The wretchedness of door-to-door evangelists. [From Drunk on religion - Pat Condell - You Tube]

tcd004 writes “At a conference on digital media at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI attacked the idea of transparency in the Internet age, warning that digital transparency exacerbates tensions between nations and within nations themselves. And increases the ‘dangers of… intellectual and moral relativism,’ which can lead to ‘multiple forms of degradation and humiliation’ of the essence of a person, and to the ‘pollution of the spirit.’ All in all, it seemed a pretty grim view of the wide-open communication environment being demanded by the Internet age.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[From Pope Rails Against the Internet and Transparency]

And it lets us find out about what the catholic church has been up to that it would rather not have us know about.

oDDmON oUT writes “MSNBC is reporting that a Columbia Business School study shows those who hold power over others make better liars. According to one of the study’s coauthors, ‘It just doesn’t hurt them as much to do it.’ For the average liar, she said, the act of lying elicits negative emotions, physiological stress and the fear of getting caught in a lie. As a result, she added, liars will often send out cues that they are lying by doing things like fidgeting in a chair or changing the rate of their speech. But for the powerful, the impact is very different: ‘Power, it seems, enhances the same emotional, cognitive, and physiological systems that lie-telling depletes. People with power enjoy positive emotions, increases in cognitive function, and physiological resilience such as lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Thus, holding power over others might make it easier for people to tell lies.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[From Study Shows People In Power Make Better Liars]

Or maybe liars are better at gaining positions of power. Fake degree on the wall and such.

Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds. [From Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ]

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.

Not exactly surprising.

“For the eleventh time, Inkwell rings in the New Year with a visit from Bruce Sterling, to address the State of the World and Things Various and Sundry…” Always good fun. [From Bruce Sterling’s State Of The World 2010]

Irish atheists defy a blasphemy law by publishing quotes it considers anti-religious, including by the Pope, on its website. [From Irish atheists challenge new law]

It seems likely the Irish Govt. will avoid this confrontation. Another case of selectively applied laws.

Religion ‘an oddity to ministers’: “The Archbishop of Canterbury accuses ministers of treating religious faith as an ‘eccentricity’ practised by ‘oddities’.”

(Via BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition.)

That’s surprisingly savvy of them!