The Abstract Factory has posted an entertaining, if violent, fantasy of how a debate with a creationist might run.

NASA's Deep Impact program was a great success, both for NASA and for science in general... but it seems to have had some drawbacks. A superstitious Russian loon by the name of Marina Bai is suing NASA for "moral sufferings", after earlier claims that the experiment would "deform her horoscope". All this, despite the fact that astrologers aren't known for using advanced optics, and the comet, Tempel 1, isn't even visible to the naked eye.

Alabama is at it again. Not content with their continued assaults against teaching science instead of religion, they're now attacking the teaching of literature — if the author or any of the characters is gay.

A bill proposed by Republican Representative Gerard Allen would ban any such book from public school libraries. Originally, this went so far as to cover Shakespeare, though he eventually added in an exception for "classics", a term that he never defined (I suppose a library could get around it by calling any work older than 20 years a "classic"). Amazingly, he even seems to be disputing that such an act is censorship:

Jeanne over at Body and Soul has written a remarkable essay on the contrast between the perspectives of Joseph Ratzinger and Oscar Romero. It encompasses the concepts of honesty (to oneself and others), the need to oppose evil, futility, courage, and moral failure. It articulates better than I can many of my own rambling thoughts and concerns about the nature of the new Pope, and there is little more that I can add.

I regularly see or hear about people with the notion that the right to freedom of speech, as guaranteed by the First Amendment, includes the right to demand that the government endorse you and pay for your advertising, distribution costs, and even your soapbox.

The Associated Press is reporting that a law school student group at a southern Illinois university is suing the university — for failing to provide funding and the official university sanction to their group, which requires members to pledge to adhere to Christian beliefs, including a prohibition against homosexuality. The group can still use campus facilities to meet, they haven't been banned from speaking on campus, but somehow, the fact that this government institution, a taxpayer-funded university, refuses to lend its name and its funding to a religious group means that freedom of speech is being restricted.

DarkSyde has posted an excellent summary of the major pieces of evidence supporting the common descent theory. It's a good reference to have nearby in case creationists attack.

There's an entry over at Feministing about whether the shift in the Democratic position on abortion is a good thing, by bringing more people into the party, or a bad thing, by turning the party into "Republican-lite", leaving the US without a liberal party. The answer to that is somewhat complicated by the nature of the American two-party system, but that's not really why I'm writing. In the comments of the Feministing entry, I saw:

There is an article over at Reason Online pointing out some of the absurdities (both theological and biological) involved in the assumption that human life begins at conception. It's a highly entertaining read. To a certain extent, it even applies to the "life begins at uterine implantation" reasoning, which I also find to be somewhat absurd. A small cluster of cells does not a human being make.

Credits to Alas, a Blog for the link.

There was an anti-abortion display set up at the parade grounds of Louisiana State University last weekend to commemorate Roe vs Wade. Predictably, this made a lot of people unhappy, and some of them were stupid about it. Over the weekend, 3,000 out of the 4,000 painted crosses that had been planted there were stolen or destroyed. Predictably, this made the people who set up this display (the "Students for Life" group and the St. Mary and St. Joseph Family Memorial Foundation) very upset, and now they're trying to call this a "hate crime" (which some bloggers are repeating and emphasizing) and threatening to sue the police for not "taking it seriously enough", presumably because they failed to immediately arrest and throw the book at five people a police officer saw removing crosses. (The officer in question did note who they were and directed them to leave immediately, and a full investigation is still ongoing.)