The ACLU is on the case of the immigrant round-up:

"Given the evidence, there is no alarmism in saying this is a round-up," said Lucas Guttentag, Director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project. "Attorney General Ashcroft is using the immigrant registration program to lock up people who already have provided extensive information as part of their green card applications," he said. "Therefore the purpose is clearly not to get information but rather to selectively arrest, detain and deport Middle Eastern and Muslim men in the United States."

Lisa Kadonaga has an article on how her parents, children of Japanese immigrants in Canada, were treated during WWII.

They were only in their teens at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, but that day marked the end of their childhood. Not long after, the fathers were taken away, and then the families were removed from towns and cities like Prince Rupert and Victoria and Vancouver. They were shipped to makeshift camps in the interior of the province, two families to a drafty tarpaper shack. For many of them, their only experience with snow was a couple of flurries per year -- it never stays long on the coast, usually washed away by next day's rain. They saw it now, lying in drifts on the floor, because it came through cracks in the roof and walls.

Towards the end of the war, Mom and Dad left the province. They didn't return -- although the laws were eventually changed to allow those of Japanese ancestry to live there again, and to vote. Shame and rejection, fear of the past repeating itself, and then the passage of time kept them away.

...

My grandfather, when asked why he wanted to come to Canada in the early years of the 20th century, said simply, "To learn about democracy". That was his heart's desire -- to live in, and participate in, a fairer and more peaceful society than the militarized dictatorship Japan was becoming prior to World War Two. He had been hoping to study political science and government at the University of British Columbia. Despite letters from two professors there, his application was denied, because of his country of origin. He became a fisherman, until the government confiscated his boat in 1942, and sent him into exile. He ended up learning a great deal about democracy -- or at least, what isn't democracy.

The question is -- have we?

Also from SFGate:

Gisroo Mohajeri clutched her pregnant belly on the steps of the downtown federal building and uttered a mother's lament: "I feel so guilty," she sobbed.

Earlier this week, Mohajeri had urged her 16-year-old, Iranian-born son to voluntarily register with immigration officials under a new program. But now he faces deportation proceedings.

Mohajeri and relatives of the hundreds of Middle Eastern men and teens who have recently been detained say they feel betrayed by the country that once offered them a safe haven. Even worse for many family members is the feeling that they acted as unknowing accomplices to the U.S. government.

"I blame myself. Why I brought my son here and put him in jail. Why? Just because I followed the law," Mohajeri cried. "I made a mistake."

From SFGate:

Relatives and lawyers of those arrested locally challenge that rationale for the latest round of detentions. One attorney, who said he saw a 16-year- old boy pulled from the arms of his crying mother, called it madness to believe the registration requirements would catch terrorists.

"His mother is 6 1/2 months pregnant. They told the mother he is never going to come home -- she is losing her mind," said attorney Soheila Jonoubi, who spent Wednesday amid the chaos of the downtown INS office attempting to determine the status of her clients.

Jonoubi said the mother has permanent residence status and that her husband, the boy's stepfather, is a U.S. citizen. The teenager came to the country in July on a student visa and was on track to gain permanent residence, the lawyer said.

Many also objected to the treatment of those who showed up for the registration process. INS ads on local Persian radio stations and in other ethnic media led many to expect a routine procedure. Instead, the registration quickly became the subject of fear as word spread that large numbers of men were being arrested.

From the Orange County Register

Mojtava Sabahi of Santa Ana is awaiting the release of his brother, an Iranian with a work permit who has applied for a "green card."

"They told him to go register and he went to register," said Sabahi, 41. "Essentially, they're just arresting a bunch of law-abiding people."

M.M. Traplci and a dozen friends, all originally from Syria, went to the Santa Ana office of the INS in the past few days to register. Traplci, 45, said he was the only one to come out.

"All my friends are inside right now," said Traplci, a stereo installer and 15-year U.S. resident. "I have to visit the family for each one today. Most of them have small kids."

