Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
The Antarctic is of course glaciated and very very cold, that is well understood. What is new is the realisation that it is not all a barren lifeless landscape, but instead contains niches where life has potentially gained a foothold in a rather surprising way. Hidden under the ice are Geothermal ice caverns. This is because Antarctic … Read more
Back in 2011 photographer David Slater was in the Indonesian jungle and had setup his camera. A rather playful troop of crested macaque monkeys that he had befriended starting larking about with his camera, and soon one ended up taking the above monkey selfie. Now here is the key question. Who owns the copyright to that picture? Generally … Read more
Religious moral claims often boil down to “because the Bible says so”. No attempt at any reason or justification beyond that is offered. Sometimes there are attempts to articulate a religiously-inspired but reason-based moral stance. Generally what you will find is that it is most probably an example of the infamous is-ought fallacy. The what? … Read more
The observation that we are seeing Hurricanes that are unprecedented and also of a size never seen before in the West Atlantic will quite naturally inspire many to wonder if there is a Climate Change connection. There is. This is because Climate Change does indeed directly increase Hurricane intensity. As I write this, we have … Read more
The TL;DR; answer is no 9/11 was not the result of a controlled demolition. For a slightly longer explanation read on. There are numerous YouTube clips and various websites that promote the idea that the collapse of the twin towers was not in any way related to the fully fueled commercial airliners being flown into … Read more
The practical tips on how to really help via a good charity are further down. First comes a bit of fun that points out some of the utterly absurd and quite frankly daft claims from the more extreme fringes of the religious community. Being faced with such silly claims from con men who are using … Read more