I finally watched Jesus Camp yesterday, what I can only describe as a first class mental rape of children. In a summer camp in North Dakota, Pentacostal minister Becky Fisher uses the most devoutly impeccable internal logic to indoctrinate children with fundamentalist religion. The children become 9-year-old preachers, bless and converse with a ( Read more... )

Over the last two semesters, I attended four dinners on climate change and policy organised by our university, with the last one held yesterday. The speakers were quite stimulating and focused on different aspects of the issue; beginnning with the science, the psychology of inertia against climate change, the health impacts of climate change ( Read more... )

Religious people have always shot themselves in the foot by trying to find "scientific" justifications and explanations for their beliefs. It would seem that after so many rebuttals to creation "science", one would have seen stern rebukes being expressed by religious people themselves against their "science oriented" brethren. The best way for ( Read more... )

This echoes my sentiments perfectly:"There are lots of things I don't understand -- say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat's last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things: (1) I can ask friends who work in these areas to explain it to me at a level ( Read more... )

How a debate with two friends about creationism turned into a defense of science itself...

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Even if the Indo-US nuclear deal is failing, it should not mean India's nuclear power generation should also instantly fail. We could have a robust power generation capability for at least a few years more, but only if we don't divert uranium into weapons building. We already have a minimum credible deterrent, and any such further activity will ( Read more... )

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It’s not everyday that you get to have a relaxed, inspirational and informal almost one-on-one chat for an hour with a Nobel Prize winner. Yet that was what it was today morning...

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Nuclear energy promises to be the safest, most efficient and reliable source of energy in the fight against carbon-emissions and climate change. Yet there is deep-rooted opposition to it in the minds of the public and policy makers, mainly based on a dissonance between beliefs and reality. It is important for the public to transcend gut reactions, ( Read more... )

Religion poisons everything. The Tehelka expose makes it clear. Because of course justifiably pointing the finger towards the Hindus is not going to solve the problem here, because they can point the finger at the Muslims in the 1992 Mumbai riots, and then the Muslims can point the finger ( Read more... )