How to Peep the Perseid's Peak 58
The Christian Science Monitor has a short piece with some tips on watching the Perseid meteor showers, which will peak over the next few evenings. MSNBC also has a good suggestion if you'd like to watch the show but can't because of weather: watch online, courtesy of NASA and the Slooh space telescope. I hope the skies will cooperate so I can see them from darkest Maine.
Please stop supporting the CSM (Score:3, Interesting)
Please do not link to the CSM or support them - their parent organization (which is where the profits from the CSM go) spreads belief that if you get sick, it's punishment for not being a good enough Christian Scientist/follower of god, and that you should not seek medical treatment. That's some seriously fucked up shit.
If you're a dimwitted adult and you want to deny yourself medical care, fine - but the children of Christian Scientists don't have a choice, and this cult endangers the lives of tens of thousands of children who depend upon their guardians for sound medical care decisions.
Mary Baker Eddy was relentlessly criticized (rightly so) by the press of her time for being absolutely batshit crazy (which she was. Someone should've tattooed "correlation is not causation" backwards on her forehead.) She got all huffy about being called a wacko all the time, and started the CSM - specifically to have a newspaper that wouldn't criticize her and would present her with a worldview she found acceptable.
Yes, they do good reporting. It doesn't matter - the money still supports a cult.
Re:Please stop supporting the CSM (Score:5, Interesting)
I must defend the CSM. I knew their technology reporter, and he turned me on to Linux.
I can't speak with authority on the Christian Science religion, but I have met a lot of hospital medical ethicists who deal with them and other religions that discourage medicine. There were some big problems with Christian Science up to 1993, when they lost a big lawsuit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_science#Children.27s_rights.2C_relationship_with_medicine [wikipedia.org] Since that time they seem to be moving away from their anti-medicine position significantly. I don't know what their vaccination practices are now, but Mary Baker Eddy said that they should get vaccinated if that's the law. These problems of children (and adults) dying for lack of medical care come up now more often with the Evangelical churches that interpret the Bible "literally", and with "naturalistic" practitioners.
The CSM is an excellent newspaper. They won 7 Pulitzer prizes. I read a book about newspapers in New England, and one chapter was about the CSM. They (like most other journalists) gave the CSM a great evaluation, although they pointed out the ironic failing of a newspaper based in Boston, one of the centers of academic medicine, that didn't cover medicine. OTOH, they said that the CSM was edited with a philosophy of trying to contribute something positive to the world, which sounds hokey but if you look at their coverage they were really doing it. They lost money. They refused to take cigarette or liquor ads. They never covered crime, except for a broad view as a social problem that we should try to do something about. Most of their circulation was by mail, which arrived a day or two later, so they eschewed deadline coverage of the day's news and instead wrote more analytical, fact-checked, thoughtful stories.
They were actually quite liberal, and during the times when the war hawks were beating the drums of war, the CSM took one step back, reported the objective facts, and treated our "enemies" like human beings, when even papers like the New York Times were doing their job as stenographers to the military-industrial complex. Foreign correspondents in war zones are awfully expensive, but it was worth it. They also had local freelancers, who knew the people and understood the culture. For example, the CSM had some of the earliest coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which they actually talked to people on both sides and treated their ideas seriously. In national coverage, they don't treat politics like a spectator sport where the Democrats and Republicans are supposed to score points against each other. They realize that we have problems to solve.
At one time I read the CSM more or less regularly, and it was pretty good. Like the Wall Street Journal, they would have one crazy editorial every day, and the rest of the paper was independent, rock-solid objective reporting. You don't find too many newspapers like that, now or ever.
They were missing the cynicism in most of the media that "things are corrupt and we can't do anything about it so let's go along with it and make smug jokes about it." See for yourself http://www.csmonitor.com/ [csmonitor.com]
Every religion is crazy in some way, and I don't understand how intelligent people can fall for them, but the fact is that a lot of people, including some of my friends, follow religions and do good things. The Catholics are crazy (and hypocritical) about sex, abortion and even contraceptives, but they run hospitals and bring lawsuits to help the homeless. The evangelical Christians believe in creationism, but Forest Mimms is the best electronic engineer I ever saw. The Jews are acting like Nazis towards the Palestinians, but then there's Noam Chomsky and the rest fighting for social justice. The Scientologists I don't have to tell you about, but a bunch of Scientologists were running Earthlink, which was one of the best ISPs at
Re:a waste. (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with the CSM isn't that the news is suspect, it's that it advertises (though name and association) a fairly harmful religion.
Christian Science is not only into faith healing, but they actually encourage their members to avoid modern medicine (including vaccines). For all that people were talking about boycotting Ender's Game because of Orson Scott Card's beliefs against homosexuals. I'm doubtful that Christian Science is any more accepting of gays, but even if they are Christian Science is still killing members through their health practices. And while the effects of an Ender's Game boycott on gay rights are fairy dubious, the success of the Christian Science Monitor directly benefits Christian Science.
Their contributions to journalism are fine and I'm not sure I'd actually boycott them, but just because the paper is good doesn't mean they don't cause harm in other ways.
Re:a waste. (Score:4, Interesting)
Ditto to this.
If critics were to equally discredit every group based on the worst behaviour of members of that group then every reputable research organisation would be destroyed.
The issue here isn't the people in the group, but the actual beliefs that define the group.
The defining belief of Christian Science involves avoiding modern medicine in favour of healing through prayer. This is a belief that kills people.
As a responsible and humane person I believe it's my duty to criticize them.