Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
I’ve blogged about these folks before here … what prompts me to return to the subject is an article in today’s UK Guardian. It is actually a reprint from the New Yorker, they have re-printed it because they felt it was that good, and I agree, so I’m pointing you at it. Should you be … Read more
Yep, its that time of year again folks …
Once upon a time long long ago … there existed a magical garden that had been created by a supernatural entity, and into this garden it put the first man and first woman that ever lived. Sadly the woman was tricked by a talking snake into eating some fruit, and so the magical super-entity became angry and tossed the pair out.
[roll forward in time to about 2,000 years ago]
Now here is a news story that illustrates just how truly insanely stupid an irrational belief can make you. When faced with a choice between an irrational belief, or a life saving operation, I’m sure your previous experience with these Jehovah’s Witness kooks will allow you to guess the choice made.
Its all concerns a lady called Mary Stinemetz, 64, who needed a liver transplant, one that would be paid for by Medicaid, at the University of Kansas Hospital. The problem (for her) was that she would be forced to compromise her Jehovah’s Witness delusions, because she would also need to receive a blood transfusion as part of this operation, something she believes violates the fictional laws of a mythological supernatural entity (to whom she has given a pet name of “God”)
Social researchers have been looking into the attitudes of the growing numbers of non-religious young Britons. Its an important question to ask because if the recent polls are correct, then the majority of the population in the UK are not religious. Let me spell that out for you … if you take every possible form of religious belief, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu and lots more, add up all the followers in the population, you find that together they are a minority.
OK, this item is here simply because I’m keen to get my hands on the next iPhone … the news is …
(Reuters) – Apple’s next-generation iPhone will have a faster processor and will begin shipping in September, three people with direct knowledge of the company’s supply chain said.
The production of the new iPhone will start in July/August and the smartphone will look largely similar to the iPhone 4, one of the people said on Wednesday.
The iPhone — introduced in 2007 with the touchscreen, on-demand application template now adopted by its rivals — remains the gold standard in the booming smartphone market.
NASA Press release …
April 20, 2011: To celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope’s deployment into space, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., pointed Hubble’s eye at an especially photogenic pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273. The larger of the spiral galaxies, known as UGC 1810, has a disk that is distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. This image is a composite of Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 data taken on December 17, 2010, with three separate filters that allow a broad range of wavelengths covering the ultraviolet, blue, and red portions of the spectrum.