When my baby nurses from his mom, he can see her face and bond with her because he was designed to do so by god. Like how a banana is designed by god to fit comfortably in the hand for eating, or maybe just carrying around.
What am I talking about?
Continue reading My baby was designed by god just like a banana
Imagine the following scenario. Two guys are walking down the street, in different cities. Guy A has two PhDs, one in quantum physics with a focus on dimensionality dynamics, the other in astrophysics with a focus on relativistic aspects of gravity and black holes. She has published dozens of peer reviewed papers on both topics and is a brilliant mathematician. Guy B never took a physics class but yesterday he finished reading large parts of The Elegant Universe. Suddenly, at the same moment, they each have an idea (they do not have the same idea … they have different ideas) about how to unify quantum level and cosmic level dynamics.
Continue reading Empowering the individual does not equal ensmartening the individual
Scientist could probably do a better job at understanding, and addressing, science denial. I know this is true. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard a scientist say something like “All you have to do is, bla bla bla” or “What I do is bla bla bla” in relation to science denialists, or addressing this issue in classrooms, etc. I’d have dozens of nickels. Yet the problem of science denialism continues. It is possible that we don’t know what we are doing.
Joshua Rosenau knows something about science denialism, as a scientist, scienceblogs.com blogger, and staff member at the National Center for Science Education. And, he’s written a paper in Trends in Microbiology on this very topic. From the summary:
Evolution, climate change, and vaccination: in these cases and more, scientists, policymakers, and educators are confronted by organized campaigns to spread doubt, denial, and rejection of the scientific community’s consensus on central scientific principles. To overcome these threats, scientists not only need to spread scientific knowledge, but must also address the social drivers of science denial.
Sounds interesting. Want to read it? You can. Just click here for the PDF!
You might also want to check out this recent post by Josh about the current state of climate science vis-a-vis policy in Washington.
Have you heard of the book “Once We All Had Gills: Growing Up Evolutionist in an Evolving World
Here’s a summary:
In this book, Rudolf A. Raff reaches out to the scientifically queasy, using his life story and his growth as a scientist to illustrate why science matters, especially at a time when many Americans are both suspicious of science and hostile to scientific ways of thinking. Noting that science has too often been the object of controversy in school curriculums and debates on public policy issues ranging from energy and conservation to stem-cell research and climate change, Raff argues that when the public is confused or ill-informed, these issues tend to be decided on religious, economic, and political grounds that disregard the realities of the natural world. Speaking up for science and scientific literacy, Raff tells how and why he became an evolutionary biologist and describes some of the vibrant and living science of evolution. Once We All Had Gills is also the story of evolution writ large: its history, how it is studied, what it means, and why it has become a useful target in a cultural war against rational thought and the idea of a secular, religiously tolerant nation.
Courtesy of the National Center for Science Education, you can have a FREE CHAPTER of this interesting book!
There is a petition making the rounds which is getting some real support, and that you should sign:
Religious institutions across our great nation serve an important role in community building & out reach, helping the poor & disenfranchised, among many other noble actions.
Our forefathers had the foresight to see that for our nation to succeed, we would need to enforce an unparalleled freedom of religion. However, they also understood the imperative need for a legal separation between church & state.
In recent years, the IRS has turned a blind eye to offending Religious institutions that mix religion with politics. By not enforcing the qualifications & disqualification’s of 26 U.S.C. § 501(c) of the United States tax code, the IRS is doing a diservice to both the American people & the vision of our forefathers.
We ask that you enforce the letter of the law.
There are two things the petition does not mention but that you need to know:
1) Many religious institutions carry out activities that are generally done by businesses that pay taxes, and they compete. Mega churches are often conference centers. Churches often run supportive housing facilities that bring in profits, or build social service facilities that dome with guarantteed developers fees. I know of a church that got a government grant to build a housing facility, subcontracted the work, and had a guaranteed $500,000 profit for their effort, and now runs the facility in the black with no taxes to pay. There may be nothing wrong that any of that. You just need to know that the tax exempt status is worth mucho dinero for any church.
2) Many religious institutions carry out a defacto political policy even other than supporting specific candidates, so even churches that stay within the letter of the law are busy being very political.
Please sign the petition HERE.
Photo of megachurch by Flickr user rauchdickson.
This doesn’t look fake, but I wonder … is it?
