science

Debating Evolution with the crazies – Hints and Tips

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If, like me, you engage in on-line discussions with theist crazies, then you will know that at some point Evolution will pop up. It is usually unexpected (but not always), for example yesterday when engaged in a debate with an Islamic fanatic about the existence of God (which is usually a claim that is some variation of one of the three famous arguments, the Cosmological, the Teleological, or the Ontological) we suddenly take a left-hand turn and Darwin pops up which then leaves all the non-believers thinking, “WTF, where did that come from?“, and soon we were buried in heaps of anti-evolution quotes.

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Encyclopedia of Life catalogues more than one-third of Earth’s species

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Now this is cool, more than one-third of all the known species of life on the planet have now been cataloged … the total they have (as I write this) is 753,315. Just before we launch into the article lets clarify those numbers. It is estimated that there are probably around 8.7 million species in total. That is just a finger in the air, so it is within a couple of million either side of that. OK, just so that you understand that number, what in actually means is that an astonishing 86% of all plants and animals on land and 91% of those in the seas have yet to be named and catalogued. Ah but hang on a moment, those sums don’t add up, one-third of 8.7 million is not 753,315, so what is the story here? Easy, we only know about 1.9 species, the rest have yet to be discovered, so it now has more than one third of the known species cataloged.

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The Diamond Planet

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Now this is cool … University of Manchester astronomers think they’ve found a once-massive star that’s been transformed into a small planet made of diamond.

The researchers first detected a pulsar using the Parkes radio telescope of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

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The Homeopathic poll – Justifying how you should vote.

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The UK’s Guardian is running a homeopathic poll in which they ask you to vote “yes” or “no” in response to the question, “Should homeopathic treatments be available on the National Health Service?”.  Perhaps you have already had this pointed out and have been encourage to vote “no”, but have you really thought about it?

Hey it’s an easy question, the answer is obvious … or is it? (Don’t panic, it is, I just want you to think through the arguments and to also explain why the NHS still has it on offer)

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Republicans Against Science

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Yesterday’s Op-Ed column in the New York Times by Paul Krugman, is quite disturbing to read. In essence the GOP contenders appear to be frantically striving to present themselves as complete lunatics. He puts it more politely and uses the term, “Anti-Science” (well it is the NYT, they tend not to publish if you use terms such as “Clueless Gobshite”, even if it is accurate). He writes:

Mr. Perry, the governor of Texas, recently made headlines by dismissing evolution as “just a theory,” one that has “got some gaps in it” — an observation that will come as news to the vast majority of biologists. But what really got peoples’ attention was what he said about climate change: “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.”

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Underground river ‘Rio Hamza’ discovered 4km beneath the Amazon

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The news is that Brazilian scientists have found a new river in the Amazon basin – around 4km underneath the Amazon river. They have called it the Rio Hamza after the bloke who led the team that found it. Its fascinating … but does warrant a little bit of clarification, because its not quite what you might think it is from the description given.

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