Physicists Confirm They Found and Killed the 'God Particle'

Virtually since the inception of its moniker, many atheists have hated the fact that the Higgs Boson, a theoretical subatomic particle thought to be responsible for attributing mass to matter, has been referred to as the "God Particle."

But as The Onion reports, they may finally have reason to celebrate, as news have been revealed that physicists have finally found, and then killed, that goddamn particle...

But if you actually want to get an idea of what the Higgs Boson and the Higgs Field are, you can check out the LHC tag, or just watch this short clip with the awesome Sean Carroll:

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Porn Stars and Beauty Queens

Any lovers of irony or fans of Joseph Heller's Catch-22 out there? If so, I have a story for you...

So it turns out that Melissa King, a girl who did some porn to be able to make the money necessary to enter a beauty pageant, ended up losing her Miss Delaware crown for having been in said porn... oh irony of ironies...

Before my rant, because I do have a couple of things to say, here's the story:

Obviously, given the puritanical attitude our society has toward sexuality and how quick we are to condemn stuff that we privately can't live without, that wasn't the smartest choice on her part, but the real problem is the hypocrisy and double standards created by beauty pageants: on the one hand, they don't want their contestants to engage in public displays of sexuality, and punish them when they do; on the other hand, beauty pageants are in the business of objectifying women and exploiting their sexuality. Sure, they pretend that it's about etiquette, sophistication, intelligence, grace, talent and so on, but you know the kind of debacle you get when you actually ask these girls even simple questions whose answers are not as simple as "world peace."

Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against shallow physical attraction, or even against using our bodies to achieve certain ends, provided no one gets hurt or exploited in the process. I have no objection to the "beauty" aspect of beauty pageants, and I have absolutely no problem with the sexiness of non-exploitative porn (those assholes that try to degrade girls in their videos really are douchebags, though, and should be castrated).

If we think that it's okay to employ someone based on their intellectual abilities, it strikes me as hypocritical that we couldn't do the same for physical attributes. In fact, we do! That's what professional sports are about. It's only when it comes to sex that everyone gets bent out of shape. But here's the thing, as a person, you are both a mind and a body. To focus only on one of these to the exclusion of the other is to really objectify you, to ignore the totality of who and what you are, and to focus only on the part of you, whatever it may be, that turns you into some kind of object. Given this basic reality, it is probably impossible not to objectify people.

My problem with beauty pageants is the farce, the hypocrisy, the claim that you can't use your own body to express your sexuality unless they get to use your body for their purposes, the idea that displaying your body in their parade is okay, but that displaying it in a video somewhere else is not. You might say that beauty pageants want to set a good example for younger girls, and porn doesn't do that for obvious reasons, but here's the thing: neither do beauty pageants. Beauty pageants teach young, impressionable girls that the most important thing in the world is to be beautiful, not smart, not educated, not curious, not interesting... beautiful above all else. When was the last time you saw a fat or ugly chick win one of these pageants, no matter how interesting, articulate or intelligent she may have been? Hell, have you even seen them participate, let alone win? And worse, because beauty pageants are deemed as socially acceptable, they are more pernicious than porn. Most little girls don't want to grow up to be a porn star, but lots of them do want to be princesses and beauty pageant queens.... and we wonder why we have a problem of female under-representation in academically challenging subjects...

And another thing that's been bothering me for a while now is the number of people whose professional careers are ruined because of personal choices they've made in the past (or concurrently), and that have absolutely nothing to do with their jobs. Why are we punishing people for living their own lives? If you are a doctor during the week, and then make sexy videos on Saturdays, and you don't botch up your surgeries, what business is it of anyone else's to tell you you can no longer work for a particular hospital because of what you do on your own time?

If I go to the doctor, what matters is her ability to treat whatever is ailing me, not her personal choices (at least not if they will not affect my physical health); if I go to a lawyer, his weird foot fetish has absolutely no relevance to my corporate merger; if I attend a lecture, the professor's pole dancing skills at the strip club last weekend has nothing to do with her lesson on epigenetics; if I get arrested by a police officer, I don't get to resist on the grounds that I've seen videos of her naked online...

I may pass personal judgment on any of these people, or not, but why should they lose their jobs because other people and their delicate sensibilities are offended?

And the saddest thing in this story, having seen her video by now, is that this poor girl doesn't even have a future in porn: she kinda sucks... She really got screwed  :(

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Richard Dawkins - Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life (1)

Dostoevsky's dictum "without God, anything is permitted" is often used by religious believers to make the point that, quite aside from the issue of its truth, religion plays an important role, perhaps even a necessary one, in fomenting moral behavior and virtue. Without God, where would morality come from? If we were simply left to our own devices, what would be there to prevent absolute chaos, violence, crime and wanton lasciviousness?

