February 2010

For quite some time now I’ve been meaning to do an article on why creationism should not be taught in science class, but I think A.C. Grayling covers it very well in this video. I guess the only thing I would add (although he does already touch on this point toward the end of the video) is that the only thing that should be taught in science class is, well, science, and that creationism simply does not fit the true definition of science. That is, not trying to make the facts fit a preconceived notion (as in the case of the Biblical creation story), but rather, looking at the facts objectively, and seeing what conclusions it leads us to, then testing our conclusions through objective, repeatable experiments.

Oh yes: calling creationism “intelligent design” doesn’t make it any more scientific or respectable.

Not only is it Chinese New Year’s Eve tomorrow (the 13th), today is also Darwin Day! Sadly, I’ve only just found out about the petition for President Obama to recognise Darwin Day, and it’s too late to sign it. Oh well, there’s always next year I guess, and it appears it hasn’t worked this year anyway. How sad that it is so politically dangerous for the US President to openly support one of the most well supported theories in all of science, and possibly the most important idea by anyone ever.

Oh yes - apparently there’s something called Valentine’s Day on the 14th as well. It appears to be some kind of cynical commercial exercise to force us to spend money on stuff that none of us need.

The case against carbon trading - but is it a fair assessment?

It seems the debate over carbon trading just won’t stay out of the headlines at the moment. The opposition party in Australia - in their usual blatant political opportunism - have decided this week to unveil an alternative climate change policy to carbon trading. However, in spite of calling carbon trading “a great big fat tax”, they have yet to specify how their own policy will be funded - and even worse, it will basically mean business as usual for big polluters anyway. So it’s basically a climate change policy for those who don’t believe in climate change, and for those who think profits for big business should always take precedence over everything else. They want to appear as though they are doing something without actually doing anything useful, while incurring costs to the consumer and pretending it won’t cost them anything. This is hardly surprising, given their present leadership. Read the rest of this entry »