Monthly Archives: May 2015

Links and Comments: About religious parents shielding their children from reality

More about the Duggars’ insular worldview. Gawker: Tell Your Duggar Tales: Did Michelle Duggar Get a Gay Crew Member Fired? The family kept their children so sealed from exposure to the outside world that their ideas about big cities like … Continue reading

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How Science Works, Concerning that Retracted Gay Marriage Survey, and the Ironies

New York Times op-ed: What’s Behind Big Science Frauds? Other links: SFGate: Study retracted: 20 minutes actually CAN’T change a homophobe’s mind The New Yorker, Maria Konnikova: How a Gay-Marriage Study Went Wrong This concerns a report from a few … Continue reading

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Bodega Bay and The Birds

Today we took a mid-Memorial weekend day drive, from Oakland. We’d planned a drive up to the Russian River area, thinking to drive up the coast with a stop in Bodega Bay for lunch. We left at 11am; it took … Continue reading

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Links and Comments: The Duggars, and other Religious Matters

I’ve been only vaguely more aware of the Duggar family, who apparently host a reality show to show off their 19 children and their piety, than I was aware of the Duck Dynasty family a year or more ago when … Continue reading

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Instant Insanity

Does anyone remember this? Wikipedia: Instant Insanity This was a puzzle that was produced in the late 1960s, a stack of four plastic cubes, with the sides of each cube a seemingly random pattern of red, white, green, and blue … Continue reading

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Links and Comments: Flip-Flopping Politicians; Jerry Coyne’s new book; Six Basic Storylines; Trigger Events

Slate: Our Best Presidents Are Flip-Floppers Politicians are attacked for changing their positions due to political expediency — as Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, a one-time biology major, has done about the teaching of creationism in schools, to appeal to his … Continue reading

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Links and Comments: Decline of US Religion; Narrative in Science and TV Finales

Major news this past week, covered by many sources. NPR: Christians In U.S. On Decline As Number Of ‘Nones’ Grows, Survey Finds Washington Post: Christianity faces sharp decline as Americans are becoming even less affiliated with religion It’s often been … Continue reading

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Bad Astronomy, 1

I’m currently reading through the eponymous book by the popular ‘Bad Astronomy’ blogger Phil Plait, now posting regularly at Slate.com, where he celebrates scientific breakthroughs and criticizes anti-science movements (anti-vaxxers, state-sanctioned teaching of creationism, etc.). His first book, which I’ll … Continue reading

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Links and Comments: 11 May 2015

Contrast the right’s paranoid claims of a war on religion with their very real war on abortion (NYT). When laws are being passed demanding a 48 hour waiting period before being let into church, then I’ll believe there’s a war … Continue reading

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Natalie Angier, The Canon

Subtitled: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science As I was unpacking books these past few weeks, at our new home in Oakland, I came across this book which I hadn’t yet read, but which seemed appropriate to … Continue reading

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