Well, whatever you may think about the moral foundation of morality, as an empirical claim, it simply isn't true that without God or religion we would turn into savages. How do we know? For one, because non-human animals, presumably not being religious believers, do have all sorts of customs and rules by which they abide without having to descend into anarchy. And second, because when you look at the behavior or religious and non-religious people, you find that there is almost no difference there.

What religious people do have, though, is a lot of shame and guilt for things that should not be quite as big a deal as they think. So it seems as though religion is a self-perpetuating industry of devotion based on making its followers feel bad about themselves and then making them turn to religion for "salvation." Not much different from drug pushers, huh?

And it's getting to the point that religious people will go to all kinds of extremes to reconcile the inevitable cognitive dissonance they experience from the conjunction of their religious beliefs and their biological nature. Richard Dawkins explores these and other related issues

What exactly is the fascination with virgins? I never understood that one...

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If Fifty Shades of Grey Is Not Dirty Enough for Your Taste, Try The Bible, But Don't Say I Didn't Warn You

When I was a little boy, the Bible was one of my favorite books. No, it's not because I was a goodie-two-shoes... it was because I loved the story of Sampson and how he would kick major ass and cause havoc wherever he went. I also liked the apocalyptic stuff... now I'm starting to wonder how I ended up so well-adjusted :)

And now that psychopathic and experienced men taking advantage of, abusing and humiliating inexperienced young girls are all the rage, well, Fifty Shades of Grey is just not extreme enough. For sadomasochistic and bondage connoisseurs, almost nothing gets filthier than the Bible...

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Diane Kelly - What We Didn't Know about Penis Anatomy

Penises... they're great. In my case, we're best friends. I never leave home without mine. Do you?

It may seem pretty obvious what they're for (what, with their relentless one-mind track), but there are still many mysteries surrounding these anatomical masterpieces. For instance, how come lots of species sport a bone in theirs while humans (and a few other mammalian species) do not? How come felines have barbed phalluses and ducks have... well, you can check out that weirdness for yourself.

But even if we stick with boring human subjects, how exactly do they work? How is erection achieved? Is it merely an inflatable tube? If so, why can't it bend? How come it's so hard? And how exactly does it stay erect?

If you've ever wondered about any of these questions, it seems that Diane Kelly can answer at least a few of them in the following TEDTalk presentation:

I think I'm going to go play with mine for a while, all in the name of science, of course :)

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This Is the Best Sermon You'll Hear Today. Amen!

I know I sometimes tend to rant against religious dogmatism and bigotry, but credit has to be given where it's due, and the following sermon by Pastor Frederick Haynes III absolutely deserves props, so kudos!

Why? Well, consider this... he's a black man and a Christian Baptist minister. So if he's talking about homosexuality, you'd think he'd go the double-whammy homophobic route and preach to the intolerant choir (sorry, but come on, you know that's how it goes).

Instead, however, he delivers one of the clearest, bravest and most eloquent articulations of the idea behind the separation of church and state I've seen religious commentators make, all before getting into the theological question of what Christian attitudes ought to be toward homosexuality given what Jesus said about it. If you declare Jesus Christ to be your lord and savior, you might want to pay attention to his teachings before you start passing judgment or throwing stones at other people  Can I get an Amen!? :)

Hallelujah!

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Sex: An Unnatural History - The Church

One of the ways in which religions have managed to control their followers is by controlling their sexuality, telling them what's allowed, what's forbidden, what they can be punished for eternally, what the purpose of sex is, and so on. And for a very long time, religions managed to do this quite well, primarily because they also controlled the means of indoctrination and communication, but then modernity and education happened...

Few events have shocked the church quite the way the introduction of the anti-contraceptive pill did because, for the first time in history, sexuality became democratized and people finally had some control over their own reproduction, control that had previously been the dominion of the church.

With the sexual revolution of the sixties, and the general secularization of the zeitgeist over the last few centuries, orthodox traditional religious restrictions on sexuality (like their adherence to natural law theory and its injunctions against birth control, abortion and homosexuality), though still strongly supported by church officials, have been mainly ignored by the faithful, and the church has lost its grip on the conscience and soul of its constituents.

But is sex only about physical gratification, or is there some important spiritual component to it over which the church really ought to have something to say? Or can such components be achieved without it? Does the very idea of sex as metaphorical forbidden fruit enhance the sexual experience? Are atheists missing out?

