offending religious feelings … gets you a prison sentence in Spain

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People get offended by many things … smoking, chewing gum, spitting, etc… but there is apparently one very special category of offence in Spain, “offending religious feelings”, apparently that will potentially get you jail time. The news is that one of Spain’s leading underground artists has been charged with this, appeared in court and now faces … Read more

Whole Brain wiring Diagram – We have reached an important milestone

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Neuroscientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have reached an important milestone, they have released the first installment of data from the 500 terabytes so far collected in their pathbreaking project to construct the first whole-brain wiring diagram of a vertebrate brain, that of the mouse. Wow. The data consist of gigapixel images (each close to … Read more

Richard Dawkins interviews Daniel Dennett – Oxford, 9 May 2012

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Now this is really worth watching, it is an hour long interview of Daniel Dennett by Richard Dawkins. Least you wonder “Who?”, I’ll explain. Daniel Dennett  is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of the Center for Cognitive … Read more

“They shall take up serpents; and …” … die.

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I never cease to be amazed about the diversity of truly crazy things that people believe. One recent example concerns a verse in the bible that says … “And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; … Read more

Catholic Church still recommending that abuse should be covered up and not reported

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We all know about the abuse, and are now aware it was not simply about a few bad priests, but also involved a quite frankly criminal conspiracy to protect the abusers and so enabled them to continue to molest thousands over many decades without fear of any consequences at all. They claim that everything has … Read more

The hijab and liberation

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Nadiya Takolia writes in today’s UK Guardian an article entitled, “The hijab has liberated me from society’s expectations of women“. I’d like to address some of her claims, but first I better make a couple of things clear. The term “hijab” refers to a head covering worn by Muslim women, in other words its just a fancy scarf, we … Read more