Deep Fried Flying

It has been a while since Anthony Watts posted the following remark on his blog:

I’ve never much thought there was much usefulness to waste vegetable oil used for automobile fuel, as there is a much more finite amount of waste frying oil available compared to petroleum. Ditto for chicken fat powered aviation. Would you want to fly on a plane that is chicken fat powered? Personally, it seems clucking ridiculous.

I just wish NASA would stick to space exploration.

Watts is complaining about an article posted by NASA where they explain an experiment they did with alternative fuels. And for this experiment they used chicken fat and beef tallow as the source for the fuel:

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Race and IQ – RukaGate

Now that most of the dust has settled over the recent YouTube drama surround HeyRuka, I thought it was time I carefully picked over the wreckage and try to give a more balanced view on things. Failing that, I’d like to stir up trouble again.

It was disappointing as someone who was very keen to have Ruka on the show to see that she’s not the skeptic that we had her down to be. It was doubly disappointing given that we’d planned to have her on our show about morality, as Ruka has found herself at the centre of a racism charge.

For those who haven’t seen her videos, Ruka has made several videos (now deleted) concerning the differences that separate the different human races. Some of this content is her attempts to defend her initial arguments, and doing nothing to make her side seem more acceptable. She has stated that the difference between races is “not skin-deep”, and I agree; any geneticist can tell you that a person’s DNA can shed light upon their ethnicity. But that’s about as good as it gets. Of course, the races aren’t as genetically distinct as to be different species. At the end of the day there’s no denying that we’re all human beings. But what I really want to address here is Ruka’s claim that the black races are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent than the other races.

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Make Your Voice Heard During The Fox News Republican Debate

On September 22, the Republican candidates will meet in Orlando, Florida for the Fox News/Google Debate, and they’ll be answering questions that you ask.

This is a perfect moment to ask your politicians why they deny the science of climate change or why they are so opposed to protecting the environment in general. Submit your question now in video or text and vote on other questions you’d like to hear asked.

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Anti-Science

So here I am sat recovering from a very full on weekend…..lots of running around and rolling in the mud and then I pulled a Falchion49, although no where near to the same extent.  So I’m checking my subs box on youtube and I come across this video by the absolutly brilliant RationalWarrior, he makes lots of these sorts of…

Colbert Mocks Limbaugh, Carlson, Doocy Over Their Global Warming Denials

On the show The Colbert Report host Stephen Colbert mocked Rush Limbaugh for claiming that the heat index is a government conspiracy, joking: The heat index is just more big government numbers telling you how hot to feel — just like their time index tells you how sleepy to feel. He also mocked Fox & Friends co-hosts Steve Doocy and Gretchen Carlson for claiming…

The Feed Issues Have Been Resolved

The issues on the feedburner servers have been resolved. The new feeds will become available in a few moments at the following locations: http://feeds.feedburner.com/realsceptic http://feeds.feedburner.com/commentsforrealsceptic If you are viewing the site via the old Virere feeds please note that those feeds will cease to exist in a couple of days. So please update to the above mentioned feeds if you…

What About God?

What about him you might ask. A 7 part documentary made by PBS NOVA called Evolution tries to answer this question in the very last part. Among others famous creationist Ken Ham gets to spout his usual dishonesty and ignorance:
Ham: “So what do you say when they tell you it was millions of years ago? Huh? Were you there?”
This famous tactic has been used by our good friend the Arc builder many times. PZ Myers explains to a little girl why this is a very dishonest question.

The primary topic is of course the teaching of Evolution in school and how people of faith deal with it. You’ll hear students, teachers and parents talk about the subject. We discuss these things regularly via youtube comments and good intentions turn into ridicule sooner rather than later. I think the struggle religious people go through is unimaginable for an atheist from birth like me. It shows how strong religious indoctrination actually is. “Evolution is from Satan himself“, “you’ll die unhappy when you want to proof we came from monkeys” are just some of the (non verbatim) quotes I remember well from this documentary.

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