Evidence that we are unlikely to recover from the Bush administration's faith based world. And the truly disconcerting number is that of the “Democrats” who are supposed to make up the reality based community.
And people still wonder why so many Americans believe in government conspiracies:
In a collision of 21st-century science and decades-old conspiracy theories, a research team that includes a former top FBI scientist is challenging the bullet analysis used by the government to conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot the two bullets that struck and killed President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
The “evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed,” concludes a new article in the Annals of Applied Statistics written by former FBI lab metallurgist William A. Tobin and Texas A&M University researchers Cliff Spiegelman and William D. James.
The researchers' re-analysis involved new statistical calculations and a modern chemical analysis of bullets from the same batch Oswald is purported to have used. They reached no conclusion about whether more than one gunman was involved, but urged that authorities conduct a new and complete forensic re-analysis of the five bullet fragments left from the assassination in Dallas.
Read The Washington Post article
I hadn't planned to pick a best blog post of the year, but then I didn't plan on visiting the Bad Astronomy Blog for the first time tonight either. The site is run by Phil Plait, "an astronomer, writer, and skeptic" who just "like[s] reality the way it is." Well, who wouldn't like it if tasked with looking at the breathtaking images he calls astronomy's Top Ten of 2006. Each image is accompanied by a fascinating description and/or explanation and Plait's kid-like sense of wonder and enthusiasm are likely to prove contagious. The entire post, in fact, has viral written all over it.
(h/t Bhc)
Stephen Colbert debates the existence of God with British scientist and icon Richard Dawkins who is promoting his new book "The God Delusion" Dawkins, it turns out, only believes in one less God than Colbert.
Americans are doing their best to disprove evolution by not evolving themselves. In a survey of countries over 20 years, the percentage of US adults that accept evolution has DROPPED from 45 to 40 percent, either of which is paltry compared to other countries like Denmark, Sweden, France and Japan where more than 78% of all adults accept evolution. Thank God for Turkey, the only country surveyed where fewer adults believed in evolution than the US.
Click photo for clip
Clip of the entire Ann Coulter interview with Gordon Robertson (son of Pat) on the 700 Club on July 21, 2006, . They discuss Godless liberals, gays and Darwinism (derogatory term used by the christian right for evolution). Anyone with a basic education will be sure to learn something new like evolution being a myth which liberals have been spreading for 50 years, much like McCarthyism.
In her defense, Ann may have relied on her own endnotes which would confuse even the best and the brightest scholars and pundits.
