ICR-Baiting
Monday, July 21st, 2008 Posted in Creationism, Natural Computation | No Comments »I just remembered some fun I had a few years ago with the comedy Institute for Creation Research. For those of you who don't know about this particular institution, it's basically a pseudo-scientific front for extreme biblical literalist evangelical Christian ...
Wall-E
Sunday, July 20th, 2008 Posted in Psychology | No Comments »I went to see Wall-E yesterday and, without spoiling it, it was great. Seriously, go and see it. I'm still from the generation who count polygons in computer animation, so it's obviously all rather jaw-dropping. I think the most amazing ...
Chemical free?
Saturday, July 19th, 2008 Posted in Biology, Health | No Comments »There's a new series of advertisements on British TV for a make of garden fertiliser which proudly announces that it is 'chemical free'. Really? Hmmm.. well, the only thing that's chemical free is a vacuum, and I'm sure that's not ...
Battlefield Earth
Friday, July 18th, 2008 Posted in Bad media | No Comments »I've finally just watched Battlefield Earth: possibly the worst train-wreck of a movie ever created. At least, according to pretty much any review ever written. And yes, it's pretty awful, though I think it's still got some competition. "Batman & ...
Water on early Mars
Thursday, July 17th, 2008 Posted in Astronomy, Biology | No Comments »A recent report says that water was widespread on Mars, early in its life. Here's the BBC article and the Nature abstract (not for the faint hearted). This will, of course, raise the possibility that primitive microbial life might have ...
Natural Computation
Thursday, July 17th, 2008 Posted in Education, Natural Computation | 2 Comments »It always annoys me when people who don't understand evolution talk about how it's just plain chance, and the probability of random mutations causing co-ordinated adaptive biological processes is infinitely small. Many people will recall Fred Hoyle's sadly misguided comment ...
Marmite tape
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 Posted in Paranormal | 2 Comments »I'm trying to find out the details of an audio tape that I remember listening to as a child, that I think was part of a promotion by (something like) Marmite. On this tape were various stories of paranormal events ...
Divided by a common language
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 Posted in Creationism | No Comments »Winston Churchill once said that America and Britain were two nations "divided by a common language". In fact, the story of language provides an excellent analogy to the story of evolution within a biological context. British and American English have ...
The Qu’ran
Monday, July 14th, 2008 Posted in Bad media, Religion | No Comments »I wonder if anyone else out there saw the lengthy documentary on Channel 4, British TV, tonight on the subject of the Qu'ran? It was certainly fascinating and scary in equal measure, not least of which because I know exactly ...
Being polite
Sunday, July 13th, 2008 Posted in General, Paranormal | No Comments »Yes, I'm British and as such I'm supposed to be infuriatingly polite to pretty much everyone, often to my own detriment. And I think I probably am, except for that seething resentment that pretty much all British people retain quietly ...
