Haha the lard wills it :)
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WESTAMPTON, N.J. — A man who leaned over a plate of sizzling fajitas to pray can’t sue a Westampton restaurant because the dish burned him, an appellate court ruled Wednesday.
Hiram Jimenez sought damages from Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill and Bar after a March 2010 incident at the chain’s restaurant on Burlington-Mount Holly Road. But an appellate panel said Applebee’s can’t be held responsible because the hot food posed an “open and obvious” danger.
According to the ruling, Jimenez ordered fajitas that were placed in front of him in a “sizzling skillet.” When he bowed his head “close to the table,” the ruling says, Jimenez heard “a loud sizzling noise, followed by ‘a pop noise’ and then felt a burning sensation in his left eye and on his face.”
In an incident report prepared for Appelebee’s, Jimenez said he was burned on his face, neck and arms after “grease popped” on the fajitas. Read more
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Growing up in a Jehovah’s Witness family is different. As a child, I didn’t celebrate birthdays, Christmas or July 4. Nor did I, or anyone I knew, mix with non-Witness families in Little League or Girl Scouts. Instead, I spent much of my time sharing the “good news.” I used to go door-to-door on my own with a big, strong, well liked man in my congregation, named Jonathan. I was just 9 and 10 when he repeatedly sexually abused me.
It is really hard for kids to speak up when they’re abused. But the Jehovah’s Witnesses make it a lot harder.
They have a “2 Witness” rule, which says that anyone who accuses an adult of abuse must have a second witness. If there is no second witness, the accuser is punished for a false accusation – usually by ordering that no Witness may talk with or associate with the “false” accuser. This is called dis-fellowshipping. For a kid raised only with other Witnesses, it was horrifying. Even your parents would have to ignore you. It was more terrifying than Jonathan.
It was the elders of my congregation who had assigned Jonathan to team up with me. When we separated from the others, he forced me into his pick-up truck and drove us to his house. Then he would say “Let’s play”. It happened too many times. Like everyone else in the congregation, my parents liked “Brother” Jonathan and trusted him in our family. Read more
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It took less than a year for a Turkish court to block the website of the country’s first official atheism association.
The Atheism Association, the first of its kind in any Muslim-majority country, was officially founded in Istanbul’s Asian-side neighborhood of Kadıköy in April 2014. However, the Gölbaşı 2nd Civil Court of Peace in Ankara has finally moved to block the association’s website, according to the group’s statement on March 3, 2015.
As of March 4, Turkish internet users could not access http://www.ateizmdernegi.org without using tools to bypass blockings, such as a VPN.
The court ruling cites Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Law, which forbids “provoking the people for hate and enmity or degrading them.”
The association has issued a statement to criticize the blocking. “Three months ago, the European Space Agency managed to put Philae on a one-km wide comet named 67P, which has a speed of 135,00p km/h, after a 3,907-day-long journey to a location 500 million km away. Meanwhile, courts in Turkey are still busy blocking websites, citing laws with vague expressions and trying to make a certain belief dominate the others,” it stated.
The Atheism Association also described the court’s decision as “a historic example of accumulating legislative, executive and judicial powers in one hand,” claiming that Turkey is “drifting away from the level of modern civilizations as fast as its judiciary system drifts away from reason.” Read more
Indian religious “guru” Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh has been accused of persuading 400 of his estimated 50 million followers worldwide to cut off their own testicles to “bring them closer to God.” The incident took place in 2000 at a hospital run by the 47-year-old multi-millionaire spiritual leader in India, but has only recently come to light due to the victims’ fear of retribution from Ram Rahim’s followers, or fear of being made social outcasts if they came forward with their stories. We take a look at the investigation into the alleged manipulation, in this Lip News clip with Elliot Hill and Mark Sovel.
– With fire-breathing religion figuring anew in global conflicts, and political discussions at home often dominated by the nuttery of the Christian right, you might get the sense that somebody’s god is ready to mug you around every street corner. But if you’re the type who doesn’t like to hang your hat on organized religion, here’s a bit of good news: in America, your numbers are growing.
There are more religiously unaffiliated people in the U.S. today than ever before. Starting in the 1980s, a variety of polls using different methodologies have come to the same conclusion: people who do not identify with religious labels are on the rise, perhaps even doubling in that time frame.
Some call them “nones”: agnostics, atheists, deists, secular humanists, general humanists, and people who just don’t care to identify with any religious group. It’s not exactly correct to call them nonbelievers, because some still have faith and spirituality in some sense or another. A 2012 Pew study noted that 30 percent of these people believe in “God or universal spirit” and around 20 percent even pray every day. But according to the latest research, Americans checking the “none of the above” box will make up an increasingly important force in the country. Other groups, like born-again evangelicals, have grown more percentage-wise, but the nones have them beat in absolute numbers. Read more
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– Pupils at Durham Free School were taught creationism during science lessons, according to newspaper Schools Week.
The school, which has already been ordered to close by the Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, has been accused of harbouring “prejudiced views” of children from other faiths that went unchallenged by teachers.
A teacher at the school reportedly asked Year 7 pupils to complete a worksheet as part of their science homework that stated: “Only the Earth has life on it. God has designed the solar system so that the Earth can support life.”
Any school, academy or free school that is found to teach Creationism as a scientific fact would be in breach of the law and its funding agreement.
Inspectors from education standards watchdog Ofsted also said that they had found evidence of bullying, poor standards in the classroom and financial mismanagement at the free school in investigations last month. Read more
Everyone’s favorite Science Guy chats with Jake Roper of Vsauce3 (about the importance of science education in ensuring future generations remain creative, experimental, and evolutionarily competitive. Science education empowers students, says Nye. It fuels our curiosity in a way that is essential for the long term survival of humanity.