And check out a brief summary of the history of the church and child sexual abuse.

Or check out the Unnatural History of Sex (The Revolution and Love).

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Hans Rosling - Religion and Babies

When Hans Rosling speaks, I listen. The nice thing about him is that he much prefers to base his beliefs and opinions on data and evidence than on ideology. So, when I saw the title of this talk about the relationship between religion and babies, I was sure he'd have something mind-blowing to say, something that few of us, if any, would have imagined based on prior presuppositions.

And the relationships he shows really are impressive and somewhat surprising, but it seems to me that he screwed the pooch on this one. I say this, and am fully aware that I'm no statistician, but I'm seeing methodological flaws everywhere in this study that a first-year student should easily be able to pick up on. See if you can spot those problems:

Even if I didn't dispute the conclusions he draws from the data he uses, I would definitely question the validity and reliability of said data. Many people, for instance, and especially in developed nations, claim membership in particular religions only nominally. In such cases, religion almost certainly does not play any kind of causal role in their family planning decisions. But when you include these people with those for whom religion actually is an important motivating factor, you wash away the actual impact of the latter's religious beliefs and the causal influence on those choices. If there were some reliable way to distinguish religious believers from religious nominalists, I would not be surprised if the results of Rosling's studies changed quite dramatically.

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Cameron Diaz Flirts with Sir David Attenborough

If you've been spoiled by multiple BBC documentaries narrated by Sir David Attenborough, as I have, then you've probably experienced the cringing sensation that it is watching those documentaries when they're narrated by other people, like Sigourney Weaver or Oprah, for instance.

And if you're Cameron Diaz, and you get a chance to meet Sir David, you'll probably get your panties in a bunch and basically offer yourself to him, as she did :)

And just as things seem to be cooling down, the sexy comes right back up again:

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Melinda Gates - Let's Put Birth Control Back on the Agenda

I'm really busy at the moment (grading finals and term papers), and don't have time to get into a long introduction to the fantastic TEDTalk presentation below, but suffice it to say that in a time in which the politicization of women's issues (whether they should have the right to choose or to have or not have access to medical healthcare) has clouded the real question concerning women's health and choice, Melinda Gates adeptly navigates right past the confusion and the distractions, to the questions that really matter...

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Bro-Choice

Whenever pro-lifers want to interfere with a woman's autonomy over her own body, they do it, presumably, because of their moral principles regarding the sanctity of human life, and they think the ethical principle trumps a woman's convenience every time. The question of a woman's liberty is not even very important...

So, guess what happened when a bill was introduced to outlaw the waste of any semen (because after all, it is human life, which means that every sperm is sacred, as Monty Python famously parodied), and a man's inalienable right to masturbate was at stake!: of course, all of a sudden pro-life conservatives, completely oblivious to the irony and the double standard, started coming up with the most hilarious and twisted arguments you could ever imagine.. Al Madrigal reports:

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Of course, philosophers mostly agree that the question of personhood is actually kind of irrelevant. Mainly, it's just an emotional distraction that does no ethical explanatory work, only emotional work...

And in case you're not following the Monty Python reference, here you go:

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The Evolution of the Y-Chromosome in the Colbert Report

Though I like to try to keep up with scientific developments, and consider myself relatively literate (for a layman) in these matters, there are times when I am truly surprised at the fact that something I thought I basically understood turns out to be different and much more interesting than I previously realized.

So when David Page showed up at the Colbert Report to talk about the evolution of the Y-chromosome, I was in for a fascinating and entertaining surprise about the evolution of the sexes.

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I wonder how Freud would have tried to spin this size difference with some ad hoc envy theory :)

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Unhate

Contrary to what the majority of people all over the world believe, I'm pretty sure this is the only life we will ever know. To some, that is a depressing prospect, and an indication of the futility and meaninglessness of human existence.

To me, however, it underscores the responsibility each of us has to make it count, to make it meaningful, and to make sure we have some sense of perspective and proportion with regard to the things that matter to us. Are our pride, convictions, resentments, race, differences, disagreements, history, ideology, etc. worth hating each other?

I seriously hope not. And hopefully it's not too late for any of us to open our hearts, make amends, forgive and enter into communion with others.

How will we know when things are really getting better: when we get to see an unphotoshopped picture of the Pope kissing Sheik Mohamed Ahmed el-Tayeb

Amen!

