MetaFilter posts tagged with critical

No critical thought allowed!

cgomez — Fri, 01 May 2009 20:17:16 -0800

James Corbett, a California high-school educator of twenty years, has been found guilty of violating the establishment clause of the first amendment. The lawsuit (PDF) was brought to a U.S. District Court on December 12th, 2007 by student Chad Farnan and his parents with the aid of the legal group 'Advocates for Faith and Freedom' against Corbett and the Capistrano Unified School District as a result of comments made which were critical of Christianity. During the sixteen month legal battle, hundreds of students in support of the teacher demonstrated outside the school while the Farnan family appealed to opinion outlets like 'The O'Reilly Factor'. Two key quotes cited as evidence in the case:

"How do you get the peasants to oppose something that is in their best interest? Religion. You have to have something that is irrational to counter that rational approach." "Conservatives don't want women to avoid pregnancies. That's interfering with God's work. You've got to stay pregnant, barefoot, and in the kitchen and have babies until your body collapses. All over the world, doesn't matter where you go, the conservatives want control over women's reproductive capacity. Everywhere in the world. From conservative Christians in this country to Muslim fundamentalists in Afghanistan. It's the same. It's stunning how vitally interested they are in controlling women."

A Review of Criticality Accidents

ikkyu2 — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:34:42 -0800

A Review of Criticality Accidents (3.7 MB pdf) Do you like reading comp.risks, or CVR transcripts from famous plane crashes? Then you may enjoy this technical analysis of 60 accidents where improper handling of fissile materials led to unexpected critical mass. All the famous names are here - Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, the Argonne National Lab - as well as the famous players: the Demon Core that claimed two lives in separate accidents, and later became the heart of the Bikini atoll ABLE nuclear test; Harry Dahglian; Louis Slotin; and even a cameo by Richard Feynman, who comments on the Dragon experiment in a footnote. Watch for the telltale signs of prompt critical - the blue glow, the flash of light, the wave of heat - and look up Roentgen Equivalent Man, and tuballoy in the comprehensive glossary at the end. I can't be the only one who likes this stuff, can I? (Via AskMe.)

News portal for independent media

tb0n3 — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 12:39:21 -0800

Blue Pill Red Pill This site just launched recently, by the looks of it. It bills itself as a "national database of all news critical, independent, and investigative this side of the galaxy." Seems to be a way of introducing people to verified and rated independent media sources, rather than aggregating content or providing articles itself. I haven't seen much like it out there.

Eep

featherboa — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 00:03:45 -0800

[Newsfilter] Terror plot disrupted. Scotland Yard has arrested about 18 potential terrorists who were planning to blow up UK to USA flights mid-air. The UK threat level is now critical - "an attack is expected imminently". And there's chaos at the airports where hand luggage has been banned from all flights.

nedrichards — Thu, 10 May 2001 13:09:57 -0800

Britain, down the drain or in heaven? Interesting article from today's Independent (UK) that discusses how Britain's future will pan out. It seems that when we have an election we've got to go and become strangely self-critical before reverting to the usual refined apathy.