This is not a joke: according to the Guardian and other sources like the BBC, Ratzi—Pope Benedict XVI—is to step down on February 28. That’s 17 days from now. He is 85 years old. Here’s the full text of the pope’s statement from Vatican Radio. Dear Brothers, I have convoked you to this Consistory, not only for […]
We had some some, er, “lively” discussion the other day about a cartoon by Gerald Scarfe in the Sunday Times showing Benjamin Netanyahu cementing a bunch of screaming, bloody Palestinians into a wall. The cartoon was published on Holocaust Memorial Day, and here it is: According to a report on the BBC News today, editor […]
by Greg Mayer The Americas were the last continents to be inhabited, and there has long been controversy about how and when it occurred. There is a general consensus that the earliest Americans arrived from northeastern Asia in the late Quaternary, but the exact peoples involved, the routes taken, when they arrived, and the modes […]
If you’re like me, you’ve been fascinated forever by the disappearance of the aviator Amelia Earhart in 1937 on a round-the-world flight. There has been increasing evidence that she managed to make it to an isolated South Pacific island, Nikumaroro. There are reports that a female skeleton was found there in the 1940s, and excavations […]
The New Statesman has announced that its Christmas issue will be edited by no other than Richard Dawkins, who will apparently fill it with all kinds of secular stuff. (This may be a counter to the issue guest-edited by the Archbishop of Canterbury last June.) It looks a great issue, and will include a contribution […]
As I’ve found from reading comments on this site, non-Americans are continually astonished by the extreme degree of both religiosity and idiocy of Republicans in America. Without living here, it’s hard to apprehend how soaked in God our country really is. And if you do live here, it’s so common that you barely notice it. […]
Over at SocraticMama, Anne Crumpacker (mother of Mason) is asking readers to sign a petition to include a secular voice in the Dallas Morning News (the interview with Mason Crumpacker was a very rare exception). As Anne says, In my view, part of the problem is that Mason’s little interview, to the best of my […]
From my CNN News alert: Moammar Gadhafi is dead, according to reports on Arab media. CNN has not confirmed the reports. One of the networks reporting the news was Al-Ahrar, a National Transitional Council TV station. It didn’t cite a source and the news couldn’t be independently confirmed. The New York Times says the death […]
Beleaguered psychologist Marc Hauser, who was disciplined by Harvard University for scientific misconduct, has just resigned his position there. As the New York Times reports, he was originally given a year’s leave and other punishments, but was not fired. It’s not clear why he’s resigned now. His resignation letter, published in the Boston Globe (click […]
At the University of Chicago, Ph.D.s get their degrees a day before undergraduates, and each division has its own graduation ceremony (ours is the Division of Biological Sciences, which includes the medical students). Since my student Daniel graduated today, I went to the ceremony to “hood” him. I’m not sure how cosmopolitan this ceremony is, […]
