From the New York Daily News:

Tom Cruise is named in a $250 million federal lawsuit that is using the RICO statute against the Church of Scientology. Ex-Scientologist Peter Letterese, a longtime critic of the church, filed suit in Southern District Court in Florida on July 15 alleging, among other things, that members of the church harassed him after he left.

In court papers provided to The News by investigator Paul Barresi, Letterese claims a member of the church phoned his lawyer at home, and when the lawyer’s wife answered, said he was her husband’s homosexual lover.

Forgive me for being cynical, but I doubt this lawsuit is going to do much against the juggernaut that is Scientology. Although if it proceeds far enough, some interesting information might come to light which helps tarnish it’s rep. More than another Tom Cruise couch-jumping bender? Probably not. God knows (am I allowed to say that here?) why people care more about that than all the other shifty crap Scientology has been involved in, but there it is. Society sucks like that.

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From BBC News:

Diners have been flocking to a restaurant in northern Nigeria to see pieces of meat which the owner says are inscribed with the name of Allah.

What looks like the Arabic word for God and the name of the prophet Muhammad were discovered in pieces of beef by a diner in Birnin Kebbi.

He was about to eat it, when he suddenly noticed the words in the gristle, the restaurant owner said.

Next week’s most likely news story? Diner burnt down and everyone murdered after fake Allah meat scam uncovered.

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I’ve never been able to figure out why religion and guns go hand and hand so often. From KOCO.com:

An Oklahoma church canceled a controversial gun giveaway for teenagers at a weekend youth conference.

Windsor Hills Baptist had planned to give away a semiautomatic assault rifle until one of the event’s organizers was unable to attend.The church’s youth pastor, Bob Ross, said it’s a way of trying to encourage young people to attend the event. The church expected hundreds of teenagers from as far away as Canada.

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We talked about those penis thief sorcerers on an earlier radio show (Jake doesn’t label stuff properly so I couldn’t tell you which one off-hand). Now here’s a really in-depth article from Harper’s on the subject so you can understand what the dilly is with that whole situation:

According to Ilechukwu, an epidemic of penis theft swept Nigeria between 1975 and 1977. Then there seemed to be a lull until 1990, when the stealing resurged. “Men could be seen in the streets of Lagos holding on to their genitalia either openly or discreetly with their hand in their pockets,” Ilechukwu wrote. “Women were also seen holding on to their breasts directly or discreetly, by crossing the hands across the chest. . . . Vigilance and anticipatory aggression were thought to be good prophylaxes. This led to further breakdown of law and order.” In a typical incident, someone would suddenly yell: Thief! My genitals are gone! Then a culprit would be identified, apprehended, and, often, killed.

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From MSNBC.com

Demonstrations on the town square show how divided people are over the school board’s decision to fire a science teacher accused of preaching his Christian beliefs in the classroom and burning crosses on students’ arms.

John Freshwater, 52, was fired last month after an outside consulting firm released a report concluding that he taught creationism and was insubordinate in failing to remove a Bible and other religious materials from his classroom at Mount Vernon Middle School.

Some residents consider him a courageous fighter for religious freedom. Others say he has brazenly violated the church-state divide.

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Personally I’m not really a fan of Christopher Hitchens so I enjoyed this a little too much:

Late last year, the writer, polemicist and fierce proponent of the US-led invasion of Iraq Christopher Hitchens attempted, in a piece for the online magazine Slate, to draw a distinction between what he called techniques of “extreme interrogation” and “outright torture”.

From this, his foes inferred that since it was Hitchens’ belief that America did not stoop to the latter, the practice of waterboarding – known to be perpetrated by US forces against certain “high-value clients” in Iraq and elsewhere – must fall under the former heading.

Enraged by what they saw as an exercise in elegant but offensive sophistry, some of the writer’s critics suggested that Hitchens give waterboarding (which may sound like some kind of fun aquatic pastime, but is probably best summarised as enforced partial drowning) a whirl, just to see what it was like. Did the experience feel like torture?

And amazingly, he has done just that.

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The word freedom gets tossed around a lot. It seems like the mot-du-jour for anyone smart enough to realize that manipulating people is as easy as telling them that such an important value might be taken away.

A few years ago, Creationists wanted people to “tech the controversy”. That was their angle, and they had managed to make a few inroads in schools. After a devastating ruling in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, it was time for them to go on the offensive. That’s why they’ve decided that the best way to push back is by invoking people’s sense of fairness and use the word “academic freedom” like they understand what that means.

The Governor of Louisiana, in his “infinite wisdom”, has helped pass a new bill that allows school to approve supplemental classroom materials to critique scientific theories they disagree with. In other words, religious creationists will bring in their intellectually disingenuous “intelligent design” into classrooms.

That means that if a school board is stupid enough to try and sneak their crap into biology classes, they open the door for possible litigation. Considering that the Dover trial cost over 2 million dollars in legal fees, you might be wondering what these idiots were thinking. It boils down to one thing: If you martyr small, ignorant school districts by feeding them to the courts, only to have them lose and become stifled in debt, you will create the illusion that government is out to take people’s freedom away. It will also look, to the uneducated many, that science is deadly afraid of intelligent design.

Here’s my proposal to the ACLU, or any other group thinking it’s a good idea to sue the schools that will take this opportunity to try and teach their creationist garbage: go after the legislators instead. If you go after these tiny, “we don’t know what we are doing wrong” school districts, you will only garner sympathy for their cause. You’ll also be regarded poorly for sending underfunded schools further into debt, likely decreasing the overall quality of their education. If you want to fight someone, fight the ringleaders, not the pawns.

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From Ars Technica:

This is a story that starts in triumph, takes a detour through farce, and inadvertently ends raising some profound questions. The triumph is one of scientific progress in the study of evolution; the farce comes courtesy of those who run Conservapedia, who apparently can’t believe that any scientific evidence can possibly support evolution. The questions, however, focus on what access the US public should have to the research that their tax dollars support.

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