Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
The term “weird” is perhaps a relative term. Often ideas that are highly unusual and bizarre will be appropriated culturally and so they become accepted as normal and not weird. Belief often operates as a mini-culture that is distinctly different and so it can and does contain things that our wider society will recognise as … Read more
OK, let’s cut to the chase, the answer is “yes”, to the question, it is a truly daft idea, and yet it is perhaps also a clever bit of political theatre because it weaves an aura of both doubt and also respectability to an anti-science stance that does not warrant or merit either. Let’s establish … Read more
You might not be familiar with the name Ken Burns. He is the highly acclaimed documentary maker who has been nominated for Academy Awards and has also won Emmy Awards for his documentaries. Perhaps the most famous, which I personally found fascinating and really enjoyed, was his 1990 work The Civil War. The Interview Ken Burns was interviewed … Read more
David Wallace-Wells has published a climate-centric doomsday article within the New York Times that is quite harrowing to read. Entitled “The Uninhabitable Earth” and published on 9th July, it lays out various scenarios within 9 sections. Yes, I’ve read it all, and if you are going to allocate the time to do so, then be … Read more
The results of the latest British Social Attitudes survey have now been published, and as might perhaps be anticipated, the number of non-religious people has continued its upward trend. Where can I find the precise details? Press Release for the latest survey is here A PDF containing the full survey results can be found here. … Read more
The enabler of Fake News is that humans respond to information at an emotional level. We might indeed criticise “them” for living inside an information bubble, but the truth is that we are all as individuals crafting echo chambers to one degree or another by selecting information that agrees with our preconceived views and resisting … Read more