The upside of the Hollywood writers' strike?
Category: science culture
Now's your chance to spare us all from another piece of dreck like The Core.
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 9:48 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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, 2008
Category: science culture
Now's your chance to spare us all from another piece of dreck like The Core.
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 9:48 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 30, 2008
Category: politics
... or, at least, in this one case, he's on the right track. Although the editors at the journal Nature don't think so. In fact, they tear a strip off the guy in last week's editorial, and I'm not really...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 9:57 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 29, 2008
Category: climate
Speculation is waste of time. Running sophisticated climate models on supercomputers is better use of same.
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 12:18 PM • 34 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 28, 2008
Category: medicine
In a world in which ends can be measured. some, though not all, means are justified.
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 10:46 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 25, 2008
Category: science culture
CBC reports that Canada's "national science adviser Arthur Carty would be retiring on March 31, and that the position and office would be phased out." To which I could only say: "Who would want the job anyway? You'd just be...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 1:43 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: climate
The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell says "after 2015 supplies of easy-to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand." This in an email from Jeroen van der Veer to his staff. Hmmm....
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 10:27 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 23, 2008
Category: climate
Will a warmer world mean fewer hurricanes hitting American soil? Nobody really knows. But a study just published in Geophysical Research Letters is bound to provide fodder for those who enjoy heralding every little morsel of evidence to support their...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 10:08 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 22, 2008
Category: climate
"Trust no one" makes for a fine motto if you're Fox Mulder. But in the real world, it would be suicide.
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 11:18 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 21, 2008
Category: misc
How can we help change this absurd culture of celebrity worship, and replace it with one that values the contributions of science?
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 10:09 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 19, 2008
Category: climate
The only way you're going to survive is if you manage to pull a rabbit out of the hat in the next few years and find a way to cheaply and efficiently capture and store the CO2 you pump out.
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 7:48 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 18, 2008
Category: climate
So, there's this town in Montana, see. Name of Choteau. And seems that science ain't so popular in those parts......
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 2:09 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 17, 2008
Category: cetacea
There still a lot we don't understand about how whales react to the noise equivalent of a jumbo jet landing on the street in front of your house.
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 8:57 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 15, 2008
Category: climate
2008 or possibly 2009 could the last year for a while in which we enjoy a break from rising temperatures.
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 10:04 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 14, 2008
Category: climate
First, let's see what other observations and other models have to say, and let's see if we can't look a bit further back in time,
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 9:07 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 12, 2008
Category: climate
When it comes to climate change, the only way we're going to come to a consensus on what to do about it is to ditch the holier-than-thou attitude and play up the win-win scenarios.
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 4:46 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 10, 2008
Category: climate
We may never live it down. The sight of George W. Bush traipsing about his ranch in Texas, extolling the virtues of switchgrass-derived ethanol as a replacement for gasoline generated more than a few chuckles among scientifically literate environmentalists. Yet...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 7:49 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 9, 2008
Category: politics
Did Clinton win the New Hampshire Democratic primary Tuesday because her name came before Obama's on the ballot? SciBlogger Matt "Framing Science" Nisbet has a couple of posts referring us to someone who seems convinced she did. I'm not so...
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 7:35 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: climate
"At the end of the day, you can be 90% confident of something, and all people will hear is that you aren't certain about what you are saying."
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 8:57 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 7, 2008
Category: technology
Watching Battlestar Galactica is way cooler on a wide-screen, regardless of the resolution.
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 9:42 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 4, 2008
Category: cetacea
So nice to start the year off the right note for a change.
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 11:35 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 3, 2008
Category: cetacea
Only die-hard deep ecologists would argue that environmental concerns, whether the topic is whales or climate change, should always be given priority over national security.
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 9:33 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 1, 2008
Category: climate
Instead of debating what's feasible, we're quibbling over just how low CO2 levels needs to be.
Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 4:00 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
