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Displaying results 30751 - 30800 of 112149
Subliminal messages to kick the video game habit
A company in Korea is applying for a patent of their new technique to help all those poor video game addicted kids in korea (think kids playing video games for 4 days straight and then dying). The only problem with the patent... the chances of it working in Korea are about the same as them working in the United States (with non-Korean speaking kids). Here's why: Venture start-up Xtive proposes to subliminally convince these kids to kick the habit by exposing them to an inaudible repetitive message. "We incorporated messages into an acoustic sound wave telling gamers to stop playing. The…
The science of Haha, snort, grunt, laugh, haha
There is an article by John Tierney in the NYT and a post on his blog about the science of humor. Here's a little sampler of the artcle: So there are these two muffins baking in an oven. One of them yells, "Wow, it's hot in here!" And the other muffin replies: "Holy cow! A talking muffin!" Did that alleged joke make you laugh? I would guess (and hope) not. But under different circumstances, you would be chuckling softly, maybe giggling, possibly guffawing. I know that's hard to believe, but trust me. The results are just in on a laboratory test of the muffin joke. Laughter, a topic that…
Sunday link roundup.
There is a great article today in the NYT about the impact neuroscience is having on the field of law. Here's a little snippit: Carter Snead, a law professor at Notre Dame, drafted a staff working paper on the impact of neuroscientific evidence in criminal law for President Bush's Council on Bioethics. The report concludes that neuroimaging evidence is of mixed reliability but "the large number of cases in which such evidence is presented is striking." That number will no doubt increase substantially. Proponents of neurolaw say that neuroscientific evidence will have a large impact not only…
Regeneration
Planarian worms can regenerate new body parts (well, I know they don't look like "parts" but you get what I mean). How do they do this? No one was quite sure until now. An MIT research team led by Peter Reddien has discovered a gene that apparently produces a product that facilitates this sort of regeneration. "Evolution has selected for mechanisms that allow organisms to accomplish incredible feats of regeneration," and planaria offer a dramatic example, Reddien said. "By developing this model system to explore the molecular underpinnings of regeneration, we now have a better…
Let's get a few things straight this morning.
First off, Major Hasan, the Fort Hood Shooter is not dead. He's in custody, wounded. Interesting how he was dead for much of the day yesterday. You'd think they'd get that straight. Second, Hasan is not os "Muslim Descent." There is no such thing. Islam is a religion. He is a Palestinian American. Third, even though it is true that Fort Hood is the largest military base in the world, it is not (necessarily) true that it has "suffered a disproportionate share of losses" in the Iraq and Afghani wars. It is bigger. It has more. Proportionate means you adjust for size, stupid newsman.…
"I currently have no home internet service"
I just received the following auto-reply: I currently have no home internet service, and so may not be able to answer your message swiftly. Thank you for your patience. This is sort of funny, partly because of the implied expectation that everyone has home internet service, and partly because I send him the message at around noon in his time zone on a Monday, so I wouldn't expect him to be at home anyway! This also reminds me that I'm toying with the idea of removing myself from the internet for a period of three days each week, so I can get more work done. I have enough backlog blog entries…
Predicting good behavior
What drives people to do good things? Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have discovered an area of the brain that determines whether people tend to be selfish or altruistic. The researchers used a brain scanning technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in conjunction with a computer game that engaged participants' altruistic behavior. In the computer game participants' success earned them money for a charity. The study showed that increased activity in a region of the brain called the posterior superior temporal sulcus strongly predicted a person's…
Fish Using Tools Caught on Video!
