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Skeptic Summary #279

Catholic hijinks, Hutaree busts, muchas gracias, cheering injustice, eight wonders and more!

The Pope should resign! - Or maybe not.

Raids underway against Hutaree “Christian militia” - News of the week.

Thanks - High praise, indeed.

Editor’s Choice: Liberals cheer Bill O’Reilly! Shocking! - Yeah, actually, it is.

8 Wonders of the Solar System, Made Interactive — Brought to us by Scientific American, this is an interactive tour of some truly mind-blowing places in our solar system. The tour includes a fantastic artist’s rendition of each wonder, plus videos, real shots from probes like NASA’s Saturn probe Cassini, actual sounds recorded in space, animations and more. The introduction:

Artist Ron Miller takes us on a journey to eight of the most breathtaking views that await explorers of our solar system. The scale of these natural wonders dwarfs anything Earth has to offer. What might we see and feel if we could travel to these distant domains? By interpreting data from probes such as NASA’s Cassini, which is now exploring the Saturnian system, and MESSENGER, which goes into orbit around Mercury in March 2011, the artist’s eye allows us an early visit to these unforgettable locales.

Click and enjoy!

SkeptiQuote: Man can’t help hoping even if he is a scientist. He can only hope more accurately. — Karl Menninger

Wednesday: Chat this week started with Westerns and Sci-Fi, and the interplay between the two. Firefly was a great example of this, but plenty of others abound. Also discussed was the over-emphasis on drama rather than comedy at award festivals. After talking about various movies I had never heard of, we moved on to the whole accomodationist movement with Chris Mooney and the like. I honestly didn’t know that was still going on… go figure. The discussion wandered onto various skeptical organizations like CFI and interactions between them. Chat ended with a sharing of favorite podcasts.

Come chat with us.

aaron28
JinOhChoi

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The absurdity of patenting genes

Are Conservation Groups Subverting Action on Global Warming?

Brick Fatwa Libertarian Also Gets Fat Government Checks

British biologist tells fanciful tales about brain evolution

Buzzed

The Curious Disconnect

Gingrich: Democrats Responsible for Own Death Threats

Homer Simpson isn’t the only would-be ‘Messiah’ in Jerusalem

Is Satan a Catholic?

Letter From a Catholic Priest

Moral by definition?

No quantum leap in human brain size?

Of Catholicism and Capone

An Open Letter to Concerned Believers

Sanity vs Insanity: cage match at HuffPo

Skepticality #124 — One Nation Under the Constitution

That’s a bit much, don’t you think, Saudi Arabia?

UV, You See? Black Light Reveals Secrets in Fossils

What’s New by Bob Park

Why Do We Call Them IDiots?

Why Francis Beckwith Can’t Be Taken Seriously

Got some skeptic news items? Send them to us, and we’ll think about adding them.

Scenes From Hitler’s “1000-Year Reich”: Twelve Years of Nazi Terror and the Aftermath, by Kerry Weinberg.



“In a long, tumultuous life that spanned most of the twentieth century, Kerry Weinberg experienced the brutal disruption of her youth in Nazi-controlled Germany, the fearful wanderings of a Jew fleeing just before World War II, the disintegration of her family during the Holocaust, the turbulent and violent years of 1940s Israel, and periods of relative tranquility as a teacher in Germany, Israel, and the United States. In this extraordinary saga she documents what happened to her and many others like her during that most horrific period of European history. As the events of the Holocaust recede more and more into the past, we have seen the unfortunate rise in recent decades of anti-Semitic revisionist propaganda questioning the historicity of the Nazi-sponsored genocide. In this context, documents such as Weinberg’s, which testify to first-hand experiences of eyewitnesses, are especially valuable to set the record straight.

Weinberg begins with childhood memories of peaceful coexistence between German Jews and Christians before the Nazi takeover. This section makes one realize how easy it was for well-assimilated German Jews to misjudge the magnitude of the disaster that so quickly descended upon them. But events soon turned ugly. She vividly recounts the jolting experience of the infamous ‘Kristallnacht,’ the burning of synagogues, murders and injuries, the destruction of her parents’ home, desperate attempts to secure visas, and finally her escape to England, and then to Israel, where she encountered more persecution from British police and hostile Arab neighbors. Symbolic of her life is the chapter entitled ‘Six National Anthems!’ Forced by circumstances to live in many nations under many regimes, she became a citizen of the world and a survivor compelled to tell her story and those of others who could not escape.”

— Inside Flap

Forum Topics:

1. The Supper
2. PZ expelled from Expelled — Dawkins slips in!
3. The Holocaust conspiracy
4. Funny FAILS
5. Scattershots: gargoyles & grotesques
6. Quote Mine warning propaganda poster
7. What is the physical evidence for the Holocaust?
8. The Pope should resign!
9. The shallow end of the gene pool…
10. Jesus tempts Satan

Articles:

1. Fundamentalists Hate Noah’s Ark
2. Evolving a Venom or Two
3. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics Argument Weak on Both Sides
4. Is the Speed of Light Slowing Down?
5. Miracle Thaw — The Bogus Miracle
6. The Bible’s Bad Fruits
7. Scientific Truth
8. Skeptic Summary #278
9. TAM5
10. Miracle Thaw Tray

There were 28,179 daily visitors this week.

Forum Topics:

1. The Supper
2. PZ expelled from Expelled — Dawkins slips in!
3. Scattershots: gargoyles & grotesques
4. Funny FAILS
5. Quote Mine warning propaganda poster
6. The shallow end of the gene pool…
7. What is the physical evidence for the Holocaust?
8. A literal jewish conspiracy
9. Documentary: 1983 ‘Moonwalk’ was staged
10. Jesus tempts Satan
11. The ‘opinion’ thread
12. Zooming in on Teabaggers
13. Beelzebufo ampinga
14. New World Order happening right now!
15. Moon-walker claims alien contact cover-up
16. Dracorex hogwartsia
17. Health care bill up for grabs
18. How could this happen!
19. DMV Senior Motorcyclist Handbook
20. What is photorealism?

Articles:

1. Fundamentalists Hate Noah’s Ark
2. Evolving a Venom or Two
3. Scientific Truth
4. Evolution is a Lie
5. Miracle Thaw — The Bogus Miracle
6. The Bible’s Bad Fruits
7. Cold Reading
8. Is the Speed of Light Slowing Down?
9. Miracle Thaw Tray
10. TAM5
11. Quantum Age Water
12. Kent Hovind is a Big Phony!
13. SkeptiCamp Atlanta: A Personal Overview
14. Mesmer, Casino Monkey, and Video Sex
15. Preaching that Anti-Evolution Propaganda
16. Calorad
17. More on the Polonium 218 Controversy
18. Come & Receive your Miracle: A Sunday Afternoon at a Robert Tilton Crusade
19. The Fred Flintstone Hoax
20. Tommy Debates the Bible Answer man

There were 106,990 daily visitors in March, 2010.