SCIENTIFIC LITERACY: “Bill Nye ‘The Science Guy’ Crushes Creationist Ken Ham in a Debate”
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Category Archives: Research Report
ALWAYS QUESTION AUTHORITY 2013 IN REVIEW: “Thank You 125,092 Visitors and 347 Followers”
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 120,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 5 days for that many people to see it.
EVOLUTION: “Republicans are Devolving; Shocking, Shocking I Tell You!”
According to Pew Research, there’s a widening gap between Republicans and Democrats on the issue of evolution:
In 2009, 54% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats said humans have evolved over time, a difference of 10 percentage points. Today, 43% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats say humans have evolved, a 24-point gap.
Pew says that there are no similar shifts in other demographics. Racially and religiously we’re pretty much where we were five years ago. That suggests that people who find the evidence for evolution compelling are leaving the Republican party.
h/t: unreasonable faith
h/t: Planet Atheism
ATHEISM: “On Atheistic Morality”
ADHD: “The Selling of ADHD: Diagnoses, Prescriptions Soar After 20-Year Marketing Effort by Big Pharma”
h/t: Democracy NOW
GLOBAL WARMING: “Reflect, Warm Air Holds More Moisture Than Cooler Air!”
h/t: The Other 98%
GUN CONTROL: “Something to Think About”
h/t: Being Liberal
GUN CONTROL: “Needed for Self-Protection . . . Not So Much”
RELIGIOUS PRIVILEGE: “Persecution Or Privilege? The Real Status Of American Houses of Worship” / Americans United for Separation of Church and State
The war on Christmas. The war on marriage. Wars on schools, on prayer, on the sanctity of life – we’ve heard countless times that a culture war rages in America. If you believe the fundamentalists, they’re merely defending themselves against an overwhelming tide of secularist persecution.
But a recent report by the Council for Secular Humanism and the University of Tampa confirms that this persecution is really a myth. In fact, the report estimates that the federal government subsidizes churches to the tune of at least $71 billion per year.
The Washington Post called these numbers a “lowball,” and estimates the real number is probably much higher thanks to local tax subsidies, sales tax subsidies and fund-raising subsidies, among other benefits. When these benefits are considered the number is closer to $82.5 billion per year.
Related articles
- You give religions more than $82.5 billion a year (washingtonpost.com)
- This Week in God (maddowblog.msnbc.com)
NOISE: “I’m Thinking. Please. Be Quiet.” / George Prochnik
I have long held the opinion that the amount of noise that anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity and may therefore be regarded as a pretty fair measure of it.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, 1819SLAMMING doors, banging walls, bellowing strangers and whistling neighbors were the bane of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s existence. But it was only in later middle age, after he had moved with his beloved poodle to the commercial hub of Frankfurt, that his sense of being tortured by loud, often superfluous blasts of sound ripened into a philosophical diatribe. Then, around 1850, Schopenhauer pronounced noise to be the supreme archenemy of any serious thinker.
His argument against noise was simple: A great mind can have great thoughts only if all its powers of concentration are brought to bear on one subject, in the same way that a concave mirror focuses light on one point. Just as a mighty army becomes useless if its soldiers are scattered helter-skelter, a great mind becomes ordinary the moment its energies are dispersed.
And nothing disrupts thought the way noise does, Schopenhauer declared, adding that even people who are not philosophers lose whatever ideas their brains can carry in consequence of brutish jolts of sound.
Always Question Authority 