Science!
I just bought Why Evolution is True”, by Jerry Coyne, and Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea ,by Carl Zimmer. I’m also currently reading Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries, by Neil deGrasse Tyson, and In Search of the Multiverse: Parallel Worlds, Hidden Dimensions, and the Ultimate Quest for the Frontiers of Reality,by John Gribbin. In case you haven’t noticed, I love science.
Just to balance it out, I am also working on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, by Philip K. Dick and I’m getting ready to re-read “Sarum”, by Edrward Rutherfurd.
And now, here are some ornithopods drawn by hyrotrioskjan.
Discovery Channel Caves In
PZ Myers has an entry on his blog today about how the Discovery Channel purchased only 6 of the 7 episodes of David Attenborough’s latest, Frozen Planet. The reason? Episode 7 deals with global climate change. Yes, that’s right. The Discovery Channel that supposedly provides educational programming, has decided to strip off the final episode of this wonderful series because they choose to ignore science and fact. How is withholding and ignoring information on a critical topic that effects everyone on the planet educating? That the Discovery Channel chooses to give into ideologically motivated ignorance is infuriating.
I’ve chosen to express my ire to the Discovery Channel at their viewer relations page. Here is what I had to say:
“I am appalled that the Discovery Channel decided not to show the 7th installment of Frozen Planet. I thought that Discovery Channel was dedicated to providing quality educational and science programming, instead, I find that it has decided that it would rather cave to the uniformed idea that global climate change is not real and refuse to show the last installment of this series because it deals with the scientific fact. Shame on the Discovery Channel.”
More Cool Science and Skeptical Images
Here are some more cool science and non-theist images for your enjoyment!
They make as much sense as the Christian trinity.
It is just as plausible as the Christian version.
Science rocks!
The man who showed the world that science can be exciting and beautiful.
Probably the most influential scientist since Newton. Evolution baby!
His work greatly influence Darwin. He is the forgotten hero of evolution.
Pass the peas please! The theory of inheritance derived by his work with peas laid the groundwork for the science of genetics. I still remember this to this day from high school biology class.
Made With Science!
By http://lithiumboy.deviantart.com/
Look around you. If you are reading this then you are most likely surrounded by things that science make possible. When you read about people who are anti-science and who seek to replace science with their fantasies of religion, think about all the things that make your life easier and richer than you would not have without science. I’m not just talking about iPhones and the Internet, or big screen TVs or even cars. Think about running water; clean running water. Think about electricity. How about the fact that most children in western societies regularly survive to adulthood? All these things can be attributed to science. If the religious right (you can’t call them radical anymore as they now make up the mainstream of the GOP) gets their way and vastly useful and proven scientific theories such as evolution, plate tectonics, and germ theory are suppressed in our educational systems and research funding, it can only bode ill for our modern way of life. If they get their way, you will need to move to Canada, Europe or Asia to have the same quality of life you have now.
So next time you hear someone going on about cutting science funding or trying to get intelligent design (creationism) into science classes in public schools look around and remember that much of what you see was made with science.
An Excellent Example of Science vrs Pseudoscience
The website atheism.about.com has a really good article examining if astrology is pseudoscience or science. While I agree that astrology is bullshit, that is not what, I think, is the real take away point from the article. You could easily subsitute any number of questionable practices such as “psychic powers” or “homeopathy” for astrology.
The real importance of the article is how well it explains the scientific method. The reason this is important is that so many people have no concept of what the scientific method is and how it works. This leads to a gross misunderstanding and mistrust of science. This is bad because it leads to the undermining of scientific advancement in our society, a society that, more and more, is very dependent on the technology that science gives us.
There is a sad and firghtening trend in this country of mistrust, and even hostility, toward science. This kind of anti-science belief used to be confined to the radical right or left wing movements. The religious right fights against science when it contradicts the Bible (which is does the vast majority of the time). The radical left distrusts it because it is not “natural”, and they fear the possible misuses of science. Now, however, anti-science beliefs and rhetoric have become the norm. We see this in the current election cycle where Republican candidates are falling all over themselves to see who can be more anti-science than the rest.
It used to be that the GOP trumpeted the benefits of science as a way to make our society stronger, better, and safer. Does anyone remember the “Star Wars” program of the Reagan era? How about the Space Race? In this country, the military has always been a major driving force in advancing science and technology. It will be interesting to see how the military responds to the ever growing hostility of the GOP to science, considering that most of the military leadership has tended to be republican, as evidinced by the many generals who have gone into politics after retiring from their military careers.
This country used to be a leader in science and technology and that is what made it a great economic and military power. If this anti-science trend continues, we can only sit back and watch as our scientific technological leadership slips away and our economy because a totally consumer driven one, dependent on the technology of other countries who put science above superstition.
Random Secular Stuff
Here is a fun little drawing of Charles Darwin riding a tortoise.
Here is the link to the original: http://ahohesensei.deviantart.com/art/Darwin-riding-a-tortoise-160649209
The drawing is by ahohesensei. Her work can be found at http://ahohesensei.deviantart.com/gallery/.
