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The conflict between science and religion is reducible to simple fact of human cognition and discourse; either a person has good reasons for what he believes, or he does not. If there were good reasons to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, or that Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse, these beliefs would necessarily form part of our rational description of the universe. Everyone recognizes that to rely upon “faith” to decide specific questions of historical fact is ridiculous—that is, until the conversation turns to the origin of books like the Bible and the Koran, to the resurrection of Jesus, to Muhammad’s conversation with the archangel Gabriel, or to any other religious dogma. It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.

While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still has immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about. It is telling that this aura of nobility extends only to those faiths that still have many subscribers. Anyone caught worshipping Poseidon, even at sea, will be thought insane.*

*Truth be told, I now receive e-mails of protest from people who claim, in all apparent earnestness, to believe that Poseidon and the other gods from Greek mythology are real.

Letter to A Christian Nation , Sam Harris, p. 66-68

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It had been an uneventful, comfortable flight.

With the window shade drawn, I was relaxing in my leather seat aboard a $25 million corporate jet that was flying 37,000 feet above the vast Amazon rainforest. The 7 of us on board the 13-passenger jet were keeping to ourselves.

Without warning, I felt a terrific jolt and heard a loud bang, followed by an eerie silence, save for the hum of the engines.

And then the three words I will never forget. “We’ve been hit,�? said Henry Yandle, a fellow passenger standing in the aisle near the cockpit of the Embraer Legacy 600 jet.

“Hit? By what?�? I wondered. I lifted the shade. The sky was clear; the sun low in the sky. The rainforest went on forever. But there, at the end of the wing, was a jagged ridge, perhaps a foot high, where the five-foot-tall winglet was supposed to be.

And so began the most harrowing 30 minutes of my life. I would be told time and again in the next few days that nobody ever survives a midair collision. I was lucky to be alive — and only later would I learn that the 155 people aboard the Boeing 737 on a domestic flight that seems to have clipped us were not.

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U.S. Congressman Foley hits on underage boys via instant messenger. And blames it on alcoholism.

In case you haven’t heard by now:

blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/09/exclusive_the_s.html

Then there’s this, from www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/10/02/foley.quits/index.html:

“An attorney for Foley, a Florida Republican, confirmed Monday that the former congressman is in an alcoholism treatment center. The fax was apparently sent from Clearwater, Florida, but Roth would not say if that’s where Foley is being treated.”

So, apparently Foley has gone to a detox center in Clearwater, Fl. What’s in Clearwater? Scientologists! So, I followed my intuition and did a little Googling, thinking perhaps Foley is drying out with the Sea Org there…

This is what I uncovered:

“FLORIDA CONGRESSMAN ACCEPTS SCIENTOLOGY AWARD
On May 24, 2003, the “Clearwater Business Association” hosted a brunch in the Fort Harrison’s Ballroom, for Florida Congressman Mark Foley (R).

Also present at this event was “Republican State committee woman” Nancy Riley. Foley is featured on a Scientology web page promoting their anti-psychiatry front group C.C.H.R. (“Citizen’s Comission on Human Rights”). The “Clearwater Business Association” (C.B.A.) appears to be primarily a way to bring politicians into the Scientology fold, by way of Scientologist Brett Miller (second from left in photo below). The primary affiliations of the C.BA.appear to be Scientology, W.I.S.E., and C.C.H.R., and not local businesses.”

www.fso.org/en_US/news-events/pg005.html
web.tampabay.rr.com/sp/FLA.html (scroll down)

WTF. Hold me, I’m scared.

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What makes officials corrupt? Disentangling law and culture is a tricky business, but a pair of economists have come up with an ingenious way to do it: studying the frequency of parking violations committed by diplomats in New York City. Since, as their study reports, there is “essentially zero legal enforcement of diplomatic parking violations,�? the authors hypothesized that any cross-national variation in parking-violation rates should flow from culture alone. And sure enough, diplomats from countries with high levels of corruption were significantly more likely to incur parking tickets, suggesting that cultural factors rather than legal norms drive a great deal of official misconduct. The worst offenders were Kuwaitis, who accumulated an astonishing 246 violations per diplomat per year from the end of 1997 through 2002, followed by Egyptians, with 140 violations per diplomat per year; countries whose diplomats incurred no parking tickets included Canada, Israel, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. The study also found that officials from countries where the U.S. is less popular were much more likely to park illegally, and that there was a significant drop-off in violations after 9/11, particularly among diplomats from Muslim nations.

