Negligible Knowledge Base

Slate: Hot Documents - “So You Want To Be a Scientologist”
Interesting read, especially since they posted the Scientography Contract and the “Church” of Scientometry makes members sign.  You thought your “church” was fucking weird.  How weirded out must people be when asked–by a “church,” mind you–to sign a fucking contract.
The Catholic Church might have avoided [...]

I can’t believe I missed this!!!  You’ll note that the date on this story is April 1, 2008–despite this it is legitimate–here’s the link to the story at the Crossville Chronicle.
A statue of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is sitting on the courthouse lawn in Crossville, Tennessee, alongside an Iraq and Afghanistan Soldier’s Memorial, Statue of [...]

Alan Boyle writing in MSNBC.com’s Cosmic Log, How Science Gets Swiftboated:
Ben Stein has done good things and funny things during his more than three decades as an actor, economist and writer (going back to his days as a Nixon speechwriter). His latest work, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” is not that good and not that funny. [...]

Albert Hofmann, the father of DSL… wait a minute… Hofmannn? DSL? Oh sweet, evil Jesus! That was the LSD guy, not the DSL guy…
Oh well, here’s the story.

Skeptico: Poor Babies:
The Expelled nitwits apparently set up a MySpace page to promote their silly mocumentary. On it they had an online poll to ask readers if they thought Intelligent Design should be taught in schools. It seems no one was moderating the page over the weekend because up until this morning, 98% of those [...]

The U.S. Extreme Court on Monday upheld an Indiana law requiring voters to produce photo identification in order to cast their vote.
The law “is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting ‘the integrity and reliability of the electoral process,’” Justice John Paul Stevens said in an opinion that was joined by Chief Justice John [...]

Skeptico: What’s Ben Stein Smoking?
I just watched Expelled presenter Ben Stein’s Thursday night appearance on the Craig Ferguson late night talk show. And I must say, it was strange. I was expecting him to talk about how “Darwinism” led to Hitler, and similar nonsense, but what he actually said was just weird:
[Expelled is] about the [...]

Well, the draft is over.  Opinions are mixed as to the Titans’ choices… but the overall consensus seems to be “what were they thinking?”

Yoko Ono is suing the producers of the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, among them Ben Stein, for use of the John Lennon song Imagine. Yoko alleges that the producers not only used the song without her permission, but that by doing so they are suggesting to viewers of the film (all seven of [...]

Tests Confirm T. Rex Kinship With Birds:
In the first analysis of proteins extracted from dinosaur bones, scientists say they have established more firmly than ever that the closest living relatives of the mighty predator Tyrannosaurus rex are modern birds.
The research, being published Friday in the journal Science, yielded the first molecular data confirming the widely [...]