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Reconstructing Aunt Sally's Secret Recipe. Addressing the Retranslations Fallacy, a common misconception about how the Bible we read has been handed down to us. [via]
comment posted at 3:14 PM on Jan-23-06
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Any motion, anyone who moves in the zone, even if it’s a three-year-old, should be killed. Over. Just so everyone knows how our "allies" operate.
comment posted at 12:45 PM on Jan-23-06

Sympathy for a Lawyer ? His father sustains he should sell screwdrivers, he takes attention deficit disorder drugs, his ex probably keyed his Toyota Corolla and he takes pleasure in tormenting prosecutors while wondering if they like him. Not a reality tv show [Via Fark]
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It's not the war in Iraq that's revolutionizing the Middle East -- it's the media. "Surprisingly, it may be this new public sphere, rather than the war in Iraq or the Bush's administration's democracy rhetoric, that does the most to promote liberalization and reform in the Arab world. " Marc Lynch, an associate professor of political science at Williams College and the (until recently) anonymous writer behind the popular blog Abu Aardvark, talked to Mother Jones about how the new Arab public is transforming the Middle East.
comment posted at 4:09 PM on Jan-21-06

A conservative Metafilter loves to hate weighs in on the issue of intelligent design being incorporated into the classroom. Some of Orson Scott Card's views have been linked to before (see here; here; and most notably here.) This time, he seems to be less reactionary and more thoughtful. This is related to many prior Mefi threads on this issue some of which include this; this; and this.
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comment posted at 5:45 PM on Jan-20-06

OK, so some professional sports players have less-than-usual first names. Certainly not ones that are likely to appear on the top ten list. But if you really want weirdness in names (and, quite possibly, other things) you need to head over to Utah. (Frameset page; click on 'The Cream of The Crop'.) Personal favorite: VulvaMae
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comment posted at 4:59 PM on Jan-21-06

Near Ovulation, Your Cheatin' Heart Will Tell on You "New research from UCLA and the University of New Mexico suggests that members of "the gentler sex" may have evolved to cheat on their mates during the most fertile part of their cycle — but only when those mates are less sexually attractive than other men."
comment posted at 10:31 AM on Jan-18-06
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"Epigenetics : the lives of your grandparents – the air they breathed, the food they ate, even the things they saw – can directly affect you, decades later, despite your never experiencing these things yourself. This work is at the forefront of a paradigm shift in scientific thinking, in which the environment can impact our health for generations to come."
comment posted at 3:29 PM on Jan-17-06

God mad at America, black people.
comment posted at 1:22 PM on Jan-17-06

"Yousry is not a practicing Muslim. He is not a fundamentalist," prosecutor Anthony Barkow acknowledged in his closing arguments to a jury in federal district court in Manhattan earlier this year. "Mohammed Yousry is not someone who supports or believes in the use of violence." So why is Yousry now awaiting sentencing in March, when he could face 20 years in prison for translating a letter from imprisoned Muslim cleric Omar Abdel Rahman to Rahman's lawyer in Egypt?
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James Lovelock, inventor of the Gaia hypothesis believes that global warming has passed the point of no return. The feedback mechanisms that have regulated the planet are now working against us, accelerating the warming process. Can civilisation survive? Not according to Lovelock. The celebrated planetary scientist believes billions will die leaving the human race reduced to a few breeding pairs living in the Artic. Gloomy stuff.
comment posted at 9:51 AM on Jan-16-06
comment posted at 9:57 AM on Jan-16-06

The Root of All Evil? is Richard Dawkins' new programme on Channel 4 in the UK, where the noted scholar says we must abandon all religion to advance human kind. RD notes that he is technically an agnostic, but his bold show suggests that declared atheism is the correct political stand. Reminds me of the recent NPR piece on what Penn believes. Are popular-media pieces of this sort a bellweather for a new anti-theism?
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