STARKE, Fla. ? A group of atheists unveiled a monument to their nonbelief in God on Saturday to sit alongside a granite slab that lists the Ten Commandments in front of the Bradford County courthouse.
As a small group of protesters blasted Christian country music and waved ?Honk for Jesus? signs, the atheists celebrated what they believe is the first atheist monument allowed on government property in the United States.
?When you look at this monument, the first thing you will notice is that it has a function,? said David Silverman, president of American Atheists. ?Atheists are about the real and the physical, so we selected to place this monument in the form of a bench,?
It also serves another function: a counter to the religious monument that the New Jersey group wanted removed. It?s a case of if you can?t beat ?em, join ?em.
American Atheists sued to have the stone slab with the Ten Commandments taken away from the courthouse lawn in this rural, conservative north Florida town best known for a prison that confines death row inmates. The Community Men?s Fellowship erected the monument in what?s described as a free speech zone. During mediation on the case, the atheist group was told it could have its own monument, too.
?We?re not going to let them do it without a counterpoint,? Silverman said. ?If we do it without a counterpoint, it?s going to appear very strongly that the government actually endorses one religion over another, or ? I should say ? religion in general over nonreligion.?
About 200 people attended the unveiling. Most were supportive, though there were protesters, including a group from Florida League of the South that had signs that said ?Yankees Go Home.?
?We reject outsiders coming to Florida ? especially from outside what we refer to as the Bible Belt ? and trying to remake us in their own image,? said Michael Tubbs, state chairman of the Florida League of the South. ?We do feel like it?s a stick in the eye to the Christian people of Florida to have these outsiders come down here with their money and their leadership and promote their outside values here.?
After the cover was taken off the 1,500-pound granite bench Saturday, people rushed to have their pictures taken on it. The bench has quotes from Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Madalyn Murray O?Hair, the founder of American Atheists. It also has a list of Old Testament punishments for violating the Ten Commandments, including death and stoning.
?Some people think it?s an attack simply by us exerting our existence. They put a monument on a public lawn that, if you put it in context, says atheists should be killed,? Silverman said. ?It is an attack, but it?s an attack on Christian privilege, not an attack on Christians themselves, and not so much an attack on Christianity.?
At one point someone in a car driving by tossed a toilet seat and a roll of toilet paper at the crowd. Neither struck anyone.
At another point, Eric Hovind, 35, of Pensacola jumped atop the peak of the monument and shouted his thanks to the atheists for giving him a platform to declare Jesus is real. Atheists shouted at him, and he stepped down after about a minute. One man yelled that religion is a fairy tale.
?The problem is it?s not a fairy tale,? Hovind said. ?We definitely have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.?
Hovind and Tubbs did say they respect the right of the group to install the monument, even if they disagree with the message behind it.
In a March 23, 2013, file photo Jennifer Lopez performs at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort and Spa in Phoenix. Jennifer Lopez sang ?Happy Birthday? to the leader of Turkmenistan during a performance DSaturday June 29, 2013, but her representative says had she known there were human rights issues in the country, she wouldn't have performed there at all.(Photo by Rick Scuteri/Invision/AP, file)
In a March 23, 2013, file photo Jennifer Lopez performs at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort and Spa in Phoenix. Jennifer Lopez sang ?Happy Birthday? to the leader of Turkmenistan during a performance DSaturday June 29, 2013, but her representative says had she known there were human rights issues in the country, she wouldn't have performed there at all.(Photo by Rick Scuteri/Invision/AP, file)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Jennifer Lopez sang "Happy Birthday" to the leader of Turkmenistan during a show, but her representative said she wouldn't have performed there at all if she had known there were human rights issues in the country.
The singer and actress performed in the former Soviet bloc country on Saturday night. A statement released Sunday by her publicist to The Associated Press said the event was hosted by the China National Petroleum Corp. and wasn't a political event.
However, the country's leader, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, did attend. Berdimuhamedow has been criticized for oppressive rule by human rights organizations. Human Rights Watch describes Turkmenistan as "among the most repressive in the world."
After a United Nations visit last month, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic said the country had made progress in the area of human rights, but "a lot more work is needed to complete this process and to ensure practice is in line with international standards."
Lopez's publicist says the event was vetted by Lopez's staff: "Had there been knowledge of human rights issues any kind, Jennifer would not have attended."
The birthday serenade was a last-minute request made by the corporation to Lopez before she took the stage, and she "graciously obliged," the statement said.
Lopez is the latest celebrity to face scrutiny for performing in countries or for leaders with human rights violations.
In 2011, Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank profusely apologized after attending a birthday party for Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who had been accused of torture and killings; she said she didn't have a full understanding of the event.