Glendon Mellow was asking the other day where to get “realistic” or “scientifically accurate” dinosaurs for kids to play with. There are a LOT of “realistic” dinosaur sets out there, but they are for the most part realistic in that they really look like the imagined dinosaurs of the last century and a half, and not the reconstructed dinosaurs of present day paleontology. I’m not sure if you can even get those. The 12 piece Large Assorted Dinosaurs – Toys 5–7" Larger Size Dinosaur Figures
In the absence of scientific accuracy one might go for fun. For this you can’t do much better than dinosaur finger puppets
Chemistry sets are great for the right kids. I’ve often recommended this book for serious home chemistry. The current best chemistry set is probably buying everything individually on the Internet and then dealing with Homeland Security. If you are going to do that you might have a look at this: 16 Piece Deluxe Organic Chemistry Glassware Set
The Scientific Explorer’s Mind Blowing Science Kit for Young Scientists
Everybody needs a good dissection set. Here there are a few ways to go. One can get a reasonably good dissection set like this one
There are dozens of kits and toys you can get that let you grow an organism and keep it alive for a while. I hate most of these kids. I recommend getting a 10 gallon aquarium from your local fish or pet shop, an external box filter (easiest to clean) and an aerator (yes, both) and then just go to your local swamps and ponds and scoop up mud and stuff and put that in the aquarium, along with water that has been properly handled or processed. Stuff will spontaneously generate from the mud, don’t worry. If it doesn’t work just get some more mud, clean it out, and try again (don’t use cleaning chemicals). You will learn to make it work over time … by doing science!
The best “Kit” for geology is a good book on geology
After hundreds of studies, it has been difficult to link fish predation by cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) to the reduction of fishing quality in Minnesota lakes. It appears that game fish such as walleye and northern pike make up from less than 1% to nearly 3% of the bird’s diet. They eat only small fish. Many of the fish they eat are perch, which prey on walleye, and it is even possible that by culling small walleye or northerns, they increase the growth rate for those fish in two way. One is by reducing competition between fish for food, and the other is by exerting selective pressure for faster growth.
When cormorants were heavily culled on Leech Lake a few years ago, the Walleye fishing got better. The fishermen and resort owners hailed the killing of the birds as a great thing and attributed the improved fishing to the culling policy. However, the lake simultaneously underwent a very aggressive restocking, and slot limits had been imposed at the same time. The fisherman and resort owners are, sorry to say, being stupid about this, rejecting the science, and possibly shooting themselves in the foot.
Two Minnesota Congressmen have been behind changing federal law to allow widespread killing off of cormorants in the state. This, I believe, is unbecoming of a member of Congress who have the responsibility of paying attention to the science, and of being stewards of our national resources at a level greater than a few local whiny mayors and resort owners.
This issue has been brewing for a few years and will continue. I am hoping that the recent focus on the importance of science in developing public policy will mean a more intelligent, less immature and misinformed cormorant policy in Minnesota over the next few years.
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How will climate change affect the flavor of wine? Are warming oceans responsible for the recent global jellyfish outbreak? Do we know how a rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide will affect poison ivy, tobacco, or even sea anemones? NCSE climate change project director talks about what the research shows and future questions to be answered. Sponsored by the Bay Area Skeptics.
Hat Tip Marnie
One of the reasons that we have not, as a species, as a group of nations, dealt effectively with Anthropogenic Global Warming is the effectiveness of climate science denialism. There are denialists in Congress, on the Internet, and everywhere. They have not succeeded in making a valid scientific argument regarding Global Warming, but they have kept the rhetoric in the foreground, which has allowed interests protecting Big Oil to keep the hapless Main Stream Media focused on a false balance between scientific consensus and unreasonable doubt. As a result, the last decade or so has been a wash when it comes to international action on Carbon emissions and other ameliorating action. As a result, the idea that we could keep global temperature rise from going past the 2 degree C mark. Now, it is increasingly understood that we are heading for much warmer conditions, and this has the World Bank worried.
The World Bank just commissioned an analysis by scientists at the Potsdam Institute looking at the consequences of a 4°C rise in global temperatures above pre-industrial levels by 2100. And the report appears to have unnerved many bank officials. “The latest predictions on climate change should shock us into action,” wrote World Bank President Jim Yong Kim in an op-ed after the report was released Monday.
The analysis is available here as a PDF file.
The analysis suggests that there is a 20% chance that temperatures will warm to more than 4°C by 2100, possibly reaching g 4°C by 2060. This would result in sea level rise of up to 3 feet, maybe more. If the warming reached 6°C, which is possible, sea level rise would be in the range of a dozen feet or more. The report also discusses the uneven distribution of imacts:
- Even though absolute warming will be largest in high latitudes,
the warming that will occur in the tropics is larger when compared to the historical range of temperature and extremes to
which human and natural ecosystems have adapted and coped.
The projected emergence of unprecedented high-temperature
extremes in the tropics will consequently lead to significantly
larger impacts on agriculture and ecosystems.- Sea-level rise is likely to be 15 to 20 percent larger in the tropics than the global mean.