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Ricky Gervais, Jon Stewart and Panda Porn

When it comes to the debate between intelligent design creationism and evolution, the late Stephen J. Gould thought that instead of focusing on the marvels of biology, such as the eye, we should focus on the instances of poor biological architecture. The idea was simple, but brilliant: we would not expect to find cases of incompetent engineering in organisms that were "intelligently" designed, whereas we should definitely expect to see the accumulation of historical antecedents giving rise to sub-optimal adaptations if the organism in question had evolved.

Well, one of Gould's own favorite examples was the panda's thumb. This spur is the epitome of retarded design. I won't get into the details now, but suffice it to say that no intelligent designer would have created such a thing, and as Ricky Gervais and Jon Stewart unwittingly discover in the following hilarious conversation about panda/racoon sex, porn and viagra, there may have been some details about pandas that even such an eminent evolutionist as Stephen J. Gould forgot to consider :)

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Well, now we know the why behind those black eyes :)

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Sex: An Unnatural History - Love

If you know anything about biology, you know that sex has existed for a long time. It's the vehicle through which organisms reproduce; we wouldn't be here without it. Somewhere along the line, however, and quite recently in fact, a new phenomenon seems to have evolved: love. And that's thrown a wrench into what previously used to be a pretty straightforward instinct.

The relationship between love and sex is complicated. You'd have to be blind not to see the differences, subtlety and complexity behind the relationship between these two instincts. Yes, often love and sex go together like peas in a pod, but there are times when you can have one without the other, times when you can use one to get the other, and times when you can use one to destroy the other. It's a mess.

Continuing her exploration of Sex: An Unnatural History, Julia Zemiro explores in today's episode the reasons we fall in love, what maintains it, why this emotion confounds even the greatest of minds, whether human are wired for monogamy, and whether there is a new horizon opening up for us or whether we are trapped in the struggle between these two all-pervasive biological tidal forces.

Oh yeah, happy Valentine's Day...

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Sex: An Unnatural History - The Revolution

When you think about the sexual revolution, your mind probably focuses on the last half a century, starting with the fact that the development of the contraceptive pill gave couples all over the world, and especially women, unprecedented freedom regarding their own bodies and sexual choices. Ever since then, and with other revolutions in mind (like the civil rights movement, the rise of feminism, etc.), sex has been more about gratification than procreation? Or has it? And did it only start fifty years ago, or does a larger sexual revolution go back for millions of years?

In the first episode of this six-part series, and accompanied by cool historical footage, some clever animation, and some provocative dramatizations, Julia Zemiro sits down and discusses the nature and history of human sex with anthropologists, feminists, nudists, philosophers, biologists, historians, linguists, journalists and others.

Oh, and this may count as NSFW, but that might just mean your job sucks and you need to do something better with your life... think about it.

Stay tuned for more episodes soon!

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GOP Race Heats Up as Comatose Candidate Steals Thunder

While many of the current GOP presidential hopefuls have recently found themselves in the middle of embarrassing controversies (like spending countless weekends hunting on camp "Niggerhead," or facing accusations of sexual harassment, or denying the validity of scientific research, or finding themselves in the middle of multi-billion dollar corruption schemes, or being responsible for the execution of innocent people, or just for being either boring as hell or bat-shit insane), The Onion reports that Congressman John Clarkson has kept himself away from controversies for the past eight years by being in a coma.

But as one should have expected, it wouldn't take long for Clarkson to be involved in a sex scandal of his own...

Sources confirm that GOP candidate Herman Cain is thrilled that Clarkson has diverted the pervert spotlight off him, even if only temporarily :)

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A Few Gay Men - The Gayest Penetration

I just don't get people sometimes. Religious conservatives base their opposition to homosexuality primarily on the Old Testament, where you can easily find injunctions and orders to kill the gays. So, you would think that if gays wanted to serve in the military (and run the risk of possibly getting killed in action protecting the same country that denies them many rights most of us take for granted) conservatives would be happy to let them run that risk...

Instead, for the last two decades we've decided to discriminate against them. Fortunately, the dark history of Don't Ask, Don't Tell is finally over, and Jon Stewart has a few things to share:

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And so does Colbert:

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The Wedding Banners

Here in America, we love our freedom of speech. Sure, sometimes we use it ill-advisedly, and sometimes we want to shut up those with whom we disagree, but free speech is one of the core principles of a good democratic republic.

So, when the British Crown banned footage of the wedding in any comedy or satirical program, they weren't counting with the fact Jon Stewart and his team could re-enact the wedding and after-parties video-game style. The picture to the right is just the teaser :)

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Exclusive - The Wedding Banners Uncensored
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Oh, William has been a naughty boy... And what's up with those hats?!?!?
.

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