This video, captured by University of California Santa Cruz professor Giacomo Bernardi, shows an orange-dotted tuskfish (Choerodon anchorago) cracking open a clam by throwing it against a rock. Other fish from the wrasse family have also been observed using similar techniques to crack open clams. These include the blackspot tuskfish (Choerodon schoenleinii), yellowhead wrasse (Halichoeres garnoti), and a sixbar wrasse (Thalassoma hardwicke). Tool use among fish is not well-studied. For a fish to plan such an elaborate scheme (digging up the clam, finding a suitable rock to use as an anvil,…
Friday Deep-Sea Picture: Elevators to the Deep
Sometimes the sub just can't carry enough or you want to get more work done than you really have time to. Thats why some brilliant deep-sea scientist invented the elevator! The yellow balls at the top are for floatation, which keeps the elevator neutrally bouyant. You can put all sorts of things on the basket of the elevator, including thermal insulated boxes for keeping animals cold on the ride up. How does the elevator work? Well, we put weights on the bottom and hoist it overboard with a transponder. It sinks, hopefully close to where we want it to end up. When we arrive in the sub to do…
Debating "intelligent design"
A site called Opposingviews.com has asked the question: Does intelligent design have merit? Defending the proposition that it does, the Disco. Inst. responds officially and through two sockpuppets: Michael Behe, and Jay Richards (both Disco. fellows). Taking the position that it doesn't, we've got the National Center for Science Education, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and (of all places) the Ayn Rand Center or Individual Rights. When we were approached about posting to the site, the administrators suggested having 3-4 responses of 300-400 words each. Of course, the…
Charter schools underperform
The Dallas Morning News observes: North Texas didn't have a single charter school with the state's top academic rating two years ago. Now there are four. But those campuses remain outnumbered by low-performing charters: 11 this year across the region, up from eight a couple years ago. The same trend holds for the rest of the state: 51 of Texas' 317 charters were rated "academically unacceptable" based on 2007 test scores, while only 15 received the top rating "exemplary," according to data released this month by the Texas Education Agency. … The 16 percent of charters labeled unacceptable…
Birds in Cities
The helter-skelter of urban life even affects birds. I swear my cockatiel is better behaved since I left London; now I know why: Rapid urbanisation around the world and the subsequent increase in ambient noise has proven problematic for animals which use sound to communicate. For birds in particular, city noises can mask the exchange of vital information and prevent males from attracting mates. To see how birds reacted to increased noise, Hans Slabbekoorn of Leiden University recorded the songs of great tits in 10 European cities including London, Prague, Paris and Amsterdam. He then compared…
Meat
Words of wisdom from Dario Checcini, the famous Tuscan butcher: "The most important thing is what the animal eats and that it has a good life . . . just like us," Cecchini says. "My philosophy is that the cow has to have had a really good life with the least suffering possible," he says. "And every cut has to be cooked using the best cooking method. It's a matter of respect. If I come back as a cow, I want to have the best butcher. On a related note, I've been really enjoying The River Cottage Meat Book, bu Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. It's so much more than a cookbook: Fearnley-Whittingstall…
Leaving comments
I know, dear readers, that some of you have been encountering difficulties leaving comments on this blog (and on other blogs in the ScienceBlogs galaxy). Indeed, I've encountered those same problems myself, trying to leave comments for my sibling bloggers. I'm confident that when our tech czar returns from vacation next week, all the problems will disappear. In the meantime, though, I still want your comments! The inelegant way around the problem (which manifests itself as an error message when you try to leave a comment) is to try another browser. (So, if you're on Firefox, bring up…
Fernandina eruption taking out wildlife
Fissure vent eruption from Fernandina in the Galapagos Islands. In news that comes as a surprise to no one, the current eruption on Fernandina in the Galapagos is having some adverse effect on the wildlife in the Pacific archipelago. Numerous dead fish and sea lions have been seen in the ocean near the actively erupting volcano - now, what exactly is causing the deaths is more speculative. I would imagine with the large plume being produced by the volcano, along with the lava flows reaching the ocean, that volcanic gases and the lava's interaction with the sea water might be the leading…
Redoubt ash throws off Alaska's legislative calendar
The Anchorage Daily News has a report that 16 Alaskan representatives got stuck in Anchorage after the eruption started. They were headed to Juneau to vote on Alaska accepting stimulus money ("volcano monitoring" anyone?), but they were on one of the many flights canceled by Alaska Airlines today due to the ash. ADN also have reports of an "ash out" in the coastal town of Skwentna. AVO is currently reporting that ash doesn't appear on the current radar maps in the Cook Inlet and there are no reports of new ash fall. This suggests that the ash is either staying below 13,000 feet / 4,000…
Romania going Creationist?
