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(PhysOrg.com) -- A software developer has created a "chatbot" program for Twitter to automatically detect set phrases associated with arguments put forward by those skeptical of anthropogenic global warming, and to send automated replies of set phrases debunking their arguments. Nigel Leck’s creation is @AI_AGW (also known as Turing Test), and the script searches the Twitter site for hundreds of phrases he believes tend to be used by those who think global warming is not occurring, or who think it is occurring but is not anthropogenic or entirely anthropogenic. When the script finds one of the phrases it then "tweets"...

In light of voluminous evidence that pioneering sexologist Alfred Kinsey and his associates were guilty not only of scientific fraud but serious criminality – culminating this week with WND's exposé of one victim of Kinsey's notorious "child sexuality" studies conducted by pedophile "researchers" – Indiana legislators are calling for the defunding of the Kinsey Institute, located on the campus of state-subsidized Indiana University. State representatives Cindy Noe and Woody Burton emphasized that any effort to cut off the Kinsey Institute hinges on electing Republican majorities in the state legislature. "I don't think the Kinsey Institute is a proper use of...

The Board of Supervisors met last night to vote on the lease renewal by the Saudi government of county-owned buildings for the notorious Islamic Saudi Academy in Fairfax, Virginia. The Islamic Saudi Academy is a school in Northern Virginia and is operated by the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia. Regular Atlas readers are well aware of this dangerous institution -- see here. Their valedictorian is serving life in prison for plotting to assassinate then-President Bush. Back in 2008, State Department officials would not close the Saudi-financed Islamic school in Northern Virginia that failed to eliminate violent and intolerant language in...

Vice President Joe Biden on Michelle Obama: She's the "nicest person you'll ever meet." Biden made a surprise visit to a school in Redwood, CA on Tuesday morning.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation is asking Americans to wear purple on Oct. 20 to show their efforts to support the end of anti-gay bullying. GLAAD has set up a website that lists a number of steps participants can take to help stop the bullying of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people

The media are in a full-scale hyperventilation following Tuesday's separation of church and state comments by Delaware Republican senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell. As an Investor's Business Daily editorial points out, O'Donnell was right when questioned about this issue during a debate with Democrat candidate Chris Coons, and all the nattering nabobs of negativism filling the airwaves are wrong: There is, of course, no such passage. Those scoffing law scholars might want to look at the Constitution's unadorned text instead of the judicial activist law review articles that take up so much of their day. What the Constitution does say, in...

Americans may still see the Girl Scouts of America (GSA) as an apolitical group but the group’s leader has acknowledged a marked change in the GSA. “We’re not your mother’s Girl Scout troup,” GSA executive director Marty Evans has said. “In 1972, they dropped loyalty to their country from their oath in favor of ‘I will do my best to be honest and fair,’” J. C. Willke writes in the October 2010 issue of the Life Issues Connector newsletter. “In 1975 the first Catholic Archdiocese cut off all support for the Girl Scouts because of their sex-ed program.” “During 1993,...

Officials on college campuses across the nation are alarmed at a wave of recent suicides involving Christians who have been harassed by homosexual activists. The main stream media isn’t covering the story so, as usual, I have taken it upon myself to do their jobs for them. None of the following eight cases have been covered by any of the three major news networks. Jonathan was a community college student in California. He was giving a speech on the impact Jesus Christ has had in his life and in the lives of others he knows. During the speech, he quoted...

Students at the University of Delaware lined up for hours to nab a seat at last night's highly anticipated debate between Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell and Democrat Chris Coons. But after it was over, most of the students we spoke to said neither candidate did themselves any favors. "I didn't think either of the candidates acted very maturely," said senior Eric McGinnis. O'Donnell, pressured to make up a 19-point gap in the polls, was on the attack from the start - slamming Coons on everything from raising taxes in the county he runs to his personal wealth. She even...

Two weeks ago, a handful of bloggers wrote scathingly about Ken Burns’ use of former Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin — two prominent writers who have faced credible plagiarism and fabrication charges that you can read about here, here and here — as prominent interview subjects in Burns’ most recent documentary about baseball, “The Tenth Inning.” Tom Scocca, a blogger for Slate, headlined his September 30 post “Mike Barnicle, Fraud and Plagiarist, Helps Guide America Through Baseball’s Era of Shame.” Scocca, to put it mildly, writes in anger.Speaking of baseball and its scandals, the other...

