See the link?<\/p>\n
It is pretty obvious to me.<\/p>\n
It seems that terrorists who are really serious, reasonably numerous, presumably well funded, and certainly experienced have threatened to attack the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia (both of them<\/a>). The fallback plan, it is assumed, is that they can’t attack Sochi so they pick some other random locations, maybe in Russia, maybe not, and attack them. (That is the part about terrorists being cowards, I assume.)<\/p>\n The Russians have security that is probably second to none in the world, or at least on par with the countries that have a lot of experience with this sort of thing and spend considerable resources on evading and avoiding terrorist attacks. One could say that this is a test of an important question. When terrorists who are among the most likely to succeed are put up against security that is second to none, with plenty of advanced warning (over four years), will the terrorists be able to get past the defenses at Sochi or will they be thwarted? Truly, this is an historic moment about to happen. Or not happen, as the case may be.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in Kentucky, Bill Nye will be debating Ken Ham over the question \u201cIs creation a viable model of origins in today\u2019s modern, scientific era?\u201d (See this post by Josh Rosenau<\/a> for details and how to watch the debate live.) As Josh summarizes in his post, and as I said here<\/a>, Bill Nye would have been well advised to not do this debate. But he decided to so it anyway. Bill is a practiced and excellent communicator and promotor of science. Also, over the last few weeks, he has been preparing for this debate, getting coaching from heavyweights such as Don Prothero<\/a>. But Ken Ham and the Creation Museum are the epitome of modern day Medieval creationism. It is a little like Sochi…<\/p>\n This is a test of a less important question than the one that will be taken up by circumstances as Sochi: When creationists who are among the most likely to succeeded in front of an audience are pitted with a leading science communicator with the best possible training and resources, what will happen?<\/p>\n I can’t watch the debate. I will be busy doing this<\/a>. That’s a bummer. But I will watch the recorded version of it (assuming they have such modern technology at a museum with displays showing humans and dinosaurs co-existing). I hope you watch it and please leave comments below on how you think it went.<\/p>\n One final thing. Some people are going to be mad at me for equating American Christian Creationists with Chechen Terrorists. I mean to do no such thing. The core reasons these terrorists exist is because a people has been repressed by a dictatorial regime (several, actually) for many years. The creationists have no valid reason to be fighting science and ruining education. At the same time, the terrorists have adopted methods to get what they want that are horrible, immoral, and cowardly and that cause random death, injury, and destruction. The creationists have adopted methods that are not nearly as horrible, still often immoral, often cowardly, but they generally don’t hurt anybody physically so that’s good. But, anti-science activism has led to a delay in doing something meaningful about climate change over the last decade, so in the end, the anti-science activists in general, including the creationists, will have some accounting to do as well. Just sayin’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" See the link? It is pretty obvious to me. It seems that terrorists who are really serious, reasonably numerous, presumably well funded, and certainly experienced have threatened to attack the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia (both of them). The fallback plan, it is assumed, is that they can’t attack Sochi so they pick some other … Continue reading Bill Nye at the Creation Museum and Russian Security at Sochi<\/span>