Megachurch leader perjures himself over sexual coercion

Megachurch leader perjures himself over sexual coercion.

Georgia sex scandal:

An 80-year-old leader of a suburban megachurch who is at the center of a sex scandal has been charged with lying under oath for saying he had sex outside marriage with only one other woman, court documents show.....

Former church employee Mona Brewer is suing Paulk, his brother and the church on allegations that Paulk manipulated her into an affair from 1989 to 2003 by telling her it was her only path to salvation. In a 2006 deposition stemming from the lawsuit, the archbishop said under oath that the only woman he had ever had sex with outside of his marriage was Brewer.

But the results of a court-ordered paternity test revealed in October that Paulk is the biological father of his brother's son, D.E. Paulk, who is now head pastor at the church. As part of Brewer's lawsuit, eight women have given sworn depositions that they were coerced into sexual relationships with Earl Paulk.

Creationist book slips up

Steve at Forbidden Music writes,

"The book [Atlas of Creation by Harun Yahya] is juxtapositions of bad pictures of fossils with bad pictures of conordinal living things (fossil fern, living fern; fossil bunny, living bunny; fossil fly, living fly) alongside the erroneous claim that there are no differences between the extinct and extant forms...

Here���s his example of a living caddisfly.

It���s a fishing lure."

Follow the link to read more and see more and larger pictures.

Canada chastises Safety Commission for wanting safety

The Natural Resources Minister wants to fire the President of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for not wanting to run a reactor without backup power. She says, "Just try it, buddy!"

The federal government has threatened to fire the head of Canada's nuclear watchdog over the Chalk River reactor shutdown, and she responded Tuesday by vowing to fight back through the courts.

Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn wrote a letter to Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) president Linda Keen on Dec. 27 in which he questions her judgment and informs her he is considering having her removed from the post.

The letter, which was leaked to the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, was written in the wake of last fall's shutdown of the Chalk River nuclear reactor and the global shortage of radioisotopes that resulted from it.

Keen responded on Tuesday with an eight-page letter accusing Lunn of improper interference and threatening to fight in court any attempt to remove her from her job.

Keen's letter... has been posted on the CNSC website along with Lunn's....

Additionally, Keen said she has asked the privacy commissioner and the RCMP to investigate how Lunn's letter was leaked to the media.

Lunn failed to notice that there have been production stoppages before without any "emergency" being publicized, because the isotope producers sell to each other when their plants have to go offline.

People, bah, humbug!

Sometimes amputating people's hands seems like a good idea.

Four teenagers in Camrose, Alberta, broke into someone's house over the Christmas holidays and cooked their cat alive in a microwave oven. The idea of someone doing that to a helpless and trusting animal has aroused considerable outrage.

It's tempting to suggest, "Pick on somebody your own size."

Hell and damnation!

Local, that is, Toronto-area imams apparently will not pray for Benazir Bhutto because she wasn't radical enough.

By Tarek Fatah and Salma Siddiqui, National Post

Ms. Bhutto had not yet received a proper burial before the attacks on her character started appearing. The vice-president of the Canadian Arab Federation circulated an article lambasting Ms. Bhutto, mocking her as stooge of the West. It did not end at that level. Haroon Siddiqui of the Toronto Star dedicated an entire column to attacking Ms. Bhutto's legacy and labelling her as corrupt and, God forbid the thought, pro-West. As if her being pro-Western was somehow anti-Canadian.

If attempts by Islamic writers to disparage Benazir Bhutto were distasteful, the conspicuous silence of Canada's Islamic organizations was equally disturbing....

At one Mississauga mosque where supporters of Ms. Bhutto had requested a prayer for their departed leader, the imam refused to utter her name from the pulpit. A few kilometres away in one of Canada's largest mosques run by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Skeikh Ala ElSayed refused to utter the words "Benazir Bhutto" from the pulpit, as if it was a profanity....

In another twist, the mosque hosting the prayer event to commemorate Benazir Bhutto missed the point altogether. Instead of honouring the women who came to attend the prayer event as a mark of respect for Benazir Bhutto, they were told they would not be permitted to enter the prayer area from the main entrance. All women were asked to take the rear staircase.

Happy Newtonmas!

Yes, it's also Sir Isaac Newton's birthday. Newton was the famous scientist who proved that one could be a genius and also a right shit. "Newton's Tyranny," which tells how Newton did his best to torpedo, sidetrack, delay, and suppress the discoveries of Stephen Gray and John Flamsteed.

Hat tip to Theo Bromine at Thinking For Free for today's Newtonmas carol:

God rest ye merry, physicists
Let nothing ye dismay.
Remember Isaac Newton
Was born on Christmas day.
His gravity and calculus
And f=ma
Oh pillars of physics and math, physics and math,
Oh pillars of physics and math

And hat tip to John Wilkins at Evolving Thoughts for the concept of Newtonmas (or Newtonmass).

