Via Jerry Coyne, I came across an excellent 2006 essay titled My God Problem by science journalist Natalie Angier in which she tackles something that also bothers me, which is the way that so many scientists seem to be so concerned about surveys that show low levels of acceptance of the theory of evolution while ignoring, let alone trying to counter, evidence of much worse anti-scientific thinking. [Read more…]
I am quite ignorant of the equestrian events that take place at the Olympics. The only ones I’ve seen involved horses going round a circuit and jumping over various fences with the scoring depending on how cleanly the horses did the jumps and the time taken. [Read more…]
The Cleveland Plain Dealer had a story about three men who started a business hosting different kinds of networking events for people. They called their venture “3 Guys”. [Read more…]
The US media loves to commemorate anniversaries. But I have not heard of any plans to address the fact that this year marks the 50th anniversary of one of the worst atrocities of modern times: when John F. Kennedy began the bombing of Vietnam. [Read more…]
I finally got around to seeing Julia Sweeney’s 2007 monologue performance Letting Go of God, where she describes her journey from being a good Catholic girl to an atheist in adulthood. It was funny, informative, and moving, as she describes the kinds of questions that occurred to her and the answers she sought from her parents, her priest, other religions, and her readings, before she finally accepted that she was, in effect, an atheist. [Read more…]
Jon Oliver of The Daily Show reports on a little known English child rearing practice.
(This clip appeared on June 11, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
A Mormon woman describes what happened when her husband told her that he had stopped believing in god. It is a poignant story of the tensions that can arise between believers and non-believers in the same family. [Read more…]
In the US we are constantly regaled with stories in the media of high-level people in al Qaeda being killed by drone strikes and how few civilians have been harmed. We are constantly reminded of how precise drones are. But of course, all that means is that there is a high probability that a drone hits the target that it was aiming at. It says nothing about whether the target was the right one to begin with, even if one concedes that the US government has the right to target and kill anyone it pleases. [Read more…]
Some of them are quite clever.
(Via Gawker.)