Yale University is organizing a conference on “Personhood Beyond the Human” for December 6-8, 2013. It will feature, among other proponents of personhood rights for animals, notorious infanticide and bestiality-promoting ethicist Peter Singer.

The conference is co-sponsored by the animal rights group Nonhuman Rights Project and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, in collaboration with the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and the Yale Animal Ethics Group.

“The event will focus on personhood for nonhuman animals, including great apes, cetaceans, and elephants, and will explore the evolving notions of personhood by analyzing them through the frameworks of neuroscience, behavioral science, philosophy, ethics, and law,” reads a description of the conference on its website.

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“Saving abandoned animals, one ride at a time…”

Guaranteed to brighten your day–watch it all (Note: video is linked at the top, if no video capacity you can read the story. Make sure to check out the map of how long the ride is from Texas to Tok, Alaska where the dog was delivered).

Also, please note that the website for Operation Roger Operation Roger (a ministry which, as the video notes, was begin through a prayer) is there.

Some dodge the stones and bottles thrown at their tents in the dead of night, others watch helplessly as their tarpaulin shelters, huddled in camps sprawled across the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, are destroyed with knives and sticks.

Rights group Amnesty International has collected dozens of such testimonies from Haitians who have been kicked out of makeshift camps set up by those left homeless by the January 2010 earthquake. Many camp residents have moved out, but just over 320,000 Haitians still live in them.

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Watch it all. LOLOL.

The start of hurricane season is 6 weeks away, and four independent forecast outlets unanimously agree it will be a busy one.

Colorado State’s Bill Gray and protege Philip Klotzbach, the pioneers of seasonal hurricane forecasting, predict a blockbuster hurricane season, with 18 named storms, 9 hurricanes and 4 major hurricanes. (The 1981-2010 30-year averages are 12.1 named storms, 6.4 hurricanes, and 2.7 major hurricanes.)

“We anticipate an above-average Atlantic basin hurricane season due to the combination of an anomalously warm tropical Atlantic and a relatively low likelihood of El Niño,” Klotzbach and Gray write in their outlook, released last week.

Ugh–read it all.

The ”˜”˜overwhelming majority’’ of Anglican leaders are in favour of a new, modern Christ Church Cathedral with not a single person voting for restoration.

The church held its synod yesterday where more than 220 Anglican representatives across the diocese expressed their views on the design options for the earthquake-damaged cathedral.

Last week the church revealed three designs for the Christchurch icon ”“ restoration, a reinterpretation of the original cathedral in modern materials, or a completely new building with a sculptural spire.

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This blew my mind–watch it all (in case of any trouble, there is another link there). Wow.

Absolutely, positively not to be missed–read it all and enjoy all the wonderful pictures (Hat tip: AH).

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Anglican leaders cannot spend insurance money from the Christ Church Cathedral on the new cardboard cathedral, a judge has confirmed.

In a judgment released yesterday, Justice Graham Panckhurst ruled that the use of $4 million of insurance money from the cathedral to fund the $5.3m transitional project near Latimer Square was a breach of the terms of the Cathedral Trust.

Church Property Trustees (CPT) asked the High Court for direction on whether the money could be used to fund the cardboard cathedral after it was called into question last year.

Read it all and the judgment is here [pdf]

The Anglican Church has revealed three options for the rebuild of the ChristChurch Cathedral.

The public can now vote for their favourite, before the church leaders make the final decision.

The fate of the most well-known church in the country has been tied up in court cases and shrouded in secrecy since the big quake in 2011, but today the three final options for the cathedral’s future were unveiled to the public.

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Of all of the creepy and crawly things that you can think of, tarantulas probably are near the top of the list when it comes to scariness. Well, get ready to add another terrifying arachnid to your list, because a new type of tarantula has been discovered in northern Sri Lanka.

Ranil Nanayakkara, a local researcher, and his team found the tiger spider and named it Poecilotheria rajaei, after a local police investigator, Michael Rajakumar Purajah. Purajah helped the team of scientists navigate the remote area where the spider was found.

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Check it out–lol.

Check it out–lol.

A cat is an animal intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.

–Garrison Keillor, Reader’s Digest, April 2013 edition, page 117

Full Moon Silhouettes from Mark Gee on Vimeo.

Check it out

Courtesy of the really cool Slothville website:

BUCKET OF SLOTHS from Lucy Cooke on Vimeo.

