Alright, let's take a break from the SOPA/Internet censorship debacle, for something that isn't depressing and awful. The ESA's Herschel space observatory's revisit of the Eagle Nebula, or "Pillars of Creation" as it has been dubbed.

The rest of the text in this entry comes from the HSO website.

In 1995, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took an iconic image of [...]

From The Godless Geek Blog
http://godlessgeekblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/herschels-revisit-of-pillars-of.html
1/21/2012 2:39:00 PM
Search rank: 376

From The Reality Check
http://therealitycheck.libsyn.com/trc-136-medical-science-reliability-is-the-cookie-monster-a-vegetarian-does-1-0-9999-
4/18/2011 2:47:55 PM
Search rank: 368

Many people have a legitimate fear of numbers, equations, and probability. This “math anxiety” keeps much of the lay public from ever willfully learning about mathematics; indeed, ignorance in this regard is often touted. Commonly used phrases like “I’m not a numbers person” and “I hate math” betray that fact that a good portion of society does not understand math and consciously avoids it.

Comprehending this deficit and doing something about it should be taken up within our school system; we should engage students with math early, often, and more rigorously.

But mathematical illiteracy plays a role in perpetuating not just equation ignorance, but pseudoscience. Not understanding just how much of your life is governed by randomness generates many a fallacious belief about the way that the world works. It should be clearly understood that randomness creates coincidence. That is to say, if there were no coincidences in life, we could speculate that some outside [...]

From James Randi Educational Foundation
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1646-understanding-coincidence.html
3/9/2012 1:00:00 AM
Search rank: 341

Five years after the National Academies released  Rising Above the Gathering Storm, a stark report showing America’s lagging capacity to innovate and compete, a sequel is out, and — no surprise —  the trends are still mostly in the wrong direction.

The update has the same name, but a new subtitle: “Rapidly Approaching Category 5.”

The report committee, led by Norman R. Augustine, the lead author of the original report and retired chairman of Lockheed Martin Corp., specifically notes, among many issues, that money for innovation initiatives from the economic stimulus package is a one-time blast when what is needed is sustained [...]

From RichardDawkins.net - All Aggregated News Content
http://richarddawkins.net/videos/525724-gathering-storm’-approaching-category-5
9/28/2010 1:14:50 AM
Search rank: 340

http://www.roozonline.com/english/news3/newsitem/archive/2010/november/22/article/hitlers-followers-...

From JREF Forum
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=193717&goto=newpost
12/3/2010 5:40:43 PM
Search rank: 338

Torture gets the truth out of the subject every time, too. Oh, that's right.... it doesn't!

From AFA Forums
http://www.atheistfoundation.org.au/forums/showthread.php?t=9999&goto=newpost
5/4/2011 1:27:34 PM
Search rank: 337

I just had to blog this. It's just too absurd to let slip.

Did you know that it's only possible to contract a single disease at a time?

Yes, really.

Meryl Dorey says so, so it must be true

 That's a page from the Winter 2006 edition of the Australian Vacination Network's "Informed Voice" Magazine. If you click and get the bigger version, you'll see that just above "How many is to many?" Meryl has made the following claim:

It is also a fact that we will only ever contract one disease at a time - measles - not measles, mumps [...]

From A Drunken Madman
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ADrunkenMadman/~3/rccB523Bk34/500.aspx
7/5/2010 7:35:46 AM
Search rank: 327

Links for you. Science:

Believe it: man flu is real
Ignorance, Fake Turing Tests, and Bads
MiSeq Aims for Ion Torrent
Irradiating organic food would save lives

Other:

Deforming the Graduate Degree
Current Test-Based Incentive Programs Have Not Consistently Raised Student Achievement in U.S.; Improved Approaches Should Be Developed and Evaluated

From Mike the Mad Biologist
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/KsPC/~3/S13kn4kSxo4/links_62911.php
6/30/2011 7:30:28 AM
Search rank: 325

In looking through the comments of Chris Mooney's recent post on vaccination denialism, I found this comment, which inevitably shows up in one form or another (italics mine; errors original):

i grew up in the 1960s when less than a half dozen vaccines were required for infant protection spread out over the first few years of life. outside of a rubella outbreak, i recall no advrese effects on our infant populace, neither in mortality, serious disease contraction, nor mental disfunction.

today there are well over 2 dozem vaccines required, sometimes given 6-8 at one time, spread out over 18 months. and, factually, ther IS a documentable and unhealthy increase in childhood autism. many [...]

From Mike the Mad Biologist
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/KsPC/~3/Hp_E00VQRgA/well_ok_some_people_are_greate.php
5/1/2011 2:53:17 AM
Search rank: 316

"Imagine there is a terrible disease reported, and although it affects only one in ten thousand people, it is absolutely lethal. You are worried about it, so you decide to undergo a medical test to see if you have the disease. Now, no medical test is ever 100 per cent accurate, but your doctor explains that this one is known to be 99 per cent accurate, regardless of whether or not you have the disease (in other words, it will deliver a correct positive or negative result 99 per cent of the time). You decide to take the test. You're a little nervous, but you think it's a sensible thing to do. A blood sample is taken, and you're told the results will be sent to you in the post.

