Archives for the 'science' Category
Happy Darwin Day
darwinday.org
Darwin Day is an international celebration of science and humanity held on or around February 12, the day that Charles Darwin was born on in 1809. Specifically, it celebrates the discoveries and life of Charles Darwin — the man who first described biological evolution via natural selection with scientific rigor. More generally, Darwin Day […]
Book Review: Breaking the Spell
Daniel Dennett is a Tufts University professor and a great writer. He also summers in Maine which gives him extra points in my book. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon is a book written by a philosopher to the pious. He doesn’t actually answer the big questions or make […]
Book Review: God: The Failed Hypothesis
The monotheistic Judeo-Christian-Islamic god is not a theory, it is a hypothesis. Victor Stenger subjects this hypothesis to scientific scrutiny and shows, once again, how it fails the tests. I enjoyed this book.
It is, admittedly, written to the pious and not those of us in the proverbial choir. I was familiar with […]
Star Gazing
brentdanley
Tonight I drove out to the Lake Afton Public Observatory. When I arrived the 16-inch telescope was pointed toward and focused on the planet Venus. It looked like a very small very bright dot. Then I went outside.
What I wanted to do was try out the new 15×70 binoculars Kirsten gave me and maybe take […]
Book Review: The Varieties of Scientific Experience
Carl Sagan’s new book, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, is easily one of my favorite books. Dr. Sagan’s description of the cosmos opened up for me an interest I will undoubtedly cherish for the rest of my life. He describes nebulae, star formation, comets, galaxies, […]
Lake Afton Public Observatory
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Last week I read Carl Sagan’s new book, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, which kindled my interest in astronomy. I plan to write a review of Carl’s book for The Rhetoric in the next few days.
I picked up a brochure at WSU this week […]
TED
I watched an interview of James Randi today on a Bullshit! DVD that came in from Netflix. I had seen Mr. Randi’s picture yesterday while reading the current issue of Skeptic. This lead me to the Skeptic website where I discovered TED. TED–Technology Entertainment Design–is a four day event each year in […]
Melting Sea Ice
Dan Crosbie/Canadian Ice Service
The New York Times today reported on the long-awaited report from the hundreds of scientists and reviewers that make up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The article states the panel’s concluded that “global warming is ‘unequivocal’ and that human activity is the main driver, ‘very likely’ causing most of the rise […]
Boeing Corporation’s New 797 Aircraft
A coworker forwarded an email to me today about Boeing Corporation’s new 797 “blended-wing-body” aircraft. The picture attached to the email (posted here) is quite interesting. This aircraft will likely never come to market but it’s fun to think about the future of airplane design. Aerospaceweb.org has additional information as well […]
Letter to a Christian Nation
Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation is only ninety-one very small pages long. I started it last night and finished tonight although it could easily be read straight through in one evening. The letter is written to Christians who wrote Sam letters in response to his much larger volume, The End of Faith. While […]