Goodbye to God

John Loftus, author of Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, finally saw the light after many wasted years as a preacher.

Let's hope a lot of people will follow his inspiring example.

Loftus is also the author of Why I Rejected Christianity: A Former Apologist Explains.

Why truth matters

A review of Why Truth Matters, a very good book by Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom, can be found here.

Love and sex with robots

Stuart Jeffries reviews Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships and How to Build Your Own Spaceship: The Science of Mass Space Travel for The Guardian, here.

The other Roswell

Former fighter pilot Robert B. Willingham has either gone senile in his old age, or he must need some easy money real bad. How else to explain his account of how "he chased a UFO across West Texas and watched it crash along the Rio Grande River," retold in a book by two ufologists, according to this press release.

The book is called The Other Roswell (how many are there by now?).

The wisdom of whores

Professor Steve Jones of University College London takes a look at Elizabeth Pisani's The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS, in which Pisani shows how billions have been wasted on disease-preventing methods that are guaranteed to fail, because they are aimed at the wrong targets and driven by politics rather than science.

How our minds (don't) work

Review in Newsweek:

In his new book, "Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind," New York University professor Gary Marcus uses evolutionary psychology to explore the development of that "clumsy, cobbled-together contraption" we call a brain and to answer such puzzling questions as, "Why do half of all Americans believe in ghosts?" and "How can 4 million people believe they were once abducted by aliens?"

Children's story about gay penguins is the most objectionable book in America

Once again, And Tango Makes Three tops the most "objectionable" list in U.S. libraries, according to the American Libraries Association.

Related posts

• Top ten most challenged books in America

Washington is the second-weirdest state in America

According to Newman Communications, publishers of Weird Washington: Your Travel Guide to Washington's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets by Jeff Davis and Al Eufrasio:

Yes, there's a tale about a bigfoot mating with a human woman and producing a son. Whether the descendents haunt the woods will have to wait for a sequel.

Source

Tom Paulu, "Kelso Theatre Pub ghost highlighted in 'Weird' book," The Daily News Online, May 8, 2008

England: Home to overweight, binge-drinking, reality TV addicts

According to The Rough Guide to England.

More on this here.

Brain myths

Busted in Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life by neuroscientists Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang.

Some of the myths can be found here.

Guide to the pretty women of Paris

Speechwriter Pierre-Louis Colin "has just blown an enormous raspberry at political correctness" with the publication of his guide, and for that he should get a big medal, at the very least.

The reaction from feminists was predictable.

Panicology and a skeptic's toolkit

Panicology is the title of a book about recent scare stories ("from GE food to climate change, from alien abduction to RSI, from runaway credit card debt to cot death"), by British science writer Hugh Aldersey-Williams and journalist Simon Briscoe.

A review can be found here.

Does the Bible explain UFOs and alien abductions?

No. But someone called Terry James (who is the editor of the "#1 Biblical prophecy website on the Internet") has written a book in which he explains that the aliens who are abducting people are really fallen angels: "One of the evil objectives of the sexual union of fallen angels and women as we move toward the end-times, could be to create a non-human society on earth which would be impossible to be redeemed by Christ during the tribulation described in the book of Revelation."

I'm guessing that's a bad thing.

The art of gold-digging

In Russia, an entire publishing industry has sprung up to teach women how to snare an oligarch.

Some of the titles are surprisingly appropriate: Bitches' Table Book, Bitch Seeks Man, and The Bitch's Beginner's Course.

In these books, the aspiring bitches learn what to do and, especially, what not to do (for example, avoid dressing in the "battle gear of the Ukrainian prostitute"). Such advice is well needed, since out of every 100 men in Russia, "ten of them will be gay, 30 alcoholics, 10 drug addicts, 20 impotent, leaving a paltry 30 men," according to Oksana Grussova, who spent 15 years hunting rich men and therefore must be an expert.

Related posts

• Harry Heads, Willabees and Throne Rangers

Quacks on the rack

Olivia Laing reviews Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us All and Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine for The Observer.

These are great books that should be read by everyone. As Laing says, "it is impossible to read even a page without being shocked by the stupidity, incompetence, arrogance and corruption of a great swath of those who practise alternative medicine."

Another review of Suckers (by Natalie Haynes for New Humanist) can be found here, and here is a review of Trick or Treatment by Bee Wilson for The Sunday Times.

Science for hire

Here's something for all concerned environmentalists out there to shoot their collective load over: Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health by David Michaels.

Dare to fart to avoid cancer

Not quite the kind of advice you normally get from doctors:

In his book, Le Grand Ménage (Spring cleaning), Frédéric Saldmann invites them to embrace the stereotypical British view of the French and to have a relaxed attitude to bodily functions.

He calls for a "May '68" of the body – an emancipation for belching, breaking wind and sweating profusely. "Eliminating" the two litres of gas produced a day by the average Frenchman "is a natural process", he writes, adding that retaining it can be harmful to the intestines. The French, he adds, should "dare to fart".

Source

Henry Samuel, "Throw caution to wind, France told," The Daily Telegraph, May 2, 2008

Michel Houellebecq is an untalented social climber whose ego is only matched by his dishonesty

Finally, some literary criticism worth taking seriously (it's from his own mother):

“This individual, who alas! came out of my tummy, is a liar, an impostor, a parasite and especially, especially, a little upstart ready to do anything for fortune and fame,” Mrs Ceccaldi, 83, writes in L'Innocente, an autobiography. The onslaught on the petit con (little git) is the revenge of a woman who has been scorned and disparaged by her son in public comments and writings.

...

Mrs Ceccaldi, a Communist Party activist in her youth who now lives in a beach hut on La Réunion island, goes on: “My son, he can f*** off wherever he wants, with whom he wants, because I don't give a stuff about him. But if he has the misfortune to stick my name in one of his things one more time, he's going to get hit in the gob with a walking stick and that'll knock all his teeth out, that's for sure.”

Houellebecq is a fierce critic of Islam, though, so he can't be all bad.

Source

Adam Sage, "Michel Houellebecq in the mother of all book battles," The Times, April 30, 2008

Where did Jesus go?

Where did Jesus go after he died on the cross? That's the weighty question asked by a very scary person called Henry Rhea, who has written a book, apparently, to explain "why Satan has ensured it has remained the biggest story never told."

Rhea knows what really happened: "Jesus was able legally to take Satan's keys of hell and death; restore the kingdom of heaven to the earth; restore man's original image and dominion; release the righteous souls held captive in paradise; and reinstate the law of the spirit of life in Him." So there.

Thinkers of the jungle

Orangutans seem to be smarter than previously thought, having learned to swim across rivers and to fish with sticks, among other things. This behaviour has been captured in photographs published in Thinkers of the Jungle by Gerd Schuster, Willie Smits and Jay Ullal of the Borneo Orang-utan Survival Association.