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Let’s start with vocabulary. Let’s stop describing these tax-funded establishments as faith schools. They are superstition schools, for that is what they teach. Alongside hard facts, innocent children are hoodwinked into accepting as real the mythology of virgin births, gods who regard women with bare heads as wicked harlots, that Noah’s Ark was real and that Darwin was wrong. It’s clear that, given the rising tide of superstition sweeping our country, no politician will help end this state-funded child abuse, and so it is time to try and fight back. The difficulty with people who think as I do is that we are always described in the negative as atheists. The word, although it simply means not believing in a deity, is mostly used in the pejorative to imply a lack of belief in anything, when nothing could be further from the truth. We are not a group who are seen as a “community�?, who are organised in our desires, or who can bring political pressure to bear on our government in the way herds of men in frocks seem to do with the sweep of a cassock or twitch of a beard.

So let’s get organised. Someone tried a group called “The Brights�?, but the name is so smug and pretentious that it’s not surprising it was a damp squib. Why not take instead The Enlightenment as the inspiration? Enlightenmentists is a bit of a mouthful, so let’s try Enlightenists. I know. I just made it up. It’s the best I can do, but we’re going to need a label if we are hoping to get things like our own schools.

Here’s what I believe as an Enlightenist. Atheism is not a driving concern, since belief in God is of little consequence. After all, if there is an interventionist God then there would be continuing demonstrable evidence of such, which there most certainly is not, and if there is a creator God who is non-interventionist then he neither requires nor merits worship, and if there is no God at all then so be it. Therefore you could happily suspect that there might be a non-interventionist God of sorts that could eventually be discovered scientifically and still be an Enlightenist. Since no action needs to be taken until such an unlikely discovery, it doesn’t matter. Now let’s move on.

Enlightenists believe in the awe-inspiring, wonder, beauty and complexity of the universe, and aspire to unpick its mysteries by reason, constant questioning, observation, experiment, and analysis of evidence. The bedrock of our morality is empathy, from which logically springs love, forgiveness, tolerance and a profound desire to make a just, egalitarian society and reduce suffering. The more knowledge a person has, the more they question and understand the real world, and the more they are required to analyse what is true then the greater the increase in empathy. Enlightenists care and wish to do good not because a vengeful God tells them to, but because intelligence suggests it is the only and the right thing to do.

So there we have it then, that’s the belief manifesto. Now, where the hell are my bloody state-funded schools? We’re always told about the high performance of superstition schools verses non-denominational ones, but we know that’s because any parent willing to pretend to be religious to get their child in is a parent interested in their child’s education, and involved parents equal successful children. Can you imagine the unseemly scramble for places if we were to be granted a state-funded Enlightenist school? Children would be welcome from any religious or ideological background, with the parents only having to fulfil the brief of allowing their children to be taught in the Enlightenist manner.

This would mean they could still be Catholics, Muslims, Protestants, Satanist, Druids, whatever they like, but their children would be taught to question the whole matching set of baggage. Sit back and watch the superstition schools empty.

Sidney Dyer with her mother, Jodi, at Mr. Dyer’s burial. Mr. Dyer, 38, of Cocoa Beach, Fla., was killed in Afghanistan.

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Burials at Arlington National Cemetery took on a grim regularity in October, when at least 103 American troops were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, the toll had reached 99 by Saturday, making October the deadliest month since January 2005.

Military officials attributed the high number of deaths to a spike in violence during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began in late September and ended last week. They also pointed to a three-month campaign to win control of Baghdad from death squads that led to increased attacks on American troops.

But such explanations were little comfort to a 6-year-old girl weeping at the grave of her father, a mother clutching the flag from her son’s coffin, or a widow walking slowly through the rain behind her husband’s honor guard.

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De stemmachines in 35 gemeentes zijn afgekeurd omdat bij deze apparaten makkelijk is te achterhalen wat iemand heeft gestemd. Amsterdam moet weer met potlood gaan stemmen, andere gemeentes kunnen hier ook voor kiezen of andere stemmachines inschakelen. Dat heeft minister Atzo Nicolaï (Bestuurlijke Vernieuwing) maandag bekendgemaakt.

Het gaat om de bijna 1200 stemmachines van producent Sdu, tien procent van het totale aantal stemmachines in Nederland. Na Amsterdam zijn Eindhoven en Tilburg de grootste gemeentes die op zoek moeten naar een alternatief voor de Sdu-machines.

Uit onderzoek van de inlichtingendienst AIVD is gebleken dat de radiosignalen waarmee deze computers de stemresultaten doorgeven tot op enkele tientallen meters zo goed zijn te onderscheppen dat gezien kan worden wat iemand heeft gestemd. “Dit vormt een te groot risico voor het stemgeheim,” zei Nicolaï. “Daarom heb ik de vergunning voor de stemmachines ingetrokken.”

A better link for those who couldn’t see the video I posted on the starbucks story…

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In its assessment of Iraqi weaponry, the inspector general concluded that of the 505,093 weapons that have been given to the Ministries of Interior and Defense over the last several years, serial numbers for only 12,128 were properly recorded. The weapons include rocket-propelled grenade launchers, assault rifles, machine guns, shotguns, semiautomatic pistols and sniper rifles.

Of those weapons, 370,000 were purchased with American taxpayer money under what is called the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, or I.R.R.F., and therefore fell within the inspector general’s mandate.

Despite the potential risks from losing track of those weapons — involving 19 different contracts and 142 delivery orders — the United States recorded serial numbers for no more than a few thousand, the inspector general said.

There are standard regulations for registering military weaponry in that way, governed by the Department of Defense small-arms serialization program. The inspector general’s report said that when asked why so many weapons went to Iraq with no record of serial numbers, American military officials in Baghdad replied that they did not believe the regulations applied to them.

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The commissioner of internal revenue has ordered his agency to delay collecting back taxes from Hurricane Katrina victims until after the Nov. 7 elections and the holiday season, saying he did so in part to avoid negative publicity.

The commissioner, Mark W. Everson, who has close ties to the White House, said in an interview that postponing collections until after the midterm elections, along with postponing notices to people who failed to file tax returns, was a routine effort to avoid casting the Internal Revenue Service in a bad light.

“We are very sensitive to political perceptions,�? Mr. Everson said Wednesday, adding that he regularly discussed with his senior staff members when to take actions and make announcements in light of whether they would annoy a powerful member of Congress or get lost in the flow of news.

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The Government would have measures in place to ensure religious extremists did not try to indoctrinate children under its under its plan to post chaplains in the nation’s schools, Prime Minister John Howard said today.

Under the $90 million initiative, all schools will be able to apply for subsidies of up to $20,000 a year to employ a chaplain.

The chaplains will not be expected to have a religious background but will be required to provide spiritual guidance to students.

If only there was a specific place, not funded by public money, where people could seek religious counseling… You know, a place where people could meet with clergy, pray, all that religious stuff. If only such a venue existed.

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After a week of early voting, a handful of glitches with electronic voting machines have drawn the ire of voters, reassurances from elections supervisors — and a caution against the careless casting of ballots.

Several South Florida voters say the choices they touched on the electronic screens were not the ones that appeared on the review screen — the final voting step.

Election officials say they aren’t aware of any serious voting issues. But in Broward County, for example, they don’t know how widespread the machine problems are because there’s no process for poll workers to quickly report minor issues and no central database of machine problems.