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Friday, April 06, 2007

Sunspots 102


Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:



Science:
Slate article on "Why We Sleep."

The Panda's Thumb has a post on Jonathan Wells, prominent spokesman for Intelligent Design. It should be required reading for anyone who has been influenced by Wells (Author of Icons of Evolution). The main point is that Wells has claimed not to have a religion-driven agenda, but he clearly has one. He has written that his anti-evolution agenda is driven by loyalty to the Unification Church (aka "The Moonies"). So he's not a good example of a truth-teller. Here's another complaint about Wells, from a related blog, about a specific instance of mis-interpreting the scientific literature.

The Weather Channel has a blog. The only item I have seen is a report on this week's Supreme Court decision that says the Environmental Protection Agency does have power to regulate Carbon Dioxide emissions. (The Bush administration had argued that it did not.)

Politics:
In First Things, "The Problem With Conservatism" and "The Problem With Liberalism ."

Music:
Slate article, pointing out that the CD is not dead yet.

Sports:
ESPN article on the disparity between the number of African-American women basketball players and the number of female African-American coaches (Only 4 of the 64 teams in the NCAA tournament were coached by African-American females. Rutgers, one of these, was defeated by Tennessee in the championship game.)

Computing:
A. A. Katz' splendid chapter on Macro and Close-up Photography. He is writing for the Sony DSC H-5 series of cameras, but most of what he says applies broadly. He can also be almost lyrical: "Why are photographers endlessly fascinated with capturing close-up and macro images? The answer is simple: the camera lets us go places we can't normally go and see things we can't normally see without it."

Literature:
E. Stephen Burnett on the religion, or lack thereof, in "Star Trek."

Christianity:
Bonnie continues her latest series on sexuality, with parts IV (creativity -- you'll have to read the post to understand what she means by that) and V (which I also won't try to summarize here). The comments to both posts are worth reading, too.

This week's Christian Carnival is here . (I know -- that isn't a link. I have not found this week's Christian Carnival. Perhaps it's on Holy Week hiatus. If I locate it, I'll add the link. For information on locating these Carnivals, see here.)

When I don't tell where I found an item above, I either found it directly, or was probably pointed to it by the Librarian's Internet Index, SciTech Daily, or Arts and Letters Daily. All of these sources are great.

Thanks for reading! Keep clicking away.

Image source (public domain)

4 comments:

Russell Purvis said...

Thanks for your comment. Yeah, looks like some of the people at school might lynch me for the republican comment. I read the two articles "The Problem With Conservatism" and "The Problem With LIberalism." Pretty good stuff.

Martin LaBar said...

Thanks, Russell. And, at some other schools, you might be lynched for what you said about the Democrats.

Our salvation rests in no politician or party, although some people (of more than one political persuasion) act as if it did.

Rob Rumfelt said...

The Panda's Thumb is a great scientific reference, but I can only take it in small doses. The relentlessly strident rhetoric over there wears thin rather quickly.

Most of its members are from the Naturalistic school of thought, which I reject. People like Wells play right into their hands and make it difficult for people to disagree on legitimate philosophical grounds.

The question of origins has been one of my interests for years and while I'm no scholar, I've been around the subject long enough to know that there are fundamentalists on both sides of the aisle. Origins define us, one way or the other.

Thanks for the link and the thought provocation.

All the Best

Martin LaBar said...

Thanks for reading and commenting, Bob.