Louisiana Puts Creationism in the Schools

Louisiana appears to have passed a law teaching Creationism in school.

Vaccines Again

OK, I promise that forthcoming posts will primarily be focused on philosophy. I’ve got a bunch of fairly technical posts coming up. I wanted to comment a bit about all the controversy over vaccines though. It’s been a big topic of discussion at the various science blogs as well as being in [...]

Higher Education Bubble

The higher education bubble? (HT: Instapundit) “Over the last 10 years, after adjusting for inflation, tuition is up 48% at public schools and 24% at private schools.” Are people with credit risk borrowing a lot of money to pay for something that doesn’t offer the returns necessary to pay off those loans?

Meltdown of the EPA

Meltdown of the EPA (HT: The Intersection). I was pretty critical of the EPA under Clinton but what’s happened under Bush on so many things is horrific. He’s replaced political debate with fixing the science. I think on many issues (including global warming) there’s a big valid political disagreement about what to [...]

Global Warming Doubters

Nice discussion from January over at Dot Earth about scientists who are concerned about global warming. The article is about the American Geophysical Union statement on global warming. But in the comments they address the supposed experts on that supposed Senate report about climate skeptics that has been making the rounds. One [...]

Effects of Ending Drugs

Marginal Revolution has an interesting discussion on what would happen if drugs were legalized. I tend to agree that a lot of the problem are drug-users and not just the crime around selling. But the effects of the government war on drugs are horrendous. I wish we could end that.

The Texas FLDS Situation

I’ve not talked about the FLDS situation here since I want to focus on philosophy here. For those interested I’ve made a few posts on the subject at M*. The first was on the double standard between the polygamy and underage marriages of African immigrants and the FLDS. The second was noting [...]

Cognitive Enhancers

Everyone is talking about Nature’s new story on cognitive enhancers. Basically a study of scientists who had used drugs to enhance mental performance.
One in five respondents said they had used drugs for non-medical reasons to stimulate their focus, concentration or memory. Use did not differ greatly across age-groups (see line graph, right), which will [...]

Free Speech: European Double Standards?

I noticed that yesterday’s bin Laden tape attacked the publication of cartoons about Muhammad. What was more interesting, to me were some comments about European double standards. Now let me say up front that I obviously condemn the reaction towards the Danish cartoons. I definitely take an American ideal towards free speech. [...]

Respect Part II

Lots of people are weighing in on the whole religion - respect discussion. I made most of my thoughts available yesterday. However Richard had up a particularly interesting and succinct post I wanted to comment on. (Check out Brandon’s response as well)

Religion and Respect

I’m slowly getting back into reading blogs. One of my favorite ‘blogging central’ sites is Science Blogs. While I sometimes wish there was a tad more diversity in political viewpoints among contributors (it sometimes seems like nearly everyone is a partisan liberal Democrat) there really is a lot of diversity of scientific views. [...]

Who’s the Greenest of Them All?

You might be surprised. New Scientist this week has an interesting story about Global Warming and the Presidential Election. It’s behind a subscription wall but I’ll quote a bit below. Contrary to what you might expect (and the fairly partisan rhetoric coming from places like Science Blogs) they say that,

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