- Increases in tropical cyclone intensity are likely to be felt
disproportionately in low-latitude regions.- Increasing aridity and drought are likely to increase substantially in many developing country regions located in tropical
and subtropical areas.
The report is sobering. Let us hope it is also inspiring. You should have a look at it.
Tim Farley has this on his blog:
On Friday, November 16, 2012 Dennis Markuze was once again arrested by the SPVM (Montreal Police) for violating the terms of his May 22 suspended sentence. It took many people many months to track him down and convince the police to arrest him. This is the story behind that…
Read the rest of that post here.
I would like to thank Tim for his diligent and effective efforts. And, I have a few other things to say.
The whole Dennis Markuze/Dave Mabus thing is an interesting case where we are required to ask ourselves about or attitudes and reactions to the activities of individuals with mental illness. This is an issue that I think needs a lot more discussion and consideration. Mental illness does not mean stalking or potential violence and other annoyances. It is a much larger thing with many aspects, and it is a problem individual people have that can bleed out into the lives of others around them to greater and lesser degrees. In my view, society is pretty bad at dealing with that one (small) branch of mental illness that involves threatening or very anti-social behavior. Having said that, I think the Atheist and Skeptics community has done fairly well with this rare but unfortunate intersection of personal behavior of a mentally ill individual and our own sense of safety. People are not calling for the worst punishment for Dennis, or for his permanent incarceration, which is saying a lot about a community that is often willing to “ban people for ever” simply because they disagree on some issue or another. I think most people are willing to see the Canadian authorities deal with Dennis as a person in need of help, but in a way that firmly requires that he receive that help. I don’t think anyone is really able to say, mainly due to lack of information but also due to the nature of this sort of situation, if Dennis is a “true threat” to others or just a person who is very very annoying.
Regarding him being annoying: I found his latest form of harassment to be in some ways worse, in some ways not as bad as, his previous behavior. Prior to his first arrest many of his missives included clearly threatening language, with phrases such as “all Atheists must die” (I paraphrase). His second round of harassment contained no such language of which I’m aware, but he became more annoying in other ways. For instance, he discovered the Twitter tradition of Follow Friday (#FF). For a couple of weeks, every time I carried out the act, a form of mutual aid, of #FF, Dennis would then spam all the recipients of the minuscule largess that this constitutes. That meant that for me to be “nice” to a fellow Tweeter, I also inadvertently annoyed them by drawing them into Dennis’s crosshairs. Assuming that his previous threats involving all Atheists ending up dead were just hot air, this second round was much worse, directly interfering with our beloved Social Networking Activities (Snorking).
Finally, I want to say this: Tim Farley and I have had our differences. We fell into different, opposing camps in certain key issues and argued about that in the Social Networking World. But never for a moment did these differences bleed out into Tim’s thoughtful and effective campaign to represent all of us in this matter, and for my part I’m more than happy to appreciate his efforts and I sincerely thank him for that. The ability to work together even when we disagree is, or should be, a hallmark of real skepticism. The inability to do so is the hallmark of cliquish behavior and mean spirited Internetitude. Here, I think we did well.
Thanks again time.
And do go read his post, it is epic.
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Pick up your eCopy of the novella Sungudogo, a new origin story for the Skeptics Movement! (Bloggers and reviewers, contact me for a review copy)
Nature, the journal, has come out in favor of the US congress acting on a Carbon Tax now.
As looming tax increases and budget cuts threaten to plunge the US economy back into recession, Congress should take a hard look at introducing a carbon tax as an important part of the solution.
This week, a reinvigorated Barack Obama returned to the White House knowing that he was poised on the edge of a fiscal cliff. Rather than relishing his victory last week, Obama must immediately set about crafting a compromise on deficit reduction with congressional leaders. The stakes could hardly be higher — for science, for US citizens and, indeed, for the world. In the event of failure, a budgetary time-bomb of tax increases and sweeping budget cuts will detonate on 2 January. As well as resulting in indiscriminate cuts to funds for scientific research and many other areas, it could knock the United States back into recession and deliver yet another blow to an already fragile global economy.
…
Just consider the possibilities. To put a levy on carbon would raise revenues that could be used to offset lower tax rates for individuals and businesses. This is what conservatives say they want to do. It would put more income — and thus choice — in the hands of consumers. Economists like the idea for more fundamental reasons. Generally, it is best to tax things that one wishes to discourage (such as smoking) rather than those that should be encouraged (such as working). Environmentalists like the idea of a carbon tax because it could generate some much-needed revenue for clean-energy research and development while reducing carbon emissions.
The editorial is here. I think it is not behind a paywall.
Why creationism is true:
Falafel. You can’t explain that!