Traplci, of Santa Ana, said none of the men had expected any problem. All have lived in this country for years, and all are in various stages of obtaining their green cards. Most had received INS letters telling them their applications had been accepted. "These people who were at the INS office came from Syria, Iraq, Iran and other countries," he said. "They are everyday people, and they were treated like criminals. "They left their countries because they didn't feel free there. They love it here. Now they are scared here, too."

From the New York Times on the round-up of Arab immigrants:

Lawyers who have sat in on the proceedings said they found them chilling. "When you're in this room and everybody around you is a Middle Eastern man, it really sinks in," said Jacqueline Baronian, an immigration lawyer in New York. "It looks like people are being rounded up, and it's very, very disturbing."

Ms. Baronian and other lawyers said that if a man was found to be violating the terms of his visa, he was turned over to an investigation officer and detained. If the violation is minor, bond is set at $1,500 to $7,500, according to those who have been through the process.

One such man, who would not give his name because he said he was a member of a prominent Iranian Jewish family in Los Angeles, said he came to register last Tuesday and was immediately detained because his pending application for permanent residency had been held up in I.N.S. proceedings for five years.

The man, whose family fled Iran after the 1979 revolution, is an Israeli citizen but came to the United States in 1997 to be reunited with his family.

He spent all of Tuesday in the federal building lockup in Los Angeles, where he said he saw dozens of men in similar circumstances. He then was taken by bus to a jail in Pasadena, where he spent the night. He was later taken to an detention center in Lancaster, about 40 miles north of Los Angeles, where his father-in-law put up $1,500 bail to get him out on Thursday afternoon.

"This was the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me," the man said. "I am very respected in the business community here and I was just trying to do the right thing, to help solve the problem this country has with terrorism."

He added: "We were treated like animals in Iran and all I want is for my kids to grow up and say they're proud to be Americans. But until the day I die, I'm going to be a foreigner in this country, because of the way I look and my accent."

The DOJ decided to go back on its sealing of documents related to thimerosal links to autism! Kudos to all the organizations and blogs (P.L.A. and WampumBlog!) who kept the pressure up!

"The Bush Administration has overreached in its attempt to seal documents in thimerosal cases and the withdrawal of their motion bears that out," said Michael Bender, director of the Mercury Policy Project. "Unfortunately, this agreement only addresses half the loaf of bread. While the motion's withdrawal may help those involved in current litigation, it leaves unresolved what this means for future cases."

While the groups acknowledge that some information unearthed in court should be kept private -- like trade secrets -- they maintain that scientific studies and information should not qualify. In addition to the documents obtained through discovery from Eli Lilly, these also include unreleased confidential documents from the Centers for Disease Control stating that mercury in children's vaccines is a potential source of neurological damage in children including ADD/ADHD, speech and language delays and other neurological disorders including autism.

"We question the Bush Administration's blatant attempt to hide from the American public documents affecting the health and safety of millions of children -- especially when the material in question is as dangerous as mercury," said Lyn Redwood, Pres. SAFE MINDs. "What are they trying to hide?"

While federal law typically seals documents in individual cases, it has not been applied to omnibus proceedings like the autism cases.

"What's the policy argument for such incredible secrecy?" said Sallie Bernard, executive director of SAFE MINDs. "The timing and the scope of this unprecedented secrecy action by the Bush Administration raises serious questions, considering that lawmakers have pledged to revisit the thimerosal liability shield provision in the Homeland Security Act when they return in January."

"The Bush Administration's secrecy request was premature, highly unusual and went against federal rules that impose severe restrictions on sealing of documents," said MPP director Bender. "The public -- and especially families of autistic children -- have a right to know about what Eli Lilly knew and when they knew it, both now and into the future."

This is chilling. A government requires people to register with them if they are of a certain background, and then rounds them up by the hundreds. Is it a violation of Godwin's Law to say that this sounds reminiscent of the behavior of the Nazis? Not to mention the internment of the Japanese in the US during WWII? I ask you, are any terrorists going to come down to the INS offices to register. NO! Tell me how this helps in the long run?

Hundreds of Middle Eastern and North African men, some just 16, have been hauled into custody across southern California in the past few days, enraging civil liberties groups and drawing comparisons with the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese Americans during the Second World War.

