Frank Gray's column in this morning's Journal Gazette gives us a clear example of religious themed pareidolia in the wild :

So Brown got her camera and put the emptied jar on a pedestal in the sun and snapped a picture.

Well, let’s just say Brown got more than she expected. Yes, the mushroom pattern stood out, a little bit. But the sun shining through the jar projected an image on the wall next to the jar and it seemed to show something.

You guessed it. It was an image of Jesus.

Now we’ve all heard about images of Jesus showing up in rust stains on water towers, on grilled cheese sandwiches, on potato chips and so on. Usually, you have to look at these images and let your imagination run a bit. It always helps to have someone standing next to you saying, “See, the arms are there and there’s the head,” and after a couple of minutes you say, “Oh, yeah, I see it, sort of.”

The image in Brown’s photo, though, isn’t one of those. No one needs to point it out. No one needs to prod you and ask whether you see anything. It’s that obvious, and it’s even in color.

Well, I had trouble seeing it at first, but yeah, I guess I can sort of make out a traditional European Jesus in flowing white robes.

Oh, well now. That does explain it.

The current GOP is truly a scary party, but if not for that it would be impossible to care about the midterm elections. When you’re reduced to rooting for soulless hacks like the current Senate majority leader—and he’s typical of today’s Democrats—you’ve lost something fundamental at the core of your humanity.

Pretty much sums it up for me.

The national survey, conducted between July 28 and Aug. 6, found:

• 75% of those polled said students should be able to speak about their faith at public school events, with support not only from those who identified themselves with particular faiths but also from 52% of those who said they don’t practice religion.
• 80% think student speakers should be allowed to offer a prayer during public school events, again with support from 59% of those who said they don’t practice religion.

Although about two-thirds of survey respondents (66%) endorsed the general idea that the First Amendment requires a clear separation of church and state, the survey also found:

• 76% support the proclaiming of a National Day of Prayer by Congress or the president, with that endorsement strongest among Protestants and Catholics.
• 53% said the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation, in a result similar to what was found in a 2008 survey by the First Amendment Center.
• 60% of Protestants said a candidate’s affiliation was important in their voting choice, as compared with 44% of Catholics and just 17% of those not practicing a religion.

So the results of the latest survey from The First Amendment Center are kind of reassuring. A solid majority of Americans, 66%, favor a high wall between church and state but when it comes to specific instances of practicing their religion they demonstrate that they don't really know what that means.

The most depressing statistic, is that over half of the respondents, 53%, believe the Constitution establishes a Christian nation. The crackpot contingent with the most extreme or uninformed beliefs shows up in the same 30-40% range as they do on almost every survey.

The results of this survey seem to indicate to me that there really needs to be a concerted education effort to combat counterfactual voices in the media (yeah, Glenn Beck, I'm looking at you). Indeed, I think most people, including atheists and agnostics, could benefit from knowing more about the history of church-state separation in the U.S. and what the current legal thinking is.

Frankly, even I find the topic confusing when it comes to issues such as benedictions given by students at graduation ceremonies or a presidential proclamation of a National Day of Prayer. I know I think both are bad, and shouldn't be allowed, but I don't quite know how they fit into the elaborate framework of legal thinking that has evolved around church-state separation.

Here you can find the full survey results.

The students I encounter in my courses generally work hard and want to do well in college. They are intelligent. They want to learn things. But the “critical thinking” that’s been touted for the past several years seems to be yielding students who think that it’s a waste of time to think about things in terms of whether they are true or false.  Instead, many seem to be learning that the proper and best attitude toward everything they encounter is doubt, and that nonstop doubt is the equivalent of being open-minded.

Some of the blame for this can be laid at the feet of modernism, which celebrated doubt. Modernist doubt grew out of philosophical skepticism, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the disastrous 20th century, which took the wind out of the sails of Western civilization in the minds of many. (Two vicious world wars that killed millions, it seems, caused certain sensitive people to question the civilization that brought them on.) Sometimes, the reaction to modern doubt is to retreat to certainty—God said it, I believe it, that settles it.  Oftentimes, the reaction is increased tolerance—openness to new ideas and a tolerance of others who are different. With many college students today, however, it seems to mean simply giving credence to anything, no matter how absurd. In absorbing the lesson that there are limits to reason, they’re concluding that more or less nothing can be ruled out by reason. Their philosophy can be summed up in these words:  “I’m just saying, who knows?”

