If you like Apes (not monkeys), then you might enjoy Escape to Chimp Eden.

I find this show fascinating.

It’s about Eugene Cussons a South African Chimp Sanctuary Director, who goes out and rescues abused chimps and teaches them how to live in the wild at his Sanctuary.

Chimps are — incredibly — dangerous — animals.

In one fascinating episode, Eugene had to enter the children’s enclosure, however, there was one adult male chimp who lived there.

Eugene always needs to get the permission of the adult chimp before he can enter. To do this, he holds out his arm and hand.

If the adult chimp sees him, he may either charge at Eugene or in return hold out his outstretched hand.  If he does the latter, Eugene can enter the enclosure and work with the children apes.  If he does the former, Eugene could be dead.

I watched the Daily Show and was looking forward to their guest: “<Somebody-Something> discusses faith in Science”.

“Oooo,” I thought.  “This should be good.”

It was not.

It was Marilynne Robinson, who appears to be another “Moderate” who — in her book Absence of Mind — thinks we’d be better off to mash religion and science together, like colors from a paint box.  [You get an ugly brown when you do that — by the way.]

“We need the best insights from Science and the best insights from religion.”

She claims.  That would be a more lopsided outcome than a World Cup Match against North Korea.

Here’s the clip if you want to see Robinson and Stewart constantly agreeing that they know how to improve science.

Coolness from this excellent episode of  Nature called Clever Monkeys.

Monkeys are not only capable of speech but also of grammar. Monkeys, not Apes!

Diana monkeys combine calls to make sentence-like messages. This requires grammar. The meaning of the “sentence” depends on what sounds are included and in what order. Added sounds convey more information, like “maybe,” or “not urgent.”

Yet another skill thought to belong only to the domain of humans.

Happy Everybody Draw Muhammad Day!

Draw Muhammad Day: Summer Picnic with Jesus, Christopher Hitchens and the Prophet Muhammad

Don’t be fooled.  This is incredabily blaphemous and disrepectiful of other people’s religious dogma, no matter how much friendship and fun is being had.

It’s so nice to live in a free society where such joyful and unifying images like this one are not banned.

As posted on Pharyngula, Swedish Cartoonist Lars Vilks was attacked during a University lecture. After this event, his website was hacked and firebombs were planted in his house.

David Frum points out that the crowd of spectators who outnumbered the protesters 10 to 1 remained passive during the protest, while the police were slow to respond to protect the speaker. This silence and lack of enforment from authorities is despressing.

Daily life in Sweden and other European countries is increasingly governed by an unwritten set of rules very different from the country’s formal law.

The formal law forbids assault and upholds free speech rights. The actual rules of the game, however, concede that certain assaults and certain violations of free speech rights may proceed with impunity. Police arrested two men for disrupting the Vilks event; both were released without charge.

I do think silence is what allows these kind of pre-enlightenment mentality to continue.

It’s a good thing May 20^th is Draw Muhammad Day.  Time to flex those free speech muscles.

I can’t decide.

It’s a book of letters between Rabbi Shmeul Boteach and Uri Geller.

Including an extra special bonus Forward by the always credible Deepak Chopra who has this to say “Through their exchanges we discover our own humanity.”

If you’re not familiar with the Rabbi, he’s a frequent Hitchens debater and author of Kosher Sex and — I kid you not — Dating Secrets of the Ten Commandments.

If you don’t know Uri Geller, well, all you have to do is Google him. Be sure to use “Google Suggest” for best accuracy.

Tanya over at Webcomic Beacon was kind enough to invite me on a podcast with Steve from Tree Lobsters to discuss skeptic comics.

I can only hope I didn’t embaress myself too much.

You can listen to the podcast on the episode page.

Update: Hooray! I’m probably wrong!

Given the comments on this post, I decided to take a closer look.  I found an earlier post on Skepchick in which they did actually show the cartoon.

It is more comforting to think that Skepchick wouldn’t actually censor or refuse to show images that may offend the religious and the recent post was probably more an attempt at satire.

Although I do have to offer up my own version of satirical censorship.

——–Original Post Below——–

Skepchick is a great skeptic site, but I was deeply saddened by their recent choice of self-censorship.

In a post about cartoonist Kurt Westergaard’s withdraw from an Atheist conference due to fears of safety, Skepchick blogger Rebecca Watson posted his controversial Mohammed cartoon, but chose to have it “slightly edited”.

By continuing to censor these cartoons in a free society, it only makes legitimate criticism of religion more taboo and our society less free.

Skepchick may have self-censored “for protection of Skepchick writers”, but it comes at the cost of protection for artists and cartoonists like myself, who choose to express their views not through words, but images.

Take the example of cartoonists Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who had death threats leveled against them for depicting the Islamic prophet Mohammed in South Park (in a bear suit no less).

The Prophet Mohammed

When asked to comment, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)—a moderate religious group—said nothing about the cartoon.

Oh, of course they said death threats were wrong but they also declined to say the cartoonists had a right to free speech and declined to say that although they may disagree with Parker and Stone’s views they support their right to say them.

Want more examples?

• With the Danish Cartoons the Catholic Church said that free speech “does not imply the right to offend the religious” and former President Bill Clinton compared the cartoons to anti-semitism.
• And on Salman Rushdie, Western “moderate” religious figures could only say that blasphemy was the problem, not the murder for hire fatwa.

Next time a cartoonist is in trouble, don’t be a moderate.  Speak up for free speech.

“To sin by silence, when we should protest,
 makes cowards out of men.”  – Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Well, except for this.

But the first 2 minutes of Jame Randi’s recently posted TED Talk is a brilliant bit on how easily we can be fooled and how this short coming of ours is exploited every day.