I also came across this quote by Friedrich Nietzsche. I’ve read it before and have always liked it.
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. “
It’s Ada Lovelace Day!
Today is Ada Lovelace Day. For those of you who don’t who Ada Lovelace was, she was Charles Babbage’s assistant while he was working on his mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. She wrote the first algorithm for the engine becoming the first computer programer.
The purpose of Ada Lovelace Day is to call attention to the contributions of woman in technology and science and, hopefully, inspire more woman to enter these fields.
So to everyone out there, especially all the girls and woman who are interested in science and technology, happy Ada Lovelace Day!
Women in Science
There is a very cool article on the Smithsonian web site called Ten Historic Female Scientists You Should Know. It is a wonderful example of the contribution of women to the sciences throughout history.
There are, of course (since they only listed 10), many more women who have played important role in the history of science. Here are just a few of them:
Hypatia (b. ca. AD 350–370, d. March 415) was a Greek scholar from Alexandria, Egypt, head of the Platonist school at Alexandria and mathematician. As head of the Platonist school at Alexandria, she also taught philosophy and astronomy. As a Neoplatonist philosopher, she belonged to the mathematic tradition of the Academy of Athens, as represented by Eudoxus of Cnidus; she was of the intellectual school of the 3rd century thinker Plotinus, which encouraged logic and mathematical study in place of empirical enquiry and strongly encouraged law in place of nature. Hypatia lived in Roman Egypt, and was murdered by a Christian mob which accused her of causing religious turmoil.[9] Kathleen Wilder proposes that the murder of Hypatia marked the end of Classical antiquity, while Maria Dzielska and Christian Wildberg note that Hellenistic philosophy continued to flourish in the 5th and 6th centuries, and perhaps until the age of Justinian. (Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia_of_Alexandria.)
Ada Byron – Considered by many as the first computer programer, man or woman. She assisted Charles Babbage on his analytical engine, creating the first ever computer program for it that could calculate Bernoulli numbers.
Grace Hopper - Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy officer. A pioneer in the field, she was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, and developed the first compiler for a computer programming language.[1][2][3][4][5] She conceptualized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first modern programming languages. She is credited with popularizing the term “debugging” for fixing computer glitches (motivated by an actual moth removed from the computer). Because of the breadth of her accomplishments and her naval rank, she is sometimes referred to as “Amazing Grace”. (Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper)
These are just a small sample of woman scientists. If you are interested in find out more about all the wonderful woman who have had a major impact on science, visit these links:
http://www.women-scientists-in-history.com/historia.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_science
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/airspacesciencemath/tp/Famous-Women-Scientists.htm
The Power of Prayer and the Slippery Slope Toward Irrelevancy
PZ Meyrs has a nice little post about the (in)efficiency of prayer. What I love about it is that it shows up Rick Perry’s inane religiously inspired ideas as being just as idiotic as many say they are. Here, praying for rain had no effect on the drought in Texas. If anything, one could conclude that it made things worse. Perhaps they just weren’t doing it right and that made God upset which caused him to make the drought worse. Of course, this wasn’t a scientific study so it is really meaningless. Still, if the power of prayer were really as strong as Christians make it out to be, you’d think that by now there would be obvious, undeniable evidence for it. The fact that there isn’t, and that any supposed results, positive or negative, are purely subjective, seems to suggest that prayer isn’t effective.
There have been several well know studies on the effect of prayer. One looked at the effect of prayer on the recovery of cardiac patients and found no evidence that being prayed for had a positive effect on the outcome of the patient’s condition. In fact, the study showed that those who knew they were being prayed for actually had worse outcomes than those who didn’t know. There was no difference between those who didn’t know they were being prayed for and those who were not prayed for at all. This study indicates that prayer offers no benefit, and in the cases where people knew they were being prayed for, could actually cause harm.
The reality is that scientists can run a thousand rigorous studies on prayer that show that there really is no effect, and Christians will always find excuses and rationalizations to support their view that prayer really does work. The fact is that all the evidence in the world against the prayer being effective means nothing to those of faith. Faith trumps evidence and truth every step of the way, which is why religious faith is so insidious is its ability to keep people enslaved under the yoke of misbelief. It is one of the main reasons that the U.S. is quickly losing its scientific and technological superiority to places like Europe and China. When your faith makes you suspicious of science, makes you push for teaching religious faith in the guise of science in public schools, makes you abandon one of the best hopes of fighting disease since the invention of antibiotics, then you will soon find yourself living in a second world economy dependent on other countries for your technology.
If we continue on this track, the U.S. will become an completely consumer driven economy where almost every technology and most goods will come from outside the U.S, leaving us completely vulnerable to the fluctuations in fortunes and whims of other nations. Our economy has always been the bedrock of our ability to promote our power and to lead the word in almost every important field imaginable. Surrendering our lead in science and technology to the ineffectiveness of religious faith will only being about the weakening of our economy and our decent into irrelevancy in the world.
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