Video conference

post from Pharyngula on 16 January 2010 09:09:18 PM. © Pharyngula

I think I'm on BlogTV right now.

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Non-Believers Giving Aid

post from Pharyngula on 16 January 2010 08:52:52 PM. © Pharyngula

If you haven't already donated to disaster relief in Haiti, here's your chance: a new umbrella organization to coordinate charitable giving for the godless has been set up. In the first two hours that this was created, over $11,000 has been donated. Get on the bandwagon!

Non-Believers Giving Aid: a religion-free way to help disaster victims

Washington, DC January 17, 2010

In response to the tragedy in Haiti, several organizations representing 'non-believers' and others have set up a disaster relief fund called 'Non-Believers Giving Aid'. In an appeal for donations, the website of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science states (http://givingaid.richarddawkins.net/):

Spurred by the horrific suffering in Haiti, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS) has set up a dedicated bank account and PayPal facility to collect donations to non-religious relief organizations. This new account is in the new name of Non-Believers Giving Aid, with all of the money donated being distributed to disaster relief.

Clearly the immediate need is for the suffering people of Haiti, and all the money raised by this current appeal will go that cause, but the new account will remain available for future emergencies too. There are, of course, many ways for you to donate to relief organizations already, but doing it through Non-Believers Giving Aid offers a number of advantages:

100% of your donation will be go to these charities: not even the PayPal fees will be deducted from your donation, since Richard will personally donate a sum to cover the cost of these (Capped at $10,000). This means that more of your money will reach the people in need.

When donating via Non-Believers Giving Aid, you are helping to counter the scandalous myth that only the religious care about their fellow-humans.

It goes without saying that your donations will only be passed on to aid organizations that do not have religious affiliations. In the case of Haiti, the two organizations we have chosen are:

Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans Frontières)

International Red Cross

You may stipulate using a dropdown menu which of these two organizations you want your donation to go to; otherwise, it will be divided equally between them.

Preachers and televangelists, mullahs and imams, often seem almost to gloat over natural disasters - presenting them as payback for human transgressions, or for 'making a pact with the devil'. Earthquakes and tsunamis are caused not by 'sin' but by tectonic plate movements, and tectonic plates, like everything else in the physical world, are supremely indifferent to human affairs and sadly indifferent to human suffering. Those of us who understand this reality are sometimes accused of being indifferent to that suffering ourselves. Of course the very opposite is the truth: we do not hide behind the notion that earthly suffering will be rewarded in a heavenly paradise, nor do we expect a heavenly reward for our generosity: the understanding that this is the only life any of us have makes the need to alleviate suffering even more urgent. The myth that it is only the religious who truly care is sustained largely by the fact that they tend to donate not as individuals, but through their churches. Non-believers, by contrast, give as individuals: we have no church through which to give collectively, no church to rack up statistics of competitive generosity. Non-Believers Giving Aid is not a church (that's putting it mildly) but it does provide an easy conduit for the non-religious to help those in desperate need, whilst simultaneously giving the lie to the canard that you need God to be good.

Please help us to help the suffering people of Haiti.

The organizations and supporters actively involved in this effort include:

Atheist Alliance International
Atheists United
The British Humanist Association
James Randi Educational Foundation
Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers
Pharyngula
The Reason Project
The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science
The Skeptics Society

Quoting Richard Dawkins, "The merciless power of tectonic plate movement has conjured a disaster of epic proportions and all of us, whether religious or not, must do all in our power to help."

Author, scientist and Founder of the Reason Project Sam Harris said, " It is widely imagined that, in times of crisis, religious people render aid in disproportion to their numbers. Richard Dawkins has now created an opportunity for nonbelievers, who are rightly focused on the welfare of their fellow human beings in this life, to put the lie to this myth."

The President of Atheists United commented "The indiscriminate consequences of earthquakes, floods, fires and such remind us that there is no god to protect us, and that humankind must come together to do what we can to help and protect each other."