Romania removes theory of evolution from school curriculum: Romania's withdrawal of the theory of evolution from the school curriculum could be evidence of a growing conservative tendency in teaching. Evolution has been removed from the school curriculum in a move which, pressure groups argue, distorts children's understanding of how the world came into being. Meanwhile, religious studies classes continue to tell Romanian children that God made the world in seven days. The theory of the Origin of Species and the evolution of humans is no longer present in the compulsory curriculum, through a…
Public health: starting the conversation in earnest
Yesterday Flu Wiki founding editor and DailyKos frontpager DemFromCT reviewed three recent report cards on public health, one each by the American Public Health Association (APHA), The Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the American College Of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). It was a great a service in two ways. The first is to remind us that "health reform" is hollow without making sure the public health infrastructure is sound. And second, he reviewed these reports so the rest of us don't have to. Believe me, that's a service in my eyes. My patience gets pretty short when I see these tomes…
Public Health: starting the conversation
by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure Yesterday Flu Wiki founding editor and DailyKos frontpager DemFromCT reviewed three recent report cards on public health, one each by the American Public Health Association (APHA), The Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the American College Of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). It was a great a service in two ways. The first is to remind us that "health reform" is hollow without making sure the public health infrastructure is sound. And second, he reviewed these reports so the rest of us don't have to. Believe me, that's a service in my eyes. My patience…
coolfuturesfundsmanagement
Bored with force X from outer space? Was Force F just too fuckwitted, and part 22 just too dull? Then why not play "hedge funds"? Hedge funds do lots of complex maths and make lots of money (only not so much recently); they also have the advantage of being opaque. So play today, with Jo Nova and her band of performing marsupials. Yes, I know, its a picture of a monkey with an arrow up it's bum, and a monkey is not a marsupial. But no known mediaeval manuscripts feature marsupials. Context, context: I forget the context in my obsession with primate posteriors. coolfuturesfundsmanagement is,…
Global Warming Could Make Peat Bogs Less Of A Carbon Sink
A new study, “An unexpected role for mixotrophs in the response of peatland carbon cycling to climate warming” by Vincent Jassey and others, just came out in Scientific Reports. The study is fairly preliminary, but fascinating, and unfortunately may signal that yet another effect of global warming that would result in more global warming. What makes this study interesting is that it examines the detailed ecological relationships between several different kinds of organisms in both field and lab settings, in order to get a handle on what they do when conditions warm. Mixotrophs are organisms…
Ten Years Before the Blog: 2009-2010
In which we review yet another good year of blogging, including the establishment of some ongoing series. And also a useful reality check. ------------ This great blog re-read project has been useful for a couple of reasons. First, it's reminded me that there have been long stretches of time when I produced a lot of good stuff for the blog. When I initially considered this, I was a little afraid that the whole thing would be depressing, and I wouldn't have anything good to point to. If anything, though, I've had the opposite problem-- cutting things down to a manageable length (assuming these…
Comments of the Week #41: From the dark struggle to cosmic Christmas lights
“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” -John Steinbeck Here we are: the final Comments of the Week of 2014 here at Starts With A Bang, a year that's seen a tremendous number of changes, achievements, struggles and triumphs. This past week has perhaps been a microcosm for the entire year, with articles on cosmology, a new Monday series, a guest post and more. If you missed anything, here's what we've covered: Dark matter vs. dark…
Religious Doctrine is Not Infinitely Malleable
Michael Ruse is back with another post over at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Let's take a look: I have written before about Calvin College in Western Michigan and its troubles. I have now to tell you that things have wended their way to their expected and sad conclusion. To give the background once again, starting with the College's own words. As a college that stems from the Reformed branch of Christianity, the bulk of what we believe is held in common with the Christian church around the world and throughout the ages. Three confessions adopted by Reformed Protestants centuries ago…
Action and Meaning
Throughout the brief history of cognitive science, debates over the nature of knowledge representation have raged. In the 1970s, the debate was between those who thought that knowledge was represented as images -- modal, or sensory representations -- and those who thought that knowledge was represented propositionally. That particular debate ended in a stalemate, upon the realization that you could account for pretty much any data set from either perspective. If you can't distinguish between perspectives, you can't really debate them. Despite the stalemate, most cognitive scientists who've…
There's Flea! And the news is not good.
