Utterly Potty Claim: “Teaching Evolution leads to Nazism!!” … really?

I’m prompted by the article in today’s UK Guardian by Katherine Stewart. She writes about, “The new anti-science assault on US schools“. Yes indeed, the US creationists appear to have taken a page directly out of “Night of the Living Dead”, and even after a fatal blow to their lunacy was delivered by the 2005 decision of … Read more

Was Darwin a racist, is natural selection a racist ideology? – Nope.

Its Charles Darwin’s birthday today … (he was born 12 Feb 1809). There is much I could write, and would like to write about him, but right now I feel it to be appropriate to examine the truly daft claim that many believers put forward. In addition to the usual “Evolution is a lie” crap, … Read more

Seeing visions: Science’s annual visual challenge – in pictures

Each year, Science Magazine and the National Science Foundation host the International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.  They have now announced the winners of its 2011 International Science & Engineering Visual Challenge.  Here now are two of the truly inspiring and amazing entries. Yep, my pick, you might and probably would make a different selection, … Read more

UK TV Alert: “How to Grow a Planet”

This looks like a real gem, its on tonight on BBC 2 at 8pm … (sorry non UK folks, but hopefully you will get access at some point, so it will be worth watching out for) Its a 3 part series by Professor Iain Stewart, in which the BBC description reads … In this first … Read more

NASA spacecraft reveals new observations of interstellar matter

Now this all hit my … “Oh-thats-Cool” … button. You know of course that the earth has a magnetic field around it, right? And that we are protected from the solar wind, a stream of energetic charged particles emanating from the Sun, by this magnetic field because it deflects most of the charged particles. Did … Read more

Boycott Elsevier

There comes a time when enough is quite frankly enough. Elsevier’s business practices demand a response … why? They charge exorbitantly high prices for their journals. They sell journals in very large “bundles,” so libraries must buy a large set with many unwanted journals, or none at all. Elsevier thus makes huge profits by exploiting … Read more