97% of climate scientists agree that anthropogenic climate change is occurring, and to highlight that fact, Skeptical Science has launched a media event in which they reveal a comment by a scientist every hour for 97 Hours. Check in to the website to see what’s new every hour, or follow the #97hours hashtag on twitter.
I once read a book by Jason Lisle — it might have been his “Ultimate Proof of Creation”, or maybe “Logic and Faith”, I can’t really remember, it was such a tedious droning bore — and was unimpressed. If you claim to be using pure logic to determine the nature of the universe, and arrive at the conclusion that your idiosyncratic, culturally determined religious mythology is literally and perfectly true, it’s safe to say that you’re doing something wrong.
I’ve been conditioning our cat. From the first day we had her, I did this little thing in which I’d tap on a glass to make it ring a few times before feeding her, with the idea that if ever she escaped outside we’d just ring the dinner bell and she’d come running. Only it’s kind of backfired. She now expects dinner and a show.
Maybe I’m old and not so active in gaming any more, but it just sunk in — I was a heavy gamer back in the 1970s, before most of you were born. I outrank most of the gibbering basement-dwelling FPS fanatics! I was playing multi-player combat games, pulling all-nighters to hammer the enemy, back when it was all about big sheets of paper and cardboard counters and throwing dice. What brought it back is that I remember Greg Costikyan — I played Costikyan’s games back in the ’80s.
The advertising for Zeteticon has been a bit low key, so it’s a good thing I happened to check my calendar! And then I looked at the roster, and it’s a good bunch — Beth and Matt and Fred and Aron and Richard and August and David and Katie, who I have not met before. Come on out to Fargo, ND this next weekend!
I notice I don’t have a title listed, which suggests that once again mail from an organizer has been snared in my spam trap, and I’ll have to go dig it up, but in case they see this, the title of my talk is “Synteny and Creationist Sins of Omission: They always forget about those pesky genes.” It’s about molecular genetics and the ignorance of creationists, if you can’t guess.
A couple of years ago, when I was looking to score some sweet fresh Jesus for a little home art project, it would have been so convenient if he’d come in an easy-open package. The future has arrived. Behold, mass-produced, factory-sealed, god in a plastic container!
John Wilkins talks about AI and the transhumanist agenda. I think we both concur that a lot of artificial intelligence and brain uploading bozos are living in a fantasy.
Angel Mario Vega, a student at Minnesota State University Moorhead, tried a too-typical stunt: he got a couple of young women (one of them under age) disgustingly drunk, literally carried one of them to his dorm room, set up a camera, and filmed himself raping her. Oh, and of course he bragged to his buddies about it and invited them to come watch. Stupid and a rapist, that usual sweet combination.
But then something interesting happened.
It’s not a great morning. The sun is shining, I got a lot done yesterday, I got a good night’s sleep, and my class notes for tomorrow are all in order, so I get to just kick back and relax today, but it’s still not a good day. I started it by catching up on my email.
Every review of Nick Spencer’s Atheists — the Origin of the Species leaves me less inclined to even want to read it. The man can’t possibly be as big an idiot as the reviewers make him out to be, can he?
The latest paean to Spencerian inanity comes from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It always puzzles me how such a secular country can have a major media outlet that so blithely props up religious twits, but here they go again with the director of the Centre for Public Christianity, Simon Smart, who’s apparently spent his whole life trying to defy the name he was saddled with at birth.
