News From Around The Blogosphere 8.31.11

The pale blue dot--that's home. That's us.

1. Earth:  home to 8.7 million species – At least that’s the latest estimate. Two of each of them fit on Noah’s Ark. And if you believe that one, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.

2. Sam Harris corrects David Eagleman about atheism – I was unfamiliar with the term, “possibilianism,” but I certainly recognize the position. Eagleman thinks he’s found a position in between atheism and theism; he’s wrong. As Sam Harris says, what he describes is by any other name…atheism.

3. Bill Nye teaches climate science to Fox Business’ Charles Payne   – Bill demonstrates in this clip what a superb science communicator he is. He manages to hold court and deliver a fairly lengthy speech without even once being interrupted by a Fox pundit. It’s remarkable! Even better, when Payne tries to move the dialogue away from the science towards a personal attack on Al Gore, Bill brilliantly takes a moment to first repeat his key message, that global warming is an indisputable fact,  before giving a perfect political response that manages to neither “defend” Gore, who denialists like to pretend personally invented the “myth of global warming” nor falling into the trap of saying something that might be later taken out of context to portray Gore as some wacky alarmist. It’s a perfect performance and a solid win for science communication. That’s why we call him “The Science Guy.”

4. An atheist billboard rejected in Nashville – So what was so shocking that it was too hot for Nashville?

“You don’t need God — to hope, to care, to love, to live.”

How dare those mean, ol’ nasty Gnu Atheists!

Related articles

• Fox Business Host Accuses Bill Nye of ‘Confusing Viewers’ with Science (crooksandliars.com)
• Eagleman vs. Harris: debate on atheism peters out (whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com)

News From Around The Blogosphere 8.21.11

1. Bionic leg gives amputee natural gait – Once again, science achieves where gods have failed, creating a practical prosthetic leg that closely simulates the function of a biological one. Now unfortunately, the article was unclear whether the leg comes with a Six Million Dollar Man/Bionic Woman sound effect option.

2. A pro-science GOP candidate? – Republican presidential candidate John Huntsman has come out in support of both evolution and climate change. It began with a Twitter post where they tweeted: ”To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming.  Call me crazy.”  He then went on ABC’s Sunday morning show This Week and came out even stronger in support of science. And in doing so, he’s proven to be the only GOP candidate who seems to have graduated from elementary school and has immediately moved up to the top of my list of who I’d like to see running in the general election against Obama…at least out of the options that are currently on the table…which admittedly doesn’t say much.

I'm pretty sure this is the right Rhett S. Daniels

3. Science blogger silenced by quack’s lawsuit – Fortunately, U.S. libel cases are notoriously hard to prove and Rhett Daniels doesn’t seem to have anything even resembling a good case. But at least for the time being, René Najera has been successfully silenced by this intellectual coward’s bullying tactic.

4. Can science engineer a human with bulletproof skin? –

By mixing the genomes of spiders and humans, researchers say they can create genetically altered human skin that could withstand a bullet fired from a .22-caliber long rifle.

They just better make sure this spider-man is taught that with great power comes great responsibility. This story sounds pretty far-fetched but it still makes for an interesting read.

5. JREF targets famous ‘psychics’ following Nightline episode – Last week’s episode of Nightline looked at the world of alleged psychics. It did a pretty decent job of representing the skeptical side, featuring guys like Banachek and James Randi himself voicing their criticisms and mimicking standard mentalist tricks. And now the James Randi Educational Foundation is following up the piece by issuing personal invites for several of the famous psychics featured in the show such as James Van Praagh to apply for their Million Dollar Challenge. Of course, one doesn’t have to be psychic to predict they’ll either ignore the challenge or refuse to take it with a silly excuse.

6. Psychic family caught in fraud case:

And the award for most unfortunately (or awesomely) titled headline goes to…

And the award for most unfortunately (or awesomely) titled headline goes to…”Samoan clerics finger homosexuals over global warming.” OH NO! They didn’t! They did. Well, I guess if you’re going to finger homosexuals, global warming is as good a reason as any…if you’re into that sort of thing.