That's a short quote from Laurie Fendrich's oped at The Chronicle of Higher Education.

When I read it I immediately though of the problems encountered by those of us trying to communicate skepticism and science. All too often we think that the problem is a lack of skepticism. That if we can just teach people critical thinking skills and give them some knowledge about the way our minds can be deceived, some inkling of how science works, then they'll have the tools to go about vetting information on their own.

What Fendrich has observed though is what skeptics and science communicators tend to overlook. At least in certain segments of our culture, skepticism has been internalized and it's viewed as part and parcel of being a good and tolerant person. Frequently it isn't people's fixed beliefs that get in the way of them thinking critically or accepting scientific consensus as more or less accurately describing the natural world but rather they just don't care. As Fendrich phrased it, "they don't really believe truth is worth figuring out."

Updated: Dwight Furrow says it better than I do, and much more succinctly:

"I am afraid we often encourage the skepticism but leave out the bit about the pursuit of truth. That is a tragic error."

China is major producer of polycrystalline silicon, a key component of solar cells. The Washington Post last year documented how at least one Chinese producer was dumping a toxic byproduct from that manufacturing process on nearby farmland. Experts suspect that firms in other developing countries are taking similar shortcuts.

The high-tech industry generated more than 2.6 million tons of e-waste in the U.S. in 2005, about 87% of which ends up in landfills or incinerators, according to the report.

Most of the rest was exported to developing countries to be dismantled by low-wage workers, many of whom are exposed to dangerous substances lurking in the guts of personal computers and other electronics.

The article does note that research is being done into producing solar panels that require less hazardous chemicals to produce.

For the past three years, Marilyn Bess has operated MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home. Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she's made about $50. To Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it's a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut.

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In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license.

"The real kick in the pants is that I don't even have a full-time job, so for the city to tell me to pony up $300 for a business privilege license, pay wage tax, business privilege tax, net profits tax on a handful of money is outrageous," Bess says.

It would be one thing if Bess' website were, well, an actual business, or if the amount of money the city wanted didn't outpace her earnings six-fold. Sure, the city has its rules; and yes, cash-strapped cities can't very well ignore potential sources of income. But at the same time, there must be some room for discretion and common sense.

When Bess pressed her case to officials with the city's now-closed tax amnesty program, she says, "I was told to hire an accountant."

She's not alone. After dutifully reporting even the smallest profits on their tax filings this year, a number — though no one knows exactly what that number is — of Philadelphia bloggers were dispatched letters informing them that they owe $300 for a privilege license, plus taxes on any profits they made.

You know, this just seems like a stupid fee. It's hard to believe that when the city codified this law they didn't include a lower limit. Yet apparently, "as long as there's the potential for it to be lucrative," Philly bloggers need to pay the city $300.

Of course, every blog is a potential money maker so technically any blogger must pay for the business privilege license. The good news though is that the $300 is a lifetime license. Bloggers also have the option of paying $50 a year.

While I certainly think anyone who makes a substantial amount of money from their business should pay taxes, the vast majority of bloggers don't make any money from their blogs, and of those who do, only a tiny fraction make anywhere near enough for the blog to be considered a business.

As it is now, this is the very model of a regressive tax. I certainly hope other cities don't follow Philadelphia's lead.

I would also think that if the city wants to increase tax revenues, there are probably large corporations operating within the city who aren't paying their fair share for city services.

Yes, I know this is from Little Green Footballs, but give it a read anyway. I promise your head won't explode. Quote:

This is a good time for some background information on Pamela Geller’s associate David Yerushalmi, who is an advocate for criminalizing Islam itself and imposing 20-year sentences on practicing Muslims. Yes, really.

He’s not simply anti-Muslim, though; Yerushalmi also wrote a now-infamous article titled “On Race: A Tentative Discussion, Part II,” in which he advocated a return to a pre-Bill of Rights Constitution, and the restriction of voting rights to white male land-owners. Again … yes, really.

