A response to "22 Messages From Creationists To People Who Believe In Evolution", compiled by Matt Stopera

(There are other responses. I'm going to avoid reading them so that I get the full exercise of writing this.)

I've been really 'lazy' about writing lately - it's so easy to write comments and preface tweets and Facebook posts of other people ( Read more... )

The parsec is a convenient unit of measure in astronomy because it's the distance at which the average Earth - Sun distance (roughly equal to one astronomical unit, another convenient unit of measure) causes a parallax (a measured change in the sky of a star's position relative to relatively static "background" stars that are farther away) of one ( Read more... )

Here's a discussion question I noticed while casually flipping through my astronomy textbook. Much of the time when these writers reference sci-fi of any kind, they mangle it. It's kind of ironic, because they usually want to point out the scientific inconsistencies in the sci-fi, but they themselves get the continuity details wrong ( Read more... )

The big thing that's dawned on me over the past two days is that all this time since coming back to SMU, I've been trying to get something for nothing ( Read more... )

So all the Reading Week hoopla is over and I wrote two midterms today: Astronomy and Chemistry. I didn't study as much for chemistry as I would have liked to, but I got out of both with plenty of time to spare. That's a rarity for me - I typically stay until the last dog is hung and I never would have guessed I'd finish both early ( Read more... )

I’m having a grand time avoiding the work that I’m supposed to be doing, and now I have a sudden inspiration to write ( Read more... )

Okay, let's see what the letter grades here actually mean. I always get frustrated when I get really specific questions about this but can't really remember how the points and percentages line up!

So to solve this frustration, I'll return to / refer to this page when I need to answer that question. You can, too! The URL is http://snipurl.com/ ( Read more... )

OK, the worst is over! I hope!

This morning’s chem exam was a doozy and a half. There were more than 40 questions! (Chemistry is so gosh darned comprehensive. You have to know how to do 1x106 different things.) Not only that, two pages were misprinted, and having meticulously torn the erroneous ones out of the primary exam booklet, as time went on ( Read more... )

I've been thinking (dangerous prospect, I know): I really need to stick with my program and finish out this year, even if it's a super struggle and I only manage straight Cs. Why? Because, if I finish, I will be set up to declare a major / honours in any of these (taking courses from my last degree into account ( Read more... )

As a benefit of being enrolled in chemistry this semester, I've been invited to come in for a 20-minute consultation appointment. I'd say this is long overdue for me - I've always been stubborn enough to figure that only I know what's best for me, which is partially true, but the reality is that I am, at most any given time, incompletely informed. ( Read more... )