August 2013
Darwin Awards: People Who Should Not Be Part of the Gene Pool
Periodically, I assemble items from around the world in which people make decisions that warrant removal from the gene pool.
•Banning Female Farting in Indonesia
No, this was not a joke. I checked. An Islamic city council in Aceh, Indonesia, has banned female citizens from passing gas loudly. The city’s mayor explained that farting aloud violates the Islamic values of modesty---not all farting, of course, just female farting. The mayor said that farting loud (s more...
•Banning Female Farting in Indonesia
No, this was not a joke. I checked. An Islamic city council in Aceh, Indonesia, has banned female citizens from passing gas loudly. The city’s mayor explained that farting aloud violates the Islamic values of modesty---not all farting, of course, just female farting. The mayor said that farting loud (s more...
Genetics: Do Persistent Close-Cousin Marriages Have Consequences?
The great scientist Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) was the first to systematically explore how heredity plays out. He worked with peas, plants with a variety of inheritable qualities, so that Mendel was able to see the results of certain mating, discovering dominant and recessive genes over many generations of these plants.
Recently, there has been a cosmic leap forward in genetic sciences, thanks to the bold independence of mapping the genomes of a number of creatures, and fin more...
Egypt's Democracy is Mission Impossible
Editor:
San Francisco Chronicle
August 16, 2013
President Obama has condemned the violence between the Egyptian military and the Muslim Brotherhood's supporters in the streets. He has said that America expects the Egyptians to:
o stop the violence;
o resolve their differences by being inclusive of all parties; and
o respect ethnic, religious, and gender human rights.
How can the Muslim Brotherhood respec more...
San Francisco Chronicle
August 16, 2013
President Obama has condemned the violence between the Egyptian military and the Muslim Brotherhood's supporters in the streets. He has said that America expects the Egyptians to:
o stop the violence;
o resolve their differences by being inclusive of all parties; and
o respect ethnic, religious, and gender human rights.
How can the Muslim Brotherhood respec more...
How Do We Know that Domestic Violence is an “Epidemic?”
The World Health Organization (WHO) has just released a report on an”epidemic” of domestic violence around the world. They say that at least one-third of women are assaulted by a partner at some point in their lives. When I see numbers like this, I wonder how they know this.
According to this report, 40 percent of women killed worldwide were slain by an intimate partner and being assaulted by a partner was the most common kind of violence experienced by women.
more...
Europe Has an Ostrich Problem: Denial of Immigrant Violence
Despite the howls of some reactionaries against American immigration reform, it is clear that most people come here to better their lives. They are decent, hard working, and ready to become real Americans, (with the exception of the radicalized few, such as the Somali youths bamboozled into becoming suicide bombers). With exceptions (in Michigan and Minnesota), there are few Muslim ghettos in the US.
Europe's immigration problem is different. Muslim immigrants from some of more...
The Muslim World Is Facing an Internal Crisis.
Since the Iranian Islamic Revolution, the moribund Muslim World has begun the process that the West faced during the 17th Century “Religious Wars.”
For Islam, the process of secular rule gradually replacing Islamic rule has stopped, and what has emerged instead is a four-part internal war: a suddenly violent eruption of hatred between the Sunnis and Shiites, and another between modernizers and reactionary Islamism. The first blood was let during the Iran-Iraq war (197 more...