#14051: — 01/21  at  06:20 PM
So... Titan pictures. What a tease!!! Now I'm gonna be waiting on the edge of my seat for a few decades until the next visit. ;) I'm particularly interested in better resolution and color correction from the next lander. I can't help but compare the uniform, sherbert-colored ground shot that Huygens sent back to the brash, technicolorish photos returned by the Viking landers. Spirit and Opportunity's photos, with their rich, subtle hues and high resolution (I'm using one as a desktop wallpaper right now) are like a different world. Hopefully, the next Titan lander will bring along a real color camera, so we'll have more than spectrometer data to go on!

I mean, science is cool and all, but ME WANT PRETTY PICTURES!

#14052: covington — 01/21  at  06:22 PM
I only caught hour 1 so far, but it was excellent. It is so refreshing to hear a scientist (and a nobel winner at that) just cut right through the crap.

On another note, here's a way science can help religion. It just occurred to me today that someone should sample the holy water in our local catholic churches for bacteria and viruses. 1000 people an hour dipping their hands in a cup of water and rubbing it on themselves, in the middle of flu season, makes me think that for very practical reasons church is hazardous to your health.

#14055: Matt McIrvin — 01/21  at  06:52 PM
Something tells me you need to read this story.

In the meantime, though seabirds and crabs were feasting on the dead squid, beachgoers were advised not to eat or even touch them, due to possible bacteria contamination.

Party poopers.

#14056: Clancy — 01/21  at  07:08 PM
This is my third MN winter, but I've never seen anything like that snowstorm quietly and prettily raging outside. Rather than hiking to a bar, though, I'm opting to roast some lamb accompanied by mint jelly.

#14060: coturnix — 01/21  at  08:00 PM
Here's one for PZ, about the beloved zebrafish:
http://circadiana.blogspot.com/2005/01/clocknews-12-zebrafish-research-at-bu.html

#14063: PZ Myers — 01/21  at  09:09 PM
I've seen a couple of storms worse, but this one is pretty ferocious. I just got home -- when I stepped out of the bar, the wind grabbed the door and nearly dislocated my shoulder. Then I had about a mile walk where I could see maybe half a block ahead through the blowing snow, and had to stagger through knee-high drifts.

I was looking for a glacier to come rumbling through.

It was exhausting and cold, and I was half-blind from the flying ice, and I was getting worried. Freezing in a snowdrift while stumbling home from a bar isn't exactly how I want to go. But then I died and there just wasn't much I could do about it.

Good thing this last weblog entry was an open thread.

#14064: PZ Myers — 01/21  at  09:14 PM
Oooh, Matt, nice squid. I wish I were on a Pacific beach right now.

Coturnix: I know Greg Cahill -- we overlapped as grad students together at the University of Oregon.

#14065: coturnix — 01/21  at  09:31 PM
Greg is a really nice guy. The press release states that Dr.Zhdanova and her students designed the video setup, but I remember the meeting a few years back where both Greg and Keith gave presentations on their methods (everybody was really excited with both, as that was the first entry of zebrafish into the field), so I just had to insert that little snippet of fact-straightening there.

#14068: Jeff — 01/21  at  10:56 PM
We had our below 0 snow storms a week or so ago. I think it was 50 here yesterday.

Anyone know which hour the "logical" IDer was on?

#14069: — 01/21  at  11:03 PM
Hearing Weinberg on NPR clearly proclaim that "idiots believe the Earth was created 6000 years ago" was almost as beautiful as Dawkins' similar comment on TOTN Sci Fri a few months ago that "All creationists are ignoramasus."

The one thing I particularly enjoyed was infuriated by was one caller's slanderous spewage misguided comments that atheism leads to wanton depravity and hedonism. Weinberg quickly asserted proper offense to this comment. I think this may be one of the most problematic notions of the public lack of understanding and commcomitant fear of atheism.

Jamie

#14070: — 01/21  at  11:05 PM
Jeff, the "logical ID'er" was on the first hour, near the end I think

Jamie

#14071: coturnix — 01/21  at  11:06 PM
The "logical ID" caller was on the first hour, with Weinberg responding (telling her to go revisit her logical steps). Unfortunately, WUNC is currently not carrying the scond hour, so I had to listen to the horrible Joe and Terry Graden instead.

#14072: — 01/21  at  11:07 PM
that would be concomitant, not commcomitant.

blame it on the PBR.

#14098: Jan Theodore Galkowski — 01/22  at  11:15 AM

Unfortunately, WUNC is currently not carrying the scond hour, so I had to listen to the horrible Joe and Terry Graden instead.

Get it from the Science Friday Realcast here and here. Also available in Windows Media.

#14099: Jan Theodore Galkowski — 01/22  at  11:20 AM

I mean, science is cool and all, but ME WANT PRETTY PICTURES!

The man wants pretty pictures. <href="http://www.billnye.com/earthdial/">Here you are</a>.

#14100: Jan Theodore Galkowski — 01/22  at  11:22 AM
How untidy. Here you are again.

#14367: Jan Theodore Galkowski — 01/25  at  11:01 PM
I've never read the guy, but there's an interesting obit of Reverend Vivian Green at the Telegraph. I found him because I love to read John le Carré who based one of his major characters in part upon Green. Green was also le Carré's tutor in Modern Languages. le Carré took firsts.

I mention him because he was a historian of Christianity, writing many books, notably an opus, A New History of Christianity, published in 1996. To tease you, I'll quote from the obit:

He traced the way in which the 20th-century pattern of the Church had been shaped by the interplay of Cross and Sword in past centuries, and how Christianity had evolved from a fringe society to become the single most important influence on Western civilisation. He examined how churches had sought to reabsorb and adjust to man's changing understanding of the nature of God.

In the book's epilogue Green, unusually, allowed himself to speculate on how the Church might develop in the 21st century. Belief in concepts of Heaven, Hell and the afterlife were no longer seen as relevant in most people's lives, he argued; the textual authority of the Bible was being questioned, and Christians increasingly had "faith but little theology". It seemed plausible that churches would either become closed sects, "clusters of believers in an unbelieving world", or more immersed in secular morality and culture at the expense of their supernatural framework.

But he found some grounds for optimism. It was less historically important that Christianity should have been a belief than a way of life. Whatever their shortcomings, Christians down the ages had set an example of self-sacrifice and love of which Jesus Christ was the exemplar. People still looked to the Church for answers when the enormity of life was too great to bear. Religious faith, he argued, was "not unlike sex", less a product of the intellect than an expression of "something deep within the human psyche". It was this quality that would give it the capacity to endure.

I also found this dis on amazon.com:

If you're trying to find the origin of various religious practices and differences this is not the book. Green assumes that reader knows what various terms are and often I did not (and I'm studying to be a Baptist Preacher). Why does the Catholic Bible have extra books from the protestant? Couldn't find it in here. How did the Baptists rise to dominance in the U.S.? Who knows? It's not here. The text is dry and unenlightening. I believe there are many better books for the uninitiated and even the fairly well initiated.

Hey, if an almost-a-Baptist-preacher dislikes it, it can't be all bad!