We’re not sure it should be called a problem at all. It’s like dividing by zero. It doesn’t work, but that doesn’t change anything for most math.
Author: News
Tom Bethell reflects on ET’s no-show, and what it means for popular culture
“Three years ago I tried to visit the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and, on a Wednesday, found the place locked up at midday.”
Nancy Pearcey on Richard Dawkins’ new children’s book
We keep hearing good things about the interview.
History of science: Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) – martyr to the multiverse?
“Scientists such as Galileo and Johannes Kepler were not sympathetic to Bruno in their writings.”
Human evolution: Cave painters really did see spotted horses – researchers
Apparently, the horse genes were there for “leopard” spotting, contrary to what some have supposed.
Here’s Sean Carroll at Uncommon Descent before he was clearly a convert to the multiverse
If you set aside God and forget philosophy, must you end up with the multiverse?
Human evolution: Humans not to blame for key Ice Age mammals demise?
They may not have adapted to warmer temperatures, it is suggested.
Vid:The Debate That Never Was: Craig vs Dawkins – “junk DNA” does show up though
We’re told that the panel’s biologist claimed that all the DNA besides the 2% protein-coding regions is redundant junk.
Scenes from the dumbdown of popular cosmology: Equations reduce sales
Equations provide a basis for evaluation that goes beyond “Wow. Way coooool.”
Granville Sewell on “The cosmos is like it is because it’s the only one we could see”
” But other universes are by definition beyond observation, so that the anthropic principle is untestable, and therefore unscientific.”
But if God is a pure mathematician … ?
How do we get from that to physical stuff?
Self-important twit: “Science should leave Texas”
Interesting because life sciences firms seem to be starting up in Austin at a fair clip.
Cosmology: Hawking replaces God with hocus pocus
In our view, Hawking’s problem isn’t that he tried to do without God but that he tried to do without God AND philosophy at the same time. And ended up with hocus pocus.
Human evolution: More details about the proposed importance of cooking
” Cooking provided early humans with more energy, allowing for such energetically-costly evolutionary changes.”
Life from Mars to Earth idea to be tested by probe
One creature to be tested is the animal, tardigrade (water bear), which can survive temperatures approaching absolute zero …