Friday, August 08, 2014
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Brain researcher claims smoking while pregnant may lead to gay babies
It's easy to spot bad science. Right?
Brain researcher claims smoking while pregnant may lead to gay babies
“Pre-birth exposure to both nicotine and amphetamines increases the chance of lesbian daughters,” professor Dick Swaab claims.
But that isn’t the only danger Swaab warns in the Sunday Times of London.
He belives drinking, living in polluted areas, and taking drugs are also indicators of a child’s health and sexual preference.
Swaab is professor of neurobiology at Amsterdam University.
Read the rest of this sad story.
I can’t make this stuff up. Let’s just call this guy a nutball.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
John Freshwater's Crusade is over
John Freshwater WAS a teacher who was fired after it was learned that he was branding students with a cross and secretly teaching creationism while trying to recruit children for Christ. All actions were unethical. The school district fired him and now he’s lost his last appeal. The long sad story is over. John Freshwater will not get his job back nor will he be compensated.
"John Freshwater, a creationist and former Ohio public school science teacher, isn’t getting his job back.
The 57-year-old Freshwater, who taught eighth-grade science at Mount Vernon Middle School for 20 years, was fired in 2008 for insubordination after he refused to stop teaching creationism and displaying religious symbols, as well as for burning a cross into a student’s arm."
I’ve posted on John Freshwater several times over the years, and I’ve called him a nutball. I think it was justified. The one thing that stands out for me in this case is that he was willing to lie and cheat in order to spread his religious views, which, in the end was seen as dishonest and repugnant by everyone involved except his religious community. Now if only he would pay the school district’s legal bills…
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Monday, May 16, 2011
Stephen Hawking on heaven and death
Stephen Hawking is a man of few words, but the words he uses are profound. When asked if he feared death, this was his response.
I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.
Read the rest of the story: Stephen Hawking says afterlife is a fairy story.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Texas - why are you the special state?
I read this headline from The Texas Tribune today. Texans: Dinosaurs, Humans Walked the Earth at Same Time. The headline drew me in. I predisposed to believe any odd story about Texas, but I did not think ignorance on this scale was possible outside of the third world. The poll was developed by the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune. It suggests that a third of the people in Texas believe that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth together and that a third don’t know. That’s over eight million people or 16 million if you count the dummies. How can this be possible?
The question was simple: Did humans live at the same time as the dinosaurs? Three in ten Texas voters agree with that statement; 41 percent disagree, and 30 percent don't know.
I love the closing paragraph:
Prindle says the results recall a line from comedian Lewis Black. "He did a standup routine a few years back in which he said that a significant proportion of the American people think that the 'The Flintstones' is a documentary," Prindle says. "Turns out he was right. Thirty percent of Texans agree that humans and dinosaurs lived on the earth at the same time."
I have friends who live in Texas. They home school and are skeptical, so I have some hope.
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Don’t put your faith in miracles. Trust science.
It's like watching the future.
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
No one of us is as dumb as all of us
I love this line, “No one of us is as dumb as all of us.” I often say it to myself when reading about mob rule, violence and unjustified vengeance. Like the Salem Witch Trials, the burning of witch children in Africa, or the burning of a Crocodile Education Sanctuary in Belize.
Most of it vanished Sunday morning, when a throng of angry villagers from a settlement about 10 miles (16 km) away torched the buildings on their property. The villagers had been told by a local psychic that the Americans had fed the two missing children to the 17 crocodiles at the sanctuary, police say.
A psychic.
"They have their own superstitions," deputy police commissioner James Magdaleno said about the Maya, who make up about 10 percent of Belize's population. "Because of their beliefs, they decided to take the law into their own hands."
No arrests have been made, I doubt there plans to arrest anybody, even the psychic who incited the mob to riot. Don’t worry, it’s was ok because they were acting on their faith.
Cherie and Vince Rose plan to stay and rebuild. You can donate to their cause at their website, or email cherie@americancrocodilesanctuary.org for more information.
Monday, September 06, 2010
Hightower on Hawking
My pastor friend Brad Hightower started blogging again. His post on Steven Hawking is interesting worth a quick read. He’s starting to take his head out of the sand when it comes to how religion views politics and science. I like where he is heading. I particularly like his take on the creationist ‘God of the gaps” in his Hawking post.
No one who actually has faith has faith on the basis of a God of the gaps. People do not hold faith in order to answer a question of origins or to fill in some cosmological gap. People come to faith in response to a moral and spiritual sense of life.
The faithful don’t think about the God of the gaps, unless of course they are in a evolution debate with a scientist, then that all I hear. I hope he addresses the obvious problem with his logic. Could it be that Christians are disingenuous?