But putting aside that awful (or awesome) title, yes, some religious nutjobs really are trying to blame climate change on the gays. But to be fair, it fits with the title of the conference in which this idea was presented:  Climate Change and Creativity. Say what you will about how the idiocy of this hypothesis is only rivaled by that of the cleric who inadvertently sparked “Boobquake,” but you have to admit, it’s nothing if not creative.

However creative as it may be, suffice it to say, it lacks one moderately important ingredient…evidence:

Details of exactly how the ministers think homosexuals are pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere, thereby trapping heat around the planet, driving up the average temperature and causing massive economic and environmental dislocation are scant.

It may be that the clerics are understandably worried about rising levels of sex tourism in Samoa fuelled by cheap air travel and consequent rising energy consumption, though why this would be a gay-only problem is a mystery. But we suspect their latching onto climate change as a consequence of gayness is informed by a more biblical sense of cause and effect.

But while gays may not be dominating everyone else in air travel but this week, they do seem to be dominating the headlines as the notoriously anti-gay pastor of a 33,000 parishioner megachurch, Baptist Bishop Eddie L. Long, as it turns out, was coercing young male parishioners into sex:

Two young men in Georgia said Tuesday that the pastor of a 33,000-person Baptist megachurch, Bishop Eddie L. Long, had repeatedly coerced them into having sex with him.

In two lawsuits filed in DeKalb County, the men said that Bishop Long, a prominent minister and television personality, had used his position as a spiritual counselor to take them on trips out of state and perform sexual acts on them.

Shocker.

Related articles by Zemanta

• There must be a law (scienceblogs.com)
• “Mega-Church Bishop Eddie Long Sued for Sexually Abusing Followers” and related posts (bumpshack.com)
• Bishop Eddie Long Scandal: Parishioners Back Bishop (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Atlanta pastor Bishop Eddie Long denies sex claims from church members | Richard Adams (guardian.co.uk)

News From Around The Blogosphere 8.3.10

Yup, I’m very behind again, so bare with me.

1. Former writers for ScienceBlogs find a new home – I’ve written already about “PepsiGate,” the controversy that led to many of the leading science bloggers on the web to leave their home at Scienceblogs. Well, now at least many of the bloggers who left, including one of my favorites, PalMD, have moved to Scientopia. And their joining other bloggers who had no previous connection to ScienceBlogs, so hopefully this will become yet another hub for amazing science coverage that the mainstream media is failing to cover. And PZ Myers, Orac, and Abbie Smith are all remaining at ScienceBlogs.  I personally don’t really care where they’re posting their material just as long as this incident hasn’t deprived the internet of great science bloggers.

2. New study again proves the Earth is warming –

The 2009 State of the Climate report released today draws on data for 10 key climate indicators that all point to the same finding: the scientific evidence that our world is warming is unmistakable. More than 300 scientists from 160 research groups in 48 countries contributed to the report, which confirms that the past decade was the warmest on record and that the Earth has been growing warmer over the last 50 years.

Oh great! Now even Earth is falling for Al Gore’s evil liberal agenda.

3. Monkeys hate flying squirrels – C’mon, who doesn’t hate flying squirrels. Fuckin’ rodents think they’re so clever because they got built-in hang gliders. Humans had to actually build our flying technology; they were just born with it. That takes no great accomplishment. I’d like to see a flying squirrel build a 747. But maybe that’s just me. So why do monkeys hate them?

This riled-up response is probably just a false alarm, with the monkeys mistaking the squirrel for a predatory bird. On the other hand, male macaques – some of whom give chase and even attack a harmless rodent – might be trying to impress females in their troop.

Although this tough-guy motive was not proved in a new study, “it is possible that adult or sub-adult male monkeys may be ‘showing off’ their fitness” as potential mates, said Kenji Onishi, an assistant professor of behavioral sciences at Osaka University and lead author of the paper being published in the current issue of the journal Primate Research.

I like my reason better.

4. How high can Virgin Galactic take you? – Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic now has two fully operational private spacecraft: SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo (aka Enterprise). And for the low, low price of $200,000, they’ll take you about 68 miles above the Earth’s surface, or 6.2 miles above  the Kármán line, the boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. Now’s the time for Captain Kirk to start offering cheaper flights with Priceline.

5, Mind reading machines are science reality –

It is possible to read someone’s mind by remotely measuring their brain activity, researchers have shown. The technique can even extract information from subjects that they are not aware of themselves.

