This is a darned good talk that addresses a lot of the bogus arguments against The God Delusion…and it’s pretty darned funny, too. Watch the whole thing. He’s very strident, shrill, and ranty. Right.
Posted 47 Minutes Ago
Comedian/actor Mike Myers talks about how enlightenment actually means “lightening up” when he sits down for a one-on-one conversation with philosopher Deepak Chopra in this clip from the next episode of Iconoclasts. Airs Thursday, November 8th @10PM on The Sundance Channel! For More info, visit: http://www.sundancechannel.com/iconoclasts/
Sucking up to Deepak Chopra? Blechh. Pretending that his nonsense has anything to do with enlightenment? Double blechh.
The only part that’s valid is the claim that humor is part of enlightenment values—so let’s all laugh at these two goofballs.
Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but we’ve got a serial spammer in the comments. This twit, calling himself Peter Moore (also known as Ken DeMyer, or Kdbuffalo, as he was known on Wikipedia before being banned there), is repeating himself over and over again, asking the same stupid question, never satisfied with any answer anyone gives him. Forty nine insipid comments in three days is enough.
I will answer him one last time. Any further attempt to spam multiple comment threads with his demands (and this alone makes him an ass: an incompetent, unqualified hack like Moore is in no position to make demands) will result in his immediate banning.
Matthew Chapman’s suggestion that the presidential candidates have a debate on science is naive, idealistic, and a step in the right direction. It will never happen, because the issues of science we could talk about are not up for debate, and I don’t think any of the candidates in any party are competent to discuss them, and they know it. They won’t step into a venue where their grade-school level understanding of science will face serious challenge, or where their embarrassing misunderstandings will be publicly aired.
Now what would be feasible, I think, would be a debate on science policy. What are they going to do about getting objective science information to congress? What do they propose to do to improve science, engineering and technology education in the schools, and specifically, what are they going to do to address major failures of the school to instruct their graduates in basic concepts like evolution? What are they going to do about an alternative energy policy, and global climate change? A lot of these questions would get down to the candidate’s understanding, but I’m more concerned that my candidate has a plan to improve the public understanding of science, rather than that they know it themselves.
At the very least, Chapman suggests that the debate be led by a panel of qualified experts. This is the best idea of all. We would improve the discourse and the depth of content of these presidential sessions immeasurably by the simple step of firing the incompetent jerks who are always tapped to run these circuses: give Tim Russert, Wolf Blitzer, and Random News Head #63 the axe (metaphorically would be good enough, but literally has some virtues, too). Why aren’t the candidates standing up before panels of economists, foreign policy experts, scientists, etc., and getting good questions asked of them by competent people? It would be far more informative, and it would give us a better picture of how a prospective president would handle his own shortcomings.
As long as we don’t have to respect his authority or consider him infallible, we can say hello to The Quantum Pontiff.
Although…computer science? What do we need their kind for? Shouldn’t we be getting more biologists here?
I thought Beyond Belief II was an excellent, stimulating, provocative meeting, but I’m somewhat discouraged about writing it up in detail because everything was taped and will be available on the web very soon … so I don’t want to be entirely superfluous. I’ve already described the first day, though, so I’ll continue with the second and third days, trying to cue you in to what I thought was most interesting and what to look for in the videos.
Sandwalk has been up and running for a year — stop by and say congratulations!
Go vote! These are my choices, and you all should follow your own consciences.
Best individual blogger: I vote for Lindsay.
Best blog: I vote for Raw Story (yeesh, but this category is stocked with some really awful right wing crap).
Best comic strip: I vote for xkcd, of course.
Best online community: LGF must be destroyed, so I vote for Daily Kos.
Best liberal blog: These are all good, so this time I vote for Hullabaloo, but I’ll probably rotate my daily vote among all the others.
Best LGBT blog: I’m torn between it and Pam’s House Blend, but I vote for Susie Bright.
Best Science blog: I voted for Invasive Species, which I’d like to see win, but I may have to throw my support to Bad Astronomy just to keep the bad climate blogs from winning.
“Celebrity” blog?: Keep it real and vote for the least obnoxious celebrity, Wil Wheaton.
Best Medical/Health Issues blog: I vote for Orac.
Funniest blog: I vote for Sadly, No. (There’s some awful humorless right-wing slug in second place, so this one is an even easier decision).
Best of the Top 2501-3500 Blogs (what a poor pattern of categorization): I vote for Creek Running North.
Best of the Top 3501-5000 Blogs: I vote for Dr Joan Bushwell.
The residents of Minnesota are now officially over-represented on Scienceblogs: Greg Laden has joined the fray.
The scienceblogs team seems to be forming a united front on at least one specific issue: in support of research in the face of animal rights extremists. This is prompted by the case of a researcher in drug addiction whose home was vandalized by domestic terrorists, and who has written an op-ed defending the use of animals in research.
I said at length what I think about animal research several years ago, in our biology discipline’s policy statement on dissection. It’s pretty darned simple: we can’t figure out how something we don’t understand works without studying the subject. We can’t learn more about cells without studying cells; we can’t learn more about animals without studying animals; software simulations and thought experiments do not substitute.
