If you’ve time on your hands. Here’s a classic: “Why bad ideas refuse to die” by science writer Steven Poole at the Guardian: And what happens when the world of ideas really does operate as a marketplace? It happens to be the case that many prominent climate sceptics have been secretly funded by oil companies. The idea that there is some scientific controversy over whether burning fossil fuels has contributed in large part to the present global warming (there isn’t) is an idea that has been literally bought and sold, and remains extraordinarily successful. That, of course, is just a particularly dramatic example of the way all western democracies have been captured by industry lobbying and party donations, in which Read More ›

Take a good look. Now be grateful for the neighbours we do have, none of whom would be staring at us, grinning, from behind a laptop. Question: How do people who think they are smarter than the rest of us manage to look so dumb?

Interesting question. From : While the human midbrain and the insect brain may even be evolutionarily related, an insect’s inner life is obviously more basic than our own. Accordingly, bugs feel something like hunger and pain, and “perhaps very simple analogs of anger,” but no grief or jealousy. “They plan, but don’t imagine,” Klein says. Even so, insects’ highly distilled sense of self is a potential gift to the far-out study of consciousness. Probing the insect brain could help quantify questions of what it means to think that vexed the likes of Aristotle and Descartes, and could even aid the development of sentient robots. More. A lot depends on what one thinks consciousness even is. Jealousy would likely be meaningless Read More ›

It’s unfalsifiable: So personal testimony will do. In a recent presentation to a bunch of political operatives, the Mann put his pseudo-scientific foot in his mouth. From the Washington Times: Leading climate doomsayer Michael Mann recently downplayed the importance of climate change science, telling Democrats that data and models “increasingly are unnecessary” because the impact is obvious. “Fundamentally, I’m a climate scientist and have spent much of my career with my head buried in climate-model output and observational climate data trying to tease out the signal of human-caused climate change,” Mr. Mann told the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee at a hearing. “What is disconcerting to me and so many of my colleagues is that these tools that we’ve spent years Read More ›

From an obituary for William Provine (1942-2015), a naturalist atheist who hung out with ID types, by Anya Plutynski: Life may have no ultimate meaning, but I sure think it can have lots of proximate meaning. Free will is not hard to give up, because it’s a horribly destructive idea to our society. Free will is what we use as an excuse to treat people like pieces of crap when they do something wrong in our society. We say to the person, “you did something wrong out of your free will, and therefore we have the justification for revenge all over your behind.” We put people in prison, turning them into lousier individuals than they ever were. This horrible system Read More ›

Over at the Progressive Fascist post, progressives wd400, FierceRoller, rhampton7, and Seversky have emerged as apologists for the attorneys general’s fascist efforts to quash dissent from climate alarmism.  What if the climate research really did amount to securities fraud they ask? I have litigated securities fraud cases for over 25 years.  I know what it takes to make a securities fraud case, and I can tell you that the fascist apologists’ question is like asking, “What if that circle really were square?”  There is a legal standard for what constitutes securities fraud, and the scientific research in question (whether it was disclosed or not) can never meet that standard.  Steve Simpson does a good job of explaining this principle here. Read More ›

In an attempt to frustrate rethinking evolution. From Suzan Mazur at Huffington Post: Six months after announcing the November 2016 Royal Society evolution meeting on this page and a half dozen or so stories later, over one-third of the seats for the event still remain vacant — and the tickets are free! But that’s easily explained, because the zoologists ultimately decided to “hog” the show. It didn’t have to be so. A lineup of speakers who truly represent the paradigm shift underway in evolution science would have quickly filled up the house. Instead, organizers went with essentially an evo-devo reunion on plasticity and niche construction — rehashed themes of Altenberg! from eight years ago minus most of the stars of Read More ›