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The Island of Doubt

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.

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me-fergus.jpg 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.

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for 9 July 2007

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Other Doubtful Blogs

Inspiration

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


Author's site: cyamid.net


Add to Technorati Favorites! Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.
--- H. L. Mencken

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.

More blogs about island of doubt.

technology:

Time to take out the trash

The European Space Agency devoted some computer time to this representation of all the space junk orbiting the earth....

Cell phone idiocy

I also know most people, especially younger types, like to believe they are perfectly capable of multi-tasking. These people include some of my best friends and members of my family. I love them, but that's doesn't mean they're right.

The ecology of HDTV

Watching Battlestar Galactica is way cooler on a wide-screen, regardless of the resolution.

Sober second thoughts on solar cells

Just about everyone pushing civilization to kick its fossil-fuel habit includes photovoltaics in the list of renewable technologies that will be required to fill the power supply gap. And just about every week one can read about a new breakthrough...

Nuclear power: the bottom line

"To avert catastrophic global warming, why pick the slowest, most expensive, most limited, most inflexible and riskiest option?"

I want this:

A hybrid pedal-electric bike....

Ch-ch-ch-changes: William Gibson is wrong

Among the axioms of the day is that we live in a time of change, and those changes are taking place at breakneck speed and accelerating. So rapid are the changes that science fiction writer William Gibson has given up...

Goats and security gates: the sacrifices we make to feel safe

The goats were sacrificed in front of the troublesome aircraft Sunday at Nepal's only international airport in Kathmandu in accordance with Hindu traditions,

How low can Detroit go?

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has released a radio ad designed to play on soccer mom's fears about road safety, dishonestly arguing that Congressional attempts to increase fuel mileage will make safe cars too expensive to afford. This despite the...

Space: final frontier or fool's errand?

Tomorrow's lunar eclipse has got the moon on my brain, and I'm not the only one. Washinton Post columnist Charles Krauthammer gets it wrong so often that I rarely bother to even glace at his output, but today he touches...

Texas and a techology fetish

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is having a bad week. The state House Public Health Committee just voted to rescind the governor's executive order requiring all pre-teen girls to be vaccinated against HPV and a county judge ruled against another executive...

The cost of fusion and freedom

The good news is the world's technological powerhouses have finally agreed to get off their collective butts and start building ITER, the big fusion power experiment. The bad news is they're only planning on spending $12.8 billion on it. That's...

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