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The YesButNoButYes blog has a list of the top ten Christian tourist traps, with photos. Their list includes the Institute for Creation Research’s museum, but not Hovind’s Dinosaur Adventure Land. My favorites on the list (based on the photos) are Golgotha Mini Golf in Cave City, Kentucky (I especially like the propane tank that appears to be connected to Jesus at the 18th Hole–does he also function as a space heater?) and the decaying Holy Land USA in Waterbury, Connecticut. I’ve not visited any of the places on the YesButNoButYes list, though I’ve visited similar places, such as the Garden of Gethsemane park in Tucson (a blatant establishment clause and Arizona Constitution violation on municipal property at 602 W. Congress).

These recordings are from 2005, but comic Eugene Mirman received calls from a nonprofit that was recommending United American Technologies as a long distance provider because AT&T, MCI, and Sprint promote gay marriage. United American Technologies, by contrast, was billed as a “Christian-based telephone company,” with a “Faith, Family, and Freedom” campaign. Apparently the nonprofit was using prerecorded calls, which asked you to press one if you oppose gay marriage. Mirman really gets them going–they accuse MCI of running a child pornography website, and say that they aim to destroy the ACLU, for example. These calls were all illegal under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, even though they were initiated by a nonprofit, since these calls were clearly intended to advertise UAT. Prerecorded calls to a residence are illegal. United American Technologies is based in Oklahoma. The calls came from “Faith, Family, and Freedom,” a 527 organization created by Oklahoma Rep. Lance Cargill, who is now Oklahoma’s Speaker of the House. There are more details about these calls in Wikipedia’s entry on United American Technologies. (Hat tip: The Two Percent Company.) ...

Anson Kennedy got this wonderful set of directions on how to get to a location in New Jersey: Stan Schwartz also received some creative directions:

I’ve got a couple of websites of hierarchically organized links that I’ve maintained for quite some time, though I haven’t really worked on them much lately. I currently get more spam link submissions than genuine link submissions to each, so I’d like to request contributions of legitimate entries. One is my skeptical links site, which is fairly extensive, especially on a few topics such as Scientology, creationism, the websites of skeptical groups, and critiques of organized skepticism. The other is my security links site, which is much less extensive, but still has some useful links, mostly on security and hacking tools and security standards. Contributions are welcome–just go to the appropriate area and click the “add a site” link at the top of the page. ...

Chirag Mehta has created “tag clouds” for a bunch of presidential speeches (including State of the Union addresses), with a slider so you can see how the topics have changed over time. Chris Mooney points out that George W. Bush’s State of the Union addresses have used “God” and synonyms twelve times, and “climate change” or “global warming” zero times.

The Kearny Board of Education released a memo and statement last week regarding “the expression of personal religious beliefs by professional staff in the classroom." They have indicated that they will be hiring an outside professional to provide training to its teachers about “Constitutional parameters” and will institute a formal policy “expressing its strong commitment to the principle that personal religious beliefs of our institutional staff have no place in our classrooms."

P.Z. Myers pointed out the beginnings of a backlash against “the new atheism” in the Wall Street Journal on January 5, now on January 16 Ken Ham at Answers in Genesis has joined in: We’ve warned you about them before on our website—but now they’re on a much more aggressive march all across America. No longer are they just staying in their classrooms or writing books and articles in the comfort of their offices. They are “the new atheists,” and they are aggressively going after your children, your liberties, and your faith! … These atheists are not just publicity seekers. They are very serious about their mission. Dawkins, from England, was recently crusading across America to proclaim his atheism to newspapers, websites, and at public meetings. ...

Anderson Cooper gives Sylvia Browne’s bogus claims the kind of media treatment they deserve. At about the midpoint, Cooper gives statistics for U.S. belief in psychics: 13% of the population, 8% of men and 18% of women. Those who’ve consulted a psychic, by region: South: 8%, West: 13%, Midwest: 11%, East: 19%. The latter numbers probably reflect Christianity acting as a deterrent to consulting a psychic. (Hat tip to Respectful Insolence.)

During my long plane flights this week, I used some of my time to catch up on reading back issues of The Economist. Here were a few of the stories I found particularly interesting in the January 6-12, 2007 issue: “Medicine at the Top of the World” (p. 65): LYING in an intensive-care ward is a world away from climbing Everest, but a connection will be drawn this spring when 45 scientists and 208 volunteers tackle the mountain to bring back information about oxygen deprivation. The reason they are going is that hypoxia (a lack of oxygen in cells, which can lead to death) is the one thing that links practically all patients in intensive-care wards—and there is no better place to study it than in the thin air of the world’s highest mountain.The story describes the Xtreme Everest expedition, which will take 250 people up Mount Everest, setting up mobile labs at various elevations to study hypoxia. The volunteers will climb up to 5,300 meters, and 16 climber-scientists will ascend to the summit to become the first to have blood drawn at the top of the world’s tallest mountain. The research will be used to try to identify the genetic basis of people’s ability to handle hypoxia, which couldn’t be easily be conducted on patients in intensive care due to not having enough of them in one place at the right time. “The logic of privacy” (pp. 65-66): ...

The blogosphere was in an uproar about Section 220 of Senate Bill 1, on the basis of a press release from astroturf organization GrassRootsFreedom, run by conservative political activist Richard A. Viguerie. This press release claimed that this section of the “Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007” would require all bloggers with audiences of 500 or more people to register with the government. Slashdot promoted the press release with its typical inaccuracy, with very few commenters actually bothering to read what Section 220 actually said. In fact, the bill only required registration for bloggers with audiences of 500 or more people who are paid. And not just paid, but paid at least $25,000 per quarter. And not just paid at least $25,000 per quarter, but paid at least $25,000 per quarter by a client to promote lobbying on a political issue. Specifically, Section 220 required “paid grassroots lobbying firms” to register and file reports, and defined those as a person or entity that “is retained by 1 or more clients to engage in paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying on behalf of such clients; and receives income of, or spends or agrees to spend, an aggregate of $25,000 or more for such efforts in any quarterly period." The Captain’s Quarters blog was one of those that correctly identified the misinformation from Viguerie. Viguerie has been a major player in U.S. politics for a long time, and is described as follows in my “Fundamentalism is Nonsense” pamphlet (6th edition, 1986): Richard A. Viguerie, of the Richard A. Viguerie Company of Falls Church, Virginia, runs one of the largest direct mail fundraising companies in the country. He has raised money for such organizations and individuals as the Panama Canal Truth Squard, Gun Owners of America, the American Security Council, Citizens for Decency Through Law, Terry Dolan’s National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), the Conservative Caucus, and the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, Senators Jesse Helms (NC), Jim McClure (ID), Orrin Hatch (UT), William Armstrong (CO), John Warner (VA), and Representatives Philip Crane (IL), Mickey Edwards (OK), Larry McDonald (GA), and Phil Gramm (TX). Viguerie also publishes the magazine Conservative Digest [Conway 82, pp. 83-84, 87].The reference is to Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman’s 1982 book, Holy Terror: The Fundamentalist War on America’s Freedoms in Religion, Politics, and Our Private Lives (Doubleday). Viguerie’s efforts were successful, and Section 220 was removed from S. 1 by Senate Amendment 20. ...