The round-ups in Los Angeles, San Diego and suburban Orange County were part of a counter-terrorism initiative by the Bush administration, requiring men and teenagers from specific countries to register with the immigration authorities and have their fingerprints taken. Several thousand citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Sudan -- many of them accompanied by lawyers -- willingly came forward across southern California to meet Monday's deadline.

However, as many as a quarter of them -- estimates vary between 500 and 1,000 people -- were arrested on the basis of apparently minor visa violations and herded into jail cells under threat of deportation.

Lawyers reported that some detainees were forced to stand up all night for lack of room, that some were placed in shackles, and others were hosed down with cold water before being thrown into unheated cells. They said the numbers were so high that authorities were talking about transferring several hundred detainees to Arizona to await immigration hearings and deportation orders.

...

In one case, a 16-year-old boy was ripped from his mother's arms and told he would never return home. The mother is a legal resident married to an American citizen. Many of the detainees came from Los Angeles' large Iranian Jewish population and are highly unlikely to have any link to militant Islamic guerrilla groups.

Immigration officials said they would not discuss numbers but did not dispute one report putting the number of detainees at between 500 and 700. They acknowledged anyone with a slight visa irregularity was subject to arrest, regardless of personal histories. The detainees' lawyers challenged the government to produce any evidence of criminal behaviour among their clients, let alone a link to international terrorist groups.

The registration scheme was conceived by President Bush's ultra-conservative Attorney General, John Ashcroft, and had already come under criticism for what opponents call blatant discrimination.

Reuters has a story that sounds awful. Read this and tell me you are proud of your government.

Hundreds of Muslim men and boys are being subjected to strip searches in freezing, standing room only detention centers in southern California after being arrested for routine visa irregularities, immigration lawyers said on Thursday.

They estimated that between 1,000 and 2,500 males, some as young as 16, were spending their fourth day locked up in what they called inhumane conditions after voluntarily presenting themselves at immigration offices to register under new anti-terrorism rules.

"The situation in the detention centers is absolutely horrifying. In one center, they were ordered to strip down and given a strip search. They were only given a prison jumpsuit, without any underwear, T-shirts, socks or shoes. They were not given blankets. They are freezing," Iranian-American lawyer Sohelia Jonoubi told Reuters.

...

Community lawyers have been refused access to the detainees who they say are being shuttled round various detention centers in prison buses, shackled and in handcuffs, as the system creaks under the strain.

Families, allowed telephone access to their relatives, reported that the men were forced to sleep standing up, or on concrete floors with no blankets, and some had been hosed down with cold water. Drinking water is said to be scarce and in some cases, detainees must use toilets without doors or walls.

The relatives said that some detainees have been told they will be deported without seeing their relatives again. Others are trying to get out on bail pending a hearing before an immigration judge which could take days or weeks.

Martin Willett, english atheist, has an interesting article on atheists and Christmas. However, I disagree with him in regards to the applicability of his argument in the US. In England, religion is nearly dead and anyone saying that evolution is made up is ridiculed as severely confused. So, Mr. Willett feels he can participate in Christmas as an atheist because it is a good excuse to have a party. It is as good a day as any and he has nothing to prove.

Here in the US, of course, it is a different story. Here we are in the middle of a culture war between the forces of reason and the future, and the forces of wish fulfillment, hatred and the closed mind. Actions by the partisans are full of meaning, intended or not. Christmas has a different tone here: participate in our Christian holiday or you are unamerican. Or worse: if you celebrate Christmas, you are acknowledging some complicity in the Christian message or culture. Everyone loves Christmas! What is wrong with you? An atheist celebrating Christmas here looks like capitulation to the Christians that are trying to take over our country.

