Huntington, West Virginia: Most disgusting place in America

Posted on November 17, 2008 by Michael

Apparently, Huntington, West Virginia is the fattest town in America. And they don’t care.

As a portly woman plodded ahead of him on the sidewalk, the obese mayor of America’s fattest and unhealthiest city explained why health is not a big local issue.

“It doesn’t come up,” said David Felinton, 5-foot-9 and 233 pounds, as he walked toward City Hall one recent morning. “We’ve got a lot of economic challenges here in Huntington. That’s usually the focus.”

I’m really glad the reporter went ahead and did the research for this article. The very next graf:

Huntington’s economy has withered, its poverty rate is worse than the national average, and vagrants haunt a downtown riverfront park. But this city’s financial woes are not nearly as bad as its health.

I guess I shouldn’t expect a town that doesn’t seem to even discuss its horrid weight problem to do well with its economy. Health is one of the most important aspects of life, usually regardless of one’s priorities. By ignoring something so significant, this town has demonstrated its willful stupidity. That stupidity, in addition to America’s existing woes, seems to have spread to its economy. Of course, I say its “willful stupidity” because it seems doubtful one could ignore all the broken chairs, crowded rooms, and cracked sidewalks in such a fat, disgusting town.

This city on the Ohio River is surrounded by Appalachia’s thinly populated hills

This just makes things all the worse. This is hiking country. It doesn’t take much to go for a walk in the hills and mountains (not to mention just around the damn neighborhood). These people are wasting their health when they could truly exploit it to seek out the beauty that is the West Virginia landscape. The overweight residents of this town who plainly do not care about health are doing a disservice to themselves, to their children, and to the rest of their town. It isn’t that they overweight and thus bad. That isn’t true. It’s that they’re overweight and they do not care. That’s morally repugnant behavior. We do not want to treat other humans with such physical (or mental, for the matter) disdain, why would we want to do it to ourselves?

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Boy Dies Twice

Posted on November 17, 2008 by Michael

Boy dies two times.

NEW YORK – A 12-year-old New York boy with brain cancer has died after his family battled a hospital to keep him on a ventilator.

The lawyer for the Orthodox Jewish family says Motl Brody’s bodily functions ceased Saturday. A machine had continued to work his lungs after he was pronounced dead Nov. 4 at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

The boy had already been declared brain dead, but some adherents of Jewish religious law say death occurs only when the heart and lungs stop functioning.

The family had asked a judge to prevent further tests for brain activity. The hospital argued that its “scarce resources” were being used “for the preservation of a deceased body.”

After having no brain activity for nearly two weeks, a Jewish family thinks their child just died. They’re wrong. Despite what their irrational religious beliefs (sorry to be redundant) claim, their child died on Nov. 4. They wasted not only financial resources, but the medical resources of nurses and doctors who could have been improving and even saving the lives of those who were (and hopefully are) still alive. It was selfish and irresponsible of these parents to pit their crazy beliefs against the lives of others. Why do we give such deference to insane ideas?

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Catholics denied Captain's Wafers

Posted on November 15, 2008 by Michael

A South Carolina priest has said Catholics who voted for the evil Barack Obama should not eat crackers. He says doing so would destroy the integrity of the cracker industry, and in a time of credit crunches and government bailouts, we just cannot afford that.

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Catholics denied Captain’s Wafers

Posted on November 15, 2008 by Michael

A South Carolina priest has said Catholics who voted for the evil Barack Obama should not eat crackers. He says doing so would destroy the integrity of the cracker industry, and in a time of credit crunches and government bailouts, we just cannot afford that.

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Maine religious leaders get it right

Posted on November 15, 2008 by Michael

A collection of religious leaders across Maine recently held a news conference advocating that Maine end its current policy of active discrimination.

BANGOR — Religious leaders across the state held news conferences Thursday to urge Mainers to end marriage discrimination against gay and lesbian couples, and called for the state to create same-sex civil marriages.

