Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
Words such as “Agast” or “stunned” don’t perhaps fully capture it, yet nevertheless we are in the midst of something quite unusual in the Arctic. Via Zack Labe, a researcher at the University of California at Irvine, and others, we have a series of tweets and graphs that illustrate just how weird things are in … Read more
Various media outlets have been reporting the news that the secret sauce for long life is Alcohol … UK’s Independent – Drinking Small amounts of Alcohol may help you to live over 90, study claims Detroit Free Press – Alcohol and coffee can help you live past 90, study says Chicago Tribune – Study: For those over … Read more
It is distinctly possible that after Salman Rushdie published his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, back in 1988, you would normally have never heard of it. Can you for example name any other novel he has written? Everything changed when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran at that time, issued a formal fatwā calling … Read more
When you do a weekly posting of news items related to religious weirdness, then there comes a point at which you might be tempted to consider the idea that you will no longer be surprised by the items that pop up, and instead you come to anticipate a specific mode of behaviour. I do confess … Read more
I was posting yesterday about how to spot bots. That is perhaps an important skill to develop because we live in an age where bots with a very specific malicious intent are being deployed to deceive and manipulate you by masquerading as a human. They promote extreme ideas, not because it is one that those behind … Read more
You may indeed have Twitter Bots that are following you or that you follow that are openly and transparently bots. These are the harmless ones run by a piece of software, and exist to provide a useful service. Examples include PoetryBot, CloudVision (A Photo Bot), or simply News Bot to tweet out headlines. Generally nobody has … Read more
