Something In The Water
BCL on the chutzpah of Jonathan Kay, junk science enabler debunker: here’s a real lack of self-awareness here. Jonathon , after all, is comment pages editor at the National Post,…
science
The chemtrail conspiracy nonsense
Scientists need not apply for membership in the Chemtrail Conspiracy. In fact, scientists will probably be booted out for even walking on the same street where the meeting is being…
vaccines and the selling of fear.
I read an article today about a family in New Zealand where a young boy came down with tetanus. His father is speaking out about their decision not to vaccinate,…
A blog post that fits the icy weather
News from Greenland from the past day: “Ice core drill gives insight into climate future.” An international study into the Greenland ice core is helping scientists predict what a future…
What’s this nonsense about mushrooms?
In the middle of a video parody on YouTube that skewers council on our new rec facilities, there’s a comment about “the mushroom farm debacle.” It then goes on, rather…
It’s snowing, snowing, snowing…
I was looking outside today as the snow fell in Collingwood (-11C when we awoke, -10C when I first walked my dog…) and thinking of my brother-in-law in England, where…
Musings on Game Design
An odd bit of synchronicity. I picked up a few unusual board games* at the discount/remainder store downtown (in the former Shoppers’ Drug Mart building) a couple of weeks back,…
Climate Change Explained
By Bob McDonald, Quirks & Quarks The end of the Kyoto Protocol, and our inability to do something about rising carbon emissions, is like arguing over rising water in the…
Don’t We All Hear Voices? A Mindfulness-Informed View of Schizophrenia and the “Normal” Mind
The hallmark of schizophrenia is perceiving things that are not there. Auditory hallucinations, including “hearing voices”, is particularly common. What if this clinically distinguishing feature of schizophrenia differs from the…
Christmas Time Fun
So what did we do this Christmas time? We tobogganed, experimented with computer programming again, played board games and much more. Here are a few of our holiday projects. We…
What do you look for (part two)?
Having expounded in my previous post what kind of person I look for, when serving on the search committee for a tenure-track hire, now it is time to list the…
The Hidden Costs of Gambling
Let’s start 2013 with a sober consideration of the social and economic costs of gambling. Back n 2006, the Canadian Medical Association noted that, “Provincial governments may be glossing over…
ISS over Regina
I was checking to see the next time the International Space Station would fly over Regina’s skies, and saw it was in two minutes! (There are only a few times…
What do you look for (part one) ?
I am a faculty member in a university physics department, who finds himself periodically involved in faculty searches and hires. How do I evaluate the curriculum vitae of an applicant…
The Mayans, the ecological crisis and the end of the world: a little sanity please
It seems like a lot of people are going to extremes with regards to the Mayan predictions – and I mean the skeptics as well as the fanatics. Some are…
Someone is wrong on the internet
I discovered an entertaining site recently called Skeptic North. It’s a Canadian equivalent to several similar sites and blogs I read that are mostly American-based. It challenges popular assumptions, ideas,…
Dan’s Estimation of the Age of the Universe
As a follow up to my post on the theory of relativity’s implications on the age of the universe and the nature of reality, I am pointing out something that…