His “Crash Course in Astronomy” is pretty good — the first part of this talk is universally (see what I did there?) applicable, since it’s a solid general description of science and how it works.
Let’s stop drawing out the pain. The St. Paul-Minneapolis Catholic archdiocese filed for bankruptcy today. Look at the numbers:
The filing estimates that the archdiocese — the largest in the state with more than 800,000 parishioners — has assets between $10 million and $50 million, with liabilities between $50 million and $100 million. It also estimated 200 to 300 creditors.
This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly.
Status: Heavily Moderated; Previous thread
Hey, that’s how I feel about him all the time!
I hope more people are beginning to see through Pope Francis’s superficial pretense to being the friendly pope — he’s actually the same old front for a deeply evil organization.
He’s the organizer for the Gateway To Reason conference coming up this July in St Louis, and apparently, a few of my hatin’ leeches have been pressuring him to drop me from the speaker lineup. Most ironically, a blogger who declares himself a voice for inclusiveness in the atheism and skepticism movements
is now writing to all of the other speakers, asking them to add to the pressure to get me booted (I also apologize to all of you, too). This kind of thing happens a lot: I’ve had kooks write to all of the faculty at UMM to denounce me. It gets old fast, I’m afraid.
I am not a fan of the Harry Potter books (what was that noise? So that’s what a million people simultaneously unsubscribing sounds like!) — my kids enjoyed them, we’ve got all of them around here somewhere, and I read the first couple of them, but they were just a bit too repetitive for my taste, and also too familiar. But don’t worry, I can understand how a lot of people liked them.
But now I’ve read a rewrite of the main story line, with Hermione as the main character. Much better! That’s a story I’d read to the end!
Uh-oh. The Pope has just grossly insulted my beliefs.
I believe you have a right to criticize anything — I go further and think you have an obligation to criticize.
I also believe that violence is never the answer, and that the proper response to words is more words, not flinging punches.
But look at what this pope is saying, violating what I hold dear.
The The Crafoord Prize in Biosciences has been announced. For those who don’t know, this is a very prestigious award, comparable to the Nobel prize, only not as well known. The categories are specifically designed to complement the Nobel.
This year’s winners are Richard Lewontin and Tomoko Ohta, and it’s about time.
The results of a survey of university scientists are surprising and odd.
Surprisingly, 87% of scientists think there is a scientific method that describes the way scientists do their work. Most of them believe in the old hypothesis → testing –→ theory view that hasn’t been popular among experts for many decades.
Almost half (49%) of natural scientists and 29% of social scientists thought that science was independent of social and cultural biases.
Almost half (48%) of all scientists believed that a theory becomes a law when it is proven.
