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.
Minnesota resident Aaron Miller has two daughters. As a concerned father, he wants to shield them from the burdens of learning about evolution. So Miller, a conservative, is running for Congress — not just for his own kids, but for the benefit of other people’s evolution-averse offspring too. Part of his plank: “There’s a war on our values by the government. We should decide what is taught in our schools, not Washington, D.C.” Read more
Cool story, bro. Family values Congressman is caught on security-camera footage French-kissing a staffer. She’s out of a job as soon as the affair comes to light… while he makes the usual feeble apologetic noises about having failed his wife and his five kids and his constituents… and gets to keep his position. Here’s the politician’s pitch before over-credulous voters sent him to Washington: Read more
When the Dutch Jesuit priest Frans van der Lugt turned 65, about a decade ago, he could have returned to his birth country and lived out his days in comfortable retirement. But van der Lugt chose to stay in the civil-war-ravaged city that had grown dear to him: Homs, Syria. Eight weeks ago, The Economist had this to say about him: A trained psychotherapist who is now in his 70s, he has been living in the Middle East since 1966. In the 1980s he set up an agricultural project outside Homs where young people with mental health problems could work. At an earlier stage in the current war, many Christians left the city after rebel forces moved in; he chose to stay, telling objectors that “I am the shepherd of my flock”. He is said to be the last European living in the heart of the city, now besieged by government forces. Read more