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A Caney Creek High School dad is fired up because the Conroe Independent School District uses the book “Fahrenheit 451″ as classroom reading material.
Alton Verm, of Conroe, objects to the language and content in the book. His 15-year-old daughter Diana, a CCHS sophomore, came to him Sept. 21 with her reservations about reading the book because of its language.
“The book had a bunch of very bad language in it,” Diana Verm said. “It shouldn’t be in there because it’s offending people. … If they can’t find a book that uses clean words, they shouldn’t have a book at all.”

[..]

Alton Verm’s request to ban “Fahrenheit 451″ came during the 25th annual Banned Books Week. He and Hines said the request to ban “Fahrenheit 451,” a book about book burning, during Banned Books Weeks is a coincidence.

Best quote in the article is probably:

Alton Verm said he doesn’t understand how the district can punish students for using bad language, yet require them to read a book with bad language as part of a class.

Another puzzling thing is that they talk about nazism in history class, and yet it’s not ok for students to kill Jews or invade Poland.

here is what Bradbury himself had to say about censorship

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Automobilisten moeten zich op de omstreden 80 kilometer-zones rond de vier grote steden niet krampachtig aan de maximumsnelheid houden. Af en toe een tikkeltje te hard rijden kan juist goed zijn voor de doorstroming, stelt verkeersofficier Koos Spee.

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“You hardly have a notion how fragile your freedom is. Americans don’t vote. You don’t complain beyond a letter to the editor. You are a sheep nation. We are sheep I should say. We bleat loudly. But we are sheep. When I was a kid, I had friends who died protesting a presidents speech.”

“You protest when they broadcast the president over your favorite program. That’s about it. We did not have the internet. You have instant truth and that isn’t good enough for you.”

“Personally your biggest problem is that you do not have the fortitude for this fight. The rest of the world looks at the US and just feels contempt. There are people in the world who really suffer but they protest with no cars and no TV and no internet and no money. But they protest. You complain. Who’s problem is that?”

“What would you suggest?” I finally

“The next time the president comes to town, block the roads.”

“How?”

“How? Park your car and block the road”

“I need my car”

“You don’t know anyone who has an old junker?”

“When the President comes to town he doesn’t allow open protest,” I said.

“Again, when I was a kid, we took that as a challenge. We would raise absolute Hell when corrupt officials came to town. We threw rocks at the Army, the same Army that overthrew Arbents ( Arbenz?). The Army we opposed was supported by America and the CIA. They were coming to overthrow Arbents because he threatened the profits of US companies harvesting Guatemalan resources. Yes, friends died. But it was better than what you do. You blog. What does it say… `when in the course of human events…’ A revolution boils down sometimes to men with rocks in their hands.”

I asked him “Well you’re an American. Doesn’t this bother you?”

“Yes, it does.”

“Well,” I pressed him. “What are YOU going to do?”

“Me? I am going to watch Godfather II tonight.”

“I don’t get it, after all your lecturing.”

“I am 87 years old. I have medical problems. And grandchildren who need me. I have already overthrown one authoritarian government. This one’s yours. You’re still young. Do you vote? I mean there is so little support for your cause that you have to enlist an old man?”

“When you left Guatemala, was it sad to you?” I asked him.

“No. Not really. Because one place is as beautiful as the next. And I have no loyalty to flags. A flag is pattern of colors. What does the flag stand for? That’s the question. Your totalitarianism isn’t even uncomfortable like most are. Most everyone, including me, can live very well. Don’t like Bush? Well at least we have our scones and Seinfeld reruns. I have my little home here too. We are less likely to protest while the shelves are full.”

[..]

