Mike Tidmus

David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization (video: TEDtalks Director at YouTube) TED: David McCandless turns complex data sets (like worldwide military spending, media buzz, Facebook status updates) into beautiful, simple diagrams that tease out unseen patterns and connections. Good design, he suggests, is the best way to navigate information glut — and it may [...]

Catholic Church and UK Colluded in Northern Ireland Bomb Cover-Up (video: Atheist Media Blog at YouTube) What exactly is it going to take to get the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church arrested and frog marched up to Den Haag to be put on trial for their incessant and ruthless crimes against humanity? Catholic Church [...]

“People will then often say, ‘But surely it’s better to remain an Agnostic just in case?’ This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I’ve been wrong all along, and there is in [...]

Condell: “Save us from over-sensitive humourless idiots.” (video: Pat Condell at YouTube) Why can’t anyone take a joke any more? Spectator.co.uk Most people reading this will at some point have had the misfortune to meet one of those piggy-faced people who at a certain point in the conversation says, ‘Excuse me, but I find that [...]

“How did it happen? For centuries, religion was insulated from criticism in Britain. First its opponents were burned, then jailed, then shunned. But once there was a free marketplace of ideas, once people could finally hear both the religious arguments and the rationalist criticisms of them, the religious lost the British people. Their case was [...]

From the National Organization for Marriage — AKA The Losers: “With a stroke of his pen, Judge Walker has overruled the votes and values of 7 million Californians who voted for marriage as one man and one woman. This ruling, if allowed to stand, threatens not only Prop 8 in California but the laws in [...]

“David Bahati MP in Uganda is currently trying to get enacted a law under which men engaging in ‘aggravated’ sodomy – where it occurs against a minor, someone disabled, inflicts HIV/Aids or is part of a rape – will incur the death penalty … Yet the Bible prescribes precisely the penalty Bahati is proposing for [...]

“Your statement is vague enough to have more than one outcome in practice. But you and your Government need to be aware from the outset that the Catholic Church will not register civil partnerships nor celebrate same-sex unions: not now, not in the future, not ever, no matter what legislation or regulations your Government enacts [...]

If this were a secular head of state, there’s no way the host country would be expected to foot a £20m bill – that’s $30,126,016.00 US Dollars. The citizens of Britain are being asked to pay for a visit by a twat in a silly hat who, when announcing his visit, insulted the United Kingdom [...]

“I think it’s perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don’t know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away. Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it’s because he’s ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they’re responsible [...]

Oh. My. Effing. Dog! Anti-Pope protesters urged to show tolerance Pink News The prime minister’s special representative for Pope Benedict’s visit to the UK says protesters should show restraint. Chris Patten, a former governor of Hong Kong and Tory minister, urged critics of the Pope to show tolerance. The Pope is due to visit the [...]

“Hopefully, anyone involved in the so-called treatment of homosexuality will realize that the medical profession considers them dangerous charlatans, and will reconsider their beliefs. I also sincerely hope that any vulnerable gay person who is unhappy about their sexuality takes notice of this motion and realizes that it is the world that needs to change, [...]

From an article in The Independent, we learn the British Medical Association has determined that conversion therapy — the changing of gay people into straight people — is bullshit. Quelle surprise ! BMA declares that ‘conversion therapy’ for gays is harmful www.independent.co.uk Gay rights campaigners were celebrating “a watershed moment” yesterday after doctors said so-called [...]

“I am not very impressed with theological arguments whatever they may be used to support. Such arguments have often been found unsatisfactory in the past. In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, “And the sun stood still… and hasted not to go down about a whole day” (Joshua x. 13) and [...]

Channel 4 Britain reports on the campaign to pardon Alan Turing (video: Channel 4 News) The father of modern computer science, the man who cracked the German Enigma Code — hastening the end of WWII, an out atheist and a gay man, Alan Mathison Turing was born on this date in 1912. This is an [...]