I finally got a half-decent video of myself giving a talk. Of course the projector still failed to work with my laptop, so I went slide-less (but it still works I think). I gave this talk this morning for the BC Humanists at Oakridge Seniors Centre. The TalkOrigins article I referenced can be found here. […]
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DeSmogBlog: Score Another Victory for Scientists, Michael Mann, and the Freedom of Inquiry
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Yesterday in a Virginia courtroom, Michael Mann—who is quickly becoming the Galileo of climate science—triumphed over the conservative American Tradition Institute, an…
Continue readingExponential Book: Must be me…
The Globe and Mail has a story about an “experiment” (I use quote-unquote because I personally see nothing new about it, but I come back to this below) carried out by a college teacher who has broken down her 200-student class into small gr…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Is There a Bias Asymmetry Between Democrats and Republicans?
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There’s a must read item today at the Huffington Post by Jonathan Weiler, co-author of the excellent book Authoritarianism and Polarization in American P…
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Relativism – Obscuring the Line between Shite and Shinola – Terence Mckenna
Mr.Mckenna on relativism and how it makes us into polite but foolish people. I see the religiously addled beginning to froth thinking perhaps that once we get rid or relativism we can get back to the unctuous vapidity of absolute morality…no no kiddies, what we are talking about here is moving debate back toward rational […]
Dead Wild Roses: Predictable Irrationality – Economics is based on ‘rational actors’ huh?
A fascinating video about how irrational we actually are as a species despite all of our material advancements. I would have to agree with what Dan Ariely says in this talk, we need to simplify our cognitive models and constructs so we can actually make rational, informed choices based on them. How a coffee chain […]
350 or bust: Finally, Some Good News Out Of Ottawa: All-Party Climate Caucus Formed
Thanks in large part to the hard work of Kirsty Duncan, Liberal MP for Etobicoke North and IPCC scientist, a new House of Commons “climate change” caucus has been formed. Duncan, who championed this initiative, said “I am delighted that my co…
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: The Experiment Only Runs Once
A big thanks to tildeb over at Questionable Motives for bring this video to my attention. The video is about the potential futures of climate change, but from a risk management perspective. It brings into stark relief the choices we are facing and some of the possible consequence of our potential action and inaction. I […]
DeSmogBlog: Why Hard Core Climate “Skeptics” Don’t Change Their Minds
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I’ve been watching with interest the blogosphere uproar over the release of results from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project centered around physicist Richard Mulle…
Continue readingExponential Book: Time to simplify
As I was discussing with my collaborator the wisdom of following the request of one of the referees to include an additional figure in our manuscript, I expressed my doubts on whether, upon heeding that suggestion, we would be able to stay under the in…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Why Communicating Science is So Money
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I’ve been meaning to thrown in my congratulations to Gavin Schmidt of NASA and RealClimate.org, who is the first recipient of the American Geophysical Union’s new…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Why Did Climate Progress Stall? It’s Called Conservative Ideological Activation
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There has been much reaction to this weekend’s Elizabeth Rosenthal New York Times piece—“Where Did Global Warming Go?” Clearly, the issue has falle…
Continue readingApology Of A Poseur
(The following was inspired by Deepak Chopra’s quackery-laden and hypocritically self-serving review of Richard Dawkins’ book, The Magic of Reality. Enjoy).I find myself saddened – yet also outraged – by Richard Dawkins’ latest written offering, an i…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: The Old War on Science Returns Under Rick Perry
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In an August post about the return of the “war on science”—prosecuted by the political right—I drew a key distinction between attacks on knowledge that h…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Once And For All: The Precautionary Principle is Not Unscientific
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Some conservatives are immensely more fun to debate than others.
In the past month, a debate over left-right science abuse with Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Insti…
Exponential Book: Rantings over rankings
Times Higher Education has just published its influential rankings of World universities. I imagine that university presidents all over the world, at this time, are either pounding their chests, proudly announcing to their students that the reputable i…
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Battle the Bad Science – Ben Goldacre
Dr.Goldacre talks about a kilometer per second on this TED talk as he discusses some of the pitfalls of modern science and how bad methodology is hurting people and the profession.
Filed under: Science Tagged: Bad Science, Ben Goldacre, Medical Indust…
Continue readingeaves.ca: Ada Lovelace Day – On Dr. Connie Eaves
For those who don’t know: Today – October 7th – is Ada Lovelace Day. It’s a day where you “share your story about a woman — whether an engineer, a scientist, a technologist or mathematician — who has inspired you to become who you are today.” It would be remiss for me not to blog […]
Continue readingRed Tory v.3.0.3: The Magic of Reality
Richard Dawkins talks to Thom Hartmann about his new book The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True. The first part of the interview can be viewed here (it deals primarily with genetic matters that will be familiar … Continue reading →
DeSmogBlog: Evolution and Climate Deniers: Natural Allies?
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On the face of things, there is no clear reason why the same person—like, say, Rick Perry—ought to deny accepted science about both evolution, and also global warmin…
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