Oh so cute–watch it all; KSH.

Look at all all of them (Hat tip: Selimah Harmon).

I caught this by accident recently and was hypnotized by its beauty. It is simply splendid–on central park, on the seasons, on the birders, and, oh my–on the birds.

You can read more about it here and if you are up for it there is a spectacular bird show there to whet your appetite.

Someone apparently hacked into the Emergency Alert System and announced on KRTV and the CW that “dead bodies are rising from their graves” in several Montana counties.

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Read it all.

A behemoth storm packing hurricane-force wind gusts and blizzard conditions swept through the Northeast overnight, where more than 650,000 homes and businesses in the densely populated region lost power, roads were impassable and New Englanders awoke Saturday to more than 2 feet of snow.

More than 38 inches of snow fell in Milford in central Connecticut, and an 82-mph wind gust was recorded in nearby Westport. Areas of southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire notched at least 2 feet ”” with more falling. Airlines scratched more than 5,300 flights through Saturday, and the three major airports serving New York City as well as Boston’s Logan Airport closed.

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Wow.

Watch it all.

Members of the Anglican Communion have been asked to provide prayer and financial support for the Diocese of Seychelles which has been badly hit by flooding due to recent extreme weather.

The Primate and Bishop of Mauritius, Archbishop Ian Ernest, has written to supporters to raise awareness of the crisis–which appears to have been largely ignored by global media–and to ask for assistance.

“Following the natural calamity which has hit the Seychelles in the past days, I am sad to inform you that the country and the diocese have suffered heavy losses from the floods,” he wrote. “Church buildings and other important structures have been destroyed. However we give thanks to the Lord as there has been no loss of life.

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A bishop in flood-hit Mozambique has warned of greater suffering if the flooding disaster that has displaced around 70,000 people is not properly addressed.

Bishop of Lebombo Diocese in southern Mozambique, the Rt Revd Dinis Salomão Sengulane said in a recent statement sent to supporters, “The situation is dramatic and it calls for our response if we are to avoid more damages to the lives of people”.

The bishop’s plea comes after devastating floods hit Mozambique following severe rains in southern Africa during the past two weeks.

The United Nations reports that at least 36 people have died and nearly 70,000 have been displaced because of flooding in the country.

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But you don’t believe the dear Lord created it anyway, do you? Hasn’t that got you into trouble with the people who don’t believe in evolution? Not in this country. You get letters but it’s a very easy thing to answer. Someone says: ”˜I believe a God of infinite mercy created every single species and the Lord looks after us and all the animals.’ Well, what about that little African boy, five years old, sitting on the banks of a river, and he’s got a worm in his eye that’s going to turn him blind in three years? Did this God that you talk about actually design this worm and say: ”˜I’ll put it in this boy’s eye?’ To suggest that God specifically created a worm to torture small African children is blasphemy as far as I can see. The Archbishop of Canterbury doesn’t believe that.

He’s supposed to believe it, though, isn’t he? Absolutely not! If you said to the Archbishop of Canterbury: ”˜Are you really telling me that God got some mud, blew in it and made a man and when that man said: “I haven’t got a friend”, he took out one of his ribs, rubbed it in his hands and went “boom, boom”?’ [Rowan] Williams [the last Archbishop of Canterbury] is a highly civilised, educated man. He wouldn’t for a microsecond be so silly as to believe that. But it does put him in an intolerable position.

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One would have hoped that the Seattle opinion and common sense would be sufficient, but FEMA has apparently reverted to a position that provides less than full participation for religious institutions. Its reasons for doing so are not entirely clear but seem to include a mix of constitutional, statutory and regulatory concerns.

Many of these concerns should have been put to rest by the Oklahoma City experience and Congress’s approval of aid to religious organizations there. Nobody suggests that government should entirely rebuild sanctuaries or pay for the printing of prayer books. But if roofs are being repaired and other structural damage is being remediated, the religious nature of what might occur below shouldn’t matter. That is consistent with the reasoning of a 2003 Justice Department opinion that permitted the federal government to provide assistance to help restore the landmarked Old North Church in Boston.

In essence, federal disaster relief is a form of social insurance meant to help repair a tear in our social fabric. Houses of worship are an important part of that social fabric and are often where people turn for comfort and support after a disaster. After Hurricane Sandy, they are equally in need of repair and should be equally eligible for assistance.

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Watch it all–such fun.