September 5, 2012
Say no more...
September 4, 2012
The Science Debate Project, co-founded by my friend Shawn Otto of Minnesota, has been trying to get candidates for the office of President to engage in a public debate about science. There has been resistance to that idea, but at least, Obama and Romney were willing to answer a set of questions…
September 4, 2012
Some time ago, a group of Internet Yahoos who shall not be named (the usual misogynist freaks who spend all their time harassing women who won't shut up) started a petition to get Rebecca Watson tossed off her podcast "The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe." As I understand it, no one took that…
September 4, 2012
This is a response to Critiquing the “Critique” and the “Critique of the Critique” of Bill Nye’s Video at UrbanAstro.org. In that post, FURYGuitar addresses both Critiquing the Critique of Bill Nye’s Video by me and Bill Nye’s “Don’t Teach Creationism…” Video Dissected by Business Communication…
September 4, 2012
This is a video of Kill-Me Kare Bare's "Hot Hot." Today, in the Twin Cities, we will have one of the hotter days of the summer, out of season, and thus one of the relatively hotter days of the year. And so...
September 3, 2012
Yesterday I was driving Julia down to Frog Town Midway where she had an exciting evening of political Phone Banking planned. We drove down Route 10 and merged onto God's Highway southbound where we encountered, in the center lane, a line of white Ford Econoline vans. They were in convoy all going…
September 3, 2012
Remember the GRAIL mission? At the beginning of the year, two satellites, named Ebb and Flow, arrived at the Moon and fell into a parallel orbit. There is an instrument on board that very precisely determines the distance between the two space craft, said to be about the size of a typical washing…
September 3, 2012
The "Next Media" animation company used to send me several animations a week (a few a day for a while) but then they were bought out by a major media outlet (can't remember which one) so most of the emails I get from them now are about how great they are, rather than providing much current content…
September 2, 2012
Marc Kuchner has an interesting post at Scientific American called Bill Nye’s “Don’t Teach Creationism…” Video Dissected by Business Communication Expert in which … well, you can guess what it is about from the title. To refresh your memory, here is Bill Nye’s video, which I had posted earlier on…
August 31, 2012
Today is Mike Haubrich's birthday. Have you checked out his blog lately? A sampling:
On Race and The Republican Party
The Moon Landing
On Original Sin
Matt Young Gets Inside the Ark Park’s Sales Pitch
August 31, 2012
Hitler finds out that the hoped for Arctic Sea Ice recovery isn't happening, and that Anthropogenic Global Warming is real.
August 30, 2012
A couple of items for you over at the X Blog. We have His and Hers writing instruments, and I finally made my own Hitler parody called "Hitler finds out that Surly Amy is sending 32 women to the Skeptics Conference in Berlin"
August 30, 2012
That would be funny.
Tim Dickinson has some pretty amazing investigative reporting in which he notes that the origin story for Romney is that he ...
... took leave of his duties at the private equity firm Bain Capital in 1990 and rode in on a white horse to lead a swift restructuring of Bain…
August 30, 2012
I like to ask people who believe in reality the following question: "What is the one single piece of evidence that convinces you that reality is real?" The answer is always easily debunked. For example:
"Evidence": Reality is real because I can sense the world around me.
Answer: Senses have been…
August 29, 2012
Creationists are holding everyone else back
August 29, 2012
In Minnesota’s Lakes Country, what we sometimes call “Up North,” the people have various degrees of knowledge of the land and its wildlife. Cabin people and campers visit briefly and may learn in detail the workings of a particular lake or patch of forest, but are usually poorly informed of the…
August 28, 2012
This isn't even in the advisories and discussions yet on the Hurricane Center site, but they are calling Isaac a hurricane. Here's a recent snapshot:
Hurricane Isaac
The current track puts Isaac just southwest of New Orleans with the heaviest winds and storm surge along the outer reaches of the…
August 28, 2012
I am very sorry, but it is hard for me to feel too badly about Randy Lee Tenley getting killed on Highway 93 on Sunday night in Montana. I do, however, feel badly for his family (if he has one) and for the two teenagers who hit him with their cars. A 15 year old driving down the highway at night…
August 28, 2012
Isaac is still not a hurricane. It will be one within 24 hours. Right? Right?
Either way, Isaac is big, wet, and windy and long before it makes landfall it will start to cause flooding and wind damage ashore, within the next 24 hours or so. There is a pretty good chance that the storm will be…
August 27, 2012
Today, NASA did something never before done, and well, not all that impressive.
Charles Bolden of NASA spoke some words into a microscope, and this voice stream was sent to the Curiosity Rover on Mars, which then sent it back. Hey, I just spent the last 15 minutes swapping monitors around on my…
August 27, 2012
.... prolly. At the moment, Isaac has all the pieces in place; winds are high enough, pressure at the center is low enough, and all that. But, the storm is not organized with an eye and nicely formed bands. I imagine that the folks in the Hurricane Prediction Center are annoyed. I suspect they…
August 27, 2012
I am looking forward to the construction of the meatspace version of the currently on-line only "Creation Science Hall of Fame" on vacant land on Interstate 75 between the Creation Museum and the Ark Park.
Someday this section of Northern Kentucky will be a veritable Miracle Mile of Creationism…
August 27, 2012
This is a book for global warming sketpics so they can be more convincing in their skepticism. The title is "The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism."
Hey, wait a second, I might have that wrong. This might be a book for people who want to take a scientific approach to skepticism about…
August 27, 2012
The good news, if you see Hurricanes as bad, is that Isaac did not turn into a hurricane over night and is having trouble getting its act together. This has caused estimates of the hurricane's maximum strength at the time of land fall to be reduced. Isaac will be a serious storm when it plows…
August 26, 2012
It is time to discuss, once again, the falsehood known as "Hurricane Landfall."
A hurricane is a whopping big thing. A hurricane can be bigger than some states. The physical region across which a hurricane is potentially deadly and damaging is very large, many tens of miles across, sometimes a…
August 26, 2012
For the second time in a row, storms have interfered with the Republican National Convention. The political party that denies science, and in particular, denies climate change, that thinks NOAA built an Ark and that has no interest in the kind of regulation that saves Libertarians from themselves…
August 26, 2012
In Defense of Science: An Interview with NCSE’s Eugenie Scott
A few weeks ago I wrote about what happens when people respond to well-established science with disbelief or mistrust. As I noted, this is an occupational risk for researchers who work on vaccines (and journalists who write about them),…
August 25, 2012
Neil Armstrong died today. NASA has released a statement.
August 25, 2012
World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines, and the Internet is a new book by Michael Chorost. I've not thoroughly read it yet but I've looked through it and I've listened to an interview with Chorost. Here's the book description from Amazon to give you an idea what it is about…
