A Hindu chaplain was invited to say the opening prayer in the Senate and some christians slipped in to protest, disrupting the prayer, and generally making fools of themselves and presenting the face of their faith which causes those who feel religious belief is something everyone ought to get over…
I was checking on the latest news about the Creationist Museum, and found myself browsing a conservative blog site, Townhall.com. The hot issue of the day is debunking the whole Al Gore Global Warming issue. Try this post, for a taste.
What truly bugged me is that, among the innumerate and sometimes marginally literate responses, there was a kernel of actually reasonable doubt. Those who follow the actual science (a minority on that site) know that there is no doubt about the present warming trend, nor about the unprecedented rise in fossil CO2 in the last century. However, there is no certain model for the causality leading to or spawning from these facts.
Doomsayers love the fantastic, sudden, apocalyptic models of global warming that Hollywood likes to portray. It’s quite dramatic, and cannot be ruled out. However, most models show that the big and civilization-altering changes that are likely to occur will take generations to notice. The present conservative movement is more interested in the next fiscal quarter than the next generation. Therefore, this is not a “real” problem.
The real problem with the Gore campaign is that it is covered as a binary issue. Either Global Warming is a big and serious and immediate problem that requires drastic solutions, or it an imaginary scare tactic. The truth is somewhere in between. Fossil atmospheric carbon dumping is (and will be) a tiny blip in history. Maybe three centuries total out of the almost hundred centuries (so far) …
I recently visited New York City, where I attended a business conference. After the conference was over, I was able to spend three hours at the American Museum of Natural History. It was well worth a visit for numerous reasons. For instance, the ocean life exhibit contains a full-size model…
Last Friday, Governor Blunt signed a bill that mandates that sex ed teachers provide political affiliations and charitable contribution disclosures to the state in order to prevent any teachers possibly affiliated with any reproductive rights centers or groups from teaching about reproduction. It also prohibits schools from obtaining materials from…
I was reading about Gallium metal, and got sidetracked by a debate about math software. The point that got my attention is the contention that civilization is based on an institutionalized principle that we all are incompetent in many important fields. The item being debated was the necessity of children…