Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
This week Discover Magazine ran the story of what happened to Russian Scientist Anatoli Bugorski when he accidentally stuck his head inside a particle accelerator. It all happened back in 1978. This was in the Soviet Union at a time when talking about anything Nuclear related was not exactly encouraged, so he did not talk about … Read more
Recently a right-wing Facebook “friend” shared an article from the Daily Caller that claimed that Satellite data showed no acceleration in warming for the past 23 years. Apart from the rather obvious “How did this guy get on my FB friends list?” question, I do actually find it fascinating to observe how such “truth” is … Read more
The classical image of dinosaurs that we carry within our heads is that they were scaled up lizards. This is not simply a cultural view, but was the initial scientific one. Back in 1842 paleontologist Richard Owen coined the word dinosaur from Greek as a description of the term “fearsome lizard”. We perhaps still carry that … Read more
There is a meme going around that consists of a sweatshirt slogan that reads … This perhaps is the essence of climate modelling. Observations are made, and slowly slowly you build up a precise mathematical model that can be used to work out what comes next. Within such models you have the various drivers of … Read more
American Atheists have their traditional seasonal billboard campaign in full swing, and as you can perhaps anticipate, the perpetually ready to be offended are (insert drum roll here) … offended at the very idea that the traditional Christmas story is fake news and did not actually happen. As pointed out by Newsweek, some being offended … Read more
Abuse is the theme this week. Over and over, stories of religious abuse emerge. People in positions of trust continue to abuse such positions and often the religious response is to cover it all up and pretend it has not happened. During the past seven days the following tragic stories have emerged. Item 1 – Pastor … Read more