Muslim defends Jews from Christian hooligans

A group of about ten Christians on the subway in New York decided to beat up a few Jews after one of them wished him Happy Hanukkah in return for "Merry Christmas" (on a day of Hanukkah). A Muslim student from Bangladesh jumped to their rescue and was roughed up himself. Fortunately, the rowdies are now in jail. Police are considering whether to charge them with assault or with a hate crime (assault with intent to intimidate a group).

Nice going, Hassan Askari!

[Walter] Alder was treated at Long Island College Hospital for injuries that included a fractured nose and a cut lip that required several stitches, while [Hassan Askari] suffered a black eye.

The suspects are to appear in Brooklyn District Court on February 7 on charges that include assault, attempted assault, menacing, harassment, unlawful assembly, riot and disorderly conduct, Silverstein said.

You see, the human thing to do, untainted by religion, is to jump in and help.

Gov't rushes to override safety rules for nuclear reactor

Prime Minister Harper, who apparently has a direct line to God, has assured Parliament that there will be no nuclear accident.

Citing an urgent need for medical isotopes, and ignoring the fact that the AECL lied when saying that emergency power for cooling pumps had been installed, the political parties of Canada will remove the reactor from regulatory oversight and force it back into production.

"There will be no nuclear accidents," said Prime Minister Stephen Harper, responding to heckles from Opposition members.

The replacement plant is six years behind schedule. Didn't anybody notice before last month?


The NRC's National Research Universal (NRU) reactor in Chalk River, Ont. is the world's biggest producer of medical isotopes. (Photo: National Research Council of Canada)

New Orleans flood control money went for Iraq war

The Bush Administration siphoned off New Orleans flood control money for the Iraq war.

In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.
--Sidney Blumenthal, 2001

Reuters: An aerial view of the New Orleans airport underwater

Also check out the Durango Bill geology page.

Isotopes over nuclear safety

Harold at Ontario geofish has an alarming report: the Canadian government is choosing isotopes over nuclear safety. Harold says:

The government has now put a lot of pressure on the CNSC to paper over their difficulties and get the reactor running again. This, despite the fact that AECL did a Conrad Black over required seismic safety upgrades...

This bottom line is that this is an old clapped-out reactor in a very active seismic zone.

Why do people laugh at creationists? 6

Here we go: a "scientific" video from Kent Hovind's Creation Science Evangalism ministry tells us that clouds block X-rays.

Bush, the Abominable "No" Man

Graydon Carter has written an editorial letter about George W. Bush for Vanity Fair. It's called "The Abominable No-Man and Mr. 9/11." Carter writes,

... a new book by former British foreign secretary Lord Owen may supply a clue. In The Hubris Syndrome: Bush, Blair, and the Intoxication of Power, Owen recalls the time in 2002 when the commander in chief collapsed while sitting on a sofa watching a football game. (Official cause: he���d choked on a pretzel.) The presidential head hit a table on the way to the floor, he suffered an abrasion on the left side of his face, and a blood sample was rushed to Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore. Owen says he was told by a British doctor who had visited Johns Hopkins that lab technicians there found that the blood contained significant amounts of alcohol���this in the body of a man who claims he hasn���t had a drop in more than 20 years.

More plagiarism by Kent Hovind's "ministry"

While we're talking about plagiarism, I noticed this in a video created by Kent Hovind's "ministry." He announced at the beginning of the video that it was not copyrighted and we were welcome to use his videos and spread them around - his "ministry" had made more than a million videos. There was one little hitch. I'm pretty sure that I recognize this image as the work of an America comic artist, who sells it as one of a series of pricey greeting cards. The style is distinctive. So I suspect that this image isn't Hovind's to give away. And I'll bet he didn't ask permission before using it - because permission wouldn't have included the right to release it into the public domain for unlimited copying. The image was innocently picked up in the critical analysis, "Why do people laugh at creationists? (part 6)".

And the mask is definitely off. What objective science lectures are promulgated by a ministry? I thought that ministries left the science to scientists and concentrated on religious or social rhetoric.

Update: The artist whose work I suspect this is is Mike Scovel. It certainly looks like his style (caution! music, lyrics, fart button!), especially for women. Perhaps I should write, "More apparent plagiarism" because I haven't heard back from the artist yet.

"Behead those who say Islam is violent"

Y'know, I always hoped this was a sick joke. It does sound like something out of the Goon Show, or Monty Python, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, or The Colbert Report.

But they're back: Sudanese Muslims call for the death of a public school teacher who let small children name a toy bear after a classmate named Muhammad. Why don't they get right to the source and execute the children?