So, while I would gladly hang out with Mr. Willett on the 25th of December while in England, I feel like it is my duty as an American and as an atheist to not participate. Instead, I'll crank out some code next Wednesday, and do some blogging. For those unaware of the history of Christmas, or its Victorian roots, I highly recommend The Trouble with Christmas by Tom Flynn. Meantime, here is Mr. Willett's take:

Nothing in any of the gospels fixes the date of Jesus' birth. The early church simply did what it was very good at, stealing and neutralizing the traditions of other religions and cults. Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus as either December 25th, the birthdate and festival of the resurrecting God-man Indo-Iranian Mithras (originally Mithra, the name changes to Mithras for numerological reasons, just as Yesua is Joshua in the old testament and Jesus in the new, so the Greek name has numerological significance), or January 6th, the birthdate and festival of the resurrecting Egyptian God-man Osiris-Aion, born of the virgin Isis (the Black Madonna of so many "Christian" statues).

There were festivals and celebrations at the time of the winter solstice long before there was a Christian church, for a couple of centuries at least before Jesus may have lived. The early Roman Church simply commandeered all shrines and festivals to itself. Places where pagan goddesses gave oracles became shrines of the blessed virgin Mary. Temples to Mithra or Apollo became churches, worship and festivals continued as before only the names and a little of the theology changed. What happened in the Greek and Latin worlds also happened in the Celtic, Germanic and Nordic lands. Old gods had their myths and festivals stolen and dressed up as Christian festivals. Celtic heroes became rewritten as Christian Saints. For the most part the people as a whole didn't seem to mind too much. There were still bonfires, feasts, gift-giving and excuses to get drunk. The change from pagan to Christian simply meant business as usual, slightly fewer orgies but just as much tax and as many idle priests as ever. Many old traditions and superstitions lived on and were Christianized. The people were still as irrational and superstitious as ever.

The Christmas that we celebrate today is a mix of old pagan traditions such as evergreen decorations and feasting coupled with an often neglected Christian gloss and overlaid with more modern secular humanist and consumerist traditions.

US Catholic church attendance has dropped below that of Protestants for the first time. The scandals have had their effect, and many Catholics are responding. Most importantly, 40% of them are giving less money. Oh well, the era of the 0.2 billion dollar cathedral is over.

The decline in church attendance among Catholics is part of a long-term phenomenon that precedes the current scandals afflicting the Church. Gallup data from the 1950s and 1960s show that about three-quarters of Catholics reported attending church within the last seven days, compared with just half or fewer of Protestants at that time. Catholic attendance continued to fall through the late 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, but remained higher than Protestants' attendance. The more recent data show that Catholics' church attendance was also higher than Protestants' in 2000 and to some degree in 2001. It has only been in the last year than Catholics' attendance has fallen below that of Protestants'.

You may have noticed that Blogger ate my template last night, and things are still not back to normal. So, I'm doing this instead of posting. Sorry. Be back as soon as I find everything. Rule #1 for Blogger: save your template!

Congratulations to New York State for passing the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act:

State senators passed a bill Tuesday that would outlaw discrimination against homosexuals in New York state, 31 years after advocates began lobbying for it.... SONDA would protect people from abuse, harassment and discrimination in employment, housing, education and public services based on their sexual preference. It would become law 30 days after gaining the governor's signature, making New York the 13th state to prohibit anti-gay bias.

Of course, the morons came out of the woodwork afterwords:

Michael Brennan, a Rochester resident who came to Albany to protest SONDA, carried a sign outside the Capitol Tuesday that read "God's plan is marriage between husband and wife."

"This is leading down the road to loss of free speech. Eventually, my convictions will become a hate crime," he said, before he and transgender advocates began arguing. "It will interfere with my ability to teach my grandchildren my values."

"This is a sad day for Christians," said the Rev. Duane Motley of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms. "Homosexuality is condemned in the Bible. Christian businessmen should have the right to not hire people that they believe are engaged in immoral behavior."

When did it become true that a sad day for Christians usually means that decent, normal people have won?

TomPaine.com has put out a $10,000 reward for information leading to the outing of the person(s) responsible for putting the Eli Lilly exemption into the Homeland Security bill!

In November, as Congress finalized the legislation authorizing a new Department of Homeland Security, two paragraphs suddenly appeared in the bill giving drug maker Eli Lilly & Company something it desired: a shield from lawsuits by parents who claim the company's vaccines caused their children's autism.

