An irregular exploration of the struggle between the power of rational discourse and the scientific method on one hand, and the forces of superstition and dogma on the other.
James Hrynyshyn is a freelance science journalist based in western North Carolina, where he tries to put degrees in marine biology and journalism to good use.
The Demon-Haunted World:
Science as a Candle
in the Dark,
by Carl Sagan
(A
review)
The Doubter's Companion:
by John Ralston Saul (Excerpts)
Skeptic Magazine: www.skeptic.com
Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal: www.csicop.org
A poem by Yehuda Amichai:
The
Place
Where We Are Right
The Meaning of the
Island of Doubt
By doubting we come to inquiry; and through inquiry we perceive truth.
--- Peter Abelard
Undisguised clarity is easily mistaken for arrogance.
-- Richard Dawkins
As for evolution, it happened. Deal with it.
-- Michael Shermer.
January 31, 2007
Category: politics
It's almost enough to restore your faith in freedom, democracy and the American way (whatever that is). Today in The New York Times appear a couple of paragraphs the likes of which I was beginning to despair I would never...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 7:17 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 29, 2007
Category: religiosity
After Garry Trudeau swallowed the apocryphal story about Grand Canyon park rangers' inability to tell the truth about the age of their charge, one would do well to be skeptical about any future strips based on alleged true stories. Fortunately,...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 6:59 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 26, 2007
Category: climate
A new poll in Canada has climate change at the top of the worry list for the first time, and it's rising fast. The Globe and Mail poll puts the share of Canadians who say the environment is the most...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 8:06 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 24, 2007
Here's what George W. Bush had to say about climate change in his penultimate state of the union address: "...and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change." That's it. A parathetical afterthought for the...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 7:05 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 23, 2007
Category: superstition
The lead story in today's Science section of the New York Times isn't really about science at all, but its opposite: superstition. The notion that we're hard-wired to believe in a god has received a lot of attention of late,...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 7:05 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 22, 2007
Category: climate
When word came earlier this month that Washington state school board is refusing to present An Inconvenient Truth, Laurie David's documentary on Al Gore's climate change slide show, to its high school students, criticism was fast and furious. The main...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 7:20 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 21, 2007
Category: climate
Of course, we'll never be absolutely certain about the causes and future trends of climate change. That's not the way science works. But according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we're getting pretty darn close to that magical 19-times-out-of-20...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 7:48 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 18, 2007
Category: evolution
PZ Myers rarely writes anything I find objectionable, but today he is so bang on that I feel compelled to share it with those few readers of mine who might not be regular visitors to Pharygula....
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 12:11 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 17, 2007
Category: misc
Following up on a couple of posts back in which I trumpeted Gary Trudeau's inclusion in Doonesbury strip an apocryphal story about Grand Canyon park rangers and the age of the geological wonder they are entrusted with explaining to the...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 6:55 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 16, 2007
Category: politics
Today's must read, from the Washington Post: The U.S. government is cutting back on environmental science....
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 7:53 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 13, 2007
Category: religiosity
Gary Trudeau sticks it to the creationists in today's Doonesbury. The topic of the day is the sad fact that the U.S. National Parks Service sells in its Grand Canyon gift shop a book that offers a Biblical chronology for...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 7:07 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 12, 2007
Category: politics
When former Redskins quarterback Heath Shuler managed to bump off incumbent congressman Charles Taylor in November, there was much rejoicing here in western North Carolina. Many Democrats kept their hopes modest, however, as Shuler got elected campaigning on "mountain values,"...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 7:38 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: evolution
Well, technically, not Seattle, but the exurbian outpost of Federal Way, Wash., where the "School Board on Tuesday placed what it labeled a moratorium on showing the film." The film in question is Laurie David's An Inconvenient Truth, with which...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 7:05 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 10, 2007
Category: climate
Just a pointer to yet another thoughtful rejoinder from the Real Climate group in the wake of media hysteria. This time it's all about whether El Nino or climate change is to blame for the ridiculously warm weather that recently...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 7:42 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 9, 2007
Category: Sci-culture
On the wall behind Fox Mulder's desk in the basement of the X-File's version of the FBI headquarters in DC was a poster of a UFO photograph atop the phrase "I Want To Believe." Which pretty much sums up how...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 6:59 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 6, 2007
Category: Sci-culture
This past week I spent the better part of three days in the company of Al Gore Jr. and his associates as part of The Climate Project, an effort to create a small army of climate change slide-show presenters across...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 6:40 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 2, 2007
Category: religiosity
Can one reject the single most important idea in biology and yet still embrace science? Ronald Numbers, a former Seventh-day Adventist turned historian of creationism, says lots of people do. John Wilkins jumped on the Salon interview with Numbers first....
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 7:25 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 1, 2007
Category: climate
What a wonderful way to begin the new year, with a responsible call for action on climate change that embraces the uncertainties rather than yet another stubborn refusal to act because of them. The New York Times' ever-reliable Andrew Revkin...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 9:16 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
