Truth (Plus Lies)

Poland may soon have indentical twins as Prime Minister and President.

Cool pavement drawing.

Here’s what I think is a pretty interesting passage from a semi-interesting post by Michael Shermer re:Evolution vs. ID.

In an extensive study on why people believe in God, the University of California at Berkeley social scientist Frank J. Sulloway and I discovered that the number one reason people give for their belief in God is the good design of the world. When asked why they think other people believe in God, however, the number one reason offered was emotional need and comfort, with the good design of the world dropping to sixth place. Further, we found that educated men who already believed in God were far more likely to give rational reasons for their belief than were educated women and uneducated believers. (All results of this study are reported in my book, How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God.) One explanation for these results is that although in general education leads to a decrease in religious faith, for those people who are educated and still believe in God there appears to be a need to justify their beliefs with rational arguments.

Thankfully, I don’t have to rely on this clever system.

Dan Savage reports:

Last week, the pope condemned divorce, masturbation, birth control, in vitro fertilization, living together before marriage, and same-sex marriage. According to Bennie, all of the above add up to “anarchic freedom.” The headlines the next day? “Pope Condemns Gay Marriage As ‘Anarchy.’” The headlines should have read something like this: “Pope Condemns Majority Of American Heterosexuals For Private Sexual Conduct; Also, Gay Marriage.”

As long as we believe in our hearts that Michael Jackson molests children with cancer, no one can stop us from acheiving our dreams.

Not the way for the state to stay clear of religious issues.

“The state doesn’t want to be in the business of endorsing a particular religion or deity,” said Assistant Attorney General Harvey Golubock

This suggests that any number of moronic personalized license plates reflect the position of the state government rather than MZSMRTY just being dumb.

I’m not sure I get it. Part of me thinks it might be some brilliant attention-getting ploy and part of me thinks he’s just nuts. Why is Howard Dean making all these button-pushing remarks and then acting all innocent about it?

But you’re going to do right by her. You have to. Sure, you can’t write an obituary — they won’t even let you be in charge of movie listings, for crying out loud, even though you could do it twice as well as that pothead they hired last year — but you do get to come up with a headline for that Anne Brancroft obit that came over the AP wire. And that’s no small matter, you think to yourself.

Silly headlines about Anne Bancroft.

Have you ever wanted the thrill of seeing the first “motorcar vs. train” collision, the first helicopter race, or the first hot air balloon catastrophe?

Time travel can help you do that.