Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
It is perhaps inevitable that whenever something dramatic happens, up pops some nut with a truly weird explanation that attempts to explain it all as a conspiracy by “them”, where “them” is quite often some arm of government. Today’s example of that is the well-known grifter Jim Bakker who uses religion as a means of conning … Read more
Phil Plait writes about the “The Great Kersten Blunder”, the story of a probe to Venus that was lost because a programmer made a stupid mistake. OK, first the actual story. The great Kersten Blunder is about the error made by Kersten (programmer) on the Vigor space probe’s converting program. He made an error in the … Read more
The news that has made the 9/11 truthers almost orgasmic with joy is the claim that a credible scientific journal, Europhysics News, has published the results of a study that claims to verify that 9/11 was an inside job. As an example of the various reports, WND (the far right site known to some as WingNutDaily), has this claim … Read more
Today I’m pointing you towards a very insightful article that is also a tough one to read. I do not mean intellectually tough, but rather emotionally because it involves the murder of very young children and also outlines how one parent had to cope with the subsequent claim that his young son had never actually … Read more
It is very common to see quotes within various memes on Facebook and elsewhere. It is also often well worth asking yourself a few questions. Here are two key filters to apply, even if the quote appears to be something you agree with … Did that person really say that? What is the actual context? For the first, … Read more
Today, in fact 40 minutes ago as I write this, the Pope conducted some official Catholic PR by declaring the culturally popular icon, Mother Teresa, is now a Saint. He announced … “After due deliberation and frequent prayer for divine assistance, and having sought the counsel of many of our brother bishops, we declare and … Read more