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.
Alaska parish priest Sean P. Thomson broke the law in four different ways last week when he got pulled over for speeding and the trooper discovered that the good shepherd was drunk out of his skull (at three times the legal limit) and in possession of a small amount of marijuana. Also, the padre was carrying two firearms, one of which he allegedly failed to declare when asked. Read more
I’ve written about metzitzah b’peh circumcisions more than once. The procedure involves the Orthodox-Jewish mohel putting his mouth on the infant’s freshly-circumcised penis and sucking away the blood. Metzitzah b’pehs have resulted in babies ending up with communicable diseases like hepatitis. We know of two cases in which the infant died and others where irreversible brain damage occurred. In New York, with its Orthodox communities in which these dangerously unhygienic circumcisions are still rife, the city’s heath authorities have done nothing to rein in the practice, other than to require the parents to sign a consent form acknowledging that they’re aware of the risks. But even that inadequate measure is going too far for some mohels. One of them is Rabbi Avrohom Cohn, 85, the chairman of the American Board of Ritual Circumcision. Cohn is one of the top baby-penis-cutters in the region, and he says he doesn’t need no steenking permission, the Jewish publication The Forward writes: Read more
Being judged by a jury of one’s peers is meant to be reassuring for defendants — a counterbalance to a professional judiciary whose possible ivory-tower tendencies may put it out of touch with common Americans. In practice, because any Tom, Dick, and Harriet can serve on a jury, with almost no regard to their intelligence or their ability to juggle information critically (in fact, such qualities often disqualify citizens from the jury pool), I can think of few things more nerve-wracking than the possible damage that a jury of mediocre thinkers can inflict. Take the verdict in the David Tarloff case. A Manhattan jury just convicted Tarloff, a man with schizophrenia, of the chillingly brutal murder, in 2008, of Kathryn Faughey, a psychologist. Tarloff’s lawyers had pleaded insanity on behalf of their client. Tarloff, they said, … had a long history of delusions about communicating directly with God. He told doctors who examined him that his plan … had been sanctioned by the lord. Read more
This could have been a prank. Or a hoax. Whatever it was, Belgium’s glowing Virgin Mary statue, which began setting Catholic passions ablaze in January, isn’t a miracle. Police had to control crowds in the village of Jalhay, near Liege who were eager to touch the figure. The statue reportedly began to glow in the kitchen of an elderly couple’s home. Over 500 people visited the house in one day, eager to pay homage to it. Then scientists took a look and found that the statue had been painted with luminescent paint. Read more
