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
Last December I was writing about the widening rift that had been measured in the Larsen C Ice Shelf in the Antarctic by NASA’s #ICEBridge. I highlighted the inevitable – the breakup of the Larsen C ice shelf, and pointed out that this was part of the on-going process that had seen Larsen A disintegrate in … Read more
I do confess to having a bit of a conflict of interest here. I drink rather a lot of Diet Coke, a can or two per day, and so I seriously have to examine my thinking and ask if confirmation bias is kicking in when writing to assure you that Aspartame is totally safe. Is … 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