Wait... He kept a gun in the church?

This seems like proof that the war on terror is the two most sociopathic kids on the block fighting each other.

Thanks for saying this.
Despite what someone does, to celebrate the death of a person is despicable. This was not about victory over an enemy, the US had already won to some degree in Afghanistan and this doesn't change a thing in the context of that war. The celebration was purely that of celebrating the death of an individual.

It was specially despicable to see americans who were against targeted killing and capital punishment, celebrate. It has done more to lower my opinion on the american people than almost anything else in the last decade. (To clarify: Its not the actions of the US im against only the peoples reaction to it)

I wouldn't try to take the entire blog in over a short time.
As amazing as the site is, i pretty much lost all faith and trust in humanity (for a while at least) after going through only about 50 posts of clergy getting away with (or almost getting away with) sexual abuse.

This is stupidest law ever. Ignoring the fact that it would end science education.

It would end all education as we know it. The law effectively says, if you claim your answer to be religious you get full marks (And once the answer is claimed to be religious the teacher has no right to criticize it, since that would be discrimination). presumably the law would have to be for all religions. and since anyone can make up a religion anytime them want whats to stop a kid from answering 1 + 1 as 5 because they believe it to be true...

I remember seeing an interview Dawkins did soon after The God Delusion came out and the interviewer couldn't believe he would consider teaching children religion as an act of abuse. At the time i was leaning towards the interviewers side but i understand what Dawkins was talking about a lot better now.

I would say that, in it self teaching a child religion is not abusive depending on how its taught to them. If its taught to them as a story to teach right and wrong, nothing wrong with that. If its all fire and brimstone and why gays are going to hell, etc. there is definitely something wrong with that. Most if not all of us would have been taught religion as kids, and i wouldn't consider my learning of religion at a young age as child abuse by any means (not getting to sleep in on Sundays could be considered worst part).

Its pretty easy to see that any church (temple or what ever else) is never going to support letting the kids go (its good business for them, when teaching the kids the parents become more religious as well as assure a new member in a few years time). And its almost an impossible sale to a religious parent (if you're right, you're insulting their religion; if you're wrong, you're calling them a bad parent, either way they wouldn't want to hear it).

The only time i ever talked about this with a few of my religious friends, they couldn't see how children could learn right and wrong without religion or found it easier to use religion than other methods.

The only wasteful spending everyone can agree with about this issue is, Adrian Smiths salary. I'd be willing to bet that he didn't read anything past the title of those research papers either. I also found it interesting that he chose "Model the sound of objects breaking" as a bad thing (says something about the target audience) considering it would have application outside of the movies and games. Even if it didn't it would still be useful research. If the US was ever actually interested in cutting spending they only need to look at the giant elephant in the room with rocket launchers strapped to it (i.e. the military budget).

Btw. put an untrained committee to hand out the research grants and see how many of those Nobel winning scientist stick around or keep getting awards. Research and technology are about the only thing the US is close to being a world leader in, and these guys seem intent on destroying that as well. The video starts with him saying how well the NSF is doing then saying "They're so good at what they do we should take-over".