Month: February 2010
There is a right answer
From US National Public Radio (NPR): Belief In Climate Change Hinges On Worldview Well, yeah. People who are already disposed to believe in economic growth at all costs, that technology will always solve any problems it causes and… that any concern for the natural environment is a sign of communism or worse, will manage to…
Messin’ With The Recipe
A friend asked recently in his Facebook status message “Why is it that AC/DC are still credible after all these years and Metallica aren’t?” (Or words to that effect.) My response was that AC/DC have never really messed with the recipe, while Metallica have done nothing but mix it up. AC/DC had one huge change…
Tea Partiers and Republicans – shh, don’t tell them their views are diametrically opposed
Glenn Greenwald, as usual, is penetrating through the spin to the heart of the matter: http://www.salon.com/news/tea_parties/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2010/02/21/libertarianism …that GOP limited government rhetoric is simply never matched by that Party’s conduct, especially when they wield power. The very idea that a political party dominated by neocons, warmongers, surveillance fetishists, and privacy-hating social conservatives will be a party…
Is there a way back?
Listening to a very interesting program on Radio National the other day. We’re currently going through a series of scandals in Australian politics because the government rushed into place a policy to insulate millions of houses in a short period. Turned out a lot of the operators were shonky, using poor materials and poorly trained…
Killer God – acquitted?
Most people I know, Christian or otherwise, struggle to reconcile the notion of a God of love with the God who is reported in the Old Testament as destroying everyone on earth with a flood, destroying the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and sponsoring various genocides by the Israelite army in Canaan. It’s…
Church and the Semiotics of Space
Here’s an iPhone photo that I sneaked this morning of the interior of the church: The church was built in the 50s, and I think the pews and many of the other furnishings are original. The small thing I noticed was the little decorated (with different shades of wood) wooden stand in front of the…
Way too cute: 3 year old installing Ubuntu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObsYo3PZ7Yo
Why let the truth get in the way of a good story?1
So, of course, all my climate-skeptic friends are splashing this article from Britain’s ‘Daily Mail’ newspaper all over their Facebook status messages and every forum they can: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html Except, of course, the story misrepresents what Phil Jones actually said quite outrageously, not once but several times. Alex Knapp has the linkage and the explanation: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/did_phil_jones_admit_that_theres_no_global_warming/…
Warm Air Hand Driers
They’re cheaper to operate than paper towels. They avoid messy overflowing bins and the grossness of used paper towels. They don’t chafe your hands. They’re even, arguably, more environmentally friendly than paper towels. There’s really only one problem with them: they don’t dry hands! Compare and contrast this with as many other features of modern…
God is wild and strange and extreme and uncontained
I’ve talked here before, a number of times, about the nature of God, as I’m in the continual process of trying to understand it: 1, 2, 3 Cassie came with us to church this week, but was a bit bored by the sermon, and was leafing through the Bible. Sue showed Cassie her favourite passage,…
Patholatry
As well as being a decent possible band name, this word that I coined on my bike ride this morning seems to me to be a decent descriptor of some aspects of our society. It’s jamming together ‘pathology’ and ‘idolatry’, and I take it to mean something like ‘worship of sickness’. I don’t mean that…
Utah State, U-U-U-Utah State
From Utah, this news: Committee in Utah Legislature Passes Climate Change Denying Resolution 10-1 And we thought we had our own problems with Senator Fielding… The stupid just continues to astound me. The profs at Brigham Young University (the big Mormon school in Utah) responded as follows: BYU science professors write letter rebuking Utah Legislature
You Can Judge a Man By The Quality of His Enemies
An old friend – and sometime sparring partner – has just announced that he’s leaving a motorbike forum I read. He’s an uncompromising sort of guy, and had had his fair share of verbal stoushes over the years, but he also has amazing research and information skills, broad knowledge and an encyclopedic memory. Naturally a…
Cloud Culture
Charles Leadbeater does a great job of outlining some of the potential of, and threats to, cloud computing: http://www.counterpoint-online.org/cloud-culture-promise-and-danger/
What would it cost to let them teach creationism in schools?
I’m currently reading a special issue of the journal ‘Cultural Studies in Science Education’, devoted to issues around science and religion. The topics are fairly broad, but given that science education is the focus, creationism in schools is one central concern. Lots of energy from lots of scientists and other interested folk – and not…
AssHoliness
Been enjoying a new blog recently: Doctor Crankenstein1. A few days ago he wrote a longish, detailed and well-researched post on the saga of Father Peter Kennedy and the St Mary’s church in Brisbane: The Beloved Heretic. I commend that post to you. But this post, and in particular its title, is about the Comments…
Disciplined Eclectism and World Views
Read yesterday’s post first. Now… dare I even suggest that, as well as for research and teaching, disciplined eclecticism might be good medicine for selecting world views? That it might be possible, rather than having to choose to be Christian or atheist, we could cobble together our own mix of Buddhism and theism and evolution/naturalism…
Disciplined Eclecticism
Chatting in the car with Suzie the other day, and she asked me ‘what’s the key educational idea you’re all about?’1 The discussion was pretty much about ‘branding’ myself: Mr Piaget has his stage theory, Mr Kohlberg his moral reasoning, Mr Vygostky his ZPD and so on… What will be my legacy and what will…
Black Metal Chaser
You might have heard of a ‘unicorn chaser‘. The idea is that, if you see something truly horrible on the web, you might need to go and look at something lovely and soothing – something like a unicorn – to cleanse the mental palate. I tend to have the opposite reaction though: if I’m subjected…
Digital Overload
Salon on how we’re coping with the deluge of information: http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/frontline/index.html?story=/ent/tv/iltw/2010/01/30/frontline_digital_nation. This article, incidentally, is written by Heather Havrilesky, who was a writer on one of my very first must-read-every-day web sites, the late lamented Suck.com.