Daily Archives: Monday, September 14, 2009

The Mary Shelley Palin-creature roll-out update

Posted on Monday, September 14, 2009 | Leave a comment

When Hong Kong-based brokerage group CLSA announced that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin would be the keynote speaker at its annual conference, many observers wondered if the arrangement was just some sort of joke, noting that Palin’s most notable foreign policy experience is being able to see Russia from Alaska. Unfortunately, we may never find out what Palin tells the audience of international investors. AFP reports that her Sept. 23 speech will be closed to the press. “Some of our keynote sessions in previous years were also closed to the media. So this is not the first time,” said a CLSA spokesperson. “Ms Palin has not yet confirmed with us the topic of her speech.” Palin’s trip to Hong Kong will be her first visit to Asia and her first paid speaking engagement since leaving office. from Think Progress

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Posted in Propaganda

Tagged Sarah Palin

God with a raquet

Posted on Monday, September 14, 2009 | Leave a comment

h/t Andrew Sullivan

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Posted in Detritus

God’s bow tie

Posted on Monday, September 14, 2009 | Leave a comment

This is one of the images following on a repair of the Hubble. More here

What, one wonders, would a child who has been home-schooled on a curriculum of fundamentalist christian ideas, make of such photos? Just take the concept of ‘light years’. If the world and creation are merely about 6,000 years old, then any number of sciences have to be deemed erroneous to make way for that single belief.

I had a conversation a couple of years ago with someone who had been convinced that carbon dating was bad science, that it was undependable. Carbon dating, of course, is a method of establishing the age of a thing which is carbon-based, such as wood. I explained to her that there’s a very simple and elegant way in which to test whether this science is accurate (and in fact, it was this cross-checking which showed us that the carbon dating readings had a predictable error which grew over time, and knowing this error, we can account for it). The test involves using samples of wood taken from tree rings.

She decided, this information not withstanding, that carbon dating still couldn’t be trusted.

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Posted in Culture war