Bummer. A while back, I asked, "Where's Flea?" The question was asked in response to the mysterious disappearance of his blog a couple of weeks ago, leaving only a blank Blogger blog. Flea, as you may remember, was one of my favorite physician-bloggers. A pediatrician, he consistently provided pithy and interesting commentary on life as a solo practice doctor, his battles with emergency room physicians who don't call him when his patients show up in the ER, and various other issues, not to mention the occasional tussle with antivaccination loons. His disappearance seemed related to a…
Linking without Thinking part 2
Andrew Bolt should have been embarrassed with his unthinking linking, but he is unrepentant: If someone claims to find 24 mistakes in your work and you manage to kind-of defend just three, it might be wiser to actually stay quiet. If you don't actually have the integrity to admit and repent, that is. I picked three representative examples from the 24 mistakes Beck alleges I made to show that not only is Beck wrong, he is obviously wrong and he won't admit it no matter how absurd a position he ends up in. The other 21 aren't any better and it would be extremely foolish to give Beck any…
Your Friday Dose of Woo: Just what acupuncture needs. Holograms. And more quantum.
It's been a bit of a depressing week. I suppose it's not any more depressing than usual, with the usual unending stream of pseudoscience, quackery (particularly of the Ebola type), and, of course, antivaccine nonsense to deal with. Then, as I'm writing yet another in a long line of unfunded grants, I find out that a foundation—and an anonymous foundation at that!—has donated close to $4 million to an "integrative oncology" practice in Ottawa affiliated with a naturopathy school to study "integrating" quackery with science-based oncology. At first, I was thinking that I'd just do an…
Clocks and creationists
Lisa Jardine is a historian who clearly understands how science works: The thought uppermost in my mind was how odd it is that non-scientists think of science as being about certainties and absolute truth. Whereas scientists are actually quite tentative—they simply try to arrive at the best fit between the experimental findings so far and a general principle. Read the rest. She ties together the ideals of how science should be carried out with a story from Pepys and an unscrupulous sea captain and modern day creationists—excellent stuff!
Scientists: What do librarians need to know about how you communicate?
Dorothea Salo asks the question over on The Book of Trogool. What do you, scientists, want librarians to know about how you communicate with other scientists? Where do you feel uncertain about the process? Where do you think it's coming up short? Do you think the process should change, and if so, how and how not? I'm aware that librarians get stuck in our own thought-bubbles just like everybody else--I myself am certainly no exception. Here's a stab at bursting the bubble. Head on over and let her know!
Worth reading: NRA, CIA, and the insides of chicken factories
A few of the recent pieces I've liked: Tim Dickson in Rolling Stone: The NRA vs. America Tammie Smith of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and Reporting on Health: Where you live determines how long you live Leah Garces at Food Safety News: Why We Haven't Seen Inside a Broiler Chicken Factory Farm in a Decade (via this Superbug post, which has links to more related stories) Charles Kenney at Small World (Businessweek): How the CIA is Hurting the Fight Against Polio Sarah Kliff at Wonkblog (Washington Post): How Ohio's Republican governor sold the state on expanding Medicaid
Quote of the Day - 7 Nov 2009
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Carl Sagan (November 9, 1934 - December 20, 1996) Pale Blue Dot (p. 6)
Now I understand how Bush can be President
He's a miracle worker and a creative genius. How else can you explain his proposal to add or train 70,000 new math and science teachers while cutting the proposed education budget by 20%? I'd like to be able to explain to my wife how we can buy a brand new MacBook Pro while saving money, but either I'm not as smart as George W. Bush or she is much, much cleverer and less credulous than Republicans. Also note that our pro-science president wants to freeze the NIH budget. Isn't it amazing how he does that?
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
By Nathan Fetty This is a slightly different post to the Pump Handle, mixing in some visuals. Thereâs a route I often drive here in West Virginia that, not surprisingly, takes me through a lot of coal mining territory. Along this route, coal miners are rushing to and from work, and big coal trucks scream down the mountain roads as they get a run to pull the steep grades ahead. Conveyor belts are humming at a large preparation plant. But one thing that strikes me every time is that thereâs a sign for âambulance entranceâ at several of the mines. For example: Â Now donât get me wrong â Iâm…
Fly Away
Rainbow Bee-eater, Merops ornatus. (click on image for a slightly larger version in its own window). This visit is the best gift I've ever received. Heartfelt thanks to John and MA for the providing these broken wings with the gift of flight, Hernan (the bullfighter) for caring for the parrots, Tom for a terrific meal, and especially PZ and his wonderful family for providing a nest and companionship to this wandering spirit. Starlings in Winter Chunky and noisy, but with stars in their black feathers, they spring from the telephone wire and instantly they are acrobats in the freezing…
What kind of PI am I?
