This continues a rather long-winded essay on my part. In Part One, I talked about the idea of extra-terrestrial life from the standpoint of cosmology, the planetary conditions that might be needed to produce it. In that post, I went out on a speculative limb, always a dangerous thing from
Category: Critical Thinking
Are We Alone? (Part One)
I’m warning you ahead of time, this is going to be long, as evidenced by the “Part One” bit above, but hopefully it’ll be interesting as well. I’ll do my best.
One of the staple topics of all-night bull sessions, and not just in college dorm rooms, is the concept of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, or to keep it simpler, elsewhere merely in our own Milky Way
The stage is set
A couple of posts ago, I mentioned the concept of staging shots in nature and wildlife photography, and I’m finally getting back to tackling that as a subject. I’m going to attempt to throw some things out there for consideration without inserting too much personal opinion into the mix – we’ll see how that goes ;-)
While I don’t know if it has ever been measured by
On Belief, Part Three
Yeah, yeah, I’ll be back to nature photography or something really cool in the woods or water shortly – I’m just hashing some thoughts out. You won’t be failed for skipping this assignment. And while it can stand alone, it’s an extension of Parts One and Two.
One of the foremost arguments from a great many people, both religious and non (believe it or not,) is the social
On Belief, Part Two
Okay, I suspect I’ve given enough to support my point that very few people seem to believe (that was Part One). To be honest, I think it’s not a dividing line, but a gradient – levels of belief ranging from “Not at all” to “Established fact,” with most people falling
On Belief, Part One
There has been a bunch of thoughts along these lines kicking around in my head for a while now, and since Pharyngula and Weird Things both referenced a new study along similar lines, I finally started putting some of them down. This has to do entirely with religious belief and the effect it has, so those into nature photography and observations can skip this one if they like. Those, however, who
On being mean
Recently, Greg Fish on Weird Things posted about yet another review of bloggers, most especially science and/or atheist bloggers, where the reviewer commented on the heinous use of sarcasm. This has been at least the fourth such published comment about the negativity of sarcasm, and I have to admit, I think it’s a case where the reviewer imagines a situation that doesn’t really exist.
Basically,
Happy Darwin Day
Today is the 201st anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, and now considered an unofficial holiday. It is intended to recognize the contributions Darwin made to science, most especially the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. Most people simply refer to this as “evolution,” but that technically falls a little short of the mark – evolution can refer to anything that
An appeal
Even a total news-phobe like me has heard about the devastating earthquake in Haiti, just about the one place on Earth least capable of coping with such events. And I’m not really one to perpetuate the guilt bandwagon, or the “redeeming act” appeals to show how nice I am. I’m not nice – I’m very blunt, and if fact gets in the way of your feelings, fact
What’s the harm?
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a skeptical account of a ghost story, and believe me, this wasn’t the first conversation I’ve gotten into about what I’ll simply call, “questionable phenomena.” And, both from my own personal experience and from numerous public discussions, I can say that a common response to this is, “Yeah, but what’s the harm?” Who