Monthly Archives: May 2010

Nietzsche’s Revenge: PZ Myers v. Sam Harris on whether science can assist a person in deriving an “ought” from an “is”

Posted on May 10, 2010 by

PZ Myers, backing the physicist Sean Carroll in the argument, says no: Sam Harris recently and infamously proposed that, contra Hume, you can derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’, and that science can therefore provide reasonable guidance towards a moral … Continue reading →

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Arizona’s new anti-immigration law made simple

Posted on May 9, 2010 by

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           . Hat tip: Jerry Coyne

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12 reasons that people are attracted to End Times woo

Posted on May 9, 2010 by

About half of all Americans believe that, within the next generation or so, humanity will come under the domination of an evil global ruler, experience the apocalypse described in the Book of Revelation, and witness the second coming of Christ. But why do they think this? … Continue reading →

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Thought for the Day

Posted on May 8, 2010 by

Dogs can’t read books, which is sad. But wouldn’t it be more sad if dogs could read books, but didn’t? Below is an image of the remains of the Library of Celsus in Ephesus, which was completed circa 135 CE. It could hold 12,000 … Continue reading →

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Why I love the man

Posted on May 7, 2010 by

Ecce homo! From the transcript of a University of Michigan spring commencement speech that President Barack Obama gave on May 1, 2010:  [W]e need an educated citizenry that values hard evidence and not just assertion. As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously … Continue reading →

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The United States now has a defacto fourth branch of government: the Chinese Communist Party

Posted on May 6, 2010 by

Since Barack Obama’s election, right-wingers have been worried about a socialist tide within the United States’ three existing branches of government (the legislative, executive, and judicial branches). But Harvard Professor Niall Ferguson, of the Council on Foreign Relations, in recent … Continue reading →

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Does walking outdoors, even for just five minutes a day, improve health and well being?

Posted on May 4, 2010 by

Startlingly, a new British study, as reported by the BBC, suggests that just five minutes of outdoor exercise provides a measurable health benefit: UK researchers looked at evidence from 1,250 people in 10 studies and found fast improvements in mood and self-esteem. … Continue reading →

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Holy elephants vs. atheist mammoths: Why do elephants have big ears and mammoths small ears? And might the answer suggest something about the evolution of religion and irreligion?

Posted on May 4, 2010 by

Mammoths have small ears. Why is that? In a science section article today, the New York Times offers the following explanation: Mammoths, despite their association with the frozen north, originated in the tropics when they split apart from elephants some seven million years … Continue reading →

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Ecce Cosmos: Does the Carina Nebula stellar nursery contradict Genesis 1?

Posted on May 4, 2010 by

A new Hubble telescope image (below) shows a 3-light year spanning nebula where stars are being born as we speak. But wait. Doesn’t new star formation contradict the finality of Genesis’s creation week in which God is said to have “created  … Continue reading →

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Mohammad in a bear suit, Viacom offices, and the recent Times Square car bomb attempt: coincidental correlation or causation?

Posted on May 3, 2010 by

AP today suggests that one possibility the FBI is exploring is this: the Times Square car bomb may have been an attempt to terrorize workers at Viacom: The SUV was parked near offices of Viacom Inc., which owns Comedy Central. The network … Continue reading →

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Better living through data crunching, or a centralized tool for global government shenanigans?

Posted on May 3, 2010 by

I’m an old-style Albert Einstein/Bertrand Russell/Buckminster Fuller internationalist. I think that national sovereignty will—and should—give way to a democratic “Spaceship Earth” world government at some point in human history (perhaps with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights functioning as an international Bill of … Continue reading →

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Gap gods and pot holes: are Richard Dawkins’s materialist atheism and Rush Limbaugh’s anti-environmentalism akin to one another?

Posted on May 2, 2010 by

Why are so many people resistant to Richard Dawkins’s totally materialist explanation of the universe (that is, atoms and void are all that really exist, and they are eternal or came into existence out of nothing)? And it occurred to me this morning that … Continue reading →

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Two lives, no books

Posted on May 2, 2010 by

This post comes from a brief exchange that I overheard, at a garage sale, yesterday morning. A man and a woman, both looking to be in their forties, paused at the same moment and gazed down into a box of books that was for … Continue reading →

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Atlases Shrug: Honors Students Boycott Arizona State University

Posted on May 1, 2010 by

In response to its Latino targeting anti-immigration law, honors students from outside of Arizona are ditching their plans of attending Arizona State University. This today at Inside Higher Ed: President Robert E. Shelton released a letter in which he said: “We … Continue reading →

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“The Prophet”: a poem by Santi Tafarella

Posted on May 1, 2010 by

Beauty is the first ugliness in line, making those behind blind. The candle’s orange tongue, declaring for God, assures darkness is elsewhere. Your truth is a mask for an undisclosed motive.

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