The provision diverts those suits from state courts to a federal 'vaccine court' where damages are capped at $250,000 - small compensation for a child's lifetime of medical care. And because any damages awarded by the vaccine court are paid by U.S. taxpayers, manufacturers are relieved of liability.

It's a sweet deal for Eli Lilly, a very special interest that, like most mega-donors, gets what it wants in Washington. Since 2000, the company has given $1.6 million to national parties and federal campaigns, 79 percent of it to Republicans.

Who inserted the provision? Reporters tried and failed to find out. Lilly's lobbyists (laughably) claim ignorance. No one on Capitol Hill is proud enough of his handiwork to claim it.

Democracy requires accountability, so TomPaine.com is offering a $10,000 reward to the first person who proves the identity of the Eli Lilly Bandit - the member of Congress responsible for inserting the company's special provision. Mail submissions to PO Box 53303, Washington, D.C. 20009. The complete terms and conditions of this offer are posted at www.TomPaine.com.

Public officials who work secret deals like this are cowards. They subvert and dishonor a fundamental American principle - open government accountable to the people.

Help us finger the Eli Lilly Bandit.

If you aren't up to speed on all this, TP also has a good collection of Lilly stories.

The New York Times is running a series of articles on the Ten Commandments. As the points out, the essays are tenuously tied to each commandment, if any connection can be seen at all. I guess the thought was that Christmas has something to do with religion in this country. The first story was about a couple losing their daughter to asthma and how they rejected the idea that it was God's will, but still kept the idea of an omnipotent God. (Huh?) The next stories were similarly disjointed and left the reader wondering what the actual message of the writer was supposed to be. As an attempt to make the Ten Commandments relevant to our modern lives, it fails miserably.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation's gilt "Winter Solstice" sign was defaced as soon as the stolen one was replaced.

It apparently was sprayed on both sides with some type of corrosive substance. Anne Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation announced a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for defacing the freethought message.

While damaging the sign's beauty, the words are still legible....

"We feel very sad about this," said Gaylor, who authored the sign's message.

"It seems to be a reflection of a change for the worse in our society--increased intolerance and right-wing aggression. Our small token Winter Solstice sign was not tampered with for the first five years we erected it, then was stolen last year, and mutilated this year.

"This vandalism was certainly the work of a fanatical religionist who thinks the Capitol belongs only to believers at Christmas. There was a week-long 'interfaith' display last week, the annual nativity pageant with angels everywhere, and the 'tree lighting ceremony' with Christian overtones. A menorah with godly text by it is placed every year. There ought to be room at the State Capitol for the views of atheists and agnostics, too."

Since I have nothing of worth to contribute today, I will instead issue a call to action. Keith Devens has a blog where he demonstrates his singular ability to ignore huge swaths of western science contained in such arcane and inaccessible places as books, magazines, journals, websites, etc.

In my life I've never heard any proof offered for macro evolution, and lots of counter examples I've never heard anybody even try to explain -- for instance, how could multi-cellular organisms evolve from single-cellular organisms, and how could sexual reproduction have evolved? It's irritating to me when people think that I'm the one who's sticking my head in the sand and ignoring "science", when invariably the person who's insinuating this has no clue what he or she is talking about, and has never studied this stuff or thought about it for a minute in his or her life. Sigh.

In short, belief in macro evolution is simply a religious belief. It's not even a new one -- I was surprised to learn that there were Greek philosophers who had a very similar belief system to evolution thousands of years ago.

I suggest that we all, very nicely, answer Kevin's request to see proof of macro evolution. Let's not rise to the bait on his sad "religion" theory, just send him links to all this too-hard-to-find science. Go to the link above and leave the links in comments. Have fun, and please be civil.

In response to my last post, people have recommended the original Solaris movie to me. Thanks for the suggestion. I have actually seen it (and mentioned it before in this blog), and I thought it did a great job of bringing out Lem's theme. I still see the baby/monster crawling past the doorway in my nightmares! That image is pure horror movie trash unless coupled with the idea that Solaris was trying to communicate in that way. Symbols like that hold visceral profound meanings for us, but must be totally meaningless to an alien, especially an alien that doesn't share our shape, scale, ecosystem, etc. Kelvin's wife is not so grotesque on first sight, but the even deeper horror of her presence slowly dawns as the plot progresses. Maybe I should see the new Solaris just so the deeper horror of its (lack of) message can dawn on me as well.

