The Call of the Puffin

What sound do you think this cute little unassuming birdy makes? A chirp? A squawk? Perhaps even a melodious song?

Guess again. Try a terrifying chainsaw-like roar!

This too.

(These unsettling authentic bird sounds brought to you by http://www.audubon.org/bird/puffin/questions.html.)

The trial of a polygamist 'prophet'

CNN: Polygamist 'prophet' found guilty of aiding rape

Polygamist sect leader Warren Steed Jeffs was found guilty Tuesday of being an accomplice to rape for using his religious authority to push a 14-year-old girl into a marriage she did not want.

Wall [the victim] spent three days on the stand, frequently sobbing as she described how she felt trapped in a marriage she did not want, to a man she did not like.

She said she repeatedly told Jeffs that she did not want to be married and was uncomfortable with her new husband's sexual advances. Jeffs advised her to pray and to submit to her husband, learn to love him, and bear his children -- or risk losing her "eternal salvation," she said.

Thus spake the prophet Jeffs: submit to rape and turn over control of your life to a man you despise, or you won't go to heaven. What could anyone say in defense of this repulsive fraud?

The defense countered that authorities were persecuting Jeffs because of his religious beliefs, which include practicing plural marriage as the way to heaven. "His church, his religious beliefs is what's on trial here, and it's being dressed up as a rape," attorney Walter Bugden argued.

Absolutely right. Ignore this defending attorney's apparently tenuous grasp of grammar and syntax for a second, and consider what he's saying. Warren Jeffs's religious beliefs are being put on trial for rape.

It's true. But his defending attorney says that like it's a bad thing.

Of course this reprobate's religious beliefs are being put on trial. The defending attorney is right about that, but here's the specious turn in his argument: he makes it seem that the beliefs are on trial BECAUSE they are religious.

The beliefs are not being assaulted because they are affiliated with a religion. They are being assaulted because they have led to degenerate and malicious behavior that is patently unacceptable in a free and lawful society.

Notice, though, that it is not the religious beliefs themselves that are being prosecuted, but the actions that the beliefs inspired. This is a free country, and you can believe whatever you want, however outrageous, but it is foolish to expect amnesty for acting on those beliefs. To use a more secular example, take the KKK; they can think and say whatever they want about minorities, but they can't cite the freedoms of belief and expression when they go lynch someone.

This trial is reminiscent of another that took place some eighty-two years ago. In the Scopes trial, the religious beliefs of anti-evolution America were taken to task - not because they were religious, but because they were ignorant, because they supported stultifying the education of our children, because they favored ancient myths over scientific fact.

Is it right that reprehensible, outrageous, or idiotic beliefs take on a sacrosanct aura of legitimacy simply because they are associated with a religion? Should we tolerate things like statutory rape or rejection of scientific knowledge because the 'sacred' preachings of ancient texts and a few sanctimonious frauds in long robes claim it's what god wants?

In a free society such as ours, such beliefs will inevitably come into conflict with reason. And they will lose.

One fewer god

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

-Stephen Roberts

Horowitz

YouTube: David Horowitz Accuses UCSC of Being Too Un-American (and gets totally shot down by Alan Colmes)

For once, Alan Colmes pulls his weight.

Or perhaps David Horowitz is just so cretinous that he can be nailed by Sean Hannity's effete liberal counterpart.

An apostate leftist, Horowitz has become something of a conservative celebrity for his strident criticisms of academia as an institutional hive of leftist indocrination. He's essentially a Joe McCarthy for the modern academy, and brings with him all of the charm, wit, and credibility of his 1950s predecessor.

His books, such as The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America and Indoctrination U, are full of hysterical shriekings about the left's stranglehold on our colleges, and the conniving communist professors who pour red poison in the ears of innocent college students. His books are plagued with errors and deliberate lies (see for instance the Horowitz fact checker), but Horowitz is, after all, an analyst for Fox News; facts are clearly not high on this man's list of concerns.

Peace, friendship, and death to the Jews

CNN: Amadinejad: Iran can help secure Iraq, Israel is 'cruel'

(CNN) -- Iran wants "peace and friendship for all," the country's president said Wednesday while again denying Western assertions his nation is pursuing nuclear weapons and trying to destabilize Iraq.

But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took a hard line against Israel, calling it "an invader" and saying it "cannot continue its life."

So, "peace and friendship for all," but Israel must die?

One of three things is going on here.

1. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not know what "peace" means.
2. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not know what "all" means.
3. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a raving anti-semitic lunatic whose position as the leader of a potential nuclear power is not a little disquieting.

I'll give you three guesses.

Fire Water!

AP: Radio Frequencies Help Burn Salt Water

John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn.

The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.

Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, has held demonstrations at his State College lab to confirm his own observations.

The radio frequencies act to weaken the bonds between the elements that make up salt water, releasing the hydrogen, Roy said. Once ignited, the hydrogen will burn as long as it is exposed to the frequencies, he said.

The Meaning of Religious Freedom

"The meaning of religious freedom, I fear, is sometimes greatly misapprehended. It is taken to be a sort of immunity, not merely from governmental control but also from public opinion. A dunderhead gets himself a long-tailed coat, rises behind the sacred desk, and emits such bilge as would gag a Hottentot. Is it to pass unchallenged? If so, then what we have is not religious freedom at all, but the most intolerable and outrageous variety of religious despotism. Any fool, once he is admitted to holy orders, becomes infallible. Any half-wit, by the simple device of ascribing his delusions to revelation, takes on an authority that is denied to all the rest of us."

-H.L. Mencken, in his coverage of the Scopes Trial, 1925