myself, which of…

Time Management For Overworked People or Planning the Harvest

It is manifestly the case that I have never fully mastered keeping things from getting overwhelming, but I get better at it every year (mostly). And there is a lot you can do to make sure that the canning and preserving don't make you crazy! Despite the fact that you've got a life, a job, a family, volunteer responsibilities and enough backlog in your life to keep you busy until 2182, you've decided that you are going to do some food preservation too. And you are definitely wondering if you are a little nuts. After all, this means finding time to do so, and isn't always easy. It helps to…

Using a Slide Rule Part 2: Exponents and Roots

Slides rules are actually astonishingly powerful things. The simple slide rule does multiplication and division using the C and D scales; strictly speaking, you can have a basic rule with nothing but C and D. But you almost never see a rule that simple. (The only one I've ever seen with only the two scales was a circular rule used as a promotional giveaway.) The other scales are where things get a bit complicated; but it's a lot of fun to figure out how they work, and to see how much you can actually do with, basically, two attached rulers with a bunch of different markings. As an example,…

Why I Hate Religious Bayesians

Last night, a reader sent me a link to *yet another* wretched attempt to argue for the existence of God using Bayesian probability. I *really* hate that. Over the years, I've learned to dread Bayesian arguments, because *so many* of them are things like this, where someone cobbles together a pile of nonsense, dressing it up with a gloss of mathematics by using Bayesian methods. Of course, it's always based on nonsense data; but even in the face of a lack of data, you can cobble together a Bayesian argument by *pretending* to analyze things in order to come up with estimates. You know, if you…

Open Laboratory 2008

Now that the registration for the Science Blogging Conference is open, it is time to remind you that the new edition of the Science Blogging Anthology, "Open Laboratory 2007", is in the works and is accepting your suggestions. Although the entire process, from the initial idea all the way to having a real book printed and up for sale, took only about a month, the Open Laboratory 2006 was a great success. This year, we have much more time so we hope we will do an even better job of it. More than 100 entries have come in so far (see under the fold) and we are looking for more. I have read…

Rabbi Avi Shafran

There is no more reverent way to wake to a fine Sunday morning than to discover another religious zealot punching himself in the face. Repeatedly. The Rabbi Avi Shafran is waxing indignant in a syndicated article that is popping up all over the place, in which he tries to denounce Zizek's most excellent article on the virtues of atheism. The best he can do, though, is whimper at length that atheists are just plain bad people—it's an argument to appeal to bigots who already have a prejudiced view of those who don't share their religion, but it's not very persuasive to people who can think. It…