Illinois moment of silence ruled unconstitutional
CHICAGO —
A federal judge has ruled that a state law requiring a moment of silence in public schools across Illinois is unconstitutional, saying it crosses the line separating church and state.
“The statute is a subtle effort to force students at impressionable ages to contemplate religion,” U.S. District Judge Robert W. Gettleman said in his ruling Wednesday.
The ruling came in a lawsuit designed to bar schools from enforcing the Illinois Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act. It was filed by talk show host Rob Sherman, an outspoken atheist, and his daughter, Dawn, a high school student.
Gettleman’s ruling was not a surprise. He had already ruled in favor of Sherman in two previous decisions.
As passed by the Illinois General Assembly, the law allows students to reflect on the day’s activities rather than pray if that is their choice and defenders have said it therefore doesn’t force religion on anyone.
But Gettleman backed critics such as the American Civil Liberties Union, who say the law is a thinly disguised effort to bring religion into the schools.
University comes back to its senses
At least one of them did. University of Salford (UK I believe) has decided to stop giving alternative medicine courses in accupuncture and complementary medicine because they are “no longer considered “a sound academic fit“.” It should never have been considered a sound fit in the first place, but what can you do. Better late then never!
Company sells devices to help UFOs avoid wind turbines.
So what’s the best way to avoid nonexisting aliens spacecraft from hitting our wind turbines at night? Little magic balls of course! But they only work if the UFO has a radar. You’d think someone who’s masterd interstellar flight would have mustered the technology to avoid hitting a freaking wind turbine, but no apparently they need help from us. Go figure.
Amazing psychic infant
I think this person is misguided. How else can you explain such statements about their 6 week old child?
She is such a powerful little being, I sensed her presence several months before I became pregnant with her.
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On the day she was born she looked straight into my eyes, wide eyed and alert and I knew she chose me to be her mother. Why, I am not 100% sure because I am only just beginning to understand the psychic abilities of my otherchildren and this little girl seems to be the most psychic yet.
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I have noticed on a daily basis that she scans my energy and in recent days she has been looking over my left shoulder and having a conversation with someone. I can feel his presence, Archangel Michael,
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She has already designed her plan for how we would meet her needs
Wow! I know we all have big plans for our little ones and see greatness in them, but this is taking it a little over board, don’t you think?
Win a date with Sylvia Browne
Get a load of this. You can win a free psychic reading with Sylvia Browne. Remember her? No? Well here’s how this website describes her amazing powers:
For 17 years, millions of people witnessed the power of Sylvia Browne’s psychic readings on The Montel Williams Show. In fact, psychic Sylvia Browne’s predictions are so amazing, there is a 7 year waiting list to get a psychic reading with her.
In fact her predictions are so amazing, they promted this segmet on Anderson Cooper:
Oh yes amazing indeed. By the way she claims she can’t be correct 100% of the time. I have an idea, why not do good on her promise to take Randi’s Million Dollar Challenge. I can pretty much guarantee he will not require 100% accuracy. Here’s proof of her accepting to take the challenge (which she’s has yet to take).
That was 8 years ago folks. 8 years! And her excuse is that she couldn’t get in touch with Randi. I sent Randi an e-mail a while ago and he answered to me personally within the hour. And he didn’t even know who I was. By the way great job Larry King who couldn’t even follow up on his promise of being the intermediary.
New study dispels common medical myths
“It is that we are susceptible to believing unproven concepts if they are repeated often enough by ‘experts’ (real or self-perceived/self-proclaimed),” Mosqueda said.
So, believe it or don’t, but:
Drink eight glasses of water each day: The authors found references as early as 1945 suggesting that healthy people should stay hydrated by drinking eight glasses of water each day. But they say there’s a complete lack of evidence supporting that recommendation. Studies also show that most people get enough fluids through daily consumption of juice, milk and even caffeinated drinks.
People only use 10 percent of their brains: This myth has been around for more than a century. Some believe it came from Albert Einstein, although the authors found no evidence of that. What they did find were studies that show people use much more than 10 percent of their brains. For example, when almost any area of the brain is damaged, it has “specific and lasting effects on mental, vegetative and behavioral capabilities.” Also, imaging studies have found no area of the brain is completely inactive.
Superstition can kill you
CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE ORIGINAL ENTRY AT “RATIONALLY SPEAKING”
I just got back from a trip to Las Vegas, where the highlight was attending a Penn & Teller show. They are the magicians who have an entire tv series devoted to debunking the paranormal, appropriately called Bullshit! As a skeptic, one of the most annoying questions I get (and I’m sure P&T do also) is “why spoil other people’s beliefs? What’s the harm? Why are you so cynical?” (Note: skepticism is most emphatically not the same thing as cynicism, either in English meaning or in terms of the original Greek philosophical traditions.)
