Wow, Randi’s looking much healthier!
Looking forward to seeing Randi speak at TAM Australia 2010 in Sydney. Details on the Australian Skeptics’ website.
-weez
MOAR: Dr Rachael Dunlop on homeopathy in The Punch
The Australian Constitution has a church and state separation specification:
Chapter V, Section 116 – Commonwealth not to legislate in respect of religion
The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.
Religious education in Australian public schools unquestionably constitutes an ‘imposition of a religious observance,’ but state governments have regardless long mandated religious education classes.
The NSW Government under former premier Nathan Rees made a baby-step forward in removing this imposition by introducing a trial of secular ethics classes in public schools- and it got the religion industry running scared:
THE Anglican Archbishop of Sydney [Peter Jensen] has privately lobbied the Premier, Kristina Keneally, against the permanent introduction of secular ethics classes in public schools, saying they would jeopardise the future of religious education.
Jensen’s right- but religious education has no place in Australian public schools, at least not beyond curricula which describes the notion that religions are indeed practised by certain people in Australia. Unfortunately, public school RE classes treat religion as factual and Christianity as being the ‘right’ religion.
Archbishop Peter Jensen said Ms Keneally had promised the Anglican Church would have input into the trial, which would be subject to an independent review.
If the self-professed Catholic Keneally indeed made this promise, it is demonstrative of a deep conflict of interest. It would be wholly inappropriate to allow a religion to vet secular ethics classes, just as inappropriate as permitting Sydney Atheists to have input into scripture classes.
It’s time for religion to get out of public schools and for government to stop pouring public money into support of religious schools. There’s a place for religions in Australia- that’s in churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.
Public schools are where children should learn facts. Promotion of superstition should be relegated to the superfaerie fan clubs.
-weez
hat tip to @podblack, @drunkenmadman & @happysinger
Teabaggers. Teabonics. Domestic terrorism.
I left the US in 1996- not a moment too soon, it seems.
-weez
MOAR: Mark Fiore: Learn to speak teabag.
No, Tanya, neither local filtering and mandatory ISP level censorship will stop traffic in child porn. The ALP’s censorship plan is identical to putting a two inch plug in a fifty foot pipe. The only effect will be slowing already pathetic internet speeds and pissing off a lot of voters.
-weez
The SMH covers Senator Conroy once again footbulleting.
Conroy is still suffering under the delusions that there’s a problem to address and that his censorship plan will in any way affect what people view on the ‘net. 17 years of uncensored public internet access in Australia has not caused society to implode. Proxies, onion router apps and VPNs will render Rudd/Conroy’s censorship system completely moot, as anyone who wishes to circumvent the censorship will do so.
The good Senator dribbled:
“There are some who want to argue that on the internet, people should be able to publish anything they like – regardless of whether it contravenes laws in the off-line world.”
As regards equality between internet and old media censorship, Conroy’s right. The Classification Board et al. should be abolished immediately to bring old media regulation in line with the more enlightened policy of unfettered speech and access on the present internet.
-weez
Here’s a whole post devoted to one link.
It’s that good and that important to read.
Big ups to Sunshine Coast Atheists for this well-researched and referenced bit.
Dear Kevin Rudd- you don’t govern a nation of christians. To use an old ALP slogan, It’s Time… to get religion out of politics.
You can start by taxing churches and requiring that their books are just as open to scrutiny as any other public company’s.
-weez
Anyone else seeing the pattern here?
-weez
image: The Age
So, it’s a lovely Saturday morning, you’re walking along the street with your kids, out doing the shopping.
You and the younguns suddenly come across black hooded figures clustered around an apparently severely injured man, half naked and smeared head-to-toe with blood, nailed to a pole.
Your 6 year old ducks behind you in wide-eyed terror at the sight of rivulets of streaming blood. The 4 year old just wails.
The perpetrators insist it’s a ‘happy message.’ They call scaring the hell out of your children ‘doing good.’
I’d like the perps to explain that to the kids’ child psychologist.
Bear in mind that the same perps are lobbying politicians to ban display of magazines with women in bikinis on the cover. Sex = bad, bloody violence = good?
Mkay.
-weez
WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff.
Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
Makes me proud to be an American. Not.
-weez
