1. Swatting attacks on fruit flies and science

Comment #275684 by George Lennan on October 31, 2008 at 11:23 am

Yeah. I've been thinking today - doesn't happen often.... but rdubya's got a good point. We don't share a border with them over here, so maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing if McCain & Palin got elected - it won't matter much to us. Then America can hit the buffers hard, make an absolute laughing stock of itself in the public eye regards its stance on science and come out of it with a kind of 'never again' immunisation. Or perhaps I'd be better off going back to not thinking at all.

2. Ricky Gervais and The Archbishop Of Canterbury

Comment #264733 by George Lennan on October 15, 2008 at 5:56 am

OK he stutters a bit but Ricky says the word 'I' 77 times in this interview.

3. [UPDATED] Richard Dawkins on Harun Yahya's Atlas of Creation

Comment #264713 by George Lennan on October 15, 2008 at 5:02 am

This is very frustrating. Richard doesn't usually use so many powerpoint slides when he speaks and now he chooses to us them we can't see them! Couldn't the audience camera have been put to better use? Sorry to grizzle - it was a good talk.

4. Cosmic crash unmasks dark matter

Comment #240949 by George Lennan on September 1, 2008 at 10:31 am

Pedant! There's loads more dark matter than the sort we're made of, so my highly insightful and consciousness-raising point stands, despite the evident lack of rigour in my reading of scientific texts (I lost my job as a space rat scientist because of this too - I'm a barman now! Ah well.)

5. Cosmic crash unmasks dark matter

Comment #240813 by George Lennan on September 1, 2008 at 5:00 am

Strikes me that if dark matter is 73 % and ordinary matter just 27 % we should be calling 'dark matter 'ordinary matter' and that it's us who are made of the weird stuff!

6. Cal scientist reflects on Darwin's genius

Comment #126437 by George Lennan on February 13, 2008 at 8:51 am

"150 years, still plenty of mysteries, yet not one shred of evidence that opposes evolution... beautiful!!!

Hang on... hang on... not a shred? How about the the human eye - it can't possibly have just formed by random chance... it would have taken billions of lucky breaks just to make a horse... let alone a human brain... are we supposed to believe that a fish just 'transformed' into a human? Did the moon just'happen' to be in the right place to make fossils? I don't think so blather babble chatter gabble jabber prattle squeal yackety-yak yak.
By the way why does Dawkins have to be so SHRILL?

7. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111734 by George Lennan on January 15, 2008 at 3:38 pm

If the majority earned 250k rather than 100k, goods and services certainly would not stay at the same price.

An intuitive grasp of this basic economic fact must radically colour the preference.

8. Fish out of water: Your Inner Fish

Comment #111603 by George Lennan on January 15, 2008 at 5:54 am

Yeah, look. If I were God I would have bypassed the whole mechanical approach. I would have made my special creation out of some ethereal unitary 'magic dust'. My beings would have all the moral, transcendental and cognitive attributes of humans without the grumbling, clanking, ludicrously complex set of cogs and gears that we have. As a vehicle for transporting us through the great moral test that is the physical world, such a 'magic dust' body could age as a result of sin while supporting all of the functions such as reproduction, manipulation of the physical world and worshipful rituals that the Lord requires our physical bodies to undertake. As an added bonus the sheer separateness and unfathomability of our magic dust bodies from the burping, farting, rotting agglomerations of tubes, wires, belts and braces that other living beings get along with would surely magnify My Holy Name far more than the accident-prone and wholly ill designed adapted fish that we *appear* to be.

9. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!

Comment #111599 by George Lennan on January 15, 2008 at 5:39 am

Sam Harris regularly points out that these guys didn't do their dastardly deeds in the name of non-astrology. However I think it is equally important that ANY doctrine/philosophy/creed or even hobby or job that you don't do not only does not, but cannot, motivate either good or evil. Stalin's failure to attend classes in astrophysics were not the underlying motivation behind his persecution of the kulaks. Hitler knew nothing of 14th century Japanese pottery aesthetics. Can this be the reason for krsitallnacht? Are the killing fields a direct result of Pol Pot's complete lack of training in beauty therapy? RD has made the point about these fellow's moustaches - but that is something they *had*. I think it is more important to point out all the various skills, training, knowledge and understanding they did not have and ask if their legacy could be construed as a result.

10. Richard Dawkins on 'Have Your Say'

Comment #110979 by George Lennan on January 13, 2008 at 10:10 am

Note to Steve Zara
I'm afraid the word 'gay' has been re-exappropriated in British English to mean 'lame, not very good, of low quality'. The priest certainly was extremely gay. Neither 'jolly' nor 'homosexual', just gay.

11. Postmodernism Disrobed

Comment #110854 by George Lennan on January 13, 2008 at 3:55 am

Readers of this thread should get hold of Francis Wheen's book 'how mumbo jumbo conquered the world' which sets the debunking of postmodernism in the context of the rise of spin in politics and the advance of pseudoscience and religion in general. It is a truly hilarious peice of work.