Here's a short video that takes you deep into a fundie lecture hall to be taught by the likes of Ken Ham. I learned of this video by visiting a well-written science blog, Pharyngula (written by biology professor Paul Z. Myers). Watching the video is startling, disturbing and depressing. The young children are…
I’ve recently been digging into the family of blogs that goes under the umbrella name: scienceblogs.com. Here’s the general mission: Our mission is to build a community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about science and its place in our culture, and give them a place to meet. The Science Blogs are…
Isn’t it striking how many highly intelligent freethinkers are ineffective speakers and writers?
Not all of them, mind you. Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are notable exceptions in my mind. They both get right to the point using ordinary words. They both look at their audience while speaking. Harris is one of the more affable speakers out there, while Dawkins excels at communicating with an earnest intensity. Their approaches to delivering their ideas explain their popularity. They stand out from the crowd with their ability to convey their ideas. Many other freethinkers (all of them intelligent, sincere and committed to following evidence where it leads) could greatly improve on the way they deliver their ideas. By failing to work on their delivery, they are losing opportunities to communicate their valuable ideas.
I base this conclusion on my viewing of the presentations at the La Jolla conference, “Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival.” You can watch videos of the sessions here. I briefly discussed the conference here.
While watching some of the presenters, however, I imagined being a fundamentalist; In short, I imagined feeling threatened by the ideas of the La Jolla freethinkers. If I were a fundmentalist, I might think I disagreed with the ideas of the scientists and philosophers while I was actually much more repulsed by the manner in which those ideas were presented.
For instance, some of the freethinking scientists and philosophers appear arrogant. They might not actually be arrogant, though they appeared…
At his recent State of the Union address, President Bush pointed out a modern American hero:
After her daughter was born, Julie Aigner-Clark searched for ways to share her love of music and art with her child. So she borrowed some equipment, and began filming children’s videos in her basement. The Baby Einstein Company was born — and in just five years her business grew to more than $20 million in sales. In November 2001, Julie sold Baby Einstein to the Walt Disney Company, and with her help Baby Einstein has grown into a $200 million business. Julie represents the great enterprising spirit of America.
What does Baby Einstein sell? An “entire line of playful and interactive DVDs, videos, books, music CDs, and toys.” It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that products this good will turn millions of babies into . . . well, pooping drooling little Einsteins. Once we harness all of the nation’s cognito-baby-power, solving of the Grand Unification Theory can’t possibly be far behind, I tell you! In fact, whenever a few of those Baby Einstein babies are together in a playpen, you’d better not stray too far away, for those moments when they collaborate and start chanting solutions to Fermat’s Theorums.
It was good to see President Bush getting solidly behind a serious educational initiative like Baby Einstein.
Or has Bush shot crookedly again? It turns out that Baby Einstein excels at convincing you to entrust your baby to the boob tube. …
Well . . . I had heard about having other people's servers get overwhelmed by Digg.com, but it hadn't before happened to us. Until today. Last night, I had put up a post about a psychology site that let's you "average" faces, resulting in incredible attractive (mathematically generated) faces of…