Month: December 2009

Ebert: “New Agers and Creationists shouldn’t be President”

Jason Thibeault3 Comments

Roger Ebert is quickly becoming a force for reason to be reckoned with. He recently posted at his blog against creationists and New Age believers — stating outright that they should not be president of the United States. And naturally Sarah Palin and today’s Republican party, as well as the far-left bullshit-peddling new-agers, play heavily in his examples. Considering how often one hears that people would not vote for an atheist or an intellectual as president, this is a most refreshing change!

It’s curious that so many people of different camps are offended by opposing beliefs, but will accept just about anything in their own. Most progressives believe Kirk Cameron is playing the Village Idiot in his infamous video explaining how God shaped the banana to fit the nature of the human hand (still unreleased: his video about watermelons). Most non-New Agers believe Shirley MacLaine is nutzoid for her citations of her previous lifetimes. On mainstream talk shows, MacLaine gets away with it by kidding herself. Mike Huckabee is a charmer when he answers that, yes, he does believe the earth is pretty much 10,000 years old. But don’t let anyone unskilled tell Jay, David, Craig or Regis such beliefs and they’re taking a chance. The audience will take their cue from the host in deciding whether to laugh at them (MacLaine yes, Creationist no.)

Do click through — he posts a lot of interesting videos and images you really ought to see.

Ebert: “New Agers and Creationists shouldn’t be President”
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And I thought I had trolls

Jason Thibeault3 Comments

Dan J received possibly the most rambling, insane, top shelf comedy gold level of paranoid schizophrenic conspiracy theory / religious solicitation e-mail anyone has ever written, and somehow, some way, he actually had the wherewithal to pick it apart.

But it gets worse. You knew I was going to say that, didn’t you? You see, Dan, the whole reason the bankers want to dominate the world and put RFID chips in everyone is because they also want you to worship the Devil. That’s a fact that a lot of bankers probably don’t even know. I know, I know, you’re laughing out loud right now.

Probably more like weeping for humanity. I know I am.

And I thought I had trolls

Morality

Jason Thibeault, , , , , 5 Comments

A long time ago, when humans first started communicating with one another in a structured and organized fashion, these first humans took it upon themselves to pass along their observations about what they believed to be the origin of and purpose of the lives they lived. In conveying to one another ideas about how this universe works, some humans were unsatisfied with a lack of knowledge about the world they knew of, and so, being the only creatures on the planet in possession of the power of imagination, they postulated that magical beings created the world they recognized, and did so in magical ways — ways we did not need to understand, in order to benefit from.
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Morality

Faith

Jason Thibeault, , , , 1 Comment

I’ve been accused of having too little faith, and having too much. I’ve been accused of taking things on faith, and I’ve been accused of having an empty life because I live it without faith. I’ve been accused, most gallingly, of having faith in science, or faith in evolution — like where idiots like Ray Comfort have said they don’t have enough faith to believe in evolution. And to be blunt, I’m kind of tired of these dueling accusations, because they depend on equivocation of the type that would get a proper theist consigned to one of the first circles of Hell.

According to Princeton Word-net Web, faith is:

– religion: a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny; “he lost his faith but not his morality”
– complete confidence in a person or plan etc; “he cherished the faith of a good woman”; “the doctor-patient relationship is based on trust”
– religion: an institution to express belief in a divine power; “he was raised in the Baptist religion”; “a member of his own faith contradicted him”
– loyalty or allegiance to a cause or a person; “keep the faith”; “they broke faith with their investors”

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Faith

RCimT: Thursday science round-up

Jason Thibeault

A few scientific tidbits for your Thursday reading.

Scientists have discovered a method of using bacteria to create plastics without using oil, which is super-cool considering our present addiction to fossil fuels. As long as these plastics can also be disposed of safely, and not turned into floating garbage masses in the ocea– oh.

Orac covers the antivaxx assholes’ propensity toward sexist remarks in silencing female critics of their misguided anti-science campaign, of portraying their enemies as baby-eaters, and of complete and fundamental misunderstanding of the history of WW2 and the genocides that came from it.

Some absolutely gorgeous pictures are up on New Scientist from some studies of fluid dynamics.

The ongoing fight between the Canadian government’s proposed laws which would allow naturopaths the same prescriptive rights as doctors that actually studied medicine, and the skeptics of Skeptic North and elsewhere, appears to be coming to a head in the pages of the National Post.

And finally, Scicurious has taken time off of her “break” to put together an epic post on the mapping of the glutamate receptors. I say epic, because only epic posts end in song.

RCimT: Thursday science round-up

More power! MORE POWER!!

Jason Thibeault,

The LHC is now the most powerful particle accelerator in human history. It has spun up to 1.18TeV per beam, for collisions at 2.36TeV. This is far short of its design capacity of 7TeV, but it’s on its way. Thus far no time travelling birds have come out of the time stream to drop baguettes into any cooling ducts to short out the universe-destroying machine, so obviously this experiment can’t possibly find the Higgs-Boson.

During the holiday break, they’re going to put some emergency protocols through their paces:

Meanwhile, engineers will test the “beam dump” mechanism used if a beam can no longer be properly controlled by the superconducting magnets lining the LHC.

In such a situation, each beam would be steered away from its circular path into a 600-metre-long tunnel, where it would crash into a massive 7-metre-long block of composite graphite lined with stainless steel and concrete. Each dump is designed to absorb 7 TeV – the energy per beam when the LHC is running at full tilt. Should a beam go astray it could smash into and melt the delicate electronics that surround the beam pipe.

Much as I’d love to see what kind of damage a FRICKIN LASER BEAM could wreak, this IS, after all, the most complicated single device we humans have ever created, so I’d rather not end up delaying Science! for another year just because I wanted to see some pretty fireworks. I guess I’ll just settle for watching some Mythbusters instead.

More power! MORE POWER!!