He also said this: “The Democrats and other naive Americans are expecting an election to make it all better. There will be a tipping point I hear people say. No. It will be a slow grind. It will take years and years to get to the truth, and when it comes out, the next generation won’t care. Democrats in Congress are not much different than the Republicans. I mean think about this. With Republicans not even liked by Republicans, the Democrats cannot find a champion that everyone agrees to. Probably this country will look like Argentina. Slow creeping paramilitary control that stifles everyone. And then one day it all slowly unravels. In Argentina, like in the US, the Police look just like the Army Special Forces. Sometimes they are the same. It helped Argentina when the British defeated them at the Falklands Island War. It will take something big like that to start the movement backwards. That or possibly a progressive church movement will turn America around the way nuns saved El Salvador.”

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U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan war against Taliban guerrillas can never be won militarily and urged support for efforts to bring “people who call themselves Taliban” and their allies into the government.

Taliban = Al Qaeda. They are the same economically, ideologically, and operationally.

Frist is a cut-and-run republican.

Take a look at these pictures:

Now, take a guess which country that is. Go here to see if your guess is correct, and to see more pictures of the same country.

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From the October 1 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace windows media:

WALLACE: Before we get to the Clinton interview, let’s start, as we always do, with the latest news. It now turns out that, as we said, top Republican House leaders knew for months that Congressman Mark Foley sent inappropriate emails to at least one 16-year-old male page. Speaker Gingrich, did House Republican leaders do all they should have?

GINGRICH: Well, I think if you look at what they actually knew, which was that the family did not want anyone involved and the actual notes were relatively innocuous, there was nothing sexual in those notes. They had him counseled. They had the head of the page program, Congressman Shimkus, talk to him very directly. And I think they thought that it was over. The newest incident only surfaced when ABC News interviewed Foley and he resigned within two hours, or I think the House leaders would have moved to expel him.

WALLACE: But during all those months they left Foley in the House Republican leadership. They left him as the head of the congressional caucus dealing with exploited children. No second thoughts about that?

GINGRICH: Well, you could have second thoughts about it, but I think had they overly aggressively reacted to the initial round, they would also have been accused of gay bashing. I mean, the original notes had no sexual innuendo and the parents did not want any action taken.

Worried about being accused of gay bashing? The same party that tried a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage? Now that is rich.

Oh, and why these attempts to tie “pedophile” to “gay” all the time?

Oh, and the right-wing radio show Drudge Report is rich as well:

Clip #1:  And if anything, these kids are less innocent — these 16 and 17 year-old beasts…and I’ve seen what they’re doing on YouTube and I’ve seen what they’re doing all over the internet — oh yeah — you just have to tune into any part of their pop culture.  You’re not going to tell me these are innocent babies.  Have you read the transcripts that ABC posted going into the weekend of these instant messages, back and forth?  The kids are egging the Congressman on!  The kids are trying to get this out of him.  We haven’t got the whole story on this. 

Clip #2: You could say “well Drudge, it’s abuse of power, a congressman abusing these impressionable, young 17 year-old beasts, talking about their sex lives with a grown man, on the internet.” Because you have to remember, those of us who have seen some of the transcripts of these nasty instant messages. This was two ways, ladies and gentlemen. These kids were playing Foley for everything he was worth. Oh yeah. Oh, I haven’t…they were talking about how many times they’d masturbated, how many times they’d done it with their girlfriends this weekend…all these things and these “innocent children.” And this “poor” congressman sitting there typing, “oh am I going to get any,” you know?

Audio-MP3 They are 16 and 17 year old beasts… (31 seconds)

Audio-MP3-It was two ways ladies and gentleman ( oh Matt, that’s why we have Predator laws. To protect them from the Foley’s. I just thought you should know) (40 seconds)

Audio-MP3–He’d feel better if they were 8 or something….

Audio-MP3- They will regulate the Internet now…That’s really all this is.

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Torture and sexual abuse of prisoners are just frat boy pranks, a congressman sexually stalking 16 year olds in the nations capital is actually a victim of young “beasts” who won’t leave the poor man alone.
I’m beginning to realize why they were so freaked out by Bill Clinton having an extra-marital affair — it was so mainstream and predictable compared to their personal habits that they thought it was kinky.

This is your Republican party folks. Had enough?