science

Creationism in the classroom

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Andrew Brown writes in the Guardian (with a picture of some bloke setting things up at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky)  … At least creationists have given it some thought. Would you rather an indifferent or a passionately wrong child in the science classroom? Let’s not simply sneer at Darwin deniers If you read … Read more

Claim: “Six Scientists go on trial next week for failure to predict earthquake” – not quite correct.

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Some utter insanity has apparently broken out in Italy. The BBC Newsnight page reports that seven scientists are, in a Galileo-style inquisition, to stand trial next week for failing to accurately predict the precise timing of an earthquake. Wow … scientists accused of failing to predict an earthquake? Actually no, that is not what is … Read more

creating “Inorganic life” – first tentative steps have now been taken

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Now this is interesting, really interesting … lets start with five key bullet points  … Scientists at the University of Glasgow say they have taken their first tentative steps towards creating ‘life’ from inorganic chemicals If they really do construct complex chemical cells with life-like properties, it could help us understand how life emerged (but … Read more

Bot tricks people into thinking it is human – Artifical Intelligence at last? Nope, I’m skeptical

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I’ve tripped over an interesting little snippet in New Scientist where there is a claim that some software called Cleverbot has passed one of the key tests of artificial intelligence: the Turing test. Now before we proceed, lets clarify what this test actually is. It was introduced by Alan Turing (hence the name) in his … Read more

Debating Evolution with the crazies – Hints and Tips

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If, like me, you engage in on-line discussions with theist crazies, then you will know that at some point Evolution will pop up. It is usually unexpected (but not always), for example yesterday when engaged in a debate with an Islamic fanatic about the existence of God (which is usually a claim that is some variation of one of the three famous arguments, the Cosmological, the Teleological, or the Ontological) we suddenly take a left-hand turn and Darwin pops up which then leaves all the non-believers thinking, “WTF, where did that come from?“, and soon we were buried in heaps of anti-evolution quotes.

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Encyclopedia of Life catalogues more than one-third of Earth’s species

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Now this is cool, more than one-third of all the known species of life on the planet have now been cataloged … the total they have (as I write this) is 753,315. Just before we launch into the article lets clarify those numbers. It is estimated that there are probably around 8.7 million species in total. That is just a finger in the air, so it is within a couple of million either side of that. OK, just so that you understand that number, what in actually means is that an astonishing 86% of all plants and animals on land and 91% of those in the seas have yet to be named and catalogued. Ah but hang on a moment, those sums don’t add up, one-third of 8.7 million is not 753,315, so what is the story here? Easy, we only know about 1.9 species, the rest have yet to be discovered, so it now has more than one third of the known species cataloged.

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