1. Richard Dawkins on Talkback Radio

Comment #237048 by fontor on August 25, 2008 at 8:07 pm

"Yes, and look where we are now."

Can't stop chuckling over that one.

2. Church Cancels Teen Gun Giveaway

Comment #209801 by fontor on July 13, 2008 at 11:21 am

Who would Jesus blow away?

I used to think the phrase "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition" was a crude caricature. No longer.

3. Band T-shirt draws charge

Comment #199414 by fontor on June 25, 2008 at 6:09 pm

Let's not forget the wonderful 'Mary' t-shirt:

http://tinyurl.com/68srnw

4. Indian village proud after double 'honor killing'

Comment #181295 by fontor on May 16, 2008 at 9:13 pm

If there's one thing we learn from religion, it's that the creator of the universe has an insatiable curiosity about other people's sex lives.

Hey, maybe he did create us in his own image.

5. Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour

Comment #177296 by fontor on May 8, 2008 at 10:05 pm

"Being religious is a way that you show you are different, that you are proud of your heritage. One of the ways young Muslims assert their identity is by being more observant than their parents."

This, for me, was the most depressing part of the article.

Sometimes I think that the only way to get rid of the religion memes is for all the believers to... well... die out. I hate saying it that way. Maybe I should say it'll happen through 'attrition' instead. Better to help them deconvert, of course. But it's awfully hard, the longer you go.

Sure, it's sad when people go. But an upside is that we get better memes, and I can't say I'm sorry to see the process happening.

6. Atheists claim censorship by billboard company

Comment #146267 by fontor on March 18, 2008 at 9:12 pm

4: A private company doesn't (and shouldn't for that matter) have any obligations here.

Sorry to wreck the party, but I'm not so sure. Can the billboard company approve or disallow /any/ message? Do they have /no/ obligation to the public?

Who gave them the permission to control the billboard business anyway? Can I make my own billboards and put them up? Probably not, in which case they have a monopoly. Is it right for them to control the 'broadcast' of ideas with impunity?

If anyone can put up a billboard, then there's no problem. It's like the web; no one else gets to tell you what to post on your blog. But if the right to broadcast is limited, and perhaps even government-sanctioned (as I suspect it is), then the company has the responsibility to ensure that decisions like these are non-arbitrary and in the public interest.

7. The business of natural selection

Comment #144365 by fontor on March 15, 2008 at 6:10 pm

Come on, everyone. Tons of people use evolutionary algorithms (including me, in language research). They're incredibly useful, and I don't see why they can't be used to predict survival in this context.

I did think it a bit odd that they'd try using static info as data, though. Interesting approach, but I might try blasting the 'population' with tons of random but likely events. Probably run the experiment a bunch of times, just to see if we get the same weighting outcomes.

The proof is how well the model predicts survival of actual companies in the real world. If it can, then we have yet another example of the incredible utility of evolutionary theory. And that would be cool.