Slashdot Mirror

Whenever I have a question about our cephalopod superiors I refer to Pharyngula. https://freethoughtblogs.com/p...

Look at the founders.

I have.

The Founder worship in America is really weird. These guys were not high-minded philosphers. They were a bunch of plantation owners and criminals who clothed their lust for profit in high-minded ideals, most of them badly ripped off from French and English philosophers. The only one with some claim to integrity among them is Thomas Paine.

A cartoon that completely fails to explain the gender disparity in STEM fields

Apparently this dummy, Olga Khazan (if that is indeed her real name) doesn't realize that there's a difference between "hating math" and not knowing any math beyond that taught in the 4th grade. Shit, I hated math, but I went through Calculus and Real Analysis. Then I married a mathematician so that I could get my partial differential equations solved via the bonds of matrimony. You know, whenever the need arises.

If you don't know basic algebra, you're not going to code for shit. It's like that Republican legislator from Arizona, Al Melvin, who believes that doing math with letters instead of numbers is a liberal conspiracy.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/p...

If you can't do that liberal math with letters instead of numbers, you can't code for shit.

[...] while Muslim faith prescribes terrorism.

That myth was debunked yet again this week by Juan Cole's Top Ten Ways Islamic Law forbids Terrorism. See: http://www.juancole.com/2015/0...

http://freethoughtblogs.com/ta...

I hope you can retreat to your imaginary world.

And yet there was plenty of controversy caused by those same people a couple of years later. Sometimes people just don't get the joke, and explaining a joke almost never makes it funnier.

I am canadian, and if we are the most scientiically literate. I really pity the rest of you.

I pity us also. Does Canada have lots of relatively successful* politicians with whackadoodle opinions on climate change, Earth's age, and female reproductive biology?

* In terms of votes, not intelligence ranking.

True but it's much more a piece of trivia than a politically relevant fact.

A few years back I remember an article about Stephan Dion and Jack Layton (the then leaders of the 2nd and 3rd largest parties in a minority Parliament) claiming they were both atheists.

I don't know if it was true or not, I honestly didn't care that much. The astounding thing was that was the opinion shared by the overwhelming majority of online comments on the website of what I recall was a right wing paper. A few engaged in mild speculation but no one really cared enough to even dig or get emotional.

These were the 2nd and 3rd most important politicians in the country and the topic of their religious affiliation was so irrelevant people scarcely bothered to investigate.

By contrast the US is so obsessed with religion that congress doesn't have a single open atheist. Not to mention the massive religious examinations of presidential candidates.

Sure this stuff does become relevant, particularly with regards to climate change, but we have nowhere near the culture wars that are going on in the US.

Here's a picture of a feminist:

http://freethoughtblogs.com/ph...

It doesn't mean what you think it means.

(Women are nowhere near equal globally yet or even in western nations in a lot of ways, pay for the same work as a man, safety walking alone at night to name two, if you think that battle has been won you're deluded, there's still a lot to do.)

I suppose you could get information about evolution from Time Magazine, but there's this thing, called "The Internet", which allows you to get your information directly from an evolutionary biologist - you know, someone who actually knows what he's talking about: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/09/23/the-encode-delusion/

http://freethoughtblogs.com/si...

...except that religion isn't just a harmless social thing that people do on Sundays.

They're in government, deciding how to run the country (eg. Bush deciding to go to war).
They're trying to remove evolution from the education system.
They get tax breaks.
etc.

I've never watched or read anything by Ed Schultz and I can't stand MSNBC.

I get it from various online analysts, The Daily Show, RightWingWatch.org, and by watching actual clips of Fox News.

A couple quick examples are Fox's infamous reaction to the "ground zero mosque" and their demonization of one of the fundraisers who happened to be Fox's #2 shareholder (of course they'd never tell a viewer). They also employ contributors who claim in other venues that Obama tried to nuke the US.

So. Do you have any examples of MSNBC telling whoppers as large as the Ground Zero nonsense or employing contributors as whacky as Erik Rush?

and... here is exactly the right thing to do! http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/06/20/a-chilling-tale-of-rape-and-social-psychology/comment-page-1/#comment-640651

Fortunately, popular opinion does not decide what the truth is. What am I in the minority of in human history, anyway? If we're looking at all humans who have ever lived, no religion can claim to be a majority. Even within large, organized religions that rally together under a single label, there is considerable disagreement over what happens to a person after death. There has never been a majority consensus on the subject.

Also, you may change your mind when you are actually faced with death. Many people who believe like you very much think about it when death actually is imminent.

No, that's unlikely and also not true.
Here's some reading material.
I'll give you the short version: facing death typically only reinforces somebody's existing beliefs. Also, even if somebody does change their beliefs when they are scared and irrational, that does not mean their previous beliefs are wrong -- people frequently make poor decisions when scared and irrational. Also, you're really just reiterating the old "no atheists in foxholes" statement, which is insulting, condescending, and false.

Read PZ Myers' take on this subject, http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/04/09/the-dark-side-of-open-access-journals/

http://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2012/05/03/how-to-fool-a-computer-grader/

"Alone In The Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique" by John Gribbin. I've just finished it. Those who've always hoped to one day chat with a Wookie or a Klingon (not to mention SETI-types) will find it thoroughly depressing, but it's filled with excellent science. There's a good review of it here:

http://freethoughtblogs.com/bluecollaratheist/2012/05/29/alone-in-the-universe-why-our-planet-is-unique-part-1

Computer geeks will like it because many of its conclusions are based on cluster-run computer simulations. :) The results of the simulations are nothing short of amazing.

