The SS Struma, whose passengers fled Romania and docked in Istanbul, was denied entry to Palestinian territory by colonial power Britain. On Feb. 23, 1942, Turkey towed the vessel to the Black Sea and set it adrift. A Soviet torpedo sank it the next morning, and only one person survived. The episode[...]
Archive for the ‘Religion’ Category
The U.S. Constitution treats belief and behavior differently
A Richland, Washington, florist is digging in for a legal fight she’s likely to lose. Meanwhile Seattle’s new police chief has imposed restrictions on what the department’s employees can post on social media, and the usually combative leader of the police union is counseling his [...]
February 11th, 2015 - 11:02 am § in Religion
Muslim family slain in N. Carolina
An angry white man is in jail awaiting arraignment on murder charges following the execution-style slayings of a Muslim couple and the wife’s sister in a North Carolina college town last night. Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, turned himself in to police after allegedly shooting Deah Shaddy Barakat, [...]
February 6th, 2015 - 3:28 pm § in Religion
Anti-vaccination megachurch ravaged by measles outbreak
… and they’re blaming it on “a visitor attended a service who had been overseas and was exposed to measles.” Which, a Daily Kos writer explains, “is how epidemics work,” adding, “And that, children, is why the church run by an anti-vaccination crank is now h[...]
February 5th, 2015 - 3:01 pm § in Religion
Creationist sues for gov’t handouts
Australian-born “new earth” creationist Ken Ham, who insists the earth is only 6,000 old and wants to build a Noah’s Ark theme park in Kentucky to promote his beliefs, intends to sue the state “for rejecting its application for tax incentives to help finance the park.” [...]
SUNDAY REVELATIONS: In the beginning there were Adam, Eve, Ngbo, Perin, Sillia, Ghe, Huang, Uman, Preter, Thym, Kal El, Thoru, Brent, Miter, Jnaet, Janus. Kasi, Chooma, Rven,Avrum, Moseh, Sara, kGhila, Juano, Wall, Sun, Bulgo, Kim, Huang, PBetu, ………………………………………………,
How big was the human population bottleneck? Another staple of theology refuted. September 18, 2011 – 7:13 am A paper in Nature by Heng Li and Richard Durbin contains estimates of the “effective population size” of our ancestors at different points in evolutionary time. (Effective population [...]
Movie Review: The Attack
A 2012 film about the experience of living in close quarters with one’s enemy. If there were any justice, this film would have gotten the buzz that American Sniper is getting. But we know there’s no justice, don’t we? [Insert cynical emoji here] The focus of the story is Amin, an a[...]
Hate group funds GOP junket
The American Family Association, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified as a hate group, has paid for an expensive 9-day visit to Israel for 60 members of the Republican National Committee, according to Haaretz, Israeli’s oldest daily newspaper (est. 1918). http://www.haaretz.com[...]
January 27th, 2015 - 2:07 pm § in Religion
No.
The Mormon Church made an offer today that LGBT people should refuse. A CBS News headline reads, “Mormon leaders vow support for gay rights — with conditions.” They should refuse because human rights are unconditional. The CBS News report says, “The church is promising to sup[...]
Please don’t box me in