October 5, 2012
Ask Allison Hagood and Stacy Herlihy about Vaccine Safety
They are the authors of Your Baby's Best Shot: Why Vaccines Are Safe and Save Lives, and they will be Desiree's guests on Skeptically Speaking.
This week, we’re looking at the science – and pseudoscience – that affects the healthcare…
October 5, 2012
I usually avoid writing about research that has not been done yet. I get press releases every day about grants awarded to universities and private companies to pursue one research project or another. There is always some reason those grants are awarded, some prior research that indicates a…
October 5, 2012
Wed, October 10th
Join us at the Barnes & Noble in Har Mar Mall in Roseville at 7pm, Wednesday, October 10 for a fun evening. The Atheist Voices of Minnesota will be featured for an authors' event and we would love to see a room full of occupied seats!
Six of the book authors will read and/or…
October 5, 2012
When I was a kid there were no boy scouts. Well, there were, but not exactly where I lived. There were cub scouts and I was a member, and older kids in my neighborhood were boy scouts, but then somehow when it came time for me to leave the Cub Scouts and join Boy Scouts, they had mysteriously…
October 5, 2012
Romney did three things at the debate:
1) He totally randomized his policies, thus putting into effect an excellent version of the Chewbaca Defense;
2) He made up his own rules, forcing Obama to follow them and embarrassing PBS and Jim Lehrer; and
3) He made a bunch of independents giddy, so when…
October 5, 2012
By making constant but weak measurements of a quantum system, physicists have managed to probe a delicate quantum state without destroying it – the equivalent of taking a peek at Schrodinger's metaphorical cat without killing it.
The story is at the New Scientist.
October 5, 2012
This WILL be an historic year at the polls when it comes to the issue of same-sex marriage. The question remains, though, what will this year's election, and the society voting in it, be remembered for? There four states with ballot items related to this issue: Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and…
October 4, 2012
This is not something you see every day:
... well, unless you live in Mala Mala or someplace.
October 4, 2012
You know, there's a pretty good chance that Justin Vacula is an OK guy. Really, that's probably true of all of the SlymePitters. Hell, I used to count Abbie Smith among my eFriends, back when the two of us shared certain views about stuff going on at Scienceblogs.com, such as being unimpressed…
October 4, 2012
The whole point of being indoors is to get out of the elements, so it is a little strange that we bring miniature suns inside, take off most or all of our clothing, and irradiate ourselves on purpose. But we (well, some, not all of us) do and the result seems to be an increased risk of disease.…
October 3, 2012
For three decades, the National Center for Science Education(NCSE) has focused most of its efforts on defending the teaching of evolution in the classroom. Increasingly, however, the teachers its executive director, Dr. Eugenie Scott, hears from are under fire for teaching global warming. So much…
October 2, 2012
How Religion and Science Interact and the Issue of Evolution
A featured speaker at Westminster College's 2012 Symposium on Religious Experience in a Global Society, Dr. Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education (Oakland, California), discusses religion, science…
October 2, 2012
You'll recall when Pennsylvania House Republican Leader Mike Turzai was filmed admitting that the voter ID law he ushered in for that state was designed to make sure Obama lost there to Mitt Romney (see below). Pennsylvania is sort of a swing state, but Obama winning there would not have shocked…
October 1, 2012
The post you are looking for has moved. It is here!
October 1, 2012
Last week's edition of Skeptically Speaking (two Sunday's ago) is now available as a podcast download.
This week, we’re looking at film and video as an exciting, engaging way to communicate science to the public. Guest host Marie-Claire Shanahan spends the hour with independent film-maker and…
October 1, 2012
By now you've probably read the story of Leo Traynor's troll. The very short version: Leo, and later his wife, were stalked on the internet by a horrid troll; the horrid troll eventually started to leave horrid objects with messages at Leo's house; The troll was baited and investigated by an IT…
October 1, 2012
It is, as they say, melting. There are almost no mountain glaciers in the world that are advancing. In just a few years there will very few mountain glaciers.
October 1, 2012
Don't worry, it's totally work safe. Turn up the volume. Trust me.
September 30, 2012
Have you read The Autobiography of Charles Darwin? Do you read, er, listen to audiobooks? If so, did you know about this one?
Read by Greg Wagland:
This work, unsurprisingly, offers invaluable insights into the life and times of Charles Darwin, his personality and the formative influences that…
September 30, 2012
Do ghosts really exist?
Is there life on Mars?
Despite what one might think, what with large class sizes and the homogenization of culture caused by TV and Fast Food, the fact remains that clumps of high school students organized into classes can vary widely from one another. Each year has its own…
September 30, 2012
Sunday Funnies, two of them: Funny and Political Funny.
And, the latest Huxley Video, How to comment on a blog post.
September 30, 2012
Arrrrrrgh.
... for science-oriented secular skeptical people like you?
Halloween is when the really scary things make their appearance, mostly in the form of the Halloween Costume Industry. This is when we learn about all those latent adult sexual fantasies involving school children, for example…
September 29, 2012
RIP Ubuntu. Ubuntu was great. For years, I kept trying to get my own Linux box up and running, initially so I could relive the halcyon days of UNIX and later so I could avoid Windows. But every time I tried to get Linux working some key thing would not be configurable or would not work. Well, I'…
September 29, 2012
This week's Skeptically Speaking should be very interesting. David Dobbs, author of Reef Madness, will be on to discuss Naomi Wolf’s book Vagina: A New Biography. There will also be a segment on ENCODE.
Details HERE. Listen live on Sunday (and participate) and download the edited podcast later…
September 29, 2012
The Secular Coalition of America is a lobbying group that represents several groups, including American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, Camp Quest, the Secular Student Alliance and so on. A few months ago the SCA made news, in a bad way, by appointing a former Bush White House Staffer…
September 29, 2012
Apple, Microsoft, Dell, IBM, Google, all of them ... the companies that make the hardware and software we use ... are, it would seem, ignorant, probably willfully so, of an important thing. We use their hardware and software in our work. Many individuals are like miniature institutions or…
September 26, 2012
There are a number of US HOuse of Representative races that are too close to call at this point. Although the house is currently predicted to go Republican, which would be a shame, there are not a lot of current data to predict this. Given the potential strength of Mitt Romney’s coattails going in…
September 26, 2012
A small college out east. Photo by wallyg.
I very strongly agree with the basic conclusion offered by a post at teenskepchick by Ali Marie, advice for those now looking at college: “…what’s the undecided student to do? My advice: community college.”. Ali discussed the problem of getting all the…
September 26, 2012
Bacon. Photograph by Flickr User Kentbrew
It appears that there is going to be a bacon shortage. It is estimated that the total amount (in poundage, I assume) of swine that will be produced next year will be several percent, about 10% most likely, less than expected. It is said that there will…
September 25, 2012
Late Winter, 1997, just before moving from Boston to Minnesota, was very snowy out east. And, that year I had stupidly agreed to shovel the snow for our apartment building in exchange for a pittance of some kind. One night I was shoveling the latest 7 inch storm off the walk, and the father of…