Well, ask the young woman that a couple of weeks ago was seized by some of her neighbors in Papua New Guinea, stripped naked, bound, gagged, and set on fire on suspicion of being a witch. She died a horrible and senseless death. This is not an isolated case in that part of the world (or in Africa). According to the local police more than 50 people were killed in the past year in two Papua New Guinea provinces because they were suspected of practicing sorcery. Anthropologist Bruce Knauft of Emory University has conducted a study according to which over the past four decades local families have seen a full one third of their adults killed violently, 90% of the deaths being connected to superstitious beliefs about witchcraft and the like.
Papua New Guinea is one of four Asian countries afflicted by an AIDS epidemics, but many villagers think it is witches, not the HIV virus, that spreads the disease (again, the same position held by many people, and even some governments, in Africa). Superstition is an easy “explanation” when the reality is either too difficult to comprehend or too hard to accept, but people are literally dying as a result of it.
But that’s the third world, right? Yes, but does witchcraft really sound that different from the practice of, say, snake handlers and speakers in tongues, right here in the good old U.S of A.? Do you remember Sarah Palin saved by a witch doctor? Moreover, plenty of people in the Western world die or get ill because they take homeopathic “remedies” (i.e., water and sugar) for treating serious conditions, for instance. And there is, of course, the psychological (and more often than not, financial) pain experienced by people whose grief and hopes are exploited by those who sell them instant Jesus cures, or tantalize them with the possibility of once again communicating with their loved ones.
That is why the work of the skeptic is not simply a matter of enjoying the intellectual challenge of exposing the frauds, or even the educational challenge of raising the world’s critical thinking abilities by a notch or two. It is work that helps reduce the exploitation of people’s fears for financial gain, power, or prestige. And it is work that may eventually save lives like the one of the innocent young woman who died in Papua New Guinea, yet another innocent victim of ignorance and stupidity.
CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE ORIGINAL ENTRY AT “RATIONALLY SPEAKING”
Christian Stupidity
There are homeless people to feed and clothe, thirsty children to give water to, sick people who need medication. Nevertheless the Pope has decided he needed to set time aside to bless two lambs whose wool will be shorn to make shawls for newly appointed archbishops to wear.
Each lamb wore a crown of flowers on its head. Let me repeat that: The lambs wore CROWNS OF FLOWERS IN THEIR HEADS…for the blessing…by the Pope! The stupid…it burns!
$630 million for new push to eradicate polio
LONDON – Bill Gates and other donors are giving more than $630 million to the international effort to eradicate polio, after the disease spiked and spread to seven countries that were previously polio-free.
Gates announced Wednesday that his foundation, along with the charity group Rotary International and the British and German governments, would donate the money in the next few years.
Despite the new injection of funds, the campaign still needs $340 million to get through 2010. The World Health Organization estimates about another $2 billion would be needed until 2013, when it hopes that polio will have been wiped out.
Polio remains endemic in Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan. In Nigeria, low vaccination rates have allowed the virus to surge, while the war on terror makes reaching every child difficult in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Despite continued vaccination efforts, the virus remains stubbornly entrenched in India.
Last year, cases were also reported in 11 other African countries and Burma and Nepal.
Trials for Parents Who Chose Faith Over Medicine
WESTON, Wis. — Kara Neumann, 11, had grown so weak that she could not walk or speak. Her parents, who believe that God alone has the ability to heal the sick, prayed for her recovery but did not take her to a doctor.
After an aunt from California called the sheriff’s department here, frantically pleading that the sick child be rescued, an ambulance arrived at the Neumann’s rural home on the outskirts of Wausau and rushed Kara to the hospital. She was pronounced dead on arrival.
The county coroner ruled that she had died from diabetic ketoacidosis resulting from undiagnosed and untreated juvenile diabetes. The condition occurs when the body fails to produce insulin, which leads to severe dehydration and impairment of muscle, lung and heart function.
About a month after Kara’s death last March, the Marathon County state attorney, Jill Falstad, brought charges of reckless endangerment against her parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann. Despite the Neumanns’ claim that the charges violated their constitutional right to religious freedom, Judge Vincent Howard of Marathon County Circuit Court ordered Ms. Neumann to stand trial on May 14, and Mr. Neumann on June 23. If convicted, each faces up to 25 years in prison.
“The free exercise clause of the First Amendment protects religious belief,” the judge wrote in his ruling, “but not necessarily conduct.”
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