If You Desperately Want the World to Come to an End
The Morning Heresy with Paul the Morning Heretic
April 25, 2018
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
I was a guest on The Whiparound podcast this week, in which I go on at absurd length about CFI's work, because as a communications professional I apparently have no idea how to be concise. I also discuss some of the news with hosts Dave and Shaun, and invent a cult based on Lakitu from Super Mario Bros.
Let’s Call it Caelus
The Morning Heresy with Paul the Morning Heretic
April 24, 2018
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Laurie Goodstein at the Times interviews Juan Carlos Cruz, the Chilean man who forced the Catholic Church to confront the sexual assault perpetrated by Rev. Fernando Karadima it had been denying. Cruz will be meeting with Pope Francis himself, and Cruz has some hope, saying, "I don’t think that this is a P.R. exercise."
President Quirrell
The Morning Heresy with Paul the Morning Heretic
April 23, 2018
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Oh no. At the National Post, Sharon Kirkey reports that homeopaths are pushing a "detoxification" treatment called CEASE, which, alas, is not what they will be doing. Instead, it stands for Complete Elimination of Autistic Spectrum Expression, where a treatment of—you guessed it—diluted vaccines are used to "cure" autism. Keep these people away from me.
Coffee and Exorcism
The Morning Heresy with Paul the Morning Heretic
April 20, 2018
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Ema O'Connor at BuzzFeed reports that at the UN Commission on the Status of Women last month, which our boss Robyn Blumner attended, Trump officials held several closed-door meetings at which they revealed a jaw-droppingly radical agenda that was "further to the right than those expressed by most other countries present, including Russia and the representative for the Arab states." As the commission's Susan O'Malley said, "I normally respect when things are off the record. But this meeting was just so bonkers."
The Luxury of Opening Your Mouth
The Morning Heresy with Paul the Morning Heretic
April 19, 2018
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
This is really cool: Dig this original broadside poster from 1876 of an Robert Ingersoll event, excerpting his speech, and it's now in the loving care of the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum.
Logic Shusshed in ‘A Quiet Place’
A Skeptic Reads the Newspaper with Benjamin Radford
April 18, 2018
The new Emily Blunt film 'A Quiet Place' would have made an interesting and compelling short film.
Alexa, Full of Grace
The Morning Heresy with Paul the Morning Heretic
April 18, 2018
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
In its obituary for Art Bell, former host of the paranormal-focused radio show Coast to Coast, the New York Times notes his receipt of his, let's say, special recognition from us:
In 1998, Mr. Bell received the ignominious Snuffed Candle Award from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a group, co-founded by Carl Sagan and based in Amherst, N.Y., that promotes scientific inquiry and critical thinking. ...
Being Needled by Acupuncturists
Investigative Briefs with Joe Nickell
April 16, 2018
The Buffalo News (Feb. 16, 2018) reported on the prestigious local Roswell Park Cancer Center’s having embraced so-called “alternative” therapies. My letter to the editor (Feb. 28) stated, in part: “Calling therapies like Reiki, healing touch, and acupuncture ‘unconventional’ or ‘integrative’ or ‘complementary’ does not make them any less pseudoscientific.”
Nice Work If You Can Get It
The Morning Heresy with Paul the Morning Heretic
April 16, 2018
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
You already know that school voucher proponents look for ways to leech public dollars away from public education and redirect that money to private and religious schools. Now Republicans in Congress are aiming their tax-dollar-vacuums at a program called Impact Aid, which would particularly hurt military families. To understand why, and why it's awful, check out this op-ed by CFI's Jason Lemieux in the San Antonio Express-News.
Space Beer
The Morning Heresy with Paul the Morning Heretic
April 13, 2018
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
I forgot to tell you! We announced the release of our yearly Progress Report, and it's a real beauty folks. Go check it out.