Templeton nonsense

So in a recent (ish) post on Richard Dawkins website led me to find some of the exams and such offered by Templeton. I have to concur with everyone over there that some of the requirements for both undergrad and masters students make the ID trolls comments make much more sense. Mainly because the requirement - for 20% of the grade - is to post at least 10 comments on 'hostile' website. Holy monkey people. 20% of your final to make comments? I no longer wonder at some of the idiotic comments that can be found on the more popular blogs regarding ID/Creationism. Seriously this blew my mind. I wish I had requirements as easy as these.

Win for evolution

So imagine my surprise when I ran into this on the discovery institute. "Peloza v. Capistrano Independent Unified School District: Evolution May Be Taught Even if it Conflicts With Religious Beliefs" Apparently the discotute is just getting to reporting on this case, which was in the nineth court of appeals. This case decided that a teacher can be ordered to teach evolution, even if the theory conflicts with his or her religious beliefs. So what does that mean? It makes it so that even if the teacher is a young earth creationist they still have to teach the science in biology. woo hoo for that case I just find it entertaining that it took sixteen years for them to finally talk about it...

Huzzah?

Well ladies and gents, good news and bad - I am now unemployed (woo.) and yes that was the bad news. ^_^;; I also got myself into the psu fencing club (yay) and found that there is no SCA on campus (boo) but there is a medieval fighting club that I am going to check out and possibly start one (yay) I am going to see about getting a locker today after class, wish me luck! ^^ I am checking out the discotute tonight so watch for that update later.

watch out for the storm

Watch out over the next few days because I will be posting a new article about climate change over on examiner. Part one will be what is climate change/global warming Part two will be what the science says and part three will be what the "sceptics" say. I plan on getting these out friday, saturday and sunday between work and homework. Please let me know what you think of these (ill post linkage) and help me combat the comments I am likely to get because I am finally making a stand on the issue.

Merry Christmas!

Wishing all of you a Merry Christmas! Hope you enjoy yourselves fully and stay safe!

The Sword of Truth novels scare me.

I am in the process of re-reading the Sword of Truth novels by Terry Goodkind (They start with Wizards First Rule) and really, the books scare me. No they aren't horror, they are brilliant fantasy but wow. Goodkind is truly able to represent the nature of human mind, social psychology and the nature of faith in a stark and wonderful way. Any skeptic or atheist who reads these books will draw striking parallels to the world we live in today, not in any world context but in the rational of the wizards rules and the thinking that is behind the Imperial Order's insane beliefs. I have read the series many times and each time find something else that chills me to the bone. Frankly the things that people believe and the so called reasons for these beliefs scares me quite a bit. I don't usually advocate on here but seriously. Read these books.

Mercury fillings debate

Those of you who follow my examiner articles will know that I recently wrote about the safety of amalgam fillings. This article started off a firing of anti-amalgam comments and even hate mail. While I understand that people would be passionate about safety the lack of intelligence of these commentators astounds me. Each comment is a personal anecdote and is usually punctuated by ad hominem attacks one my intelligence. For example Marie Flowers said "this is one of the most ignorant articles I have ever read on amalgam fillings." All I did was present what the FDA and ADA said. I also used the wonderful article at Quackwatch to fill in about the other side. Said Marie Flowers also recommended mercurypoisoned.com, which is when I realized that she was not only against mercury fillings, but is an anti-vaccer. This load of crap is right up there with anything else that the anti-vac people come out with. For example on the website they have good old Alex Jones! From the wonderfully wacky prisonplanet.com. Whats Alex talking about today? Oh yeah, vaccines, flu shots, autism, and Alzheimer's. In the same video. BAH!