I have been very confused at the reviews I have read about the new Solaris remake. They all indicate that the new film is about the relationship between Kelvin and his dead wife. This confuses me greatly, as that is about as far as you could get from the point of the original book. Lem's book is about communication between humans and aliens, and about the probable ultimate futility of it. And, now I learn that Lem has exactly the same impression I have.

...today, this prickly Polish visionary insists that fans and critics alike have misinterpreted his work. After the release of the Soderbergh version of ''Solaris,'' Lem issued a statement announcing that while he had no intention of seeing the film, he was troubled by its emphasis on romance at the expense of deeper philosophical concerns. Had Solaris merely been the story of love between a man and a woman, Lem wrote, he could have just called it Love in Outer Space.

Very sad. Solaris is one of my favorite books. It doesn't sound like I should see the new movie, in case it colors my attachment to the original. If I were an english major, I'd write something about the parallel between Hollywood/Lem and Solaris/Kelvin. I am not, so you'll have to write that breathy term paper for yourself.

For those of you too distracted by the Repug implosion of the US, I'd like to remind you that the rest of the world is made up of decent, normal people: Canada is ratifying the Kyoto Treaty. Now, if Russia adopts it, it will come into force, and the freeloading US will continue to trash the environment at the expense of the responsible adults that run the rest of the world. (This is mostly hyperbole. I understand some of the technical issues about Kyoto are hard and based on unproven research. However, that is just a smoke screen for US inaction on the global environment. If I saw any action from the Repugs on this I wouldn't complain. But, they think the Second Coming is just a few years away, so they aren't worried. Morons.)

To celebrate the limited victory of the forces of science over creationism in Ohio, I'd like to share an evolutionist's version of Julie Andrews' Favorite Things from the movie The Sound of Music (text only, there will be no singing!). The article is a list of facts inconvenient for the creationist. It is far from comprehensive, but quite long, quite funny and quite damning. I am reminded of Feynman's process for predicting whether some hypothesis is true or not. He said that hypotheses that turn out to be true are the ones that become more demonstrably true the more you look at them. If something looks more and more wrong the more experiments you run, things don't look good. Works quite well, for example, when analyzing our modern Lott. As this list shows, evolution is more demonstrably correct the more we look at it. Some of my favorite things:

Universal Gravitation

Although "just a theory," universal gravitation continues to be, well, universal. It holds true in all places, under all conditions, so it renders the brainless quip about evolution being "just a theory" a bit specious, at best.

Micro-organisms

Why did they have to show up? They're never mentioned in the Bible at all, so creationists have to do some creative rewriting of Genesis to account for their day of creation, and their presence or absence on the Ark.

Ice Ages

Very inconvenient! They have to have occurred since the Flood, since, according to creationists, the surface of the Earth was reworked by the Flood (to create, for instance, the Grand Canyon practically overnight), which would have messed up all those marks of glaciers on the landscape. That means mile-thick ice sheets had to advance and retreat again and again, across half the Northern Hemisphere, with the speed of freight trains.

"When the bugs bite, when the bats wing, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmmmmm...." ~whack!~ No singing!

Y'know. It is 10:30 in the morning here, and I don't think I have heard Trent Lott's daily apology yet. Does any one know where he is going to hold it? After his performance last night, I'd have thought he would have scheduled it early. He's got lots more explaining to do.

I don't consider myself an Anglophile on principle, it just seems to work out that way. Douglas Adams and Monty Python are my examples of the heights of comedy. I love Shakespeare. I listen to Pete Townshend and Portishead. I have an issue choosing between surfing Amazon or Amazon.co.uk. I like PBS stations 'cause they carry British TV (I don't get cable), and I'll stop whatever I am doing to watch The Saint, The Prisoner or The Avengers. I read New Scientist every week. (I am a geek. You knew that.) True to form, I have found another great UK product: New Humanist. Take a quick trip to their subscribe page and sign up to have a free copy sent to you (US requests no problem). It will come along with a subscription form. On getting the magazine, I flipped through it and filled out the subscription form immediately.

