Skepticism
Skepchick Quickies, 4.23
- Wow, sounds like fun for the whole family at the Japanese fertility festival!
- Join the National Center for Science Education, and this blogger will match your donation.
- Life-changing books: recommendations from 17 leading scientists.
- A chart of countries’ public acceptance of evolution. If not for Turkey, the US would have come in at the end of the 34-country list.
- Hey, here’s some UFOs. (Thanks, Craig!)
re: countries that believe in evolution
– Canada’s not even on the list! Freakin’ SLOVENIA and LOUXEMBOURG on are the list, but not Canada? Who compiled this thing?
Am I being to cynical in assuming that survey of Canada would probably have involved standing around downtown Toronto for an afternoon with clipboards?
Either they lumped us together with the US, or thought that the US was a representative sample of North America, and didn’t bother doing a survey. Or, the comparative lack of controversy up here suggested that it really wasn’t an issue.
The survey might have been just to compare the US to “Other Countries”, in which case, they just picked out a handful from the various continents, so that they could take it to various state assemblies and say “look how we stand up compared to obscure third world countries that many of our respondents had never even heard of.”
Sorry, we in the United States sometimes forget that Canada exists. :P
The New Scientist book list was really interesting. I like that they included Elaine Morgan because even if she’s way off base with the aquatic ape thing, her “Descent of Woman” is what really suckered me into physical anthropology. And it’s because of her that I read her favorite book, The Naked Ape. Not a huge fan of Desmond Morris but he is a very useful resource.
Nothing frightens the masses like road flares and balloons.
And here’s some disproving:
http://www.azfamily.com/news/homepagetopstory/stories/Phoenix_local_news_042108_new-lights-sightings.895be60f.html
Also:
We’re # 1! Iceland FTW!
Now that that chearing is done, it’s funny how Iceland is on top, seeing how 97% of the population is religious in some way.
Steel Phallus. Isn’t that title of the sequel to Iron Man?
Did you know that you could change the caption of the image?
Australia isn’t on the list either… for shame.
That list isn’t really big on the commonwealth is it? Are we considered part of the UK still?
Of course Australia is still part of the UK. You still have the queen on your money, right?
Ahh, yes, I followed the Phoenix Lights story closely since it happened in my town. By now this ‘mystery’ as long been debunked (as teambanzai notes).
I wonder what makes people do this? Is it a publicity stunt? Just to get a rise out of people and do something different and disruptive? What makes people commit hoaxes?
Any ideas?