sciolist

A nice (but somewhat blunt) atheist comedian lady says on BBC television that people who believe in stuff without evidence. Then again if the theist chap hadn't said that all aborted children go to heaven, she wouldn't have suggested that by that reasoning, abortion was the best thing for them.

http://cruellablog.blogspot.com/2011/10/my-atheist-btchslap-and-internet.html

Obviously, with wider internet publicity, this must be followed with rape-threats against her and other vileness from aggrieved people. I don't recall Jesus saying that uppity women should be threatened with rape, but I guess there's a number of ways to interpret any holy book.

http://www.alternet.org/health/151514/why_our_monkey_brains_are_prone_to_procrastination_%28no%2C_it%27s_not_just_laziness_or_lack_of_willpower%29/?page=entire

An interesting article about the nature of procrastination and why me, L and several other folks I know would rather read 'just one more chapter' of the book before lights out despite it already being way past bedtime.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2305#comic

Superman - a transitional power source.

An excellent little poem from the excellently inky Cuttlefish:

http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2011/07/atheist-for-month.html


It’s good, sometimes, to see the world
Through someone else’s eyes;
To take another’s point of view
And try it on for size.

“Be Muslim for a month,” perhaps,
Be Sufi, or be Sikh;
Try walking in their footsteps—
You could start for just a week.

You could try to be a Muslim
Or a Christian, or a Jew
But I’d like to see more people
Trying atheism, too.

Just try it for a month, or two,
Or maybe for a year—
Pretend there’s no use praying
Cos there’s no one there to hear

Pretend there is no god above
To save us from ourselves
Pretend there are no holy books—
Just leave them on the shelves

Pretend there is no heaven
And pretend there is no Hell;
Pretend we only get one life,
And try to live it well

And maybe, if you try it out,
You’ll like the you you find
Not member of a single tribe
But all of humankind

And maybe if enough of us
Can wear each other’s skins
We’ll understand our differences...
And everybody wins.

Apparently, the cost of war (and specific wars) to the US
http://costofwar.com/en/

And, a page with cute graphics enabling you to understand just how big a billion, or a trillion dollars is. Just because they rhyme, they're not very similar.

http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2229

Superman is getting on a bit.

I heard Sam Harris talking on the radio this morning (apparently touting a book) about how we can derive morality from science. This being something I'm rather keen on, I was happy that he said something concise and clear before I regretfully had to leave the car (and radio) and go into work.

To paraphrase:
We can make decisions about good and evil based on the wellbeing of humans and animals. All that sort of stuff is tied into anthropology, sociology, economics etc which Science can certainly get a handle on. Is it 'right' to coerce women into wearing burqas, as they do in Afghanistan? Women get beaten or killed for not going about their lives in a cloth sack. Afghanistan has a 12% literacy rate for women and an average life expectancy of 44 years. It's an unfortunate place to be born if you're female.

So it might be fairly rational and sane to infer that wellbeing is not being increased by burqa-coercion. Harm doesn't seem to be limited by that practice. Hence it may be less good than other options.

Apologies if my above paraphrase gets muddy or confused, I'm not trying to claim direct cause in either direction between burqas and the literacy rate. But one could make observations, look at data, make hypotheses and generally strive to make the world a better place with less harm in it.

And secondly, a referral of more 'Scott Adams is a bit crap' vein via Pharyngula.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/04/why_sockpuppetry_is_stupid.php

"Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, has been discovered to have tried to pad his reputation with a fake ID … he's used the pseudonym "PlannedChaos" to go around the web praising Scott Adams as a "certified genius".
You know, it's a good rule of thumb that if you have to announce that you're a genius, you aren't a genius.
I've been remarking on Adams' stupidity for years. He's a creationist apologist who doesn't understand science, and the kind of insipid apologist for religion who thinks Pascal's wager is a good argument. It's no surprise that he had to cobble up imaginary sycophants to make himself look good.
And then, of course, there's the classic, standard Adams riposte whenever he's exposed as a fool. Sure, he said something stupid, he'll say, but he did it because he's funny and you are even dumber for taking him seriously. It's no surprise that that is his response now.
I'm sorry I peed in your cesspool. For what it's worth, the smart people were on to me after the first post. That made it funnier.
That schtick wore out ages ago."

Pretty ladies with Steve Buscemi's eyes photoshopped in.

http://chickswithstevebuscemeyes.tumblr.com/

It's surprisingly creepy.

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/11/16/children-draw-h-p-lovecraft-cthulhu/

Yes, some 10-11 year olds draw characters from the Cthulhu Mythos. How cool is that to have stuck on your fridge by a young'un.