So far, it has only been used to identify visual patterns a subject can see or has chosen to focus on. But the researchers speculate the approach might be extended to probe a person’s awareness, focus of attention, memory and movement intention. In the meantime, it could help doctors work out if patients apparently in a coma are actually conscious.

I can't handle the truth!

6. Anti-vaxxer Meryl Dorey is a lying bitch – The other day, Meryl Dorey of the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN – [snicker] ) responded to the accusations made against her that her organization misinforms parents and that they’ve harassed the McCaffery family, whose 4-week-old baby Dana died of pertussis because she was too young to be safely vaccinated and those around hadn’t been vaccinated either. Of course, she denied any wrongdoing of any kind. But now the McCaffery’s have responded to her response. And big surprise. She lied…a lot.

7. Self-sustaining robot has artificial gut – I do love my robot news. A robot, Ecobot III, eats dead flies for sustenance. It’s pretty inefficient now but it’s hard to imagine the possibilities for how far this research could take robot technology in the future.

8. Supplements found to be unsafe – I know it sounded like a great idea for supplements to not be regulated to confirm they are safe and effective but it turns out that, shockingly, not verifying these products are actually safe is a really, really bad idea. I know. Who knew?

Related articles by Zemanta

• “Health fascism” in Australia? The anti-vaccine loons think so (scienceblogs.com)
• Outrage over campaign after baby’s death (news.theage.com.au)
• Virgin Galactic – Richard Branson Launches SpaceShipTwo (brighthub.com)
• PepsiCo blog, Food Frontiers, is an affront to those who built the reputation of ScienceBlogs (scienceblogs.com)
• Monkeys Go Bananas Over Flying Squirrels (livescience.com)
• Scientopia: a new science blogging network [DrugMonkey] (scienceblogs.com)
• New study clinches it: the Earth is warming up (blogs.discovermagazine.com)

Does astrology disprove climate change?

Well South Dakota thinks so:

News From Around The Blogosphere 2.12.10

Happy Darwin Day everyone!

Also save the date June 21 because it will Global Atheist Solidarity Day!

1. Secular Coalition for America receives a gift of $500,000 from philanthropist Todd Stiefel

2. Need information to counter global climate change deniers in a hurry? Don’t worry. There’s an app for that.

3. Creation Science Fair? – It’s not very fair to science.

4. Measles outbreak in South Africa –

The cause of a measles outbreak sweeping South Africa has not as yet been determined, but initial suspicions point to religious objections and unfounded fears that immunizations against the disease increase the risk of autism in children.

Thank’s Jenny McCarthy!

Collection of responses to James Randi’s unfortunate comments about climate change

I have enormous respect for James Randi. As the father and de facto leader of the modern skeptical movement, he has done more to promote critical thinking than almost anyone else alive. But even skeptics can be wrong from time to time. And even skeptics can fall victim to common logical fallacies.

Unfortunately, for Randi, that day has come as he’s written two rather credulous and poorly reasoned essays (here and here) expressing his doubts about some of the current established science regarding global climate change. I think the best takeaway from this situation is that it’s situations like this that really prove how skeptics differ from religions and other groups that revolve around an ideology. While skeptics may admire leading figures in the movement, no one is above reproach or criticism. Not even the father of the movement itself. Skeptics don’t worship James Randi. We don’t blindly accept the positions of Michael Shermer or Phil Plait or D.J. Grothe, or Stephen Novella, or Richard Dawkins. And even though we’ve come to rely heavily on their experience and opinions, the moment they seem to stray from the path, so to speak, or take a position based on logical fallacies, they’re going to be bombarded with criticisms about it. But unless they slide too far down the skeptic spectrum and do a lot more damage to what blogger Jesse Galef calls their “skepticism street cred”, they still have a seat at the table.

But it certainly is disappointing to hear that the de facto leader of the skeptical movement is beginning to sound a bit like a global warming denier. And it’s even more disconcerting that, given his role in the movement, he would be naive enough to nonchalantly publish these controversial thoughts for all to see without considering how it may impact the larger movement and without first doing far more research. As Greg Laden said, he should have known better.

But on a larger level, it doesn’t really matter what Randi thinks about climate change because the strength of the very movement he empowered is that we don’t rely on authorities to tell us what to believe but rigorously demand evidence for scientific claims.