Now that they've proved that Islam is violent, perhaps we could let them stew in their own self-created misery, and just give refugee status to any apostate, atheist, or woman who wants to leave the country.

While they're working themselves up into a frenzy, let's hope there are some rational elements out there. Anyone?

Pakistan suspended from Commonwealth

Pervez Musharraf has refused to lift the state of emergency in Pakistan, which allows him to arrest members of the Opposition and tear-gas "activist" lawyers and judges. As he has failed to restore democracy, Pakistan has been suspended from the Commonewealth.

Canada blocks Commonwealth climate agreement

Stephen Harper is refusing to join in a British Commonwealth agreement to limit production of greenhouse gasses.

Let's review the choices:

• Try to reduce or halt global warming, and it's not happening: low-level economic pain, preserved environment
• Try to reduce or halt global warming, and it's happening: low-level economic pain, preserved environment
• Don't try to reduce or halt global warming, and it's not happening: no economic pain, preserved environment
• Don't try to reduce or halt global warming, and it's happening: no initial economic pain, no preserved environment, ecological disaster, huge economic losses, loss of life, etc.

One of those four choices is unacceptable. It's the one where we do nothing and we're screwed by the time we're sure the climate is changing.

Australian Liberals distribute faked flyer

Two days before an election while they trail in the polls, some members of Australia's ruling Liberal Party have been caught distributing fake flyers. These nasty Liberal notices are purported to come from a non-existent Islamic organization and urge Australians to vote for the Labour Party, which will be soft on terrorists who blew up a bar in Bali, killing 200 people. Many of those people were Australians. I don't imagine that many people are sympathetic with the murderers. The Liberals were caught delivering the fake notices to homes in a key electoral riding.


In an era of plausible deniability, the Liberal Party said that it had suspended a couple of unidentified Liberals for an unauthorized prank. Sure--if it works you might win the riding; and if it doesn't work, you can claim that it wasn't your idea. I guess they deserve to lose the election.

Denyse O'Leary: There is no bottom to dumb

Denyse "Miss thePoint" O'Leary quote-mined a paper, only to have the author come back and excoriate her for her obtuseness.

Thanks and a big wave of the hat to PZ Myers at Pharyngula for "An important rule of quote-mining."

ERV: DI Fellows EXPELLED for plagiarism

S. A. Smith at Endogenous Retrovirus notes that the Discovery Institute hijacked a science video from Harvard University and re-dubbed it to support a creationist point of view:

This isn't a case of naive copyright infringement on Dembski's part, i.e. "Hey! I found this cool video on YouTube, let's use it!" Though Dembski is pictured here, others have reported multiple DI 'fellows' presenting this manipulated animation. The Discovery Institute does not have a license to use this animation, so they downloaded it illegally.

Maybe they think it is 'okay' to use it anyway, because they stripped off Harvard/XVIVOs copyright and credits.

Maybe they think it is 'okay' because they gave the animation a new title ('Inner life of a cell' became 'The cell as an automated city') and an extraordinarily unprofessional new narration (alternate alternate title—'Big Gay Al takes a tour of a cell!'). Harvard/XVIVOs narration, all of the science, is whisked away and replaced with a 'surrealistic lilliputian realm'- 'robots', 'manufacturing', 'circuitry', 'nano motors', 'UPS labels'. Maybe they think it is 'okay' because they turned all of Harvard's science into 'MAGIC!'

Hmm. From my point of view, as a virologist and former teaching assistant, this isnt just copyright infringement. This is theft and plagiarism.

I hope that Harvard and XVIVO are not going to stand for the misuse of their work. It brings a new meaning to "teach the controversy." Even if all the Disco Inst. can do is PR, they could at least create their own videos.

What computers can swirl, computers can unswirl

Pictures on the Internet led to the arrest of a Canadian gay pedophile in Thailand. He or someone else posted pictures of him raping young boys, with his head digitally "swirled" so that the face was unrecognizable. Germany's federal crimes office reversed the process (they won't say exactly how) and Interpol released a picture of the culprit. He was recognized and a recent picture was added to the clues. Now, he has been arrested and it's time to face the music. No more posting poems about how lonely street kids admire the reassuring "prowess" of the foreign visitor.

The suspect had been a seminary student. He was a teacher of English as a second language in Korea when the warrant was issued.

Men who are attracted to children of either sex tend to go where there are children. They might be youth group leaders, teachers, ministers. Men who are conflicted about their sexuality might turn to religion in their efforts to deal with the problem. They might become priests, especially the non-marrying kind. Please warn your children. If someone touches you, move away instantly. Say "No!" loudly. Say loud and clear that this is wrong and you'll tell their boss and your family. Keep backing off. Leave. Do not be intimidated by authority. They'll pick on someone else.