Turns out the guy who started the “let’s storm Area 51” Facebook group didn’t quite mean it, but he might be making something better out of it? Newsweek reports:
The event was never meant to be taken seriously, but the momentum it started might be used for good, they decided. Now, a new plan has been enacted to make the Area 51 raid a celebration of art and science instead of an actual raid, all while promoting a demolition of the UFO secrecy some believe has been enacted by the American government.
Roberts never expected the astonishing response to his Facebook event. “I have been concerned about people taking it too literal since my post reach cracked 200,000 people,” he told Newsweek. “Just by watching the discussion on the event page, I’ve personally seen an insane amount of people that cannot read the satire what-so-ever.”
Much like the U.S. military, Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada would also rather folks not storm the joint:
Storming any kind of Department of Defense facility is not safe. It’s not safe for those who are guarding it, it’s not safe for what we’re protecting inside. … I haven’t been to Area 51 myself. I appreciate that people shop along the highway for all those souvenirs.
But if you do go to Area 51, this guy will sell you alien abduction insurance. Newsweek again:
The alien abduction scheme says it provides $10 million compensation in the event the policyholder is beamed up. It covers medical issues (all outpatient psychiatric care), sarcasm coverage (immediate family members only) and double indemnity coverage to the sum of $20 million in the event aliens insist on conjugal visits or the extraterrestrial encounter results in offspring. … The catch is in the fine print: cash is paid in installments of $1 per year for 10 million years.
At the CFI blog, Jamie Hale does us the service of looking into claims about artificial sweeteners, and it sounds like my reliance on Splenda is not threatened.
Former Point of Inquiry host Lindsay Beyerstein looks into the pseudo-spiritualism of presidential candidate Marianne Williamson:
Marianne Williamson has made her fortune selling snake oil. In that, she has something in common with another candidate whose fortune started in New York City: President Donald Trump. And, like many of Trump’s assertions, her core ideas collapse under the slightest scrutiny. We’ve already seen in Trump the damage that a president can do through superstition and willful ignorance of science. “The collective, soulful ache of the nation” may be real, but Williamson’s cure isn’t.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is suing Google for allegedly censoring her political ads. Santa Clara University legal scholar Eric Goldman says the lawsuit “weaves a complicated conspiracy theory of how Google is out to get her, but the facts cited by the complaint told a thoroughly uncompelling conspiracy story.”
Muslims make up about 1 percent of the U.S. population, but 9 percent of the state prison population, and many of those prisons don’t seem interested in their religious liberty claims. NPR reports:
“Incarcerated Muslims are asking for very basic things: religiously compliant food, books, prayer mats. But they’re not receiving them in many states,” Saei [of Muslim Advocates] said. “This idea of religious liberty is baked into the U.S. Constitution and federal law specifically protects the religious liberty of prisoners. But our report shows that many state prisons are arbitrarily and illegally preventing incarcerated Muslims from practicing their faith.”
A woman in California has been convicted of the murder of her 3-year-old daughter, who she trapped in a hot car, under blankets, in order to purge her of “lustful demons.” The only demon here is about to serve 25 years to life.
Jack Jenkins reports that while the Trump administration makes a lot of noise about stopping the persecution of Christians around the world, the number of Christian refugees they’ve let into the country has dropped significantly.
More than 850 clergy sign on in support of pastor Kaji Douša who was detained for her ministering to people at the border, and whose operation was under surveillance by Homeland Security. Douša is suing the government.
Yonat Shimron talks to the editor of a new collection called The Museum of the Bible: A Critical Introduction, Jill Hicks-Keeton:
One section is on how the Bible is defined and framed in the museum. There’s a chapter by Margaret M. Mitchell (University of Chicago) on the museum’s Bible boosterism, arguing that the museum is creating Bible boosters rather than critical thinkers about the Bible.
Another major critique of the exhibits is that the Protestant Bible, and specifically the white evangelical Protestant Bible, gets prioritized to the exclusion of other people and traditions for whom the Bible is important. Duke Professor Marc Brettler and I each have chapters arguing the Jewish Bible is really not represented accurately in this museum.
Hulu is bringing back Hitchhiker’s Guide for a reboot of the series.
The Onion reports on the Catholic Church’s feelings of molestation superiority:
Telling the youth organization that if they come for the king they best not miss, the Catholic Church announced Thursday that it was not about to be out-molested by the goddamn Boy Scouts. “If some pissant organization like the Scouts thinks they can beat us at the molestation game, then they have another fucking thing coming,” said Pope Francis, directing his message to the Scouts’ leaders as he stressed that a couple thousand piddling cases was a drop in the bucket compared to the generations of sexual abuse that had made the Catholic Church number-one in molestation for centuries on end.
Quote of the Day
The opening paragraphs of a piece by Chris Lee at Ars Technica on, um, bouncing bubbles:
Sometimes life just isn’t fair. If you play with fluids, you get to use cool camera systems, and every paper fluid researchers write comes with a fancy video of a fluid performing unnatural acts. Then, when you ask about applications, the researchers point to ink jet printers.
This should actually be taken as a warning. If you force a scientist to come up with an application, they will invent the ink jet printer as a form of long-lasting revenge. So, please, don’t ask what bouncing superwalker bubbles might be useful for.
Yeah, I dunno.
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Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by Paul or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.