I have a problem with US humanist/skeptic/freethinker magazines/newsletters, of which I get many (American Rationalist, The Humanist, Skeptic, Skeptical Inquirer, Free Inquiry, Free Mind, Family Matters and the Secular Humanist Bulletin): they preach to the choir. I don't need convincing. I don't need ammunition against the crop-circle bubbleheads I meet at dinner parties. What I want is a cultural magazine that brings me a well-rounded, cultural view of Humanism. Something that shows that my worldview is a part of a cultural thread that has its roots in antiquity, that engages the best minds of our day, and that has every chance of being the principle that will take humanity into the future.

New Humanist does all that. The issue I was sent (Autumn 2002) has an bio on Rosalind Franklin (whose name would be remembered with Watson and Crick if she hadn't died young), seven extensive book reviews, Hitchens on Orwell, an overview of the London International Festival of Theatre, atricles on the superhero myth, American televangelism, Jewish disbelief, Karl Popper, and US millennialism and foreign policy, and a thoroughly British puzzle. I read the whole thing, including the ads. Perhaps the higher content quality is due to the fact that the magazine is a quarterly, or the fact that it is working on its 118th year. I don't know. But, I do know that I'll let my other ungodded journals lapse before I let this one go.

You may have noticed the comments system that I have established using Haloscan's comments system. The comments link at the bottom of each blog entry is for you to make off-the-cuff snide comments on my pontificating. Works nicely. Tim and Jody have already used it effectively to provide me with extra information that my sub-standard journalistic skills failed to turn up. Please use it for any little thing that crosses your mind. And, yes Tim, the centering is now gone on the comments. Now, will you consider guest blogging for me? I need to get some programming done at work!

Thanks to Tim Ridge who took the extra step of finding and downloading the full PDF of the Ohio Board of Education Standards and searching the text for any weasel-words inviting teachers to criticise evolution. Tim notes that the word criticism only appears once:

Nature of Science
1. Discuss science as a dynamic body of knowledge that can lead to the development of entirely new disciplines.
2. Describe that scientists may disagree about explanations of phenomena, about interpretation of data or about the value of rival theories, but they do agree that questioning, response to criticism and open communication are integral to the process of science.
3. Recognize that scientific knowledge is limited to natural explanations for natural phenomena based on evidence from our senses or technological extensions.

Thanks Tim! Hey, you got a URL for those standards? The PDF I found is here, but I'd like to check that we are talking about the same version, since there seemed to be a host of last-minute changes. There are also HTML pages of the standards, but once again, I am not sure if they are the final versions.

I'd like to personally thank the morons in government (all of them) for letting the national flood insurance program lapse. It seems Congress was too busy to reauthorize it, since they were hard at work destroying our country with the Homeland Security Bill. Please do not get the impression that I have a newly-built condo out on the barrier islands of North Carolina. I am the current steward of (that is, I own) a house that has been on its present site for over 200 years. And rarely, like three years ago, we have a massive flood, and my house goes under. Without the insurance program, my historic house (once the state treasury of NJ!) would not have survived. A personal loss for sure, but a loss for New Jersey heritage as well.

I have to check, but my flood insurance might run out in January, and I'll have to renew it. It has been exactly five years since I bought the house, and I bought it in January. Guess what? I won't be able to get any more until the program is reauthorized by Congress and the President, not possible before February. Any flood losses in those two months are my responsibility entirely. And, I just started refinancing. Guess what? I can't get a mortgage if there is no flood insurance on my house, since it is in a federally designated flood zone.

How could this happen? How could a program that protects 4.4 million property owners with $623 billion in total insurance coverage be allowed to lapse into legal limbo? And more practically, how can property owners and buyers in flood hazard areas deal with the situation?

Congress' failure to reauthorize the flood insurance program is directly connected to its partisan gridlock on virtually the entire federal budget this year. To fund the government into 2003, Congress passed a continuing resolution that authorized operations at the major federal departments. But in an effort to keep the resolution streamlined, congressional leaders eliminated a variety of federal activities that required reauthorizations before Dec. 31 in order to continue functioning.