Updated: I guess I totally missed when Charles Johnson ditched the right wing last year. Good for him. I long for the day when we have a principled, sane and educated Republican Party again. Of course, I long for the day when we have a principled, sane and educated Democratic Party too.

 

I loved watching this guy on our local PBS station in the 1980s. His little shows would invariably mark the end of the broadcast day back then (just before God Bless America and static). A pretty good way to sign off for the day I thought.

He was 72 years old. I would never have guessed, but he had been the executive director of the Miami planetarium since 1973 and had started there back in 1965. The guy had literally been turning people onto astronomy for longer than I've been alive! What a career.

Here's Sky and Telescope's post about Horkheimer's passing.

In a surprising development, Texas House of Representatives Republican Debbie Riddle is actually asked to provide proof to her bizarre claim that unnamed, former FBI officials have told her of foreign citizens giving birth to babies in the U.S., only to raise them to become terrorists. Naturally, Riddle does what any self-respecting politico would do -- acts indignant.

To be fair, however, few British Ufologists now believe in the literal reality of spaceships – the so-called "nuts and bolts" school of thought. In this country, members of the UFO community are rather like members of the Church of England: they love the feel of the subculture – the conspiracy theories, the films, the TV series, the video games, the merchandise – without subscribing to the implausible doctrines. They leave that to Americans, where UFO conventions are packed with believers in "grays" (little grey aliens with wraparound eyes) and fabulously sophisticated spaceships. Even born-again Christians in the Bible Belt are in on the act, arguing that grays are a portent of the Antichrist.

Nice, if a bit snarky, article about last night's release of previously secret files from the National Archives.

The skeptic’s task is not to score rhetorical points, but to seek genuine understanding of fringe claims. We want to learn what is true, what is fake, what the difference between these may be — and (if I may borrow a phrase) learn why people believe weird things.

Late at night, hands cramping from note-taking, eyes bleary with research, I can sometimes catch a glimpse of the Goblin Universe: ”Holy shit, what if there really is a Bigfoot? What if ghosts actually do exist? What if 9/11 was an inside job? What if….”

Sometimes this feeling is uncomfortable, sometimes it is thrilling — but always it comes to me as something of a relief. Here’s why:

1. If it doesn’t even occur to us that the claim we’re examining could just possibly be true, we’re not honest investigators;
2. If we can’t feel the persuasiveness of a claim, we don’t really understand it.

To my mind, this is where the rubber meets the road: are we really willing to look fairly at weird claims? And, is understanding something we’re psychologically capable of achieving?

Daniel perfectly sums up the skeptical enterprise in that one, short section. Read the full post at Skepticblog.

We wanted to make it as healthy as possible," he said, "so it was baked, not fried.

Morrie Yohai, the man who created Cheez Doodles, died last week at the age of 90. According to the NY Daily News, Yohai was a mystic, WW II Marine pilot and philanthropist.

After WW II, Yohai took over the reigns from his father of the Old London Melba toast factory in the Bronx.

The business was already famous for Cheese Waffles, caramel popcorn and, presumably, Melba toast but Yohai wanted something new, and inspiration hit him after stumbling across a cornmeal extruding machine. Yohai did what only comes naturally to a snack food maker and started coating the extruded cornmeal with cheese.

Yohai left his vast Cheez Doodle empire after selling it to Bordon which decided to relocate to Columbus, OH. He then started teaching the next generation of snack food entrepreneurs at the New York Institute of Technology where he eventually became the associate dean of the school of management.

As time went by, Yohai discovered vast untapped wells of spirituality within himself. He studied Torah and Jewish mysticism, later writing over 500 poems and publishing two books of poetry. Yohai also founded the New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.

Retronaut says, "This picture is 'Reopening of the South Fork Bridge after flood in Nov. 1940 / 1941' at the Bralorne-Pioneer Museum in British Columbia, Canada." Now look at the third guy from the right in the rear row.

Is this photoshopped? I don't know. According to Wikipedia the first t-shirts with graphic designs on them appeared in the 1950s but I don't think that's a t-shirt. Looks more like a sweater to me. Those sun glasses look awfully modern though. I sure would love to know more about this.

But then we realized that if we had overeducated people with voices rather unsuitable for radio narrate the stories with clever analogies and accessible morals, the whole thing would come off far less depressing.

An oldie, but a goody.