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POPSMoral (ir)Responsibility The link to the letter is pretty good stuff. I always thought it was odd that christians would be against doing anything about "global climate change" (true or not). I thought it had something to do with Revelations and that they see global warming as a precursor to the return of little baby jesus. But now we see that the real reason is it will divert resources away from the inquisition of homosexuals.
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POPSScience is Hard! At least he's being honest and now we know why Evolution isn't popular in the United States... It's too hard to understand.
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POPSSinging Tesla Coil This is a solid-state Tesla coil. The primary runs at its resonant frequency in the 41 KHz range, and is modulated from the control unit in order to generate the tones you hear. So just to explain a little further, yes, it is the actual high voltage sparks that are making the noise. Every cycle of the music is a burst of sparks at 41 KHz, triggered by digital circuitry at the end of a "long" piece of fiber optics.
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POPSDon't Know Much Biology This attitude has enormous political—and educational—implications. What happens if scientific truth conflicts with a politician's "spiritual truth"? This is not a theoretical problem, but a real one, as we see in debates about stem-cell research, abortion, genetic engineering, and global warming. Ignorance about evolution may be widespread, but it's not nearly as dangerous as dogmatic certainty about the real world based on faith alone.
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POPSThe Miracle of Science anybody can have false beliefs that make them a threat to the life, health, and well-being of others. Certain religious beliefs are simply a subset of these. The true problem is not religion. The true problem is beliefs that make one a threat to the well-being of others; religious and non-religious alike. However, when it comes to saving lives, promoting good health, and improving well-being, scientific investigation has in the past shown itself to be far more useful than prayer and faith. Any person truly interested in promoting life, health, and well-being will have good reason to go with what works.
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POPSChristian Academy Science Fair Winners Named Christian Academies shouldn't have science fairs. Can you tell me with a straight face that these kids are getting a quality education? It's one thing for this to be an entry in the fair, but it's completely absurd that it won! I think we found a future president.
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POPSWhy would I want my doctor to have studied evolution? If my doctor were treating me, I would want to know that he or she knew about evolution. Evolution is so ingrained in medicine that every doctor should have studied it. As Theodosius Dobzhansky stated, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”; evolution is inescapable in all of the life sciences, including medicine. I have been fortunate in that my personal physicians have been knowledgeable about evolution; I even learned a bit from them. However, it disappoints me that a few doctors do not hold such a view and I feel even sorrier for their patients.
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POPSUnified theory of the crank ... It explains the tendency of cranks not to care if other cranks (and denialists in general for that matter) have variations on their own crazy ideas, just as long as the other cranks are opposing the same perceived incorrect truth. Cranks and denialists aren't honest brokers in a debate, they stand outside of it and just shovel horse manure into it to try to sow confusion and doubt about real science. They don't care if some other crank or denialist comes along and challenges the prevailing theory by tossing cow manure, as long as what they're shoveling stinks. This clip makes me think of willhelm
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POPSChallenges facing K-12 science education A state college is going to set them back about $20,000 per year; a private college is going to be double that, easily. Yet here come these poorly prepared kids who are going to be paying all that money for instruction in basic algebra, remedial English, and with heads full of unscientific garbage that we need to spend a year draining. It's such a waste of time and effort on our part and theirs, and these students are going to struggle and suffer and in many cases fail. Every time a school levy fails, every time some anti-education bozo gets elected to the school board, I want to grab the parents responsible and explain to them that that decision is going to personally cost them tens of thousands of dollars when they send their son or daughter off to a college to teach them the stuff they should have learned in 10th grade - PZ
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POPSCollege Needs Biology Faculty Teach the evidence, but ignore it so that you arrive at the theologically 'correct' answer. Link to their Biblical Foundations Statement.
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POPSScience in the World 2050 Alonso Fyfe on Neil deGrasse Tyson's presentation at Beyond Belief 2006. However, Tyson offers a different conclusion. He argues that the acceptance of intelligent design, even among scientists, even among the best and brightest minds in science, is a problem. The problem is that where scientists (and others) evoke intelligent design, they quit studying, and they quit learning. They draw a line in the sand and refuse to venture past it. Even if you are as brilliant as Newton, you reach a point where you start basking in the majesty of God, and then your discovery stops. It just stops. Your kinda no good any more for advancing that frontier, waiting for somebody else to come behind you who does not have God on the brain, and who says, ‘That’s a really cool problem. I want to solve it.’ They come in and solve it.
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POPSRichard Dawkins Quotes "Leon Lederman, the physicist and Nobel laureate, once half-jokingly remarked that the real goal of physics was to come up with an equation that could explain the universe but still be small enough to fit on a T-shirt. In that spirit, Dawkins offered up his own T-shirt slogan for the ongoing evolution revolution: Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators."
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