Friday, September 03, 2010
Beautiful words from Hawking
These words are beautiful from Stephen Hawking, but Christians will reject them outright.
"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing," he writes. "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.
"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."
Still beautiful though.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Why I like Science
Why do I like science? My reason is simple, if you make stuff up, some other smart scientist will eventually figure it out. Your ideas, your methodology, you conclusions, all of it must stand up to outside scrutiny. It keeps people honest in a way that religion can never hope to approach. Harvard researcher Marc Hauser found this out recently. He’s been accused of fabricating data.
“Given the published design of the experiment, my conclusion is that the control condition was fabricated,” said Gerry Altmann, the editor of the journal Cognition, in which the experiment was published.
Dr. Hauser said he expected to have a statement about the Cognition paper available soon. He issued a statement last week saying he was “deeply sorry” and acknowledged having made “significant mistakes” but did not admit to any scientific misconduct.
In science and academia, it’s not oops, my bad. It’s oops, there goes my career. If this allegation is true, Hauser is finished and so are his theories. Show me the equivalent in religion? It does not exist.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Creation Museum uncomfortable for some?
According to Bernadette Barton, a professor of sociology at Morehead State University, The Creation Museum in Kentucky is uncomfortable for non-fundamentalist Christian visitors.
On her third trip to the museum, Barton took her undergraduate students, who found the visit unsettling. Several in the group were former fundamentalists who had since rejected that worldview. Several others were gay. In part because of these backgrounds, Barton said, the students were on edge at the museum. Particularly nerve-wracking were signs warning that guests could be asked to leave the premises at any time. The group's reservation confirmation also noted that museum staff reserved the right to kick the group off the property if they were not honest about the "purpose of [the] visit."
The Creation Museum may make former fundamentalists uncomfortable, but I’m sure it will just make me laugh.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Rachel Maddow – The War on Brains
There is something about Rachel Maddow I find appealing. I think it might be her brains.
Stupid hurts.
Sunday, June 06, 2010
Dinosaur mammoth fight – very cool
An old friend from high school is starting to dabble in YouTube. He is a fellow Atheist with an razor wit and I loved this great debunking of a fundy nutball. If you like it please pass it on. I hope to encourage my friend to make more.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
John Freshwater’s truthiness
John Freshwater has appeared here on my blog several times. He came to my attention after branding a student with a cross in 2008. Now he’s fighting for his job and spinning his story in the process.
The handouts, describing how species such as the woodpecker and giraffe could not have evolved, were used to demonstrate faulty analysis, bias and the wrongful application of the scientific method, Freshwater said.
Right – these handouts were creationist pseudoscience and a blatant attempt at undermining evolution on religious grounds.
Freshwater testified that he was not trying to hide the material.
"I try to conserve paper. I would use them over and recycle them. If a kid's absent, I'd say 'What you need is right over there on the shelf.' "
Right… not sending the handouts home had nothing to do with keeping parents ignorant of your efforts. You were all about green teaching. I see that now.
The problem here is credibility. Freshwater pushed his Christian educational agenda openly. Now that he is exposed, he is not man enough to stand up and take responsibility. I’m sure the martyrs would be proud.
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Missouri school bans evolutionist t-shirts
Sometimes I cannot believe I live in the same country as Missouri. Seriously, there is no way the shirts can be described as religious, yet Assistant Superintendent Brad Politt utter this idiotic sentence in defense of his actions.
“If the shirts had said ‘Brass Resurrections’ and had a picture of Jesus on the cross, we would have done the same thing,” he said.
Brass Resurrection? Brass Crusade? Non of that makes any sense given the context of the t-shirt. Music evolved. Oh my god, run away, run away, they mentioned evolution. It the false of religion of science. They are idiots one and all. Evolution is not religion. The T-shirt is not even about evolution. Can we vote Missouri out of the union?
***update – I feel like an idiot. I had the state wrong.
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Monday, May 25, 2009
Science is cool: eBird.com
I love birds. I’ve enjoyed bird watching since my youth. I’ve kept track of my sightings in various journals and field guides over the years, but I don’t have one comprehensive list. I’ve always wanted to do something about it. I found eBird.com a few weeks ago. I plan to start entering my sightings via their handy interface after my next outing.
eBird's goal is to maximize the utility and accessibility of the vast numbers of bird observations made each year by recreational and professional bird watchers. It is amassing one of the largest and fastest growing biodiversity data resources in existence. For example, in 2006, participants reported more than 4.3 million bird observations across North America.
How cool is that?
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
A review of the California Academy of Sciences
On my personal goals for 2009 is to visit 12 different museums. I visited the new California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on May 16. It was an amazing experience. Since it was a new space, I though a review from the point of view of a fat middle-aged mildly enochlophobic/claustrophobic museum loving atheist would make for a perfect post.
