The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Being an Atheist Is Bad. Being an Obnoxious Atheist Is Worse.

Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) is inarguably obnoxious: Prominent atheist and professional provocateur Richard Dawkins has sparked a fierce debate on Twitter after he classified certain types of rape and paedophilia as “worse” and milder than others. “Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of date rape, go […]

Call Me Old-Fashioned, But …

. . . as the father of six children, the standard method of procreation has always seemed to me both efficient and fun. Others, however, consider the natural way of baby-making to be too messy and unscientific, and so Progress demands a Brave New World of “reproductive technology,” about which Alexis Madigral of The Atlantic enthusiastically […]

‘Population Bomb’ Author Predicts Cheerful Future of Cannibalism

Long ago utterly discredited by the falsehood of his “overpopulation” prophecies, Paul Ehrlich is still taken seriously by liberals. He went on HuffPo Live this week to warn that the depletion of natural resources means soon we’ll be forced to “eat the bodies of your dead,” et cetera: In addition to being full of wild […]

The Science Is Settled?

Definition of intellectual: Someone who presumes to judge, outside the field of their own expertise, who qualifies as an “expert”: Florida’s Sen. Marco Rubio came under attack this week for refusing to submit to scientific authority. “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists […]

‘Unintentionally Heteronormative’!

Readers will please pardon my long silence this evening, but I was doing deep research on (yet another) long post about feminism, the completion of which will have to wait because . . . this: Emily Nagoski is a Ph.D. “college health educator in Massachusetts.” Both an atheist and a progressive, Nagoski has “worked for […]

Carts and Horses, Causes and Effects

Complex causation in human behavior means that social science often isn’t very scientific. Not every variable can be measured with such accuracy as, for example, annual income and years of education, and things which are not measured tend to be neglected as factors in social science. Researchers don’t usually find correlations by accident, and they […]

‘Unusually Thick Ice’ in Antarctica Traps Scientists With Unusually Thick Heads

Ship crew who have been stuck in 5 metres of ice for days prepare an ice helipad for rescuers http://t.co/9k6esXzwC2 — Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) December 30, 2013 It probably seemed like an excellent idea: Load a bunch of tourists and journalists aboard a ship for an expedition to Antarctica in December (the height of […]

Last Night, I Hit Rand Simberg’s Tip Jar for $10, Because … Science!

Global warming “hockey stick” theorist Michael Mann has sued several critics, a litigation that Mark Steyn calls “a textbook example” of “bollocks on stilts.” When Mann first sued in October 2012, Ken White at Popehat called it “Butt Hurt in the First Degree”: [T]he complaint seems almost calculated to support likely conservative narratives about it. […]

« go back — keep looking »