Terry Firma, though born and Journalism-school-educated in Europe, has lived in the U.S. for the past 20-odd years. Stateside, his feature articles have been published in the New York Times, Reason, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Wired. Terry was the founder and Main Mischief Maker of Moral Compass, a now-dormant site that pokes fun at the delusional claim by people of faith that a belief in God equips them with superior moral standards. He was the Editor-in-Chief of two Manhattan-based magazines until he decided to give up commercial publishing for professional photography... with a lot of blogging on the side. These days, he lives in an old seaside farmhouse in Maine with his wife, three kids, and two big dogs.
Depressing. From Maria Konnikova at the New Yorker: [In April,] Brendan Nyhan, a professor of political science at Dartmouth, published the results of a study that he and a team of pediatricians and political scientists had been working on for three years. They had followed a group of almost two thousand parents, all of whom had at least one child under the age of seventeen, to test a simple relationship: Could various pro-vaccination campaigns change parental attitudes toward vaccines? Each household received one of four messages: a leaflet from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stating that there had been no evidence linking the measles, mumps, and rubella (M.M.R.) vaccine and autism; a leaflet from the Vaccine Information Statement on the dangers of the diseases that the M.M.R. vaccine prevents; photographs of children who had suffered from the diseases; and a dramatic story from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about an infant who almost died of measles. A control group did not receive any information at all. The goal was to test whether facts, science, emotions, or stories could make people change their minds. Read more
The man who opened fire in the Canadian Parliament building in Ottawa yesterday, after shooting and killing corporal Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial (pictured), was a follower of Allah. The attack by 32-year-old Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a.k.a. Michael Joseph Hall, came just two days after another Islamist terrorist from Quebec, Martin Couture-Rouleau (25), mowed down two Canadian soldiers with his car, killing one of them, in his home town of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. Both men were considered “high-risk travelers” and had had their passports seized. According to eCanadaNow, [Bibeau] and another group of men were prevented from leaving the nation this past July. They were destined for Turkey. The implication seems to be that they were on their way to join Islamic fighters in Syria or Iraq, although some Canadian media say Bibeau merely “dreamed of traveling to the Middle East to study Arabic.” Read more
We’re all familiar with the notion that Jesus Christ will return to Earth. (Any day now.) Kristi Rhines just believed that the Savior, who happens to be her husband, would return really, really soon. Police say Kristi Rhines told restaurant managers her husband was on his way to pick up the tab. Read more
In 2012, the New York Times published an article about strip clubs in Tampa. Business at the establishments boomed, the Times reported, when the National Republican Convention came to town, in ways that it didn’t when left-leaning conventioneers descended on the city. One strip club proprietor said daily revenue during the RNC event was three times that of the take during the Super Bowl, itself a high-grossing time for peddlers of sexual titillation. You could still quibble over what those things meant. Republican convention-goers could simply have higher incomes than their counterparts on the left, making it easier for them to spend bigger bucks. Maybe Democrats and associated groups were just as interested in exotic dancing, but more reluctant to be seen indulging in activities that their political fellows may condemn as misogynistic. Now, however, thanks to Canadian psychologists Cara MacInnis and Gordon Hodson, we have a scientifically sound look at the link between lustful interest in sexual imagery on the one hand (pardon the pun), and conservatism and religiosity on the other. The researchers published their paper in the peer-reviewed journal Archives of Sexual Behavior and titled it, straightforwardly, Do American States with More Religious or Conservative Populations Search More for Sexual Content on Google? And the answer is: hell yeah. Read more
Jeff Porter, who writes under the pen name UGAFender, is A Georgia boy, born a raised. I’ve traveled to 3 of the 4 corners of our country and to several spots off the reservation… I have interests that range the gamut, so there’s no telling what category I will cover. Feel free to insert sics where you feel they belong. With his intellectual pursuits “ranging the gamut,” Porter focused his powers of observation and logic on atheism the other day. Atheism is such an empty vessel; a bleak and vacant belief in a brief and futile and purposeless existence. A belief that we came from nowhere and we are headed for nothing must sustain a vacuum where one’s soul should otherwise be abounding with hope and joy and comfort in the knowledge of the truth that we are eternal and ever lasting beings, created for a purpose and with a destiny. Read more
