Scientists at Cornell have put 3-D printing to an incredible medical use: They’ve made an ear remarkably similar to a natural one. Using 3-D images of a human ear, they printed a mold to be injected with gel containing collagen from rats’ tails, HealthDay reports. Next, they added cartilage from cows’ ears.
I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.
As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.
So I guess you’ll be wondering—what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist.Personally, I still think companies should have to label GMOs, even if there’s no reason to suspect there’s a problem with them. I support transparency above everything.
[I cut out just the relevant segment of ajbuchan’s post, there was a lot more.]
…
There is an abundance of evidence for the reliability of the New Testament’s eye-witness accounts of his life.
Really? An abundance. Well, in the more than half a decade I’ve been atheist blogging and studying religious claims worldwide I’ve heard about none. Although, I must say, I’ve sure heard a lot of people make these types of cocksure claims about evidence without presenting any.
There really was a man named Jesus of Nazareth who came to be called ‘Christ’.
I deny that, show me a single piece of extra-Biblical evidence of this.
There really was a trial, a sentencing and an execution of a man who didn’t deserve it.
First of all, there’s also no record of that, unless you’d like to produce some. Even the accounts in the Bible vary, probably because they’re slightly different versions of the same myth that had previously been passed down orally.
Second, within the context of the story, what makes you think Jesus didn’t deserve what happened? He wasn’t wrongfully accused, he was truly guilty of the crime he was charged with. You could say that the crime was bullshit or that death was severe, but you make it sound like he was innocent.
There is evidence that what happened next changed that part of the world in a way that meant his followers went around sharing about his life and ministry with the world around them, risking their lives for the sake of their message.
You can’t just say there is evidence and think that that counts. Back it up! Show me the evidence. Of course, this point doesn’t even matter because proving that the spread of the story of Jesus changed the world doesn’t prove the story true. It just proves the story effective. Superstitious people, near cavemen really, living in fearful times under a dictatorship, of course this story of hope and redemption appealed to them. Of course power structure was fearful of it.
What does Minchin think happened instead of this?
I can’t speak for him, but I bet part of what he believes happened was a guy didn’t rise from the dead and promise a magical kingdom of supernatural wonder to the ghosts housed within the bones of all who apologized to him for masturbating.
Why would you create a story and risk your own life in sharing it, and die for it like many have?
San Jose firefighters treated 21 people for burns when they walked across hot coals at an event by motivational speaker Tony Robbins.
The incident occurred Thursday, with some of those suffering second- and third-degree burns.
Robbins’ organization released a statement saying it will look into ways to make the coal-walking event safer if possible.
The Associated Press reported that the coals had temperatures of between 1,200 to 2,000 degrees.
God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there will never be any liberal science in the world.- John Adams, Founding Father and 2nd President of the United States
We discover in the gospels a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication .- Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father and 3rd President of the United States
Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.In the affairs of the world, men are saved not by faith, but by the lack of it.I looked around for God’s judgments, but saw no signs of them.The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.- Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father, scientist, inventor, educator
Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies.Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.- Thomas Paine, leader of the American Revolution
(via muchtoocynical)
A 30-year-old Portland woman who botched a home circumcision of her 3-month-old son has been sentenced to five years of probation.
Keemonta Peterson was arrested last April after a lengthy investigation into the October 2010 incident. Peterson, inspired after reading the Old Testament, decided…
Following a deluge of thousands of complaints from around the world, Montreal police have launched an investigation into a St. Laurent man accused of making hundreds, if not thousands of deadly threats.
The man is believed to be Dennis Markuze, but uses a variety of pseudonyms when online,…
Here’s a classic Good Reason News post with a typical comment from Dennis Markuze. It’s a pretty obscure read, meaning I don’t know what the fuck he was talking about.
you little liars do nothing but antagonize…
and you try to eliminate all the dreams and hopes of humanity…
but you LOST…
