gregladen | May 6, 2010There is good reason that many of us would like to see religion gone, and it is religion itself, not the people who are religious, that we want to see wither and die.
Read more
gregladen | May 5, 2010The police officers are pleased and amused by the situation, which gives the young viewers an indication of what it looks like when all is well that ends well.
Another in the "How we got this way" series.
gregladen | May 4, 2010Remember the excitement when ER was first aired? In those days, a prime time hospital show was a fresh, new, wonderful idea and we all loved it. Then, St. Elsewhere, and that was OK. Then a lot more followed, and the market became saturated and annoying.
But now, there's something new. Not more of the same at all. In fact, rather less of the same. Check it out:
Hat tip: Rob.
gregladen | May 4, 2010Convergence is an annual science fiction and fantasy convention that is held over July 4th weekend in Minneapolis. The Skepchicks organize a "track" at Convergence called SkepchiCON, which is a series of discussions about skepticism and stuff. At the risk of getting into all sorts of trouble, I'm going to be on some of the panels in this track, and I'm planning to attend a few events that I'm not empaneled for. And, just so I'll know where to find it later when I need it, I thought I'd blog my tentative schedule.
(Please note: The price to register for the CON goes way up on May 15th, so if…
gregladen | May 3, 2010Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and other TV shows like it helped young Americans learn what and who to be be afraid of, and most importantly, what our enemies looked like....
Read on
gregladen | May 3, 2010Are now available:
1
Wired Science - Wired Blog
2
Watts Up With That?
3
Climate Progress
4
RealClimate
5
Bad Astronomy
6
Next Generation Science
7
Climate Audit
8
Respectful Insolence
9
Pharyngula
10
The Frontal Cortex
11
Dispatches from the Culture Wars
12
Deltoid
13
Science-Based Medicine
14
Cosmic Variance
15
Uncertain Principles
16
Not Exactly Rocket Science
17
FuturePundit
18
Gene Expression
19
BPS Research Digest
20
Neurophilosophy
Ranking made by Wikio
Please add any comments you have on this list below, in the comment section.
gregladen | May 3, 2010After years of inattention, in the past month, the mainstream media has suddenly turned its eye toward black women. And the resulting coverage, filtered through a pretty jaundiced lens, is enough to make me wish the world had never "discovered" us. Here are the messages we've heard: 1). Men don't want us. 2). We don't have any money. 3). We're fat and unhealthy.
Check it out
gregladen | May 3, 2010... like, twenty years ago ...
Back in 1989, Dr. Genie Scott and other scientists staged a mock debate between evolution and creationism. Where: San Diego meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologst. When: 4/6/1989
gregladen | May 3, 2010Michele Bachmann might be the stupidest person who can still breathe.
Do you know what net neutrality is? It is...
...a principle proposed for user access networks participating in the Internet that advocates no restrictions by Internet Service Providers or governments on content, sites, or platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and on the modes of communication allowed etc. etc.
-Teh Wiki
President Barack Obama once said of Net Neutrality that he is "a big believer in net neutrality. I campaigned on this. I continue to be a strong supporter of it." (source)
Therefor,…
gregladen | May 3, 2010"Dick Shake"
I want to start out by restating (or stating more plainly) that the Tokenskeptic podcast should be on your listening list, and that it influenced my own thinking about Boob Quake.
Previously, I had been mainly interacting with people with a positive or neutral view of the Boob Quake, and in observing their relationship to the broader community of skeptics, feminists and atheists, noted that they were getting increasingly crapped upon for their involvement in it by subsets of those communities. The cleavage between pro and anti Boob Quake grew as quakes often do, along pre-…
gregladen | May 2, 2010This is a somewhat stream of consciousness response to an interview of Michael McRae by Tokenskeptic followed by an interview with Desiree Schell of Skeptically Speaking.
Please go listen to the podcast, it is quite good.
How much change has happened in the way the world views crazy religious beliefs because of boobquake? How much change in the way we cause change has happened because of the critique of boobquake? I'd say a little of each, but not much of either.
I think that the critique of boobquake is somewhat disproportionate to the event. Boobquake was clearly never meant to be that…
gregladen | May 2, 2010Wouldn't that be great? Hey, there's an Ubuntu Christian Edition, an Ubuntu Muslim Edition, and another Ubuntu Christian Edition. Why not an Atheistubuntu? Or a Skeptibuntu? or, more usefully, I would think, Sciencebunutu with Atheistic tendencies?
(And for those of you who like to cross certain boundaries there could be a Science Fiction Edition. Called, of course ....
... Cthulhubuntu!)
LOL
Anyway, how would a science edition of Ubuntu be different than plain old Ubuntu?
Well, three things. First, it would have a LOT of software automatically included that at present us sciency types…
gregladen | May 2, 2010Our president is very, very funny. (Skip the Leno part ... he uses sight gags that the producer of the video chose to not let us see. And, he isn't half as funny as Barack.)
gregladen | May 2, 2010"So, we can all think that only crazy and stupid people will vote for Michele Bachmann this year. If that's the case, then there are a lot of them in her district. Or we can support the Democratic organizations in the 6th District and the candidate who is running against her in the general election."
CLICK HERE
gregladen | May 1, 2010A New Hampshire high school principal is insisting her membership in a Facebook group lamenting that Barack Obama lived through his first year in office is all a big misunderstanding.
Principal Ronna Cadarette claims it was all an understanding, leave me away, go away, and stop infringing my constitutional rights etc. etc. But this is the same person who refused to allow ANY teachers to broadcast Obama's famous speech to the schools last year. For which there was a suit. Which ended ... in an interesting way brings up the question as to whether or not this particular school principle is…
gregladen | April 30, 2010Iran is never far from U.S. news headlines. Nuclear threats, unfair elections, captive reporters, a lack of religious freedom, all seem to demand that we do something. But what is to be done? What are the actual conditions in Iran, and what kind of leverage do we in the Western world, and particularly in the U.S. have to effect change? Last summer, Stephanie Zvan was privileged to chat with Dr. William Beeman, professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota and a leading Western scholar of Iran. They discussed the intersection of religion and politics in Iran, U.S.-Iranian relations…
gregladen | April 30, 2010I've spent a fair amount of time at the Harvard Law School. In fact, I was there when Barack was there. I didn't attend the school, but I drank beer in the school's beer hall, lived in a dorm shared by the law school and the science area, and cut through the main law school building on my way to the square when it was raining or really cold.
The main thing I took away from that is how obnoxious and rowdy Harvard Law Students are. They can't handle their beer at all. I saw several fist fights among the students break out over conversations people were having, not even that late in the…
gregladen | April 30, 2010The Island of Doubt was the blog of James Hrynyshyn, and it dealt with environmental issues, and especially the politics of denialism. Well, James has shut down Island of Doubt and started a new blog called "Class M." That new blog is here.
James is one of those people I've come to trust for information about environmental, climate, energy, and related issues. Plus he's a genuinely nice guy. I've had the fortune of spending a fair amount of time with him at the ScienceOnline conferences, and that has been very enjoyable.
Go check out Class M. James intends for this new blog to be fairly…