For those not in academic biomedical research, "PI" stands for "principal investigator"; i.e., the person who wrote the grant that funds the laboratory effort and (usually) the leader of the laboratory. Unlike Revere, I've only been a PI for around 8 years and an NIH-funded PI for only around two and a half years, I still remember what it was like to be a graduate student and then a postdoc laboring away under my PI, all for the greater glory of his name (and, hopefully, mine), as well as to produce preliminary data to bolster the next grant application. Via Revere, I find this rather amusing…
Thanks for the measles yet again, Andy: Antivax vultures swoop in to spread misinformation among the Minnesota Somali immigrant community
Earlier this week, I took note of an ongoing measles outbreak in Minnesota. This outbreak affects the large Somali immigrant community there, and the reason for the outbreak is simple. Over the last decade, uptake of the MMR vaccine has plunged dramatically in the American-born children of the Somali community, from 92% to 42%, far below the level necessary for herd immunity. The reason for the drop is that antivaccine fear mongering has taken hold in the community, thanks to American antivaxers who targeted the community and Andrew Wakefield himself, who's visited the community at least…
Behe's Dreadful New Book: A Review of "The Edge of Evolution"
I've gotten my hands on a review copy of Michael Behe's new book, "The Edge of Evolution". The shortest version of a review is: Bad science, bad math, and bad theology, all wrapped up in a pretty little package. As people who've followed his writings, lectures, and court appearances know, Behe is pretty much a perfect example of the ignoramus who makes a bad argument, and then puts his fingers in his ears and shouts "La la la, I can't hear you" whenever anyone refutes it. He *still* harps on his "irreducible complexity" nonsense, despite the fact that pretty much *every aspect* of it has been…
Coturnix on Sex, part II - The Hooters Conundrum
My second guest-blogging post on Echidne Of The Snakes, about the potential to have Hooters fund some breast cancer research. Purposefully written to provoke. Cross-posted under the fold... Abel PharmBoy of Terra Sigillata asked: Can Hooters support the fight against breast cancer all without being perceived as capitalistic, misogynistic, or otherwise demeaning to women? You need to read his whole post to see the context, i.e., exactly what kind of sponsorhip for exactly what kind of breast-cancer research. Definitely something that could be, if done carefully, be done in good taste, with…
The Road Less Traveled
There was a time when I was vacationing, near the Bosque del Apache wildlife preserve. There were literally thousands of birds. Most were snow geese or sandhill cranes. There were a lot of people, too. But off a ways, there was a trail. It went, among other places, to a spot called Solitude Canyon. Sounded good. Even better, there was an overlook. On a hill, high above the bosque, it was possible to see the preserve. The thousands of birds appeared as white and gray pixels, rendered on a pointillistic expanse. On the way back, I came to a point in the trail. There was a post with a…
Ben Carson: A case study on why intelligent people are often not skeptics
As a surgeon, I find Ben Carson particularly troubling. By pretty most reports, he was a skilled neurosurgeon who practiced for three decades, rising to the chief of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. Yet, when he ventures out of the field of neurosurgery—even out of his own medical specialty—he routinely lays down some of the dumbest howlers I've ever heard. For example, he denies evolution, but, even worse, he's been a shill for a dubious supplement company, Mannatech. Worse still, when called out for his relationship with Mannatech in the last Republican debate, Carson lied through his teeth…
Bringing woo to disaster areas
Almost two years ago, I discovered something that disturbed me greatly. Basically, I learned the story of an Air Force officer named Col. Richard Niemtzow, MD, PhD. Col. Niemtzow is a radiation oncologist who has over the last decade fallen deeply into woo. Specifically, he has become known for a technique that he has dubbed "battlefield acupuncture," a technique that he has promoted energetically (word choice intentional) and ceaselessly, to the point where, sadly, the military is starting to take it seriously even though the evidence Col Niemtzow has presented in favor of the technique is…
An anonymous Canadian foundation grants $4 million to study "integrative oncology"
