May 07 2011
While I was receiving chemotherapy treatment on Wednesday, 2011-05-04, a tweet from a friend of mine caught my interest. [Yes, I play on Twitter while the chemotherapy drugs drip into my veins.] Looking back in my timeline, I found that the tweet from @zeno001 followed this brief exchange: Wow! It appeared that Mr. Kirkland was …
Apr 27 2011
It has recently come to my attention [by way of a post at Dispatches From the Culture Wars] that a group of Christians in the State of California feel that they need to codify their rights to evangelize and spread the gospel because those rights are in grave peril. They think that an amendment to …
Jan 11 2011
Sometimes I have an exchange of words, comments, ideas, etc. with someone, and I am left wondering why I even bothered. I’d like to show you just such an exchange so that you can get an idea of why I feel this way at times. Twitter is an interesting medium for conversations. The limit of …
Jan 09 2011
This advertisement is being promoted by WorldNut Daily. Surprise, surprise. httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqRqwU5oeLA …in an economic meltdown, non-hybrid seeds could become more valuable than even silver and gold. I love the “graph” that purports to show the value of gold, silver, and “Nonhybrid Seeds.” It’s odd that there aren’t any numbers on that graph, isn’t it? I …
Jan 06 2011
I sometimes see comments and questions wondering why atheists are, to some people’s eyes, very angry people. When I see those comments and questions, an excellent blog post by Greta Christina, Atheists and Anger, always comes to mind. Yes, we atheists are often angry. We have a number of reasons why we are angry. Being …
Jan 01 2011
Terry Hurlbut (@Temlakos on Twitter) authors a column for Examiner.com called Creationism Examiner. On December 30th, 2010, Terry published an article entitled Creationism and science: wider implications. The article was brought to my attention in a post by PZ Myers at Pharyngula. I have, in the past, seen remarks about Biblical literalists attempting to “turn …
Dec 28 2010
A newspaper column was brought to my attention the other day. I had never before heard of the newspaper, The Daily Star of Oneonta, New York, nor the author of the column, Tom Sears. Mr. Sears writes a regular opinion column for The Daily Star. Many of his columns’ titles are prefixed with On the …
Nov 20 2010
I’ve written about Joe Cienkowski on a previous occasion. Some of you may already be familiar with Joe and his ideas about evolution and atheism. I’ve had brief exchanges with Joe on Twitter, and though we disagree, we keep things fairly cordial. Someone was kind enough to recently provide me with one of Joe’s self-published …
Nov 11 2010
Many people are not familiar with the term Dunning-Kruger Effect. The linked Wikipedia article begins with a very good description: The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer …
Oct 22 2010
While driving east on University Avenue in Champaign, Illinois, I was presented with the sight of this billboard. I found that I was not the only person in town who noticed the billboard, and was a bit insulted by it. [I’m not offended by it, as it takes much more to actually offend me.] A …
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