Rachel Ford is a programmer, and since 8:00 to 5:00 doesn't provide enough opportunity to bask in screen glare, she writes in her spare time. She was raised a very fundamentalist Christian, but eventually "saw the light." Rachel's personal blog is Rachel's Hobbit Hole, where she discusses everything from Tolkien to state politics.
Last year, researchers for Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council concluded that homeopathy was not a reliable means of medical treatment. The chair of that effort, Professor Paul Glasziou, revisited the topic in a blog post in which he takes aim at some of the homeopathy supporters who have objected to his team’s work. Read more
Two Illinois Republicans, Rep. Keith Wheeler and Rep. John Caveletto, have introduced a bill (since referred to the Rules Committee) to amend state birth certificate rules by denying financial support from single mothers who don’t name the child’s father on the birth certificate. Furthermore, they would deny the child a birth certificate altogether unless a father’s name was listed: Read more
Conservative Christians have already come up with plenty of reasons to hate the hit superhero movie Deadpool. You know, like the sex scene that wasn’t all about making babies (which apparently spells the end of civilization as we know it). And it being “Godless,” “lawless fantasy,” “debauched vulgarity” and a number of other descriptors that sound like they could be, but really aren’t, endorsements of the film. Well, now they’ve got another one: Read more
When it comes to taking rights away from other people, nothing is more important to conservatives that meeting biblical demands (or at least those demands they attribute to the Bible). Oddly enough, that paramount importance is lost when following biblical principles would interfere with enacting conservative policy. And conservatives go to great lengths to explain away or ignore those parts of the Bible. For example, Pope Francis’ recent comments about Donald Trump? Well they present a veritable case study in conservative eagerness to disregard scripture. When asked, the Pope said: “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Francis said when a reporter asked him about Mr. Trump on the papal airliner as he returned to Rome after his six-day visit to Mexico. This has since prompted a flurry of responses from conservatives — including the following, from (Catholic) Sean Hannity: Read more