Beyonce, Nelly Furtado, 50 Cent, Mariah Carey and Usher were paid handsomely to perform at parties linked to the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. All later announced plans to donate their performance fees to charity and said they hadn't known the leader was connected to terrorism.
Lopez has no other performances scheduled in the country, her publicist said. Her performance fee wasn't disclosed.
___
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A dome of extreme hot weather is baking much of the West, but whether or not the moment is historic will be up to the thermometer at Death Valley?s Furnace Creek, where the world?s hottest temperature ? 134 degrees ? was recorded in 1913.
By Patrik Jonsson,?Staff Writer / June 29, 2013
The thermometer at the Furnace Creek resort is already at 120 degrees before noon in Death Valley National Park in Furnace Creek, Calif. Excessive heat warnings will continue for much of the Desert Southwest as building high pressure triggers major warming in eastern California, Nevada, and Arizona.
Chris Carlson/AP
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Potential record temperatures are inching up across the American West as a high pressure dome slides across gauzy skylines and trembling desert canyons. But only one place can determine whether a new world heat record will be set this weekend: Death Valley, Calif.
Skip to next paragraph Patrik Jonsson
Staff Writer
Patrik Jonsson is the Atlanta-based correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. He writes about national affairs from a decidedly Dixie frame of mind.
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Death Valley is a seared moon landscape that periodically blooms with fields of wildflowers. A thermometer near Furnace Creek recorded a 134 degree day in o July 10, 1913, which remains the hottest recorded air temperature on planet earth.
As heat warnings reverberate on Saturday from Phoenix to Las Vegas and hospitals gear up for a spike in heat exhaustion victims and perhaps worse, weather watchers are watching to see whether this heat wave breaks any records.
The heat wave is "a huge one," National Weather Service specialist Stuart Seto said, according to the AP. "We haven't seen one like this for several years, probably the mid- to late 2000s."
Phoenix was forecast to hit nearly 120 on Saturday. The record in that part of the world, Arizona?s Valley of the Sun, is 122.
Energy-sapping heat is expected to spread across Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah, potentially to dangerous levels. Las Vegas may see 117 degrees this weekend, which would mark only the third time the Nevada gambling capital got so hot. An average of 658 Americans die from heat-related causes every year, far more than are hurt or killed by tornadoes.
"This is the hottest time of the year, but the temperatures that we'll be looking at for Friday through Sunday, they'll be toward the top," weather service meteorologist Mark O'Malley tells the AP. "It's going to be baking hot across much of the entire West."
Forecasters say the temperature in Death Valley, meanwhile, could inch to 130, at least close to one of the earth?s most extreme weather moments. The world in 1913 was far less polluted and industry, cars, and planes emitted a fraction of modern-day carbon emissions, which many earth scientists today blame for climate change.
At any rate, Death Valley has been pretty hot in recent years. On July 12, 2012, nighttime temperatures dropped to only 107 degrees after a 128 degree day, tying a world record for highest daily low temperature set a few days earlier in Oman. That same day, the 24-hour mean temperature in Death Valley clocked in at 117.5 degrees. That 24-hour period was the hottest in recorded world history.
A federally protected subtropical desert and once a supplier of gold, silver and borax, Death Valley has a unique mix of landscape and weather that create what Chris Carlson, an AP photographer, described as ?unrelenting heat so bad it makes my eyes hurt, as if someone is blowing a hair dryer in my face.?
As air rises from the near plant-less valley floor, it cools as it gains elevation, eventually dropping back to the valley floor again, denser than before. As superheated localized air masses thus circulate, Death Valley becomes a convection oven.
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I decided to keep it simple & use the suggested questions for my intro.
1) What's your username? Why'd you pick that username? faeriebreath. & honestly, I don't remember why I picked it...but whenever I look at it now, it makes me think of someone who eats fairies by the bowl full. It's also my LJ username, so if anyone still uses LJ, feel free to add me. & the title of the thread is just because I needed a title. heh.
2) How'd you find this place? Why did you look it up? Google. I was looking up roleplay forums. :D
3) How long have you roleplayed on forums or chat? On what sites? Did you start with tabletop games or such? I started in 6th or 7th grade, but once I graduated high school I sort of stopped.
4) In coming to RPG, what've you been looking for specifically? A new home for roleplay? Better roleplay? Just to get back into roleplay, and to get more practice with writing fiction & developing characters.
5) What kinds of roleplay are you interested in? Fantasy? Sci-fi? Fantasy mostly. Not necessarily "high fantasy," I enjoy fantasy themes that take place in the real world too. And if the story is good enough, I'll do "realistic" rp's. Preferably modern since I'm not too great at history. XD I'm really awful at sci-fi RPs, I think...but I'm willing to give them a try.
