“Kill her, kill her by firing squad”
No, it’s not what right wing talk radio is saying about Hillary Clinton. It’s what a thousand or more protesters in Sudan are saying about a UK schoolteacher who was recently sentenced to 15 days in prison for (supposedly) insulting Islam.
Her crime? She allowed her class to name a teddy bear Mohammed.
It’s times like these when I just shake my head and wonder what went wrong with the human race…
Via the BBC, here’s an odd development in the troubled country of Sudan.
Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, will appear at a court in Khartoum and, if convicted, could face a prison sentence, a fine or 40 lashes.
Why do the Sudanese want to whip a British teacher?
She was arrested in Khartoum after allowing her class of primary school pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad.
This, apparently was considered to be “insulting religion, inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs”.
Any religion that demands a woman be whipped for allowing kids to name a teddy bear after their prophet deserves to be insulted. Repeatedly and forcefully. This is nothing but insanity, and yet another reason to resist any attempt at injecting religion into government.
Teaching late afternoon labs means I’m quite often out at the college until well past dark, especially in the late fall. This evening, I happened to walk beside a window just in time to catch a glimpse of this:
![[Sunset at the college, 11/27/07, 1024×768 JPG image]](http://whenchemistsattack.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/sunset_112707_1024.jpg)
A pillar of fire by night…
Click the image to enlarge to 1024×768.
Don’t forget to back up your important data periodically. Even once every five or ten minutes may not be sufficient!
… because you never know when the hard drive in your laptop will come loose and start rattling around just like the rattle inside a can of spray paint.
Hard drives, apparently, do not take well to this sort of thing. Arrgh.
As a chemist, I’m obliged to love chemistry humor. From The Onion,
Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff were briefed on the atomic situation in Iran Tuesday with the aid of colorful interlocking plastic models and a short film.
“The United States will not stand idly by while Iran gains the protons, neutrons, and whatever else they need to threaten the free world,” Cheney said at a press conference that afternoon. “Iran has demonstrated time and time again its ability to combine atoms of hydrogen and oxygen right out in the open, and we cannot allow that to go on any longer.”
Classic. Reminds me of the dihydrogen monoxide scare…
As I understand it, one of the arguments that folks who are against the availability of legal abortion is that they value a “culture of life” – the idea that what they consider to be “human” life is sacred and should be protected by society. For example, here’s South Carolina Representative Gresham Barrett (emphasis mine):
Culture of life: Representative Barrett is a firm believer that life begins at conception, and that any attempt to harm or endanger the life of an innocent child, born or unborn, is wrong. He is a co-sponsor of several pieces of legislation supporting life and helped push for the passage of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban signed into law by President Bush.
Here’s a similar statement by one of South Carolina’s Senators – Jim DeMint: (Again, emphasis mine)
The role of government is to ensure that each life, whether young or old, born or unborn, independent or vulnerable, is valued and protected.
The right to life is not something that begins or ends at our time of choosing. Rather, this unalienable right begins at conception and ends at natural death.
You would expect senators and representatives who express the belief that it is the government’s job to ensure that life, as they define it, is valued and protected to vote their conscience. That would mean voting against legal access to abortion and some other birth control techniques.
You would also expect that these same senators and representatives would work very hard to ensure that children, once born, would have access to medical care. Supporting legislation like the expansion of SCHIP, a program to increase the availability of health care to lower-income children, would be a no-brainer for principled people who believes that human life is precious and must be protected. Such people, you would assume, would find it intolerable that our system allows even one child to go without medical care. Right?
Except that both Representative Barrett and Senator DeMint both voted against the SCHIP bill.
Can someone who is more acquainted with the “culture of life” than I am explain why the unborn must be protected, while children who are out of the womb should be allowed to go without health care? It doesn’t make much sense to me
I have to admit that I spent time reading about John Scalzi’s visit to the Creation Museum when I should have been making out a test for my introductory chemistry class. So, now I’m sitting here at home working on the test.
Check it out. Or, if you’re not too fond of horses, take a look at the pictures.
Now that the Creation Museum is operating, I wonder if that means Biblically Correct Tours is going to go out of business …
In case you’ve forgotten why it’s a bad idea to mix religion and government – and why separation of church and state is such a good idea, here’s a little reminder from overseas.
