The Smug Baldy Speaks

Just when you thought that the battle for America’s soul was won, and the forces of lunacy and idiocy had retreated to the fetid holes from which they sprang, we find that Texas will be the new battleground for creationists bent on the destruction of rational thought in science education. In an editorial today […]

Today, Gizmodo is reporting on a new chip camera than can take 3D pictures. (see the original story on cNet). They speculate that the new technology could show up in digital camera in the near future, and may be potentially useful in medical sensors, and face recognition applications.
That may be so, but roughly half […]

OK - I am beginning to love GarageBand. I spent about an hour today putting together my first podcast episode. I apologize for how rough this is, but I figured that, since this blog is called the Smug Baldy Speaks, and I had always planned to put some podcasting together, I should actually […]

 

 The Smug Baldy Speaks Episode 1 [6:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (148)

Many people like to think that humanity is rightfully master of the universe because only our species can perform complex symbolic reasoning and do cool things with our opposable thumbs. We enjoy our spot at the apex of the food chain, at the very pinnacle of evolution, even though we defined the rules […]

The question is simple enough:
As you watched the scores of U.S. Presidential debates, did you ever wonder why there has been no debate devoted to policy surrounding what may be the most important social issue of our time: Science and Technology?
Well it turns out that plenty of folks wondered about this, and were motivated to […]

With every presidential candidate shifting into total balls-out (or labia-out, as the case may be) pander-or-perish mode, I think it’s important to cut through the inane hype where possible, and get at their positions on issues that matter to me. One such issue is education. While the uneducated and undereducated aren’t necessarily […]

In the latest issue of the eSkeptic newsletter is a link to an interesting debate held at Cal-Tech between Dinesh D’Souza and Michael Shermer over the relationship between science and religion.
In this debate on what are arguably two of the most important questions in the culture wars today — Is Religion a Force for Good […]

In this article, I’ll outline a proposal to utilize a well known conceptual framework to increase our ability to rigorously and dispassionately examine the accuracy of psychic predictions of future events. In part one, I propose two sets of guidelines related to data recoding and validation, as well as data analysis. In later […]

In part of one True Believer’s drive by on my Sylvia Browne piece, in which the commenter admitted that I amaze her, she said:
Of course, I’m one that doesn’t believe the human race ever had a tail or gills too.
Although she went on to say how she wasn’t, “so closed minded that I refuse […]

The news out of Frankfort, KY is that Park Rangers in the state are increasingly challenged by visitors who had also visited the Creation Museum:
The Creation Museum, which presents the Bible’s creation story as fact supported by science, was opened in late May in Petersburg by the Answers in Genesis Christian ministry.
And there might be […]