6) What're your hobbies? Reading, duh. Crafts. Gardening. Doodling. Taking photos of stuff (plants & animals, mostly). Making collages & mediocre paintings. Playing Neopets. :P
7) What's something you're good at besides writing? I occasionally sew clothes (I make my own or upcycle stuff I find at thrift stores). I also make jewelry.
8) Do you have any friends here at RPG that invited you here? Would you want to make more friends while you're here? No & yes.
9) Do we get cookies for looking through your thread and saying hello? This is the best that I can do:
Divorce early in childhood affects parental relationships in adulthoodPublic release date: 28-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lisa M.P. Munoz spsp.publicaffairs@gmail.com 703-951-3195 Society for Personality and Social Psychology
June 28, 2013 - Divorce has a bigger impact on child-parent relationships if it occurs in the first few years of the child's life, according to new research. Those who experience parental divorce early in their childhood tend to have more insecure relationships with their parents as adults than those who experience divorce later, researchers say.
"By studying variation in parental divorce, we are hoping to learn more about how early experiences predict the quality of people's close relationships later in life," says R. Chris Fraley of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Psychologists are especially interested in childhood experiences, as their impact can extend into adulthood, but studying such early experiences is challenging, as people's memories of particular events vary widely. Parental divorce is a good event to study, he says, as people can accurately report if and when their parents divorced, even if they do not have perfect recollection of the details.
In two studies published today in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Fraley and graduate student Marie Heffernan examined the timing and effects of divorce on both parental and romantic relationships, as well as differences in how divorce affects relationships with mothers versus fathers. In the first study, they analyzed data from 7,735 people who participated in a survey about personality and close relationships through yourpersonality.net. More than one-third of the survey participants' parents divorced and the average age of divorce was about 9 years old.
The researchers found that individuals from divorced families were less likely to view their current relationships with their parents as secure. And people who experienced parental divorce between birth and 3 to 5 years of age were more insecure in their current relationships with their parents compared to those whose parents divorced later in childhood.
"A person who has a secure relationship with a parent is more likely than someone who is insecure to feel that they can trust the parent," Fraley says. "Such a person is more comfortable depending on the parent and is confident that the parent will be psychologically available when needed."
Although there was a tendency for people to experience more anxiety about romantic relationships if they were from divorced families, the link between parental divorce and insecurity in romantic relationships was relatively weak. This finding was important, the researchers say, as it shows that divorce does not have a blanket effect on all close relationships in adulthood but rather is selective affecting some relationships more than others. They also found that parental divorce tends to predict greater insecurity in people's relationships with their fathers than with their mothers.
To help explain why divorce influences maternal relationships more than paternal ones, and to replicate the first study's findings, Fraley and Heffernan repeated their analysis with a new set of 7,500 survey participants. Unlike in the first study, however, they asked the participants to indicate which of their parents had been awarded primary custody following their divorce. The researchers speculated that paternal relationships were more insecure following divorce because mothers are more likely than fathers to be awarded custody.
The majority of participants 74 percent indicated that they had lived with their mothers following divorce or separation, while 11 percent indicated living with their fathers; the remainder lived with grandparents or other caretakers. The researchers found that people were more likely to have an insecure relationship with their father if they lived with their mother and, conversely, were less likely to have an insecure relationship with their father if they lived with him. The results were similar with respect to mothers.
While it is premature to speculate on the implications of this work for decision-making regarding child custody, the work is valuable as it suggests that "something as basic as the amount of time that one spends with a parent or one's living arrangements" can shape the quality of child-parent relationships, write Fraley and Heffernan.
"People's relationships with their parents and romantic partners play important roles in their lives," Fraley says. "This research brings us one step closer to understanding why it is that some people have relatively secure relationships with close others whereas others have more difficulty opening up to and depending on important people in their lives."
###
The study, "Attachment and Parental Divorce: A Test of the Diffusion and Sensitive Period Hypotheses," R. Chris Fraley and Marie E. Heffernan, was published online on June 28, 2013, and is forthcoming in print in September 2013 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, a journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP).
SPSP promotes scientific research that explores how people think, behave, feel, and interact. The Society is the largest organization of social and personality psychologists in the world. Follow us on Twitter: @SPSPnews
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Divorce early in childhood affects parental relationships in adulthoodPublic release date: 28-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lisa M.P. Munoz spsp.publicaffairs@gmail.com 703-951-3195 Society for Personality and Social Psychology
June 28, 2013 - Divorce has a bigger impact on child-parent relationships if it occurs in the first few years of the child's life, according to new research. Those who experience parental divorce early in their childhood tend to have more insecure relationships with their parents as adults than those who experience divorce later, researchers say.
