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.
Virginia minister Christopher Alan Hogge is the director of social services for the city of Franklin, and the pastor at Battery Park Baptist Church in Smithfield. He works with children in both jobs, which is why this is doubly disturbing: 48-year-old Christopher Alan Hogge was arrested Monday on eight counts of distribution of child pornography. Investigators received a cyber tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that an Internet account in Isle of Wight County had accessed a social-media account where child pornography was stored. Read more
A president getting hounded in a sex scandal? Now it’s Ken Starr’s turn. Six years ago, the author of the “overly aggressive” Starr Report that lead to impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton, was appointed president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Baylor is the largest Baptist university in the world. The Board of Regents is now rumored to be considering kicking Starr out over his pattern of dereliction in handling a string of campus sexual-assault cases, most involving the school’s football team. Read more
In 2014, a British doctor of Palestinian descent who specializes in endocrinology, and who worked for the U.K.’s National Health Service, traveled to Syria to join ISIS. BBC News just published a profile of the man, Issam Abuanza. Abuanza left his Sheffield home, his wife, and their two children to volunteer as a fighter and a medic. He is thought to be the first practicing NHS doctor to have joined the so-called Islamic State. As you might expect, the Hippocratic Oath was among his first casualties. Read more