The police are warning they will deal seriously with any women who dare to wear short trousers, skimpy overcoats or skirts that are revealingly transparent or have slits in them.
Wearing boots instead of full length trousers will not be tolerated, nor will hats instead of headscarves.
If you’re unfortunate enough to be an Iranian woman, you might be arrested for the simple act of wearing a hat. This is where the mixing of religion and government leads, and it was wise of our founding fathers to see the trap. It’d be good for all of us to remember that.
CNN’s running an article about the rising cost of getting a college education. According to the article, the average cost of a year of school at a private four-year college is $32,307 ($23,712 if you leave off housing expenses). Ouch!
The news is a little better if you’re interested in going to a public college. It’ll only cost you $13,589 per year ($6,185 if you’re lucky enough to not need housing).
When you consider that about half of the people who attempt to go to a four-year school don’t get a degree after six years of trying, that’s a lot of money to spend up front – even in more modestly priced public colleges. The costs are also going up. Cost is increasing at a slightly faster rate for public colleges (probably due to states getting stingier with funding), but has a long way to go to overtake the private schools.
The costs of going to a two-year college are also increasing, but by a much lower percentage. A year at an average two-year public college will only cost $2,361. That’s not including housing, but most two-year college students live at home.
And here’s the part where I sound like an advertisement: Looking to go to college, but not sure you can afford either the money or the time? Try taking courses at your local community college. Most of them have agreements with four-year schools in their state for transfer of credits. It’s a much cheaper way to get a year or two of college courses than even a public four-year college. If you decide that four years of college are too much, you can instead pursue a two-year degree that’ll still earn you a good salary. (Associate’s degrees in nursing, for instance, are in much greater demand than many bachelor’s degrees in other subjects.)
So don’t forget about your local community college. They typically provide a good education without eating such a large hole in your wallet. (And yes, I teach at one. If you take one of my classes, you can learn about the fine art of blowing stuff up. 🙂 )
You might remember, if you’re somewhat close to my age, the dawn of video games. Early games were not beautiful. In fact, they were quite ugly!
![[Death Race screenshot, from Wikipedia]](http://whenchemistsattack.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/death_race.jpg)
Death Race (1976) – Screen shot from Wikipedia
If you’re lucky, you might be able to guess what the graphics in that screen shot are supposed to represent. It might be surprising, but this almost indistinguishable pattern of lights was one of the first shots in a thirty year battle: the battle over violence in video games.
The screen shot is from the game Death Race. The object of the game was to run people down to score points. This didn’t go over too well with many folks, and led to quite a bit of outrage. The outrage, of course, made this otherwise unremarkable game famous.
Skirmishes over video game violence continued throughout the 1980s. Later, in 1992, Midway released Mortal Kombat, which was condemned in the Senate by none other than Senator Joe Lieberman (who seems to prefer violence directed at real people to on-screen violence). More recently, there’s been controversy over the Grand Theft Auto series of games.
After video game ratings became popular (after Mortal Kombat), it seemed that the outrage against violent games got its teeth pulled. So, even though some people still get upset over the latest violent (and mature-rated) game, nobody’s very serious about it.
If you don’t believe me, look at what’s happening with the most popular violent game currently available: Halo 3. Churches are using it to lure teenagers to church youth groups!
Those buying it must be 17 years old, given it is rated M for mature audiences. But that has not prevented leaders at churches and youth centers across Protestant denominations, including evangelical churches that have cautioned against violent entertainment, from holding heavily attended Halo nights and stocking their centers with multiple game consoles so dozens of teenagers can flock around big-screen televisions and shoot it out.
Even the churches are embracing violent games. The battle over violent games is over, and gamers won.
Postscript: I wonder how effective the Halo series can be as a recruiting tool for churches. The central idea of Halo is that the humans (who aren’t portrayed as religious) are attacked by the Covenant. The Covenant is a group of fanatical and dangerously deluded religious zealots. One of your objects as the player is to prevent these deluded religious fanatics from destroying all sentient life in the galaxy. It’s not a game that presents a favorable picture of believers.