“We feel a moral obligation at this pivotal time to raise our voices on behalf of Mainers who are denied that most basic human right — the right to marry and form a family with the person of their choice,” said the Rev. Mark Doty, pastor at the Hammond Street Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, in Bangor.

It’s refreshing to see some of the semi-rational religious leaders of Maine finally get their voice out there (there are still religious leaders, hence the “semi”). Of course, with the semi-rational leaders come the crazies.

“I [Marc Mutty, director of the Office of Public Affairs] don’t think [the coalition] represents a great majority of the religious community in Maine,” he said. “They represent marriage as a civil right and believe that anyone that meets certain criteria should be able to marry.

Of course they don’t represent a majority of the religious community. They aren’t bigots.

“Marriage is the building block of society and includes procreation,” Mutty continued. “Without procreation, and same sex couples can’t, they’re missing out on a huge piece of the puzzle. The argument is not any more complicated than that.”

It’s beyond me why someone thinks this is a valid argument. It is not required that one have children or even touch one’s partner upon obtaining a marriage license. Intent or ability to procreate is irrelevant when the state issues a marriage license.

Unfortunately, one of the semi-rational leaders had to go and reconfirm the need for the “semi” before he stopped speaking.

“I cannot fathom a God who would discriminate based on gender, sexual orientation or ethnicity,” she said. “My Universalist tradition believes that God loves everyone equally. Why then should we deny anyone who loves the right to make a lifelong marriage commitment?”

I can fathom a god who is misogynistic. It isn’t very hard. I can also fathom one that discriminates based upon sexual orientation. In fact, the particular Christian god feels sodomy is a capital crime.

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Be good for goodness' sake.

Posted on November 14, 2008 by Michael

Recently, an atheist bus campaign was brought to fruition in the UK. Its point was to convey a message that worrying about what happens after life really doesn’t do much to improve what’s happening during life. Now there is a new humanist campaign. This one takes place in the United States.

DENVER — Ads proclaiming, “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake,” will appear on Washington, D.C., buses starting next week and running through December, sponsored by The American Humanist Association.

…

“Our reason for doing it during the holidays is there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of non-theists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional religion.”

While the religious who are utterly offended by the notion that morality can exist outside their world of make-believe will object to this message, they really shouldn’t. It does one of the few good things religion has going for it – it reaches for a sense of community. As one of the social animals, humans need the contact and closeness which religion has the ability to harness. Hopefully this humanist message can help to foster the community sense by appealing to the wide-spread desire to simply be a good person.

It’s too bad people like Bill Donahue are under the delusion that morality somehow comes from religion. See a video with the same general idea here.

Codes of morality, of course, have always been grounded in religion. For those of us in Western civilization, its tenets emanate from the Judeo-Christian ethos. By casting this heritage aside, and replacing it with nothing more than the conscience of lone individuals, we lay the groundwork for moral anarchy. And that is because there is nothing that cannot be justified if the only moral benchmark is what men and women posit to be right and wrong. Indeed, every monster in history has followed his conscience.

The man is blatantly wrong. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say he isn’t willing to stone a woman to death for adultery or any other absurd command that is in the Bible. It’s morally repugnant by today’s standards. But what makes Donahue not cast (physical) stones? It certainly isn’t the idea of morality in his religion or from his god. The very reason he (and all others) pick and choose from holy books and philosophers is that our sense of morality comes from somewhere outside these books.

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Be good for goodness’ sake.

Posted on November 14, 2008 by Michael

Recently, an atheist bus campaign was brought to fruition in the UK. Its point was to convey a message that worrying about what happens after life really doesn’t do much to improve what’s happening during life. Now there is a new humanist campaign. This one takes place in the United States.

DENVER — Ads proclaiming, “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake,” will appear on Washington, D.C., buses starting next week and running through December, sponsored by The American Humanist Association.

…

“Our reason for doing it during the holidays is there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of non-theists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional religion.”

While the religious who are utterly offended by the notion that morality can exist outside their world of make-believe will object to this message, they really shouldn’t. It does one of the few good things religion has going for it – it reaches for a sense of community. As one of the social animals, humans need the contact and closeness which religion has the ability to harness. Hopefully this humanist message can help to foster the community sense by appealing to the wide-spread desire to simply be a good person.