Thanks again.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation's gilt "Winter Solstice" sign has returned to the State Capitol Building in Madison, Wisconsin. It was stolen from the building last year, even though it was under the watchful eye of security and a host of cameras. The FFRF has a permit to post the sign. The new sign reads, on the front:

At this season of the Winter Solstice may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

On the back:

State/Church: Keep Them Separate. Thou shalt not steal.

Turns out we in the US aren't the only ones trying to keep the church's hands off our children. Scotland is in the middle of a debate to eliminate government funding for Catholic Schools. The National Secular Society in the UK has a timeline of the issue. I reproduce the whole thing here.

HOLD A REFERENDUM ON CATHOLIC SCHOOLS IN SCOTLAND SAYS NSS

The National Secular Society is challenging the Scottish Executive to hold a referendum on whether Catholic Schools should be transferred to the community sector. The call comes in a letter to First Minister Jack McConnell from the NSS's Executive Director, Keith Porteous Wood.

The NSS's demand for a referendum comes after a week in which the Catholic establishment in Scotland has been rocked by repeated attacks by secularists urging the Scottish Parliament to phase out sectarian schools.

The row was sparked by plans by the Scottish parliament to outlaw sectarianism and religious hatred. The Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark got the ball rolling by suggesting that 412 Catholic schools in Scotland (the only publicly funded denominational schools that exist in the country) should be abolished. She said at a prize-giving ceremony that the existence of Catholic-only schools had separated her from her best friend during her school days.

The NSS then joined the fray with a letter to the Scotsman (read it here.)

This prompted the Herald newspaper to take the issue up, and carried comments from the NSS and the Humanist Society of Scotland here.

These comments infuriated the Archbishop of Glasgow, Mario Conti, who wrote a ridiculously hysterical refutation of our criticisms here , which itself was roundly rubbished in the Daily Telegraph by Alan Cochrane here.

The Archbishop's remarks simply inflamed the situation, with more argy-bargy the following day here & here.

The NSS then accused the Archbishop of trying to blackmail the Scottish Executive with his threats of creating a Catholic backlash at the polls here.

Richard Dawkins's argument with Conti was also re-hashed for round two here and a swathe more letters followed here.

The new call for a referendum is expected to create more fireworks this weekend, and Ivan Middleton of the Scottish Humanists has penned an excellent article for the Edinburgh Evening News, due to appear this evening.

You can't vote on science. Yet, the media loves to take polls on the status of evolution in the mind of the US everyman. Would we listen if they took a poll on whether people believe in inertia? It would be convenient, no more deaths in car accidents. Every evolution poll shows us yet again how stupid two-thirds of the US really is, especially in comparison to Europe, and how anemic our educational system is. These things we know. The problem is these polls raise the creationist idiots' morale. Can two-thirds of the US population be wrong? Do you feel enough conviction to contradict them? I do, of course. But, then again, I am educated. And, apparently, a minority.

One last thing on the Ohio Board of Education standard adoption. I wanted to note a good site by Ohio Citizens for Science, which was the source of the congratulations letter from Dr. Eugenie Scott. Also found there an article from the Cincinnati Post on the standards fight with the title Ohio Poll:'Design' theory is religious:

In the on-line survey of college science professors teaching at four-year public and private schools in the state, 93 percent said they were not aware of "any scientifically valid evidence or an alternate scientific theory that challenges the fundamental principles of the theory of evolution." And 90 percent said there was no scientific evidence at all for the idea of intelligent design. Seven percent of the science professors said they thought the theory was strongly or partly supported by scientific evidence. Ninety-two percent of the respondents said they thought that Ohio high school students should be tested on their understanding of the principles of the theory of evolution in order to graduate. And 90 percent said students should not have to be tested on intelligent design to graduate. The researchers said that perhaps their most surprising finding was that 84 percent of the science professors thought that accepting the theory of evolution was consistent with believing in God. Nine percent said it wasn't and the other seven percent said they weren't sure.

Limited victory.