click here to see bigger picture

We spent the Day at Blue Marsh Lake as a family. We also had Barry’s Father along and Barry’s sister and her whole family. Here are some pictures…..

Here is my new look. I shaved off all my hair except for the top of my head.

Dear Friend,

Imagine that one day Facebook suddenly erased your identity from its social network-  What would you do?  The right to an online identity is something that most of us have come to take for granted, yet there are millions of people in every part of the world who are denied this right.

What we love about Facebook is the ability for people to create and customize online identities to reflect our lives. When it comes to languages, we can list virtually any language in the world, or even make up languages- how else could we show off our fluency in “Language of Love”?  If our ability to choose religions, languages, and interests are limitless, why should Facebook impose limits on something as essential as gender?

Join me and urge Facebook to become a vehicle, not a roadblock, in the uphill drive for recognition and respect of trans identities:

www.allout.org/facebook

Grab the closest book or Magazine to you. Go to page 56. Copy the 5th sentence.

Stone meteorites, which account for 94 percent of these bodies in space (called meteoroids there), have low metal content because they originated in the outer, stony mantles of asteroids. -Astronomy  August 2011

Share yours in the comments below.

Funky properties of frozen water may have made life possible.

by Douglas Fox

From the February 2008 issue; published online February 1, 2008

Read the whole thing CLICK HERE

One morning in late 1997, Stanley Miller lifted a glass vial from a cold, bubbling vat. For 25 years he had tended the vial as though it were an exotic orchid, checking it daily, adding a few pellets of dry ice as needed to keep it at –108 degrees Fahrenheit. He had told hardly a soul about it. Now he set the frozen time capsule out to thaw, ending the experiment that had lasted more than one-third of his 68 years.

Miller had filled the vial in 1972 with a mixture of ammonia and cyanide, chemicals that scientists believe existed on early Earth and may have contributed to the rise of life. He had then cooled the mix to the temperature of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa—too cold, most scientists had assumed, for much of anything to happen. Miller disagreed. Examining the vial in his laboratory at the University of California at San Diego, he was about to see who was right.

As Miller and his former student Jeffrey Bada brushed the frost from the vial that morning, they could see that something had happened. The mixture of ammonia and cyanide, normally colorless, had deepened to amber, highlighting a web of cracks in the ice. Miller nodded calmly, but Bada exclaimed in shock. It was a color that both men knew well—the color of complex polymers made up of organic molecules. Tests later confirmed Miller’s and Bada’s hunch. Over a quarter-century, the frozen ammonia-cyanide blend had coalesced into the molecules of life: nucleobases, the building blocks of RNA and DNA, and amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The vial’s contents would support a new account of how life began on Earth and would arouse both surprise and skepticism around the world.

Thoughts???

Declare and share your nonbelief! Although the nonreligious — including one in six U.S. citizens — are a significant segment of the world population, many Americans have never knowingly met a nonbeliever. You can help dispel myths, educate and promote reason by adding your voice, face and message to FFRF’s friendly neighborhood freethinker campaign. FFRF’s “Out of the Closet” billboards and bus signs are going up around the country. Although we can’t put everyone on a real billboard, every nonbeliever can participate in this unique “cyberboard” campaign. (Yours might even be chosen, with your permission, for an actual billboard.) This is your chance to proclaim you’re a freethinker and why. It’s working for the gay rights movement. Now it’s time for atheists and agnostics to come out of our closet. Many faces make Enlightenment work.

http://ffrf.org/out/

I read an post by The Friendly Atheist about Bibles in Doctor’s office’s.

Here, in Lancaster County Pennsylvania, it seems like there are bibles and christian children’s books and magazines in all Doctor and Dentist offices. They seem to assume that everyone in this area is christian and goes to church. The last time I was at the doctor for my daughter to get her shot for school, the new doctor at the office started talking about her church and the things that they are doing. It seems people just assume here that everyone is christian.

What is it like in your area? Is there religious material in your doctor and dentist office? What are your thoughts on Religious propaganda inside the Doctor office? Would you feel different if it was a Qur’an or Book of Mormon?

List of tax exempt status revocations for 2011:
http://www.irs.gov/charities/article/0,,id=240099,00.html

Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.

The lifestance of Humanism—guided by reason, inspired by compassion, and informed by experience—encourages us to live life well and fully. It evolved through the ages and continues to develop through the efforts of thoughtful people who recognize that values and ideals, however carefully wrought, are subject to change as our knowledge and understandings advance.

This document is part of an ongoing effort to manifest in clear and positive terms the conceptual boundaries of Humanism, not what we must believe but a consensus of what we do believe. It is in this sense that we affirm the following:

Knowledge of the world is derived by observation, experimentation, and rational analysis. Humanists find that science is the best method for determining this knowledge as well as for solving problems and developing beneficial technologies. We also recognize the value of new departures in thought, the arts, and inner experience—each subject to analysis by critical intelligence.

Humans are an integral part of nature, the result of unguided evolutionary change. Humanists recognize nature as self-existing. We accept our life as all and enough, distinguishing things as they are from things as we might wish or imagine them to be. We welcome the challenges of the future, and are drawn to and undaunted by the yet to be known.

Ethical values are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience. Humanists ground values in human welfare shaped by human circumstances, interests, and concerns and extended to the global ecosystem and beyond. We are committed to treating each person as having inherent worth and dignity, and to making informed choices in a context of freedom consonant with responsibility.

Life’s fulfillment emerges from individual participation in the service of humane ideals. We aim for our fullest possible development and animate our lives with a deep sense of purpose, finding wonder and awe in the joys and beauties of human existence, its challenges and tragedies, and even in the inevitability and finality of death. Humanists rely on the rich heritage of human culture and the lifestance of Humanism to provide comfort in times of want and encouragement in times of plenty.

Humans are social by nature and find meaning in relationships. Humanists long for and strive toward a world of mutual care and concern, free of cruelty and its consequences, where differences are resolved cooperatively without resorting to violence. The joining of individuality with interdependence enriches our lives, encourages us to enrich the lives of others, and inspires hope of attaining peace, justice, and opportunity for all.

Working to benefit society maximizes individual happiness. Progressive cultures have worked to free humanity from the brutalities of mere survival and to reduce suffering, improve society, and develop global community. We seek to minimize the inequities of circumstance and ability, and we support a just distribution of nature’s resources and the fruits of human effort so that as many as possible can enjoy a good life.

Humanists are concerned for the well being of all, are committed to diversity, and respect those of differing yet humane views. We work to uphold the equal enjoyment of human rights and civil liberties in an open, secular society and maintain it is a civic duty to participate in the democratic process and a planetary duty to protect nature’s integrity, diversity, and beauty in a secure, sustainable manner.

Thus engaged in the flow of life, we aspire to this vision with the informed conviction that humanity has the ability to progress toward its highest ideals. The responsibility for our lives and the kind of world in which we live is ours and ours alone.

For historical purposes, see preceding Humanist Manifestos: I and II.

Click here for a version in Spanish (pdf).
Click here for a version in Portuguese (pdf).

Humanist Manifesto is a trademark of the American Humanist Association-© 2003 American Humanist Association