It’s too bad people like Bill Donahue are under the delusion that morality somehow comes from religion. See a video with the same general idea here.

Codes of morality, of course, have always been grounded in religion. For those of us in Western civilization, its tenets emanate from the Judeo-Christian ethos. By casting this heritage aside, and replacing it with nothing more than the conscience of lone individuals, we lay the groundwork for moral anarchy. And that is because there is nothing that cannot be justified if the only moral benchmark is what men and women posit to be right and wrong. Indeed, every monster in history has followed his conscience.

The man is blatantly wrong. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say he isn’t willing to stone a woman to death for adultery or any other absurd command that is in the Bible. It’s morally repugnant by today’s standards. But what makes Donahue not cast (physical) stones? It certainly isn’t the idea of morality in his religion or from his god. The very reason he (and all others) pick and choose from holy books and philosophers is that our sense of morality comes from somewhere outside these books.

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Gay Marriage

Posted on November 13, 2008 by Michael

Let’s get one thing straight about gay marriage.

“It’s thrilling today,” Barbara Levine-Ritterman said. “We are all in one line for one form. Love is love, and the state recognizes it.”

That isn’t true. The state recognizes nothing about love. That isn’t its job. What the state of Connecticut does is recognize that two people who enter into a legal contract cannot be discriminated against based upon gender when gender is not relevant to said contract. Take a driver’s license. What is relevant is ability to drive. The state can discriminate against 10 year olds and those with DUI’s because they are unproven as safe drivers. It cannot discriminate against Asians or people named Bill. That isn’t relevant to the contract. Precisely equal, the state cannot discriminate against a contract which confers legal rights (i.e. a marriage contract) based upon something arbitrary such as gender. A secular marriage contract and the rights therein are not based upon genitalia or the ability which does or does not come with genitalia, complimentary or not. From a legal stand point, it is a very simply issue.

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Survey: 1 in 3 British teachers think creationism should be taught

Posted on November 8, 2008 by Michael

One in three.

One in three Brit teachers believes creationism should be at par with evolution

London, Nov 7 : One in three Brit teachers believes that the theories of creationism and intelligent design should be given the same status as evolution in the classroom, according to a new survey.

According to the survey of 1,200 teachers, 53 per cent thought that creationism should not be taught in science lessons, while 29 per cent thought it should, reports Timesonline.

However, 88 per cent said that if students raised the issue in a science lesson, they should be allowed to discuss it.

Creationism is based on a literal interpretation of scripture as an explanation for the origins of life.

Intelligent design is a more modern version, which says that life is so complex it cannot be explained solely by evolution.

According to National curriculum guidelines, creationism has no place in science lessons.

Last year, Professor Michael Reiss, a biologist and Royal Society director of education, provoked a furore by calling for creationism to be treated in science lessons as a legitimate ‘world-view’.

It’s nice to see a news article which calls intelligent design what it is – a “modern version” of creationism – but it’s still unfortunate to hear such a silly thing be called a “theory”. Maybe it’s stupid statements like this that have played into the awful science education of so many British teachers.

It should be of note that while creationism is rampant all over the world, including Britain, this was a survey of all teachers, not just science or biology teachers. Regardless, however, of one’s particular field, there’s little excuse for thinking magic is at all a legitimate world view.

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One for common sense

Posted on November 7, 2008 by Michael

Smokers banned from fostering

LONDON (Reuters) – A council has become the first in London to rule that smokers will no longer be able to foster children.

Redbridge Council’s cabinet agreed Tuesday night to a ban on placing children with foster carers who smoke unless there are exceptional circumstances.

The local authority in northeast London said the decision, which will come into force in 2010, was made to protect children from the “damaging effects of passive and second-hand smoke.”

Other councils around the country have introduced similar measures, particularly relating to very young children, but Redbridge’s ban is thought to be the most far-reaching.

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