For now, I don’t have much else to say about the matter that hasn’t been said better by someone else already. So I’ve decided to post links to others who have commented.

First, there’s Massimo Pigliucci, who I think nailed every point I can think of perfectly.

Some other commenters:

PZ Myers Part 1

PZ Myers Part 2

Phil Plait

Orac

James Hrynshyn

Daniel Florian

Greg Laden

Le Canard Noir at The Quackometer

Jon Stewart proves once again far savvier than ‘real’ news networks

Vodpod videos no longer available.

News From Around The Blogosphere 11.11.09

1. Lou Dobbs leaves CNN – Good riddance!

2. Children with autism show slower pupil responses –

Recently, University of Missouri researchers have developed a pupil response test that is 92.5 percent accurate in separating children with autism from those with typical development. In the study, MU scientists found that children with autism have slower pupil responses to light change.

3. Can Earth absorb CO2 much greater than expected? –

New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.

This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO₂ than had been previously expected.

4. Star Trek-like Replicator Makes Metal Parts –

She admits that, on the surface, EBF3 reminds many people of a Star Trek replicator in which, for example, Captain Picard announces out loud, “Tea, Earl Grey, hot.” Then there is a brief hum, a flash of light and the stimulating drink appears from a nook in the wall.

In reality, EBF3 works in a vacuum chamber, where an electron beam is focused on a constantly feeding source of metal, which is melted and then applied as called for by a drawing — one layer at a time — on top of a rotating surface until the part is complete.

5. Did Glenn Beck rape and murdere a young girl in 1990? – I’m not saying he did, but like a lot of other people, “I’m just asking questions.” And these are apparently questions that Glenn Beck doesn’t want to see asked because he tried to shut down the satirical Beck-mocking site glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com. But Beck couldn’t silence the questions and the so mirror sites using this Fark-inspired meme applying Beck’s own “I’m just asking the question” tactic remain on the web. What are you trying to hide, Glenn? And why haven’t you denied that you raped and murdered a young girl in 1990? Huh?

Kiddos to South Park for nailing this particular Beck tactic on tonight’s show.

6. Mormons becoming pro-gay rights? – Last week I blogged about how filmmaker Paul Haggis left $cientology largely because of their unapologetic anti-gay position. Well now the Mormon church is coming out in support of gay rights. Seriously.

7. E.T. phone Rome – The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences is holding its first ever conference to discuss the possible ramifications for the church should extraterrestrial life be discovered. Maybe they’ll finally pardon Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk, who was put to death by the Inquisition in 1600 for suggesting life might exist somewhere else in the universe.

Ingrid Newkirk on Glenn Beck – Danger! Crazy Overload! Crazy Overload!

Ingred Newkirk and Glenn Beck are both beating up on Al Gore because of his doing more for popularizing global climate change science than possibly anyone else in the world. Beck hates Gore because he’s a liberal and according to Beck’s book, he seems to think Al Gore single-handedly made the whole thing up. Newkirk doesn’t like Gore because again, despite Gore doing more for popularizing global climate change science than possibly anyone else in the world, she claims to think that’s all invalidated by the fact that–gasp–he eats meat.

KHAAAAAAAAAAN!

Apparently, according to Newkirk’s self-righteous and hypocritical philosophy (she uses insulin made from animal products for her diabetes despite passionately condemning the use of animal products in medicine), one can’t be an environmentalist without being a PETA-approved vegan. Because clearly she’s done sooooo much for environmentalism. In fact, REAL environmentalists don’t make a move without first going to Newkirk for advice. Who does that Al Gore think he is for tirelessly donating countless hours to drawing attention to one of the greatest threats to human society when he should just sit back and stop eating meat? Cause clearly if Gore simply sat on his ass and just stopped eating meat, that alone would solve global warming.

Irony overload.

But I think the funniest part of this video is when Glenn Beck hypocritically announces how much of a meat-eater he is (2:50 mark). It’s okay because he’s not crusading for environmentalism. And it was okay for Charles Manson to kill people because he wasn’t crusading against killing people. The awkwardness of these two trying to exploit the other despite their obvious contempt for each other is worth the price of admission alone.