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Contrary Evidence To Evolution And Global Warming?

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Following last month’s Glasgow Skeptics talk, “Evolution and Global Warming Denial: How the Public is Misled”, by NCSE (National Centre for Science Education) Executive Director Dr Eugenie Scott, ID proponent Dr Alastair Noble has used his website, The Centre For Intelligent Design (never to be confused with The Centre For Unintelligent Design!), to take issue … Read more

Lost in York

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I’ve spent the day today in York (the old one founded by the Romans in CE 71). My son is off to university there, so I drove him there yesterday. Today we did a big shop in the morning so that he can now hibernate for the winter in his dorm as he studies. We … Read more

Atheist Pastors in Holland

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The BBC reports today about a cleric who is actually an atheist …

The Rev Klaas Hendrikse can offer his congregation little hope of life after death, and he’s not the sort of man to sugar the pill.

An imposing figure in black robes and white clerical collar, Mr Hendrikse presides over the Sunday service at the Exodus Church in Gorinchem, central Holland.

It is part of the mainstream Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN), and the service is conventional enough, with hymns, readings from the Bible, and the Lord’s Prayer. But the message from Mr Hendrikse’s sermon seems bleak – “Make the most of life on earth, because it will probably be the only one you get”.

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Punching a Hole in Time

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This latest item of science news leaves me wondering just how much of it is hype and how much is real, so I’m pushing it out into a couple of skeptic communities to see what folks think. Here is the claim …

First Demonstration of Time Cloaking

Physicists have created a “hole in time” using the temporal equivalent of an invisibility cloak.

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Geologists press for recognition of Earth-changing ‘human epoch’

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A decade ago, Nobel Prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen first suggested we were living in the “Anthropocene,” a new geological epoch in which humans had altered the planet. Now, in an article for Yale Environment 360, Crutzen and a coauthor explain why adopting this term could help transform the perception of our role as stewards of the Earth.

  • You can read that Yale Environment article here (published 24 Jan 2011)

(Oh and lest you wonder, he knows what he is on about. Paul J. Crutzen is an atmospheric chemist who won the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research on ozone-depleting chemicals. From 1980 to 2000.)

Anyway, today’s UK Guardian also has an article all about this here. Here are a couple of extracts to tempt you into clicking on over there to read it all …

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An Interview with Julian Assang’s lawyer

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Jack of Kent, the famous legal blogger, had a brief (informal) telephone interview with his friend and fellow libel reform campaigner Mark Stephens as he was in a cab going to Wandsworth Prison to see his client Julian Assange,  then blogged about it all. It makes fasinating reading … here are some extracts … Mark … Read more