Sully discovers anti-atheist discrimination

Andrew Sullivan finally realizes that there’s real discrimination against atheists here in the USA. He quotes Volokh:

In 2000, the Mississippi Supreme Court ordered a mother to take her child to church each week, reasoning that ‘it is certainly to the best interests of [the child] to receive regular and systematic spiritual training’; in 1996, the Arkansas Supreme Court did the same, partly on the grounds that weekly church attendance, rather than just the once-every-two-weeks attendance that the child would have had if he went only with the other parent, provides superior ‘moral instruction’.

And he concludes:

Imagine if Christian parents were denied custody because of their faith. O’Reilly would have weeks of programming. But atheists? Naah. When Christianists declare that they are fighting for religious freedom, bring this issue up. It will determine whether they are in good faith, so to speak, or not.

N.b.: the whirring sound you hear is Thomas Jefferson spinning in his grave.

Random 10

“Oi! iTunes!! Wotcha got for me today?”

  • “Behind Blue Eyes” by the Who (from Who’s Next)
  • “Triad” by Jefferson Airplane (from The Best of Jefferson Airplane)
  • “Grind Me Baby” by DJ Rush (from Keoki – DJmixed.com)
  • “Accident on 3rd Street” by Al Stewart (from Russians & Americans)
  • “Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard” by the KLF (from Chill Out)
  • “Nota Bossa” by The Funky Lowlives (from Buddha Bar 2)
  • “Travelling Song” by Pentangle (from The Pentangle Family)
  • “The Lord Is In This Place” by Fairport Convention (from What We Did On Our Holidays)
  • “What You Are Listening To” by Porcupine Tree (from Up The Downstair)
  • “Come On (Let The Good Times Roll)” by the Jimi Hendrix Experience (from Electric Ladyland)

Two recommendations

Film: Mrs. Henderson Presents. Great story, beautifully acted, wonderful songs. (I’m going to pick up the soundtrack CD tomorrow. I was going to download it, but for some reason iTMS only has a few of the songs available.)
Music: Absent Friends by The Divine Comedy (i.e. Neil Hannon). I have no idea how I managed to overlook this guy’s work for so many years. I finally heard an earlier song, “Lost Property”, on Orbital’s Back To Mine compilation, and promptly downloaded this, the latest album. Big gorgeous songs, a stunning voice…. A copy of the Secret History compilation is heading this way from Amazon.co.uk.

Why evolutionary ideas thrive in Britain better than elsewhere

This is what I love about the blogosphere.
One of the blogs I read regularly is Shelley Powers’ Burningbird. This evening she posted a long piece which began with a plug for a blog she really likes, 3 Quarks Daily. Shelley is usually reliable, so I clicked over and browsed, and came across this item with an excerpt from a longer interview at ReadySteadyBook. I read the first two sentences, and I was hooked:

Marek Kohn is a writer who lives in Brighton. His most recent book, A Reason For Everything: Natural Selection and the English Imagination, looks at the key thinkers behind the development of evolutionary theory in Britain, and why these ideas have thrived better in Britain than in other countries.

I read the whole thing, and it was one of those extraordinarily stimulating experiences, the kind that sends your mind running off in fifteen different and FASCINATING directions.
And a few minutes ago I didn’t know that 3 Quarks Daily, ReadySteadyBook, or Marek Kohn even existed. That’s why I love about the blogosphere – those gloriously serendipitous experiences.

"The age of certainty"? Let's talk….

Save the date:

We are excited to announce that on Wednesday, April 12th Harvard Book Store and Seed Magazine will cosponsor a discussion on Science in the Age of Certainty with John Brockman, Daniel C. Dennett, Daniel Gilbert, Marc D. Hauser, Elizabeth Spelke and Seth Lloyd. This event coincides with the publication of the new book What We Believe But Cannot Prove: Today’s Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty, edited by Mr. Brockman.
Eminent cultural impresario, editor, and publisher of Edge (www.edge.org), John Brockman asked a group of leading scientists and thinkers to answer the question: What do you believe to be true even though you cannot prove it? This book brings together the very best answers from the most distinguished contributors.

It’s taking place on Wednesday, April 12th, at 6:30 PM, in the Askwith Lecture Hall at Longfellow Hall, in Cambridge, MA.
UPDATE: And speaking of Brockman, read his piece about “The Selfish Gene at 30” with a splendid rant about the dire consequences of ignorance about science.

Persistence of addressing

A few days ago I mentioned that “It’s going to be interesting to hunt down all of the places which have my Sun address”. Yesterday I came across one of them: PayPal. And changing it was quite a trip.
It’s easy to add a new email address to PayPal, so I did that. But then I wanted to make this address the primary one, and delete my sun.com address. To accomplish this, PayPal wanted to send a confirming email to the current primary address – but that address had been deactivated on the day of my RIF. The workaround was interesting. First, I had to log in. [“Something you know.”] Then PayPal showed me the last four digits of my credit card, and asked for the full number. [“Something you have, but could be stolen.”] Next, PayPal indicated that it had my phone number on file, and asked if it could call me. When I clicked Yes, a four digit code was displayed, my phone rang [“Something you have that can’t be stolen.”], and I was instructed to enter the code using my phone [“Something ephemeral that you know.”] . This satisfied PayPal that I was who I claimed to be, and the change was effected.
How does this stack up as an identity solution? It certainly exploits existing technology to the full….

A stranger in a REALLY strange land

When I read stories like this, I wonder what weird, alien country I’m living in.

“I just killed a kid,” Charles Martin told the emergency services operator. “I shot him with a goddamn 410 shotgun twice.” He had gunned down Larry Mugrage, his neighbours’ 15-year-old son. The teenager’s crime: walking across Mr Martin’s lawn on his way home. Mr Martin opened fire from his house and then, according to the police, walked up to the wounded boy and pulled the trigger again at close range, killing him.

[I’m turning off comments, because I don’t want the chore of moderating all the rants from the RKBA nuts who try to justify their culture of death.]