The more religious the sexual predator, the worse he is

An Australian study found exactly that.

Another study found that predators see religious organizations as something like candy stores where the clerks aren't very smart.

Read the entire blog entrty here.

Our pale, blue dot

By Carl Sagan:

Uncle Alf Jackson learned to love to carve

Great Uncle Alf Jackson loved to carve and taught me how.

He learned to love wood carving because the pressure of the carving knife in one hand and of the wood in the other stilled the trembling which had taken from the once skilled hunter his expert marksmanship, had made it impossible for him to ride a horse and had taken away his ability to drive a team of mules in his own fields.

By the time I was old enough to carry on a conversation with him, his sentences often had to be translated by his even more gentle and caring sister Kate. Because he was as patient as I was curious and answered my every question, something few adults could bear, we had long and happy afternoons.

Uncle Alf wanted to spare me the Parkinson's Disease that is a Jackson family inheritance. It has, since before the Civil War, selectively afflicted the men. Taking away the ability of one from every generation to do without reducing the capacity to care. Though barely able to walk and talk, Uncle Alf taught me the family preventative he regretted having ignored.

"Drink coffee," he said. "Eat plenty of fresh fruit and fresh vegetables. Every meal. Every day. And drink coffee. None of the Jackson men who drank coffee got the palsy." Among them, his brother John, whom I knew well.

Yes, I parroted back to him the commonplace injunction to children in 1950s rural Columbus County, North Carolina: "It'll stunt your growth."

"They say it will and they mean well,", he answered, "but it won't."

"How much?" I asked.

Four or five cups, every day. Right on what is now scientifically verified target.

My parents wouldn't allow it and Uncle Alf was no long with us when, dearl in my freshman year at North Carolina State University, I began to follow his advice. Apparently not too late, for at 68 I still have no symptoms of Parkinson's.

Here I am

Here I am