Proponents of nuclear power like to claim that their pet energy source is so clean. I’m mystified by this argument, not mystified as a rhetorical device, but mystified in actual, I’m utterly confused, literal sense. Clean? What do you mean, clean? Have you actually thought this through? There’s no human endeavour less deserving of the […]
Read MoreIt’s a miracle I’m not pounding my head against a wall, moaning in despair. Bas Roelman, a journalist for Trouw newspaper, published today about a report by marketing research firm Motivaction, claiming that a majority of the Dutch believe in miracles. Upon reading that, I sat up in shock: are the straits of Dutch superstition […]
Read MoreWhen even a scientific magazine like Wetenschap in Beeld (Science in the Picture) makes huge errors like this, errors in their thinking as much as in their facts, it’s no wonder that less and less people really understand science, and more and more people lose faith in it. In their April issue, WiB printed an […]
Read MoreThis video has been doing the rounds again. It claims to prove human proclivity for herd behavior, while all it really shows is the urgent need for critical thinking, for understanding of the scientific method, for a sceptical attitude towards any claim, and most of all, for actual facts. Let’s break it down. The caption […]
Read MoreBritish headmaster Graeme Whiting has gone on record claiming that fantasy books cause mental illness. Odd, that. I thought that mental illness causes fantasy books. But seriously: one of the greatest gifts parents and educators can give a child is the gift of an open mind. And imaginative stories–fantasy literature and fairy tales, but also […]
Read MoreDe Nederlandstalige versie van dit bericht is te vinden op mijn Nederlandstalige site. Arguably the most important news of the new Millennium–by some standards, by far the most important news since the onset of the Industrial Revolution–seems to be landing with much less of a splash than I expected. Reason enough in itself for world-wide celebration, […]
Read MoreWell, they did emphasize I would probably receive one more issue after I canceled my subscription to Scientific American (temporarily, to give myself a chance to catch up on two years of back issues). But I never expected to be the target of the far-from-hidden message contained in that issue…
Read MorePacifists, don’t ever again tell me that man invented war. Last night, in the Jungles episode of BBC’s Planet Earth series*, my wife and I watched in growing horror as a giant group of chimpanzees sent out an invasion army to occupy their neighbors’ bit of jungle, which happened to contain some fig trees the […]
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