Residents of Vinton, Iowa are still recovering from a storm that tore through their small town two weeks ago. It brought winds upwards of 130 miles per hour that destroyed buildings, rolled cars, and uprooted trees. I was shocked by how much damage a relatively quick wind storm could do after surveying the damage for myself on my way into town. Luckily, there were not many injuries, and no deaths to the best of my knowledge.

Hey folks. This is a continuation of an earlier post in which Maggie and I (I’m Seth) argued that the skeptic community, insofar as it cares about being good without god, ought to extend moral consideration to the non-human animals raised for meat production. A consequence of this is to cease contributing to the so-called factory farming system, as it causes a large amount of unnecessary suffering. One of our commentors challenged the rational humanist basis for such a view. 

There is a magical store that has a no-candy checkout aisle for grabby children, umbrellas you can borrow to get to your car, and probably the happiest employees I have ever seen at a grocery store. That store is Wegman’s and it is new to me, since I came from the Midwest where Meijer was king.

Dr. William Lane Craig is well known in some atheist circles for his elusive and slippery style of debate, and for his contributions to apologetics in the form of valid (but hardly sound) arguments, some of which I've even discussed on this blog. I've never admired Dr. Craig, but until now I've never been offended by him either. The argument to which I'm referring isn't new; it's actually from his 1994 book Reasonable Faith (which incidentally just made my reading list if for no purpose other than blog fodder).

I recently found out about the possibility of making birth control a mandatory no-copay prescription under new insurance plans, which would mean that the ability to control one's sexual reproduction would be more accessible to more women. The National Women's Law Center and Planned Parenthood are sponsoring a blog carnival to show support for this becoming a reality under the Obama Administration, so I wanted to bring this up to students and see what they thought about birth control.

Access to birth control has an effect on all people, female and male, and we should all care about the ability to choose if and/or when we have children. Some students have written articles to participate in the carnival. Here is what CFI On Campus students and allies are saying: