So in my new found rememberence of the joy of sharing stuff with you lot here’s something I’ve just started watching on youtube. It’s a talk from PZ Myers at the ‘Imagine No Religion’ Conference. It’s been uploaded to youtube and it’s quite awsome and PZ has had a great analogy between religion and a tape worm!!! Anyway, here it…
On the 11th of October the Independent published the article “Global warning: climate sceptics are winning the battle” where they quote James Hansen saying the following:
Climate sceptics are winning the argument with the public over global warming, the world’s most celebrated climate scientist, James Hansen of NASA, said in London yesterday.
Continue reading Climate Sceptics Are Winning The Battle
Human beings love simplicity.
People get nostalgic about living in the past – what they see as ‘simpler times’. It’s true to say that the world around us is growing more complicated every hour. At the age of twelve, I could have explained to you how the television in my house worked. Now, ten years older and (hopefully) more knowledgeable, It absolutely baffles me. As I’ve progressed through my education, I’ve discovered whole worlds so small that they cannot be seen, and so large that they cannot adequately be imagined. Every day, scientific discoveries are being made and added to the lists of information that students must learn before they can reach the cutting edge, and much of this knowledge flies in the face of our preconceived notions.
Little wonder therefore that so many people warm to anti-scientific schools of thought under the influence of Occam’s Razor. The common perception of this is that if two equally likely explanations exist for a particular phenomenon, then the simpler of the two is probably the correct one. Hopefully everyone reading this can easily think of examples where this idea is flat-out wrong.
Well surprise surprise, creationist abuse the DMCA to silence their critics. And it’s the brainiacs at CSE, thats Hovind Jnr and cronies, that have been out doing it. Now I don’t know exactly how many they’ve hit but SkepticTV has heard of 3 smaller you tube channels in the past week that have been hit with false DMCA’s. The first of them being our own BluJugganaut, he had two or three taken down, all critiques containing short clips from various episodes of Creation Today, all within fair use for commentary and the like so all falsely DMCAed.
Blu shrugs this off, he’s at uni and the counter notice is a chore whilst he’s not got regular internet access and uni work to do. I know other people might have encouraged him to press the counter notice but it’s his call. So anyway, press on a few days and I get a
So, following on from last nights show here’s the main news item of the week. On saturday 10th December we will be having a 1 year Birthday show that should last within the region of 12 hours. Why 12 and not 24? Well simple, thats how long we were up against Neph in the call that started it all. We will also be taking to oportunity to do a little bit of fundraising for the Secular Students Allience, this predominantly American based group supports students aolder High School pupils in setting up secular/humanist groups and provide support for any getting grief from religious types.
To this end we intend to hold a charity auction during the show as well as having things set up for people to donate without buying, with that in mind we’re looking out for interesting things that can be auctioned so if you have an item you’d like to donate then get in touch. We’re also sorting out a guest list of co-hosts and hopefully some special guests, if you’ve got any suggestions for either of them we’d love to hear from you.
‘Look at that.’ my mum said, pointing into a branch of LUSH, ‘How does somewhere like that stay open in the middle of a recession?’
For those who don’t know, LUSH sells luxury soaps and other cosmetics. I disagree with her on two points. First, she thinks their soaps smell horrible, but I rather like them (though not at the price – talk about paying through the nose). Second, I understand full well how such a chain stays afloat in economic times as desperate as these. The reason? They have a magic word that makes otherwise sane human beings spend twice as much money as they should: ‘Natural’.
Ben 1 Bad Science 0 Watch this video on YouTube Just remember kiddies that most science is done well! Womble
As promised this is where I found out about the paintings from my last post. Steven Newton of the NCSE gave a talk about the above topic and whilst it does focus on one scientific concept I think it’s fair to say it can be loosely ascribed to all topics if the science denialism really does spread laterally. It also shows that creationism is much more wide spread in the states than some of us (myself included) would have realised. I know that there are a few creationist churches within modest driving distance of where I live, although I’m not aware of any of their kids challenging their teachers the way some do in the states.
This is something that I’ve taken from a video of a talk I plan to post soon but I thought I’d post this first. The talk is by one of the chaps in the NCSE and whilst at the time of writing my post on that isn’t written when it is you’ll find the link here. The speaker uses the image I’ll link you too below as one of a number to help set the scene for his talk, and this one in particular gives you a good dea of how they think. And to be honest I’ve got to agree, which has nothing to do with him being a fellow geologist (although that does make him awesome!).
The painting dpicts a scene where jebuz has pitched up outside the white house where he dangles a copy of theAmerican constitution, behind him is an assortment of dead people from various points in American history, to the front left are representatives of what makes America great at the moment and then to the right are some of those that are hell bound, including a cameo from ol’ horny
