Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid (At Least Until November)

This morning the New York Times is reporting:

Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas was three or four years old, intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Monday. They reported that they had not yet found concrete evidence that a terrorist plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way.

Arrgh! If Tom Ridge called me personally to say that the sun would rise tomorrow, I’d be inclined to stock up on flashlights and camp lanterns. My outrage meter has been pinned in the red for months by the administration’s willingness to politicize even the most basic functions of government.

The New Dark Ages, Part II

To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.
Richard Dawkins, on the September 11 attacks, in Positive Atheism

In The New Dark Ages I bemoaned the decline of science literacy in the United States, and laid the blame, at least partially, at the feet of religion. I think it is a valid indictment. But I think we also have to consider the possibility that religion is adaptive. By we I mean secular-humanists and atheists who believe in a mechanical universe; by adaptive I mean conferring a reproductive advantage to believers.

This Explains A Lot