xkcd: Exoplanets

xkcd: Exoplanets

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Catholic News Agency misrepresents same sex parenting study UPDATED

I have come to expect CNA will twist the news to support its agenda, this article on same sex parenting is no exception.

In it, they quote research done by other groups which may lead one to believe that this study condones same sex parenting as a statistically significant factor in the adult problems faced by the children that are its products.

However, this is not the remit of the study at all, as its conclusion - which is not mentioned at all in the CNA article - makes very clear (slightly edited for ease of reading. high-lights my own).

Modern Physics lecture series by Leonard Susskind

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Archive: Study shows morality is a mechanical function and can be influenced by magnetism

Source: NPR




Far from being divinely inspired and objective, a recent study shows that morality can be skewed by applying magnetic pulses to a region of the brain behind the right ear.


The study has wide ranging implications that show that, not only is morality subjective, it is mechanical and malleable.

"We judge people not just for what they do, but what they're thinking at the time of their action, what they're intending," Young says. But, she says, a brief magnetic pulse was able to change that.

The fact that scientists can adjust morality with a magnet may be disconcerting to people who view morality as a lofty and immutable human trait, says Joshua Greene, psychologist at Harvard University. But that view isn't accurate, he says.

"Moral judgment is just a brain process," he says. "That's precisely why it's possible for these researchers to influence it using electromagnetic pulses on the surface of the brain."

The new study is really part of a much larger effort by scientists to explain how the brain creates moral judgments, Greene says. The scientists are trying to take concepts such as morality, which philosophers once attributed to the human soul, and "break it down in mechanical terms."

If something as complex as morality has a mechanical explanation, Green says, it will be hard to argue that people have, or need, a soul.

Indeed.


In the last year, we have had evidence now to show that morality is subject to influence by magnetism, and that free will is an illusion. Those gaps God has to hide in are slowly getting filled.

Ignorant and proud of it - Trevor Zwingli opines on the rejection of science.

Source: Western Morning News


We are all used to reading the insane rantings of north American theist's proclamations on wilful ignorance, but it still shocks me when I see evidence of it here in my backyard of the 'Old Country'


Our anonymous writer (he has now revealed his identity as Trevor Zwingli of the Tremough Catholics) appears to be rather bored of learning and understanding the world we live in. Here, for you all to enjoy, is the article in full, complete with my responses. I urge you to comment yourself.

In a forlorn attempt to improve my education, a friend regularly pops round with a pile of back copies of a magazine called New Scientist. They invariably have clever and colourful covers asking things like "Is Time Travel Possible?", "Can we Build a Brontosaurus?" or "Will Man Live Forever?"

Sadly, the answer to all these questions is always an emphatic NO. Sadder still, to reach this conclusion you have to wade through pages of gobbledegook understandable only by the sort of chap who wears sandals and socks and still lives with his mother.

However, it's good to know that people who have difficulty forming relationships have somewhere cosy to discuss quarks, neutrinos and the Higgs Boson Particle. After all, you never see them down the pub.

But this indulgence is rapidly turning to horror as you notice how fascination with the arcane is seeping out from publications like New Scientist into the media as a whole. Coverage of such things as the arts and history – even light entertainment – has been replaced with matters scientific.

Comedy panel shows all must now have a technological bent and every time someone notices something odd happening with a sandwich in the canteen of the Cern large hadron collider it dominates headlines. The schedules are packed and it will be only a matter of time before peak viewing is dominated by Kirstie Allsopp splitting the atom in a folksy, accessible way.

All through, the message comes across clear as "Hey! isn't science interesting? Isn't it fun?" to which the answer again is an definite "No!"

Riding the crest of this assumed wave of interest is a simpering weed called Prof. Brian Cox who obviously took his chair as a result of research into zit cream and having a whining northern accent. He is science's answer to gardening's Alan Titchmarsh and once he has appeared in front of the cameras he is presumably sucked back into the same oily tube from which he was squeezed. On his very debut he joined the Ron Bendell "Don't you want to hit him in the face with a shovel?" hall of fame.

As BBC budgets are trimmed – entailing vast cuts to local radio, regional TV and the rest – Cox is always there, delivering a piece to camera outside an observatory in Chile spouting on about his interest in black holes and the wonders of delving into dark matter.

His preoccupation – and that of the legion of cohorts dragged out from the bowels of laboratories across the world to back him up – always seems to be the origins of us all, the Big Bang and how little gizmos flying around the cosmos affect you, me and the fundamentals of creation.

Once, of course, these things were all left to theologians although that's terribly non-PC these days. Now, exponents of the new beliefs are free to ponder the imponderable and come up with the explanation of life, the universe and everything.

But what, I wonder throughout, has any of this got to do with the price of fish? Yes, bearded men looking at screens may have tracked down the tiny neutrons that enabled the formation of the Crab Nebula but how should that alter my life? Does that knowledge help any of us, at any time, drag ourselves through the day?

All of it, as archbishops, popes and ayatollahs before have found, is irrelevant tosh and does nothing to make the world a better place.

Good science must surely lead to practical good rather that highfalutin conjecture. Do new thoughts about the origins of the Solar System help us provide sewage systems that could save thousands in the slums of India? Do theories about the first few seconds after the creation save millions from malaria?

We already have all the understanding of the basics we need to make a happier, comfier world but instead billions are spent on meaningless research while millions starve – and folk shiver in front of gas fires they can't afford to switch on while their licence fees are spent sending Prof Cox to sit in front of yet another radio telescope. But clearly the nerds have taken over. Our tiny bit of spare cash goes to the new elite and our tiny bit of leisure time is filled by the same people telling us how fascinating it all is. New Scientist should be placed on the top shelf along with other publications of interest to people who need to get a life.

Scientific evidence for the existence of Jesus.

Man arrested at Large Hadron Collider claims he's from the future

A man named Eloi Cole from the future who claims there are no countries where he comes from, was arrested at CERN whilst rummaging through trash cans looking for fuel to power his blender-appearing 'time machine power unit'.


The bow tie-wearing and overly-tweeded man claimed to have come from the future to warn us about a disturbing future that comes into existence after the discovery of the Higg's boson at the nuclear accelerator research centre in Switzerland.

"The discovery of the  Higg's boson led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hell-hole and I'm here to stop it ever happening."

Not all bat-shittery is disturbing, but a future dominated by Nestlé and their infernal confections should worry us all.