Oh, the New York Post. The NYC equivalent of the Daily Mail, the Wall St. Journal’s trashy cousin, and least preferred wrapping paper of salmon everywhere. For a sample of their journalistic standards, you’ll want to turn to just two weeks ago, when they occupied themselves by getting nearly everything wrong about the Boston bombings, [...]
Some people often talk of disagreements needing to hold an intellectual purity devoid of emotion and steeped in reason. ‘Some’ almost always meaning those whose personal interests aren’t being bargained over by others. For them, it’s only acceptable to hash out differences with as calm a tone and as civil a posture, no matter what [...]
In case you weren’t aware of this – and you should be (it trended on Twitter) – QED just happened again. Last year’s convention gave birth to this site, and I’m glad to have gone again; it isn’t often that as Brits, the world is jealous of our skeptical meet-ups and not vice versa. With [...]
I’m sitting in a cubicle, anxiously waiting for the next call to start. The software automatically disconnects from the previous number, a man who, though I can’t know for sure, enjoyed hanging up after his terse ‘No’. I’m inside the SEIU Communications Center on 42nd street with members of the Center for Inquiry NYC branch [...]
We Christians live in a world of turbulent oppression. Whether only being able to regulate the last three months of a woman’s pregnancy (America at least) or failing to have our holidays honored by an internet search engine, one thing is crystal clear. We don’t get to make everyone do and say the things we [...]
I grew up as a Christian fundamentalist. It’s taken me years to be proud of those words, and to realise the power they have. For years, they were my shameful secret, to be hidden away like an abusive stepfather. I’ve come to realise that, like an abusive stepfather, it is nothing to be ashamed of, [...]
This may seem like ‘old news’, but I’ve only just watched the Rowan Atkinson sketch for Red Nose Day in aid of Comic Relief. For those who don’t know, in the sketch Atkinson pretends to be the Archbishop of Canterbury, but the sketch was pulled from the iPlayer service – and apologies were issued by the BBC [...]
Yesterday, the Catholic world anxiously waited to hear the first words of their newest religious leader, the so-called rock of the Church and torchbearer of their faith, from atop the gloriously ordained balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. Meanwhile in Missouri, the members of the Kansas City Atheist Coalition were just wishing that they would get [...]
Ah St. Paddy’s. A time to celebrate the most proud of traditions: the shameless permission to get drunk at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. If you’re the Kansas City St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee though, it’s also apparently the time of year to lord over some of that sweet, sweet religious superiority. From local station [...]
We Brits tend to get a bit smug when Creationism is in the news. “LOL”, we say, biting into our scones and cream, “only in America”. I spend most of my blogging life pointing out that Britain has a Creationist schools problem too. In fact, there’s a group of 40 schools where only 10% of [...]