Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
In the UK, we have the unelected Queen as head of the Church of England, and also at the same time head of state. Then we have the house of Lords populated with unelected bishops. So while we might cringe at the thought of how backward and medieval it is to have clerics running things … Read more
Idiocracy is the 2006 movie in which two ordinary people get frozen for 500 years and wake up to a future where natural selection has been rather indifferent as regards intelligence. In other words, all the stupid people managed to outbreed the smart ones. The net result is a world populated entirly by illiterate alcoholic … Read more
Source: Nature — Aug 11, 2010 Early hominins were using stone tools to butcher meat as long ago as 3.4 million years, about 800,000 years earlier than previous evidence dates to, scientists report in this week’s issue of Nature. The finding comes from an examination of animal bones found last year in the Lower Awash … Read more
In Aztec belief, Tlaloc was the god of rain and water and was feared for his ability to send hail, thunder and lightning. As for wind, we have lots of gods to choose from including Aeolus, the Greek wind God, Fujin, the Japanese wind God, and Vayu the Hindu wind God. Then there is a … Read more
Source: New York Times — Aug 9, 2010 “By allowing artificial intelligence to reshape our concept of personhood, we are leaving ourselves open to the flipside: we think of people more and more as computers, just as we think of computers as people,” says author and computer scientist Jeron Lanier. “The constant stream of stories … Read more
Every August, just when many people go vacationing in the country where skies are dark, the best-known meteor shower — the Perseid meteor shower — makes its appearance. The “shooting stars” promise to deliver an excellent show this year to anyone with clear and dark skies away from urban and suburban lights. The best time … Read more