Schlock Fiction "Left Behind" Series Now A Bigoted Video Game

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.

Sit down, pour yourself a cup of Holy-CRAP-These-People-Are-Insane and read this

Suspect Health Information Sneaking Into Print

ScienceBlog: A spate of suspect health information seems to be bubbling into print lately.

A government researcher claims in USA Today that nearly one out of three American adults has or is at risk for diabetes, even though actual prevalence is only 6.5 percent, with the rest either undiagnosed or consisting of healthy people with high blood sugar.

The New York Times recently reported that the American Society for Hypertension is taking drug company money to come up with new guidelines widening the definition of high blood pressure.

The Washington Post joins the parade of publications exposing "disease mongering" by drug companies, this time focusing on "restless leg syndrome."

A Times essayist argues in support of the snack food industry that schools are going so far in a crusade against childhood obesity they may be making kids afraid to eat normally.

And the Post unmasks the highly publicized American Medical Association warning last March that college girls like to drink and have sex during spring break as having been based on a "poll" as unscientific as Pat Robertson's meteorology.

The issue requiring constant vigilance is whether today's vast health claims are mostly on the level or merely half-vast.

Top Scientist Gives Up On Creationists

Guardian: A leading British scientist said yesterday that he had given up trying to persuade creationists that Darwin's theory is correct after repeatedly being misrepresented and, he said, branded a liar.

Speaking at the Guardian Hay festival at Hay-on-Wye, the evolutionary biologist Steve Jones spoke of his frustrations when trying to debate with religious opponents.

"I don't engage with creationists directly," he said, saying that, when he had, they had frequently quoted him out of context or accused him of lying. "If somebody has decided to believe something - whatever the evidence - then there is nothing you can do about it."

The University College London professor spoke to the provocative title, Why Creationism is Wrong and Evolution is Right. He pointed out that acceptance of Darwin's theory on a global scale was a "minority belief". According to polls, 100 million Americans believe in creationism.

His talk laid out some of the evidence for evolution, such as that of changes in the HIV virus after infecting people. He also hinted at a puzzle thrown up by the human genome project. Far from the hundreds of thousands of genes many geneticists expected, there seem to be around 30,000.

Another revelation was the notion that the chimpanzee genome project has shown that women are closer to chimps then men. Prof Jones explained that is because the X chromosome has changed less than the Y chromosome since we split from a common ancestor with chimps. Women have two X chromosomes compared with XY in men.

The most important difference between evolutionists and creationists, Prof Jones concluded, is that scientists are always prepared to say, "I don't know".

"If there weren't any unknown parts of evolution, bits we don't understand, it wouldn't be a science," he said, "That's one thing that believers never say, because it's all written down in a big book."

In 1997, Prof Jones was awarded the Royal Society's Michael Faraday prize, the UK's foremost award for communicating science to the public.

I Killed My Television

Taking a big leap this Memorial day and disconnecting the television. From now on it's Netflix and XBox.

Here's what happens when you wipe a Tivo:


And here's the carnage from the roof.


And with that, we start participating instead of watching.

May 25th is Towel Day

You sass that hoopy Douglas Adams? Now there's a frood who knew where his towel was. You are invited to join your fellow hitchhikers in mourning the loss of the late great one. Join in on towel day to show your appreciation for the humor and insight that Douglas Adams brought to all our lives.



A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

It's Official - Muslims Are Freaking Nuts As Well

A fish with markings that resembled a Koranic text has been found by Kenyan officials after vanishing from the fisheries office where it was stored.

The tuna fish, which had provoked intense interest from Muslims, had apparently been stolen by people posing as National Museum officials.

The fish was found at the shop where it had first come to public attention.

Sceptics say the writing was the work of someone who caught the fish and then threw it back into the sea.

But others say this would be impossible, and local imams are said to have been talking in the mosques about the fish. More at BBC

~~~~~
But Wait! There's More!

A pet shop owner has found the markings on one of his tropical fish appear to spell the word "Allah" in Arabic.

An Asian customer spotted the markings on the astronotus ocellatus at Walker Aquatics in Waterfoot, Rawtenstall, Lancs, and offered to buy it for £10.

The customer bought the most expensive tank in the shop to house the fish, at a cost of £700. Also at BBC

Light 'Em Up! - Cure For Cancers In Five Years

Scientists in Manchester say a cure for all types of cancer could be available on the NHS within five years.

The world's first patient trials in a technique which genetically engineers cells will take place at the city's Christie Hospital later this year.

The treatment - gene-modified t-cell therapy - could replace more intrusive treatments like chemotherapy.

The cells are fitted with a "tracker" device to kill cancer cells before being injected back into the patient.

Professor Robert Hawkins, clinical director of Medical oncology at the hospital, says the initial results of lab tests have been "spectacular". BBC

Ten Things I Hate About Commandments

"Ten Things I Hate About Commandments" is a mash-up trailer for a John Hughes style teen comedy, using footage from the Charlton Heston version of The Ten Commandments. It's masterfully done, and milk-out-the-nose funny. (via Boing Boing)

Study: Wal-Mart Equals Higher Poverty Rates

A study published in the latest issue of Social Science Quarterly is the first to examine the effect of Wal-Mart stores on poverty rates. The study found that nationwide an estimated 20,000 families have fallen below the official poverty line as a result of the chain's expansion.

During the last decade, dependence on the food stamp program nationwide increased by 8 percent while in counties with Wal-Mart stores, the increase was almost twice as large at15.3 percent. "After controlling for other factors determining changes in the poverty rate over time, we find that both counties with more initial Wal-Mart stores and with more additions of stores between 1987 and 1998 experienced greater increases (or smaller decreases) in family poverty rates during the 1990's economic boom period," Stephan Goetz a Professor of Agricultural and Regional Economics at The Pennsylvania State University states.

Although Wal-Mart employs many people living in its communities, for most, the hours worked and the wages paid do not help these families transition out of poverty.

Another effect is that the closing of "mom and pop" stores following the appearance of a store leads to the closing of local businesses that previously supplied those stores including: wholesalers, transporters, logistics providers, accountants, lawyers and others.

The authors state that "by displacing the local class of entrepreneurs, the Wal-Mart chain also destroys local leadership capacity." They encourage community leaders to think about programs and policies in anticipation of helping those displaced by the arrival of the chain.

From Blackwell Publishing