June 6, 2011
John Pieret is a snark genius, and you should read his latest, especially checking his links.
And check out his recent WTF moment, not to mention his non-snarky, but moving and thoughtful essay on respect.
June 5, 2011
Tom Rees reports on a smart new study which tests the effect of religiosity on attitudes toward torture in the US. Using two different large surveys, the researchers first simply examined the correlation between religiosity and support for permitting torture. Realizing that conservative political…
May 31, 2011
Nadia El-Awady, who you'll recall as a science writer in Egypt who helped chronicle the revolution from Tahrir Square (she's also organizing this year's World Conference of Science Journalists in Doha), tried an experiment:
I experimented last week. I took off my hijab - the headscarf many Muslim…
May 31, 2011
Peter Freed wants to you to know that Jonah Lehrer is Not a Neuroscientist. Lehrer doesn't claim to be, of course. He's a journalist and science writer who covers developments in neuroscience, and a good one at that.
Freed is concerned about how Lehrer handled a recent study on "the wisdom of…
May 27, 2011
In the video above, you can see my creation/evolution hero of the last school year. Zack Kopplin is a Louisiana high school senior (heading to Rice University next fall) who decided to fight the misnamed Louisiana Science Education Act. That bill, passed in 2008, opens the door to creationist…
May 26, 2011
Having a cold isn't as much fun as you'd think. Back to regular blogging shortly.
If you haven't registered for SkeptiCal '11 yet, there's still time before Sunday.
May 25, 2011
Razib Khan has a good response to my post yesterday about biopunks, including this:
I obviously support this movement and its intents (I've met a few of the people who are prominent in it). But we need to keep perspective here. This will probably be analogous to the free or open source software…
May 24, 2011
On DNA Day, 23 and Me had a sale on their personal genomics service. They'd do their standard scan of your genome for free, as long as you paid for a year's worth of their online subscription service.
A much smaller version of that same genome survey would have cost you a thousand dollars or more…
May 23, 2011
Reviewing Elaine Howard Ecklund's Science vs. Religion for the Washington Post last May, I noted:
Rice University sociologist Elaine Ecklund offers a fresh perspective on this debate in "Science vs. Religion." Rather than offering another polemic, she builds on a detailed survey of almost 1,700…
May 23, 2011
I mentioned before that last weekend I was going to a post-Rapture party/conference thrown by local atheists, and I did, and it had its definite moments. I wasn't there on Rapture day itself (I was at Maker Faire then), but the crowd the following Sunday was undiminished, and the talks were…
May 21, 2011
I took the picture above at Maker Faire today, at a display by a group called Kinetic Steam Works, which uses coal-powered steam engines to power various devices. This shot captures the steam, certainly, but also the kinetics (the moving wheel, blurred with speed), and also work, a belt conveying…
May 18, 2011
Caroline Crocker taught creationism in some DC-area colleges, and the colleges didn't renew her contract, so she was put on wingnut welfare with a gig at the ID creationist IDEA center. There, she tells us, she helped create "safe houses" and fake identities so students could secretly come "out of…
May 17, 2011
Remember when Ben Stein, promoting his schlockumentary in Canada, dismissed the ADL's concerns about his mistreatment of the Holocaust by saying "it's none of their fucking business"? Classy, right?
Anyway, having been booted from the pages of the New York Times for violating the paper's ethics…
May 17, 2011
Tomorrow (Wednesday), Bay Area Skeptics will be hosting the excellent Rebecca Watson for a Skeptics in the Pub Quiz. Watson is a founder of Skepchick, a host of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, and a force for skepticism and sensibility in a world that is too frequently senseless. As a member…
May 16, 2011
Scientists Take Darwin on the Road | Miller-McCune:
"I want to send our scientists to rural schools and communities around the U.S. to talk about evolution for Darwin Day 2011." Jory Weintraub's words hung undigested in the silent air of the management meeting at our North Carolina center last July…
May 12, 2011
In Ophelia Benson's writeup of the Ron Lindsay/Chris Mooney discussion, there's a passage about the Templeton Foundation that jumps out as deeply problematic:
Then they talked about the Templeton Foundation, and Mooney's "fellowship," and the fact that it was controversial. Would you accept a…
May 12, 2011
PZ Myers responds to a podcast debate between Chris Mooney and Ron Lindsay about accommodationism and New Atheism. I haven't listened to the podcast, so I don't know who won or who lost, or what brilliant points were or weren't made. I do know that the title of PZ's post reflects the general New…
May 11, 2011
I can't say I've ever understood the adulation Noam Chomsky gets in some lefty circles. His arguments are generally fairly banal, drifting into a caricature of liberalism.. I don't doubt that at some point in his life he may have been an incisive political commentator, but I've never seen it.…
May 11, 2011
In cleaning out my open webpages, I came across the video above in an important post at Wired blogs, and it hardly matters that the post is from last October (yes, I keep too many tabs open in Firefox). Rhett Allain argues that there's an inverse relationship between how much standardized testing…
May 5, 2011
Christopher Lane has a fascinating history of agnosticism in the New Humanist, an ode to doubt. :
Then [in the Victorian era] as now, doubt requires strength - it is not an easy or straightforward position to maintain.
The impact of such doubt grew on both sides of the Atlantic, with subscription…
May 5, 2011
Greg Laden suggests A multiplicity of strategies is better than infighting when addressing creationism and related problems. That seems reasonable, and I'm intrigued by his diagnosis for the conflict over accommodationism and New Atheism:
I have always thought, naively and probably incorrectly,…
May 4, 2011
Janet Stemwedel has an open letter, and as someone who got the same ham-fisted promotions, and didn't write about it for roughly the same reason (also I don't care about silly putty), I can endorse her letter wholeheartedly.
May 3, 2011
Cosma Shalizi, 11/4/2007: "The object of torture is torture":
The point of this torture is not to extract information; there are better ways to do that, which we have long used. The point of this torture is not to extract confessions; there are no show trials of terrorists or auto-de-fes in the…
May 2, 2011
It's a running joke that any time some horrible person is in the news, Discovery Institute fellow David Klinghoffer is sure to pen a piece trying to link that person to the nefarious ways of evolution-defenders. He's written such pieces about Hitler, the Columbine killers, the Holocaust museum…
May 2, 2011
Via the White House Flickr site, a tense moment in the Situation Room yesterday, as the national security team was updated on the raid on a Pakistani compound where Osama bin Laden had been in hiding. The weight of the moment plays out a little differently on each face. The political, diplomatic…
April 28, 2011
Thanks to BoingBoing for this example of the importance of skepticism:
A gang of thieves in Istanbul, Turkey have reportedly been dressing like doctors and distributing sedatives door to door, telling residents the medicine was related to a test for high blood pressure. Once the victims dosed, the…
April 26, 2011
The hijab and niqab worn by some Muslim women have hit the news lately, especially after France's ban on the veil worn by some Muslim women (niqab) went into effect, and after death threats against a British imam who held that wearing hijab (a scarf covering the hair) was a woman's choice (he also…
April 25, 2011
Chad Orzel says Support the National Center for Science Education:
I try not to do any shilling for political groups on the blog, but I'll make an exception for the National Center for Science Education. Why? Three reasons:
1) They do good and important, if not always glamorous work, supporting the…
April 25, 2011
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all…
April 21, 2011
Chris Mooney reports on Psych Evidence that Supports New Atheism, writing:
In general, I believe what we know about human psychology runs contrary to the New Atheist approach and strategy. However, I do my best to follow the data, and here's a study that suggest at least one aspect of their…