Supporters of science-based medicine and keeping pseudoscience out of medicine have a few years to prepare for an onslaught of crappy studies “proving” the value of “integrative” oncology. No doubt at this point you’re wondering just what the heck Orac is talking about. I will tell you. It involves an institution we’ve encountered before and a naturopath we’ve met before, specifically the Ottawa Integrative Cancer Centre and Dugald Seely, ND (translation: Not a Doctor), FABNO (translation: Not an Oncologist). Somehow, Dugald Seely and his brother Andrew have somehow scored some sweet,…
Newly Described Bird-like Dinosaur Predates Archaeopteryx by 15-20 Million Years
tags: evolutionary biology, convergent evolution, paleontology, taxonomy, zoology, basal birds, theropods, dinosaurs, ornithology, birds, Alvarezsauroidea, Haplocheirus sollers, Maniraptora, Archaeopteryx, researchblogging.org,peer-reviewed research, peer-reviewed paper A Newly Discovered Basal Alvarezsauroid Theropod from the Early Late Jurassic. Artwork: Portia Sloan [larger view] DOI: 10.1126/science.1182143 A long-standing scientific debate focuses on the origins of birds: did they evolve from reptiles or dinosaurs? Currently, most scientists think that birds are modern dinosaurs,…
Fly Me to the Moon: The Incredible Migratory Journey of the Arctic Tern
tags: evolutionary biology, behavioral ecology, migration, microtechnology, geolocator, natural history, biological hotspots, longest migration, seabirds, Arctic Tern, Sterna paradisaea, researchblogging.org,peer-reviewed research, peer-reviewed paper Arctic Tern, Sterna paradisaea, Iceland. Image: Arthur Morris, Birds as Art, 2007 [larger view]. Canon 400mm f/5.6L lens (handheld) with the EOS-1D Mark III. ISO 200. Evaluative metering +1/3 stop: 1/1000 sec. at f/5.6 in Manual mode. Manual Flash with Better Beamer at 1:1. For decades, it was widely suspected that a small seabird, the…
Who Won The World War II?
This post (from May 10, 2005) was deliberately written to provoke, by asserting that the "victors write history" rule gets into trouble when there are too many victors writing too many histories. Thus, it was written deliberately as an opposite extreme to what kids learn in school in the USA, as well as a report on what many Europeans think and say over beer in a bar (I have heard it many times), not a report of yet another "Truth" that I actually believe in. So, I also re-posted the comments and hope that some real WWII experts chime in this time around (Orac? Archy?) and straighten-up the…
Chris Hedges wastes everyone's time
Chris Hedges wrote a pretty good book on fundamentalism called American Fascists; at least, I thought it was pretty good, but now I have my doubts about his credibility. He has a new book, I Don't Believe in Atheists, and has an essay that summarizes his position. I could not believe how awful it is — it's basically a declaration that all atheists are exactly like Pat Robertson, and then it charges in with nothing but venom and accusations to defend his position. Here's a perfect example. These atheists share a naïve belief with these fundamentalists in our innate goodness and decency. They…
Death and Disaster
Or, Pielke versus the world. To put my prejudices up front, my money would be on Pielke. Since I get to write this whilst watching a backup of my laptop (for for some odd reason) I'll have time to read the sources as I write this. Background: global warming is happening, and will continue into the future. But how much of a problem is it now, and how much will it be in the future? These are difficult questions. Many organisations and people (the Greenpeace types) appear to automatically assume that All Will Be Ill, and there is no particular need to study this question or even think about it.…
Gardner on Theodicy
Writing in The New Criterion, the always excellent Martin Gardner reviews Bart Ehramnn's new book God's Problem: how the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question -- Why We Suffer. Since I am among those who think the problem of evil and suffering in its various forms is a real crackerjack argument against traditional Christian theism, I read the review with great interest. The “review” part of the review is actually brief. What did Gardner think of the book? Back to God's Problem, the book that triggered my long-winded speculations. It is hard to imagine how a better, more…
Reflections on American Academy's Report: Do Scientists Understand the Public?
Held in over 30 countries, the World Wide Views on Global Warming initiative represents the state-of-the-art in new approaches to public engagement, the subject of several recent reports and meetings. This video features a short documentary on the Australian event. Over the weekend, my friend Chris Mooney contributed an excellent op-ed to the Washington Post pegged to an American Academy of Arts and Sciences event yesterday. The op-ed previewed a longer essay by Chris released at the event in which he described some of the major themes expressed in the transcripts of three meetings convened…
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