TED: James Randi's fiery takedown of psychic fraud

Legendary skeptic James Randi takes a fatal dose of homeopathic sleeping pills onstage, kicking off a searing 18-minute indictment of irrational beliefs. He throws out a challenge to the world's psychics:

Prove what you do is real, and I'll give you a million dollars.

(No takers yet.)

James Randi has an international reputation as a magician and escape artist, but he is perhaps best known as the world's most tireless investigator and demystifier of paranormal and pseudoscientific claims.

Randi has pursued "psychic" spoonbenders, exposed the dirty tricks of faith healers, investigated homeopathic water "with a memory," and generally been a thorn in the sides of those who try to pull the wool over the public's eyes in the name of the supernatural. He has received numerous awards and recognitions, including a MacArthur "genius" grant in 1986. He's the author of numerous books, including The Truth About Uri Geller, The Faith Healers, Flim-Flam!, and An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural.

Watch the video

Aussie Sausage 'Solution' to Cane Toad Invasion

Scientists in Australia have designed a cane toad "sausage" that could help protect vulnerable predators from the poisonous toads.

The researchers developed the sausage as a bait that could help train animals to avoid eating the large toads.

Read the Article

Legal doesn't always mean right

So in March 2006, Westboro protesters showed up at St. John's Catholic Church ("St. John's Kennel" in their formulation) in Westminster for Mr. Snyder's funeral, reportedly carrying signs depicting male anal sex and slogans like "Semper Fi Fags."

For the record, no one has claimed Matthew Snyder was gay. Not that that should matter. But the church's bizarre argument is that the death of "every" dead serviceperson should be celebrated as God's punishment of a gay-tolerant nation.

Cpl. Snyder's father, Albert, sued the "church" for disrupting his son's funeral. In October 2007, he won a $10.9 million verdict. Last September, an appeals court tossed that verdict out.

The worst of it is that the court recently ordered Mr. Snyder to help pay Westboro's legal bills. You heard me. Mr. Snyder, who makes $43,000 a year, must pay $16,500 to the people who made a circus of his son's funeral. "You can do the math," says his attorney, Sean Summers. Snyder has been forced to seek donations online (www.matthewsnyder.org).

Westboro says it will use the money to give the same treatment to another grieving family.

Read the Article

Amid Calls for Transparency, Pope Describes Dangers of Digital Age

A report by Margret Warner of PBS Newshour from the Vatican to investigate how the Catholic Church is planning to deal with the Child Sex Abuse scandal, and instead describes the dangers of people communicating their opinions more freely over the internet.

VATICAN CITY | We've come to Rome for a week to explore how the new wave in the Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal is being seen and dealt with by the Vatican, the power center of worldwide Catholicism. Pope Benedict XVI is coming under increasing pressure, as hundreds of charges of alleged priest abuse of minors explode throughout Europe -- so we were eager to see him at the earliest possible opportunity.

It was the last morning of a three-day conference on how the church should use and deal with the digital media of today. "Have they talked about the sex abuse scandal?" I whispered to a young reporter for Avvenire, the country's dominant Catholic newspaper. She smiled and shook her head: "Not a chance."

So what did the Pope have to say to the masses of people wanting answers and guidance from their religious leader when he arrived?

"The times in which we living knows a huge widening of the frontiers of communication," he said (according to our Italian fixer/producer) and the new media of this new age points to a more "egalitarian and pluralistic" forum. But, he went on to say, it also opens a new hole, the "digital divide" between haves and have-nots.

Even more ominous, he said, it exacerbates tensions between nations and within nations themselves. And it increases the "dangers of ... intellectual and moral relativism," which can lead to "multiple forms of degradation and humiliation" of the essence of a person, and to the "pollution of the spirit." All in all, it seemed a pretty grim view of the wide open communication parameters being demanded by the Internet age.

We'll be keeping a close eye on what happens and what is said on this issue from the Vatican in the coming weeks.

Read the Article

The Internet: Where religions come to die

Kind of speaks for itself, but don't take my word on this... please watch this video and if you think its worth the effort, send it on to a friend.

Seattle cartoonist: May 20 is ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed Day’

As a snarky response to Muslim bloggers who "warned" Comedy Central about an episode of South Park showing the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bear suit, one Seattle cartoonist, who calls laughter her form of "prayer," is asking artists all over the world to create depictions of Mohammed on May 20. A Facebook page has been set up to cache the images for all to see.

Speaking on a Seattle radio show on Friday, cartoonist Molly Norris said she announced her idea as a way of countering the fear exhibited by Comedy Central in censoring episode 201 of South Park.

After Comedy Central cut a portion of a South Park episode following a death threat from a radical Muslim group, Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris wanted to counter the fear. She has declared May 20th "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day."

Norris told KIRO Radio's Dave Ross that cartoonists are meant to challenge the lines of political correctness. "That's a cartoonist's job, to be non-PC."

At the South Park Studios website, a message was posted that notes, "After we delivered the show, and prior to broadcast, Comedy Central placed numerous additional audio bleeps throughout the episode. We do not have network approval to stream our original version of the show."

The New York-based Revolution Muslim group's Web site was largely unavailable Wednesday but a CNN report said the statement was posted alongside a graphic photo of slain Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was murdered by a Muslim extremist in Amsterdam in 2004.

Read the article

Majority of Israel's Jews back gag on Human Rights

Oh to be a Jew. This interesting article by an Israeli Newspaper explains that the majority of Israelis believe it is ok to stop human rights organisations from doing their job if it exposes bad stuff done by Israel. If its a majority vote is it ok, or is that democracy gone crazy? Democrazy?

More than half of Jewish Israelis think human rights organizations that expose immoral behavior by Israel should not be allowed to operate freely, and think there is too much freedom of expression here, a recent survey found.

The survey, commissioned by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University, will be presented Wednesday at a conference on the limits of freedom of expression.

The pollsters surveyed 500 Jewish Israelis who can be considered a representative sample of the adult Jewish population.

We would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those pesky kids at Amnesty International.

Read the article