I read Sarah Zagorski's article on Zachary King at LifeNew.com and I am, frankly, bored by Zack King. But I am fascinated by Zagorski, and by her bosses at LifeNews.com, and by the huge audience of "pro-lifers" who create the demand-driven market for clichéd con-men like Zack King. King is only telling Zagorski and her audience what they want to hear. And what they want to hear -- what they want, they desire, they wish for and hope for -- is a horror story. Read more
In the year 2000, about 30 percent of the world's population was under the age of 15. That's about 1.8 billion people. But Buck Williams, investigative journalist, doesn't notice that all the children vanished in the disappearances until Hattie points it out to him. Twice. Read more
Huge, if true: "Just after I turned 14, the coven members came to me and said that I was going to be involved in an abortion in about nine months. There was a sex party with all the male members between 12 and 15 and a female member over 18 and her purpose was to get pregnant, and then she was going to have an abortion in nine months.” Read more
I wouldn't guess that either Rubio or Huckabee -- or most of their fellow anti-abortion, "personhood begins at conception" proponents -- would want to extend this claim of full personhood and full citizenship to this unviable unborn twin. The problem, for them, is that they haven't got any clear rationale for exempting that fetus in fetu from the categorical, absolute claim they are making about human personhood from the moment of fertilization. Read more
I've updated the blogroll here. This is your chance to escape the tour bus and ditch the official itinerary. Explore. Click on old favorites you haven't visited in a while because the Facebook buses don't include them on the guided tour. Wander. Stray. Get out of line. Read more
Memes are made by fools like me, but only evolution can make a 9,500-year-old tree. Also: Franklin Graham, George Zimmerman, the Party of Calhoun, the mindset of the Class of 2019, and what does the USGS have against Oakland? Read more
The training montage in "Rocky II" offers an implausible -- maybe even impossible -- version of Philadelphia geography. Philly journalist Dan McQuade plotted out Rocky's run on a real map of the city and found a messy, mixed-up route of more than 30 miles. Biblical scholars have been doing the same thing, with similar results, examining the geography of the Gospel of John. Read more
Franklin Graham is, yet again, irked and bothered and wrong. This time it's about not giving toys strict gender labels at Target. Also: The only band that matters; petty tyranny; excluded from communion but not, technically, excommunicated; and duct tape ... in spaaaace! Read more
Then I said, "Ah Lord God! I have never defiled myself; from my youth up until now I have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by animals, nor has carrion flesh come into my mouth." Then he said to me, "See, I will let you have cow’s dung instead of human dung, on which you may prepare your bread." Read more
It's Friday the 14th, but let's have some Douglass anyway: "Scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake." Read more
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