petitio principii

This is a dangerous piece of circular reasoning: the solution to the problems created by an ageing population is to increase population growth.

The ‘logic’ employed appears to be that, in order to sustain the current number of…

maximising your personal potentiality

Simon points to this article over at The Age, which walks the fine line between unreadable madness and compelling stream-of-consciousness genius and is probably a fairly hilarious discourse on… well, something:

Well, that wake up call is here.

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census: ‘no religion’ now equal to Anglicanism in Australia

The 2006 census has been published, and amongst many interesting trends, the figures show that people of “no religion” numbered 3.7 million at the time of the census – only 11,691 fewer than the number of Anglicans, and…

germany: crazy cults are verboten

German officials have allegedly refused to grant the makers of a new film starring T. Cruise, Crazy Cult Member, access to historic military locations for the purposes of filming. The film is about a plot to assassinate Hitler, and the…

on teaching science

I enjoyed this article about the teaching of physics to school children in the United Kingdom, and reforms which seem to be focused on teaching kids to talk “about” science rather that teaching kids science itself.

Perhaps the…

coulrophobia junior

In case there was any doubt left that marketing is the applied practice of pure evil, McDonalds have confirmed it with this terrifying baby-clown-monster advertisment:

At last, you can combine your fear of clowns, your distaste for…

how to undo 61 years of progress

This is a heartwarming little story – the process put in place to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay lacks some of the essential elements of fairness that were afforded even to the senior Nazis tried at Nuremberg. That is according…

spin of the week

Once again, the spin of the week goes to The Australian (link) – this time for Dennis Shanahan’s effort in portraying polls showing an electoral massacre for the Government as “good news” for Mr Howard and Co. As…

theme/wordpress update

I’m currently in the process of upgrading both WordPress and the blog’s theme (which is a customised version of the awesome Unsleepable theme, for anyone that cares). There may be a few teething problems, so bear with me.…

ham update 2: ham-related art, and more legal details

Further to previous posts (one, two), here’s some great “Jesus with the little dinosaurs” art (thanks to KO):

Meanwhile Legal Eagle points to this article on the actual details of the legal battle in the Ham v Anti-Ham lawsuit.

it is more important to force raped women to have children than to stop murder and torture: god

Those wacky funsters at the Vatican are at it again – this time they’re misrepresenting Amnesty’s new policy regarding abortion and instructing Catholics not to support the organisation. Amnesty’s position is that women who are pregnant as a result of…

early pioneer of misleading spin complains about ‘feral media’

Tony “Saddam has WMDs which can be ready to attack us in 45 minutes” Blair is using his lame-duck period between now and the end of June to whine about the media. In particular he is…

stuff you should know about: America’s (not so) secret war in Africa

The US has established “Africa Command” on the Horn of Africa – a military group with a mission including fighting Islamist militants and, it seems, getting involved in local conflicts in the process.

Some relevant details:

• the

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ham update: ham sued by anti-ham offshoot of church of ham

You will recall our friend Ham, curator of the Creation “Museum”, from the story about dinosaurs with saddles – he who told us that T-Rex ate grass until “the fall” and other such nuggets of wisdom.

It seems…

fundamentalist threatens NSW members of parliament

The double standards on display in relation to this story are fascinating. A religious leader threatening members of the New South Wales parliament with holy consequences if they vote for a particular piece of legislation:

Catholic politicians who

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