A week later the envelope arrives from the testing centre. You open it up, and read the contents. Staring you in the face is the answer you dreaded: the results are positive. The test has indicated that you have the lethal disease. You are devastated.

And you are [...]

From Skeptic's Subreddit
http://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/j37q2/opening_passage_of_the_thinking_traps_chapter_in/
7/30/2011 12:06:33 AM
Search rank: 311

Via Not Exactly Rocket Science

A restoration of Anchiornis by Michael DiGiorgio, showing the color patterns detected in the dinosaur's fossil feathers. This was arguably the most important dinosaur discovery of 2010.

2010 has been a good year for dinosaurs. Numerous new species have been named, long-awaited conference proceedings have been published, new techniques for studying the past have been devised, and scientists finally allowed us to answer one of the most confounding questions in dinosaur science. There was so much new dinosaur science that it was impossible to cover it all here (in fact, an accepted manuscript describing

From RichardDawkins.net - All Aggregated News Content
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/572518-the-top-dinosaur-discoveries-of-2010
1/3/2011 11:41:18 AM
Search rank: 307

Feel the Christian love:

#bbpBox_66439611425107968 a { text-decoration:none; color:#009999; }#bbpBox_66439611425107968 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; }@FlyingFree333 The only reason #Atheists are growing is because #Christians allow you to exist. We start should burning you guys alive againabout 6 hours ago via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite@Walken4GOPChet Walken

That’s your typical GOP supporter these days. Wishing for the gold old days when they could just kill you.

From Stupid Evil Bastard
http://stupidevilbastard.com/2011/05/because-thats-what-jesus-would-do-right/
5/7/2011 1:45:31 AM
Search rank: 298

submitted by Ponerology
[link] [comment]

From Skeptic's Subreddit
http://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/ne7jz/irrationality_may_be_the_result_of_mental_noise/
12/16/2011 7:34:20 AM
Search rank: 296

       One of the most profound advances in Medicine was vaccination, I'm not sure how much this can overstated, this along with clean water and and sanitation has been saving lives of decades.
  
But it seems along with Moon Hoaxes, Flat [...]

From The Shockwave Writer
http://shockwaveplasma.blogspot.com/2010/08/living-without-wisdom.html
8/24/2010 9:51:00 AM
Search rank: 284

The USA's National Academy of Sciences National Research Council (NRC) was ordered by Congress several years ago to offer “action-oriented advice” on how the nation should be reacting to the potential consequences of climate change. America's Climate Choices, the final in a series of four reports, was recently published.  The committee that authored the report included not only renowned scientists and engineers but also economists, business leaders, an ex-governor, a former congressman, and other policy experts.  The press release summarizes the report's basic scientific conclusions:

"The [...]

From Skeptical Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=743
5/17/2011 5:23:01 PM
Search rank: 256

I have sent a letter to Mr. David Murphy, Chairman of Trustees of St. Augustine's Priory School Limited. It was sent by recorded delivery on Thursday 7th April. The Royal Mail Tracking Service indicates that he signed for receipt of it on Saturday 9th April. The text of the letter is given below, with minor deletions indicated using square brackets. Although I gave both my telephone number and my email address in the letter, I have not yet received any reply.


Dear Mr. Murphy,

Safeguarding at St. Augustine’s Priory School

On 5th April, I received a visit from the police, concerning a complaint of harassment that had been made against me by Mrs Gumley Mason, specifically concerning name-calling in some of the postings by contributors to the blog.

There was no need for such a complaint. If [...]

From Confessions of a skeptic
http://scepticalthoughts.blogspot.com/2011/04/letter-to-chairman-of-trustees.html
4/14/2011 5:00:00 AM
Search rank: 223

This year is the 30th anniversary of the publication of Stephen Jay Gould's famous essay, Evolution as Fact and Theory in Discover magazine (May 1981).¹

Back in 1993, I wrote a essay for talk.origins promoting the basic concepts that Gould, and others, advocated [Evolution is a Fact and a Theory (1993)]. This [...]

From Sandwalk
http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2011/08/evolution-is-fact-and-theory.html
8/19/2011 1:05:00 AM
Search rank: 203

In 1666 Samuel Pepys watched  from “a little ale-house on the Bankside” as much of London burned to the ground. Pepys was no stranger to  nature and mankind colluding to produce drama, indeed his diary seems peppered with calamities. The year before London went up in smoke Pepys chronicled the Great Plague of 1665. On 20 May of 1663 the prolific diarist noted a combination of rain, wind and tide leaving important portions of the city navigable only by boat:

 “Then to Westminster, where by reason of rain and an easterly wind, the water was so high that there was boats rowed in King Street and all our yard was drowned, that one could not go to my house, so as no man has seen the like almost, most houses full of [...]

From Skeptical Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=289
1/1/2001 12:00:00 AM
Search rank: 181