I’ll start with parking. It’s underground. Need I say more? I drove down what I describe as a French tunnel. If’ you’ve ever driven the rabbit warren of tunnels underneath Paris, you know what I mean. A long tunnel connects from the street to a parking structure directly under the entryway of the museum. The parking lot is large, well lit, and because we were early, empty. For the trivial fee of $15, I parked for the entire duration of my visit.
We bought tickets at the ridiculous price of $24.95 per adult, and $19.95 per teen. For our party of four adults and one teen, we paid nearly $130. This is steep for a museum visit. In fact, it is about $100 more than I’ve paid to visit any other museum.
The California Academy of Sciences is new. You feel it when you walk in through the large plate glass doors. The space feels fresh and relevant. The energy is real. You can feel the excitement generated by the staff and eager visitors. I was happy and disoriented at the same time. It felt like my head was on a 360 degree swivel. I was trying to take everything in while not wanting to miss a thing.
We headed straight for the Morrison Planetarium to secure tickets for the first screening of Fragile Planet. As we waited for tickets, we gazed down into the Steinhart Aquarium’s Philippine Coral Reef exhibit. It is a stunning top down view of tropical fish that reminded me of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. There is something peaceful about watching fish. I love it. The day was off to a good start.
We had an hour to kill before the first showing of Fragile Planet so we visited the four-story Rainforest exhibit. We knew something special was about to happen as we watched a giant fish leapt from the water and eat a beautiful blue butterfly. It was one of those moments where people point and yell. A “real nature” moment as my son referred to it.
The museum staff regulates the flow of people into the Rainforest exhibit so that the it does not become too crowed. We waited five minutes for our turn. Later in the day, people would wait an hour or more. When our party entered, my misery started. You don’t realize it at first, but the rainforest is hot and humid just like the real thing. Plus, you are in a glass cage with heat lamps near the top of the exhibit. To say I freaked out would be a little to harsh, but the little voice inside my head which threatens my sanity in situations like this kept yelling for me to get out of there. I fought the urge to run.
I know I’m stressed when I stop taking pictures even when presented with unparalleled beauty. The Rainforest exhibit is amazing. I saw things that I never though possible in a natural history museum; but I hated every moment of it. The worst moment came near the top when I realized the only exit was a crowded elevator. Near the top the heat increases to a point where it felts oppressive. I was sweating through my clothing and starting to worry about my health. I felt like I was in a sauna with no way out. And the people… it would have been much worse if it were crowded.
As it was, waiting in line for the elevator ride down took forever, yet in reality it was only a few minutes. But then, entering a hot crowded elevator seemed like some ghoulish last attempt to make me freak out. I closed my eyes and missed the best part of the exhibit, the wow moment when you see the backside of the aquarium.
I enjoyed the Morrison Planetarium's presentation of Fragile Planet. I was a sweaty mess sitting in my seat. The cool air conditioning helped to cool me off. The smell of the shoes from the people behind me was annoying. I felt sorry for the lady below me who had her head between my feet. I’m sure she skipped lunch.
My wife gets motion sickness under some conditions. She closed her eyes 10 seconds in. I developed a queasy stomach after a few minutes but found the discomfort well worth the experience. Fragile Planet paints a picture of of the vastness of our universe in a way I’ve never experienced before. I found it refreshing.
After the Planetarium we entered the pits of hell known as the Steinhart Aquarium. Whoever designed the walkways did not take into account crowds. The walkways are narrow, do not flow well, and often dead end. There is no logical flow to the exhibits. It was maddening. And here I must admit, I freaked out. After 20 minutes of trying to see the exhibits, I found myself pressed into corner by a few dozen people. It did not matter that the exhibits were amazing. Nor did it matter that I love fish. I needed to get out and I did. 
I sat on the only bench I could find in front of the albino alligator exhibit. It took another 20 minutes for my head to return to normal. I watched freshwater turtles and alligator gar swim in a beautiful open aquarium. It was nice and peaceful.
The rest of the exhibits are natural history oriented. I enjoyed walking the various exhibits but found the display dedicated to Galapagos Finches particularly enjoyable. The natural history exhibits cater to children with interactive games that tech key environmental concepts and touchable exhibits spread throughout.
In general, the museum is worth a visit. It is unique enough to warrant a special trip. The rainforest is beautiful in way that is hard to describe with words. The focus of a mix of kid friendly exhibits and adult oriented displays make the visit enjoyable for everyone. I left a sweaty tired mess, but I had blast in the process. My last word… the admission price is too high.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Friday, May 08, 2009
Science is cool: White blood cell chasing a bacterium
This is happening inside of me. It's too cool for words. And I don’t need faith to believe in it.