AL

"C'mon humans! We've wiped out entire species before! We can do it again!"

I don't think Dawkins is very tactful, but I think calling him a bigot and comparing him to the most extreme religious zealots is far from fair. I don't ever recall Dawkins advocating violence against religious people, or arguing that the religious should be persecuted or censored, or otherwise coerced out of their beliefs. He disagrees with religion and he's very blunt about it, but this is hardly comparable to the types of religious extremism that get criticized -- blowing people up who disagree, or trying to pass laws to outlaw the activities of homosexual men and so forth. If you can show me a quote where Dawkins advocates violence or persecution, my opinion of him will rapidly deteriorate for the worst, but until then, he's just someone who disagrees with religion just like me, albeit much more rude and cranky about it.

I don't think Coyne ever premised this in this particular article. I'm not familiar with his other works, but it's certainly not the case that he never challenged it here. See:

I was getting ready to go to my game theory class in the morning. My TV is normally on and every station had the same special report with Rudy Giuliani giving a talk to reporters. I didn't really think much of it, 'til I got to class and my professor told us what happened.

Pluto demoted? My astrologer totally did not see this coming.

John Tesh (the pianist and former host of Entertainment Tonight) has a nationally syndicated radio show called "Intelligence for Your Life," which could easily have provided numerous examples for this article. Did you know, for instance, that reading emails lowers your IQ? Studies have shown that people who read emails prior to taking an IQ test scored lower on said test than those who did not. Tesh recommends taking a break from your emails now and again (and I was hoping to do an email read-a-thon this weekend...rats). And did you know that caffeine improves your relationship skills? Studies show that people who drink coffee regularly are rated as more fun and likeable by their dates than people who don't drink coffee. Tesh recommends drinking some coffee before going out, but also offered the useful caveat not to drink too much, else you'll be jittery and nature may call in the middle of an engaging conversation. I learned all these nifty things from his show. And I use the word "learn" very loosely there.

5000!?

The page seems to be joking. In the first two "tricks" (cancelling digits and finding more primes), he ends by telling you to try the trick out on specific examples that blatantly do not work (i.e. reversing the digits of the prime number 23 yields 32 which is not prime, obviously, and "cancelling" the 9s out of 89/91).

Orcas and dolphins (bottle-nose). If it were legal, I'd love to keep one or two or a whole pod as pets in a large swimming pool. Then I'd charge admission to anyone that wants to swim with them, of course. Oh, as for why, dolphins are arguably the most intelligent creatures next to us. It's only a matter of time before we can figure out how to communicate with them. Well actually, we already have rudimentary ways of communicating with them, but I'm hoping to surpass the level of Koko the Gorilla in terms of human-nonhuman communication.

The man did apologize and extend an olive branch to the Jewish community, so I'm not sure we can ask for more out of him. Let's hope he learned something. There were scenes deleted from the movie under pressure from groups like the ADL. The main deleted scene was the quote from Caiaphas that Christ's blood is "upon" the Jews. Now whether or not that's anti-Semitic depends on your views, but the ADL saw it that way.

No one made that claim. However, if you think specifically that this 9/11 conspiracy is tenable, then by all means, substantiate your position.

According to about.com, 6-14 million children are raised with a homosexual parent. They may not necessarily have been adopted though. http://adoption.about.com/od/gaylesbian/f/gayparents.htm

I don't see the wanting privacy for the daughter and having had her as ring-bearer at the wedding to be contradictory. Was the wedding public with news reporters welcomed in? For all we know from that article, it might've been a tiny event with no more than a few dozen people.

Same thing. Just because it protects you from UV light when it's high up in the atmosphere doesn't mean it's a good idea to expose yourself to it down here.

I'm surprised the ACLU took the position that this amounts to unconstitutional censorship. While I don't agree with pulling these books in particular as they seem to be fairly harmless, I do think, generally speaking, that this is not unconstitutional censorship and that schools can and should adopt policies conducive to learning and hostile to disruption -- this means doing such things as sending a kid home from school for wearing a t-shirt that says "Deport all Mexicans," even though this person is perfectly constitutionally free to wear such a thing off-campus.

Regarding terrorist negotiations in general, what if the terrorist demands are very modest? For instance, a few years ago, the Philippines agreed to withdraw about 50 troops from their "humanitarian force" from Iraq in exchange for one of their nationals who was held hostage. The Philippines took a lot of criticism from the West for "appeasing" the terrorists and so forth, but I wonder, moving 50 people out isn't such a big demand. If someone held your family for a small ransom (say a few hundred bucks), wouldn't you pay? Or would you stand firm on the principle?

Here's a funny Hovind video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4440517326780624645&q=debate Fast forward to 24:40 and you'll hear this funny quote from him: "...quit using my tax dollars to put [evolution] in our school system" Yes, he said "my." Classic.

Those studies seem very iffy to me. Particularly when it began making comparisons to human telepathy and citing studies that plants respond to music and anger and sweet-talk. The latter was tested on Mythbusters and produced no effect. I will say that it's probably true that plants do not feel pain as we know it. Those last four words, however, are key. Plants don't have a nervous system releasing neurotransmitters in response to stress like we have, but they do have a hormone system, releasing hormones in response to stress. Who knows if their hormone system doesn't allow them to "feel" pain in an alien fashion?

I'm curious why Superman doesn't do more to stop global conflicts like war and ethnic cleansing. Instead he's out stopping robberies. Oh, and not to mention that he can supply the entire world's energy needs since he seems to have an unlimited ability to do work.

Not that your claim would have any effect whatsoever on the issue of constitutionality, but what makes you think it's "more historical then [sic] religious?" Aside from the fact that those are two qualifiers that are not even comparable in that way, the U.S. Department of the Treasury states clearly that the phrase "In God We Trust" was added to the currency in the midst of a religous fervor.http://www.treasury.gov/education/fact-sheets/currency/in-god-we-trust.html

That's my idea of a Marriage Protection Amendment. "Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of marriage, nor forbidding the consensual, private arrangement of such. Nor shall Congress attempt to define marriage for the people, particularly with glittering generalities such as 'heterosexual marriage is the cornerstone of all civilization and the fulcrum upon which the Cosmos pivots.'"

Perhaps I'm politically naive, but I've never understood the strategy of "rallying the base." Who else is the base going to vote for? Or would they really abstain from voting (something I can't imagine they'd do if they thought the Democrats might do them worse)? What makes sense to me is what my state's govah-nator suggested his party do long ago. They already have a monopoly on the right, so move toward the middle. And one obvious way to move toward the middle is to not bring up this very divisive gay marriage amendment business. IIRC, aside from prohibition, this will be the only other amendment in US history that restricts a freedom rather than guaranteeing one.