gregladen | October 16, 2012Or even better yet, how about the original? It's going up for sale on ebay. Here's my copy of the letter:
And the ebay site is here.
The letter was written to the author of Choose Life The Biblical Call To Revolt, and includes this famous comment:
... The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and…
gregladen | October 13, 2012... the podcast, is now available for download:
This week, we’re looking at the science – and pseudoscience – that affects the healthcare decisions parents make for their children, and women make for themselves. We’re joined by Allison Hagood and Stacy Herlihy, to talk about their book Your Baby’s Best Shot: Why Vaccines are Safe and Save Lives. And on the podcast, we’re joined by Skepchick.org founder Rebecca Watson, to talk about pseudoscience that’s targeted and marketed specifically at women.
Also note that the upcoming Skeptically Speaking will be on Genetically Modified Food
This week,…
gregladen | October 11, 2012The juxtaposition of Nobel Prize season and the revelation of High Octane Crazy in the Republican Party in regards to science is examined by Rachel Maddow:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
gregladen | October 10, 2012I knew a guy who had a simple answer to the whole Death Penalty thing. He's hold is fingers, thumb and index finger, a short ways apart from each other like he had something in his grasp, and he's say, "One bullet ... costs about nine cents." I have no idea how much a bullet really costs, but I do know that we don't execute people by just deciding to execute them and then shooting them in the head. In fact, it is telling that our society spends way more money, time, and effort on the legal activities surrounding execution than in anything comparable in the criminal justice system.…
gregladen | October 10, 2012Quite possibly. Here's a picture of it:
Image from NASA. Obviously.
There's a pretty good chance that this is a manufactured object and not some natural thingie that formed on the surface of Mars by Mars-esque natural processes. But, if that's true, then there's a pretty good chance that the object, formed by an intelligent being, is just some piece of junk that fell off of one of the alien space ships that has landed on Mars recently. Alien to Mars, sent by Earthlings.
It reminds me of this one time... we were doing survey in a certain region which shall remain nameless, and finding lots…
gregladen | October 10, 2012This has been known for years. It is very frustrating to see people ask questions like "well, what we don't know is what will global warming do?" Global warming has done, already, quite a bit and it is insulting to our collective intelligence and an affront to the families of those who have died from it to pretend nothing has happened. From desertification in Africa to heat waves in Chicago, global warming has killed people. Perhaps the following video from PBS will make this a bit more palpable to those who can't grasp this concept.
gregladen | October 10, 2012This morning, my inbox had a handful of interesting data that are totally unconnected to each other, each interesting in its own right, and together, a veritable potpourri of bloggyness. So, here goes:
First, Don Prothero at Skeptiblog has written one of those posts you want to keep handy next time you need to refer to Noah's Ark. The title of his post is "Ship of Foolishness" but I'm going to catalog it under Noah’s Ark compared to the Titanic. Here's the embedded data comparison:
I gotta get me some of that Gopher Wood.
Ok, I said these different data comparisons were not related to each…
gregladen | October 9, 2012The evidence that if you are a Republican you are a member of a club that you should be embarrassed to be a member of mounts. In this case, Jon Hubbard and Loy Mauch of Arkansas speak out in favor of slavery and blame African Americans for the results of institutional racism.
"Arkansas Republicans tried to distance themselves Saturday from a Republican state representative's assertion that slavery was a "blessing in disguise" and a Republican state House candidate who advocates deporting all Muslims. The claims were made in books written, respectively, by Rep. Jon Hubbard of Jonesboro and…
gregladen | October 9, 2012David Schnare is a climate change denier, right-wing activist, and lawyer, and he works for the conservative “free market” think tank American Tradition Institute (ATI). Evidence has come to light suggesting that Schnare acted unethically during the course of a recently settled legal battle over access to private emails exchanged among university based climate scientists. In particular, Schnare may have worked at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at the same time he was engaged with work at ATI, without the required permission.
Almost two years ago, ATI initiated legal proceedings…
gregladen | October 8, 2012I knew this guy, can't remember his name, who practiced a combination of naturopathy and homeopathy (they are different) along with a few other suspicious arts, back in the 1970s. Other than the white muumuu that he usually wore, I remember two things about him. I remember that a few years before I ever laid eyes on him, he drove his Volkswagen Bug to Mexico to go on a spiritual journey, and within one day hit and killed a cow, and spent six months in jail for this, and was released back into the United States at the border. And, I remember that he almost killed Joe.
I have a friend, some…
gregladen | October 8, 2012NCSE executive director Genie Scott chats with polar explorer Will Steger about their experiences and perspectives on climate change education. Steger is an educator and author of several books on his expeditions and environmental issues, including climate change. Where: University of Minnesota.
gregladen | October 7, 2012On July 9th, 2012, Anoka High School student Justin Aaberg committed suicide. Here in Minnesota, when a kid commits suicide we don't talk about it; often the other kids in the school are never told. There's just a funeral service and a yearbook page but no discussion, no action, no response. But, Justin was one of several kids who successfully took their own lives in the Anoka Hennepin School District, the largest school district in Minnesota, and they were among a much larger group who came close to doing so, because they were gay or thought to be so, and were thus bullied and shunned and…
gregladen | October 7, 2012Watch the following video without reading any context. Listen to what the guy says. Note that he says that evolution and embryology are lies from hell. Note that he claims that these lies have one purpose: To keep us from knowing that we need a savior. Note that he claims that the earth was create in 6 literal days about 9,000 years ago (why not 6,000 is a topic of another post some time, perhaps). Note that he claims that the Bible teaches us how we run our lives, our families and our churches, but most importantly, note that this man is saying that the bible, which he takes absolutely…
gregladen | October 6, 2012No matter how much one may have disagreed with a colleague in life, no matter how much damage one might feel a particular person's work may have done, when that colleague finally dies one says a few good words, pays respect, and puts aside past differences.
But not in this case. I met Jean Philippe Rushton a couple of times but never got to know him as a person. But I do know that he was convinced of the inferiority of Africans compared to, for instance, himself, and spent his entire life improperly manipulating data, sometimes just plain making the data up, to "prove" this. If you look…
gregladen | October 6, 2012Would it really matter? What would really happen?
Science blogger Kevin Zelnio has the story: A Post-PBS Educational Television Landscape
What is the bottom line of Kevin's post? Well, go read it and find out.
And for when you get back from Kevin's post, here is Rick Santorum letting the genie out of the bottle:
gregladen | October 6, 2012We've been talking about marriage, and we'll continue that conversation. But for now I just wanted to alert you to the fact that a big chunk of money, allegedly about 2 million bucks from one person, has been given to the anti-same sex marriage organization, "National Organization for Marriage," and it is expected that this money will be funneled into ads in Minnesota and the other states where this fight is being fought.
See this for the reason that this is all so stupid.
And then click here and send money. Just do it. I just gave Minnesotans United for All Families 90 bucks. That was…