"By studying variation in parental divorce, we are hoping to learn more about how early experiences predict the quality of people's close relationships later in life," says R. Chris Fraley of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Psychologists are especially interested in childhood experiences, as their impact can extend into adulthood, but studying such early experiences is challenging, as people's memories of particular events vary widely. Parental divorce is a good event to study, he says, as people can accurately report if and when their parents divorced, even if they do not have perfect recollection of the details.
In two studies published today in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Fraley and graduate student Marie Heffernan examined the timing and effects of divorce on both parental and romantic relationships, as well as differences in how divorce affects relationships with mothers versus fathers. In the first study, they analyzed data from 7,735 people who participated in a survey about personality and close relationships through yourpersonality.net. More than one-third of the survey participants' parents divorced and the average age of divorce was about 9 years old.
The researchers found that individuals from divorced families were less likely to view their current relationships with their parents as secure. And people who experienced parental divorce between birth and 3 to 5 years of age were more insecure in their current relationships with their parents compared to those whose parents divorced later in childhood.
"A person who has a secure relationship with a parent is more likely than someone who is insecure to feel that they can trust the parent," Fraley says. "Such a person is more comfortable depending on the parent and is confident that the parent will be psychologically available when needed."
Although there was a tendency for people to experience more anxiety about romantic relationships if they were from divorced families, the link between parental divorce and insecurity in romantic relationships was relatively weak. This finding was important, the researchers say, as it shows that divorce does not have a blanket effect on all close relationships in adulthood but rather is selective affecting some relationships more than others. They also found that parental divorce tends to predict greater insecurity in people's relationships with their fathers than with their mothers.
To help explain why divorce influences maternal relationships more than paternal ones, and to replicate the first study's findings, Fraley and Heffernan repeated their analysis with a new set of 7,500 survey participants. Unlike in the first study, however, they asked the participants to indicate which of their parents had been awarded primary custody following their divorce. The researchers speculated that paternal relationships were more insecure following divorce because mothers are more likely than fathers to be awarded custody.
The majority of participants 74 percent indicated that they had lived with their mothers following divorce or separation, while 11 percent indicated living with their fathers; the remainder lived with grandparents or other caretakers. The researchers found that people were more likely to have an insecure relationship with their father if they lived with their mother and, conversely, were less likely to have an insecure relationship with their father if they lived with him. The results were similar with respect to mothers.
While it is premature to speculate on the implications of this work for decision-making regarding child custody, the work is valuable as it suggests that "something as basic as the amount of time that one spends with a parent or one's living arrangements" can shape the quality of child-parent relationships, write Fraley and Heffernan.
"People's relationships with their parents and romantic partners play important roles in their lives," Fraley says. "This research brings us one step closer to understanding why it is that some people have relatively secure relationships with close others whereas others have more difficulty opening up to and depending on important people in their lives."
###
The study, "Attachment and Parental Divorce: A Test of the Diffusion and Sensitive Period Hypotheses," R. Chris Fraley and Marie E. Heffernan, was published online on June 28, 2013, and is forthcoming in print in September 2013 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, a journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP).
SPSP promotes scientific research that explores how people think, behave, feel, and interact. The Society is the largest organization of social and personality psychologists in the world. Follow us on Twitter: @SPSPnews
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
CNC mills are usually the antithesis of portable. Sometimes they're as big as trucks. But ShopBot Tools, a North Carolina-based CNC Tool manufacturer, is trying to change that with the Handibot, a CNC Mill you can carry around.
The Handibot is a three-axis CNC mill that's run through a smartphone, tablet or desktop app. First, you model whatever you plan to cut, drill, or carve in the app. Then here's where the Handibot is really different from traditional CNC equipment?rather than bringing the material to the machine, you bring your Handibot to the plastic, wood, aluminum, or whatever material you're using. So you've got a lot of flexibility. It should work on a table, floor, or ceiling, and it's ready to go when you hit start. Even though it's portable, ShopBot says it doesn't lose any of the precision of one of the traditional CNC big boys.
So, yes, it's a Kickstarter campaign. And you have to kick in $1,995 if you want to get your hands on a Handibot. But ShopBot says that the crowdfunding aspect will help them build a community of makers around the Handibot, a la Thingiverse or other comparable maker communities. What's really exciting about the Handibot? ShopBot doesn't really know what people could do with it. But the fact that it is portable leaves the options wide open. [Kickstarter via Core77]
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Public release date: 28-Jun-2013
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