Example: Earth's molten iron core is what gives us a strong magnetic field that protects our atmosphere. The only way they could get that to work out was to put a supernova(!!!) .1 light years (that's not a typo) from the solar system at a critical time while it was forming. This also helps answer why our system has an unusual mix of elements compared to other stellar systems (particularly of radioactives such as Aluminum 26 and Iron 60).

Example: we're actually a binary planet -- Earth and Moon. The moon is thought to have formed from a planet in the Langrange point, called "Theia," that would have fractured our thick crust, making continental drift possible; the moon's gravitational effects on Earth are also critical.

Read the book. Even if you disagree with it (and I know many here will, especially my good friends who love SETI), but it's an excellent read.

Normally I'm suspicious of articles like this where we get one side of the story about some US law enforcement agency doing something bad, but in cases of seizing assets US law enforcement has an absolutely horrendous record.

And as for your claim that he should have just signed the form another case where someone took your advice led to the DHS seizing $35,000, I sure as hell wouldn't sign anything the DHS told me to if I knew there was an error.

it only took 6,000 years for jesus to show up riding a velociraptor

To my astonishment, even that clown Pat Robertson seems to have had a come-to-Jesus moment on that topic .

To prevent travesties like this.

The modern form is the . I'm still trying to figure out their imagery, but it's pretty ugly. Exactly how do you rape someone with a chainsaw to shut them up?

The Orthodox Church Patriarch who got caught when he had photoshopped his very expensive Rolex watches out of photos. http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/04/06/who-needs-a-30000-watch/

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/05/07/the-reports-of-dinosaurs-dying-of-farts-are-greatly-exaggerated/

Except that, you know, all they're saying is that the dinosaurs made *SOME* methane. Nothing about dying from dinosaur farts or substantial amounts of methane. It's possible to speculate if you are anti-science, and that's about the only way to come to a conclusion that refutes science other than refusing to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, people were full of shit in the first place.

Are you kidding? Long past time that our government started framing the issue in this way since, in reality that's just exactly what it is.

While virulent teabagging " Nixon and Reagan were too far left / let's end-the- EPA ! " narcissists who compromised their rationality by coke-snorted their way through the 80s go apoplectic over some poor NAFTA-shafted Mexican coming over to trim their freaking hedges, the specter of massive uncontrolled global destabilization borne of crop failures, oceanic dead-zones and mass population migrations is hurtling towards reality.

Think carbon trading is going to cost you money? Try ponying up for perpetual, open-ended colossal military and intelligence efforts that dwarf the Iraq and Afghanistan efforts combined.

If the fundie freaks want to think they inhabit a child-like universe characterized by a perfect moral justice personally overseen by Santa-God then that's their business ....until they start trying to make everyone else live in their land of make-believe as Sen Inhofe (OK) in determined to do:

http://freethoughtblogs.com/zingularity/2012/03/09/james-inhofe-says-god-decreed-there-will-be-no-global-warming/

Inhofe:

Well actually the Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that âoeas long as the earth remains there will be springtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.â My point is, Godâ(TM)s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.

There's a strong argument to be made that democracy has already failed. It's possible that we've waited so long we cannot stop runaway greenhouse gas emissions.

No one really knows with certainty if the methane-sequestering perma-frost will go into a positive feedback loop or not.

Whatever the probability of that or some other unforeseen positive feedback loop accidentally being invoked, like the runaway acidification of the oceans wiping out marine life and toppling the food chain- the fact is we've - strike that - CONSERVATIVES - have brought us so close to what we knew to be the edge of disaster that it's now possibly nothing more than a matter of chance whether we live or die.

A system of government that permits its nation and people to be brought to the brink of a known, well understood and scientifically proven extinction process- save for luck- is pretty much the definition of a failed system of government. We may be in for a future in which our civil liberties and standard of living are simply going to be greatly curtailed, whether we like it or not.

The first organizing principle of any society is not democracy, not "freedom of speech" or "freedom of religion" or any specific set of freedoms at all. It's survival.

Rest assured that whether we survive or not, we WILL implement a form of government that maximizes our chances of doing so at the expense of everything else. Have no doubt about that at all.

We need to act right now. Right this very second. Right this very election. We can do a lot worse than implementing the set of recommendations known as the Princeton Wedges.

http://cmi.princeton.edu/wedges/

This approach is distinguished by it's immediate implementability. It doesn't rely on any single silver bullet. It doesn't rely on merely possible future technological advances. The cost is bearable, even minimal and the benefits are not just ecological long term ones but also immediate economic ones.

It's time for America to man-up, get up, shake off the dreamlike, narcissistic just-so fairy-tales promulgated by the sociopathic and mentally enfeebled forces in our society and do what it

As ar as I know, Hezbollah is military force which is not very concerned about modesty issues etc, unlike so called Jewish Talebans:

• Silence! Jerusalemâ(TM)s Jewish Taliban want women to refrain from singing in public
• Jewish Taliban Attacks Elderly Woman for... Something...
• The Jewish Taliban
• Thousands in Israel protest against Jewish extremists
• Haredi teargases woman for using 'men only' sidewalk

What sex education class in Arkansas?

Because testing requires manpower and money, both of which, sadly, are in short supply in medical research (or any research, for that matter). Wasting money on the claims of a quack means that some legitimate avenue of research either gets deprived or cut off.

If you want to pay to have his claims tested, you go right ahead.

Burzynski's research seems to be unconvincing: http://freethoughtblogs.com/blaghag/2011/11/a-look-at-the-burzynski-clinics-publications/

His patients are definitely paying for the research though: tens of thousands of dollars each. After 30 years, and millions of dollars, he really ought to have produced better results than a couple of conference presentations and a few papers in poor journals.

This "giant squid" is a complete invention, with NO EVIDENCE whatsoever to support this flamboyant and fanciful idea. Read PZ Myer's discussion: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/10/10/traces-of-a-triassic-kraken/