New York, NY, October 12, 2010 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today criticized Carl Paladino for a series of anti-gay remarks, including his assertion that children should not be "brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid or successful option." Ron Meier, ADL New York Regional Director, issued the following statement: We are appalled by Carl Paladino's comments denigrating homosexuality and suggesting that a homosexual lifestyle is not "valid." His statements are an affront to all New Yorkers, and are particularly disturbing in light of several recent hate crimes targeting the LGBT community in the New York Metropolitan Area....

About the only factor still keeping Columbus on the calendar in places like New York is his role in the Italian-American community, which has made many Mayors and Governors reluctant to toss the great explorer completely overboard. But the very fact that Columbus’ place in history now comes down to a single ethnic group’s pride, rather than his role in the discovery and development of the entire country, shows just how fragmented American history has become. While Ferdinand and Isabella may have brought Columbus back in chains, modern day political correctness banishes him to the darkened dungeon of non-personhood, erasing...

A female truck driver was arrested after she allegedly ripped up a lithograph at a Colorado museum that purportedly shows Jesus having sex. Kathleen Folden, 56, of Kalispell, Mont., spent the night in the Larimer County jail after being arrested at the Loveland Museum Gallery, The Coloradoan of Fort Collins reported. Police said she used a crowbar to break through the plexiglass protecting the lithograph and then shredded it.

On the afternoon of April 1, 1983, Barack Obama, then a senior at Columbia University, made his way into the Great Hall of Manhattan’s Cooper Union to attend a “Socialist Scholars Conference.” There Obama discovered his vocation as a community organizer, as well as a political program to guide him throughout his life. The conference itself was not a secret, but it held a secret, for it was there that a demoralized and frustrated socialist movement largely set aside strategies of nationalization and turned increasingly to local organizing as a way around the Reagan presidency — and its own spotty...

Many critics argue that Christopher Columbus gave us a devil's bargain. In October 1492 that Italian explorer, working for Spain, opened America to his fellow Europeans. The result: we got a prosperous New World by impoverishing, enslaving and murdering the natives who were already here. But this view fails to distinguish between two types of exploitation—one over other humans and the other over nature: the former which should be expunged from our moral codes and civilized society, the latter which is the essence of morality and civilization. The former form of exploitation was suffered especially by the tens of millions...

Republican Carl Paladino, a tea party candidate for governor of New York, said Monday on NBC's "Today" show that he doesn't discriminate against homosexuals. On Sunday, in a discussion of gay marriage at a meeting with Brooklyn Hasidic Jewish leaders, Paladino said children were being "brainwashed" into accepting homosexuality as "valid."

A Montana woman faces criminal charges after she used a crowbar to destroy a blasphemous exhibit at a gallery in Colorado. Kathleen Folden was arrested after she smashed an exhibit that depicted Jesus in a lewd act. The exhibit, by artist Enrique Chagoya of Stanford University, had caused outrage among Christians.

WASHINGTON, DC, October 6, 2010 — Despite the popular, state-sponsored ideology that denies the existence of prejudice based on racial or skin color differences in Mexico, a new study from The University of Texas at Austin provides evidence of profound social inequality by skin color. According to the study, individuals with darker skin tones have less education, have lower status jobs, are more likely to live in poverty, and are less likely to be affluent. Andrés Villarreal, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and the Population Research Center affiliate, published his findings in the October 2010 issue of...

<p>The universe was in chaos after the Big Bang kick-started the cosmos, a new study suggests.</p> <p>While one might expect the explosion that began the universe to wreak some havoc, scientists mean something very specific when they refer to chaos. In a chaotic system, small changes can cause large-scale effects. A commonly cited example is the "butterfly effect" — the idea that a butterfly beating its wing in Brazil can bring about a tornado in Texas.</p>

A former Silsbee, Texas, high school cheerleader did not have a First Amendment right to refuse to cheer for a basketball player she claimed had sexually assaulted her, a federal appeals court panel has ruled. The student — known in court papers as H.S. — attended a party after a Silsbee High School football game in October 2008, when she was 16. She alleged that several individuals sexually assaulted her, including then-football players Rakheem Bolton, Christian Rountree and an unidentified juvenile. In January 2009, a racially divided grand jury from Hardin County refused to indict the players, who did not...