Michael Shermer, the Executive Director of the participating Skeptics Society, notes: "It's all well and good to say that we nonbelievers are just as moral as believers (we are, but that's a philosophical point)--actions count more than words and real donations are where the theoretical rubber meets the practical road. This is our time to pony up and show the world our true character.

Jason Torpey, President of Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers stated, "As they have done with the Out Campaign, Non-Believers Giving Aid continues the RDFRS tradition of positive, community-centered atheist coalition building."

A spokeswoman for the Richard Dawkins Foundation noted, "While those of us who do not believe in a god or gods might identify ourselves as 'atheists', 'humanists', 'non-theists', 'skeptics', 'Freethinkers', or other label - the term 'non-believer' has been brought into the public consciousness by President Obama and is easily identifiable. Independent of whether we are non-believers or not, the tragedy of Haiti pulls at everyone's heartstring. All of us are unified in our humanity."

Non-Believers Giving Aid
http://givingaid.richarddawkins.net

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is a 501(c)(3).
www.RichardDawkinsFoundation.org
www.RichardDawkins.net

Contact: Liz Cornwell, rec@RichardDawkins.net
719.351.6324
Mailing Address: 11605 Meridian Market View, Unit 124 PMB 381, Falcon CO 80831

Photo downloads: http://richarddawkins.net/media

Contacts for participating organizations

Atheist Alliance International
http://www.atheistalliance.org/
Contact: Stuart Bechman, President email: president@atheistalliance.org
Tel: +01-866-HERETIC.

Atheists United
http://www.atheistsunited.org/
Contact: Bobbie Kirkhart, President email:e-mail president@atheistsunited.org
Tel: 323-229-5500.

The British Humanist Association
http://www.humanism.org.uk
Contact: Andrew Copson, Chief Executive email: andrew@humanism.org.uk
Tel: 020 7079 3584 or 07534 248596.

James Randi Educational Foundation
http://www.randi.org
Contact: D.J. Grothe, President email: idjgrothe@randi.org
Tel: 954-467-1112
Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers (MAAF)
http://www.maaf.info
Contact: Jason Torpy, President email: president@maaf.info
Tel: 614-329-1776

Pharyngula
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/
Contact: PZ Myers, pzmyers@gmail.com
Tel: 320 589-7116

The Reason Project
http://www.reasonproject.org/
Contact: Sam Harris email: contact@reasonproject.org

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science
http://www.RichardDawkinsFoundation.org & www.RichardDawkins.net
Contact: Liz Cornwell, Executive Director email: rec@RichardDawkins.net
Tel: 719.351.6324

The Skeptics Society
http://www.skeptic.com/
Contact: Michael Shermer, Founder email: mshermer@skeptic.com
Tel: 626/794-3119

For information on the Disaster Relief Agencies:

Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans Frontières)
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/

International Red Cross
http://www.icrc.org/

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No, Cold Snaps Dont Disprove Climate Change

post from FUTURISM NOW on 16 January 2010 07:25:16 PM. © FUTURISM NOW

Heat is on its way.

Your friendly Futurism Now writer is not a scientist so I’m not qualified to fully interpret the latest paper from James Hansen, but maybe you are. He is asking for comments on the following, If It’s That Warm, How Come It’s So Damned Cold?, which you can download in full from his Columbia University web site here. He says, “Criticisms are welcome. This is a draft essay that I wanted to get out because we are releasing our December and annual surface temperature analysis on the GISS web site. We will prepare a write-up on 2009 temperatures for the GISS web site next week.” Some of the findings include: The warmest recent year was 2005, not 1998! And he also kills a few other wrong conclusions of the skeptics, such as that there has been a decade-long cooling trend, which most certainly is not the case. One thing is clear: James Hansen (or someone he knows) surfs the internet for comments on climate change. Here’s a bit of an excerpt:

“Why are some people so readily convinced of a false conclusion, that the world is really experiencing a cooling trend? That gullibility probably has a lot to do with regional short?term temperature fluctuations, which are an order of magnitude larger than global average annual anomalies. Yet many lay people do understand the distinction between regional short?term anomalies and global trends. For example, here is comment posted by ?frogbandit? at 8:38 p.m. 1/6/2010 on City Bright blog:

?I wonder about the people who use cold weather to say that the globe is cooling. It forgets that global warming has a global component and that its a trend, not an everyday thing. I hear people down in the lower 48 say its really cold this winter. That ain’t true so far up here in Alaska. Bethel, Alaska, had a brown Christmas. Here in Anchorage, the temperature today is 31. I can’t say based on the fact Anchorage and Bethel are warm so far this winter that we have global warming. That would be a really dumb argument to think my weather pattern is being experienced even in the rest of the United States, much less globally.?

I wonder about those people too. It’s the usual USA-centric viewpoint of Americans though — what we think and experience is universal, or at least, the desired norm and if not, you’re weird. Of course, that’s not true. There’s a big world out there that isn’t like us, and doesn’t experience our cold snaps from Canada or the Arctic.

Hansen is not the only person fighting the perception of the Cold Snap versus Global Warming. One thing global warming skeptics don’t seem to get is the difference between winter and a global warming trend (which lasts longer than two months). In fact, where I live we had a very cold December and January, but it wasn’t record-setting cold by a long shot, as it wasn’t in [...]

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Suomenlinnan Ikkuna, 2

post from Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) on 16 January 2010 02:59:41 PM. © Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

tags: Suomenlinnan Ikkuna, Helsinki, Finland, nature, image of the day

Suomenlinnan Ikkuna (Suomenlinna window).

Soumenlinna, Helsinki, Finland.

Image: GrrlScientist, 19 July 2009 [larger view]. (raw image)

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Capuchin Monkeys Using Stone Tools

post from Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog on 16 January 2010 02:52:00 PM. © Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog

video details and more

This BBC documentary “Clever Monkeys”, narrated by David Attenborough, shows Capuchin monkeys in Brazil using heavy stones to break open aged palm nuts.

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The 7 main causes of numerical rubbish

post from not only bridges on 16 January 2010 02:14:00 PM. © not only bridges

[...]

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Eagle eyes view

post from Bad Astronomy on 16 January 2010 02:00:36 PM. © Bad Astronomy

This is phenomenal footage, showing what an eagle sees as it flies courtesy a very small and light camera attached to the bird.Wow. I have to find a copy of that whole show. That’s really amazing footage!Tip o’ the flight feathers to Fark.[...]

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Klaes on Avatar: Part Two

by Larry KlaesWe now wrap up Larry Klaes’ essay on Avatar (and Centauri Dreams’ coverage of the film) with a look at how and why humans will expand into the cosmos, with reflections on our society’s portrayal of aliens and of itself.[...]

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Commenting problems

The buggy software is better now, but some people are still completely unable to comment — and the primary complaint I'm getting is that the confirmation email needed to register never arrives. One possibility is that somehow, your domain or name or something is blocked by some systemwide filter.

If that's your problem, send me a note using the same email address you used to register. I'll forward those to the people in charge so they can dig through the system and discover why ScienceBlogs hates you. Then we'll slap it silly and tell it to love you instead.

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Distracted at #scio2010

I am going against the herd here at ScienceOnline 2010 — I am not tweeting and blogging throughout the event, but am just sitting back and enjoying the talks, while all the nerds are pounding away at their keyboards. (Note sneaky implication that I am not a nerd with the rest of 'em.)

However, I did just do my interview with Reddit, so it's all recorded and done with and merely awaiting editing and publishing. It will probably be available online on Tuesday — be patient, I'll put up a link when it is available.

I will remind you also that tonight at 9pm EST I'll be helping to raise money for relief in New Orleans by battling a preacher on BlogTV. This is a great sacrifice for me, since I'll be dragging myself away from the bar and the lively group of people here at SciOnline to answer a pile of questions from a well-meaning but entirely delusional fellow. Tune in, cheer and howl, and kick in a few bucks if you can to the effort.

I'll be back in action tomorrow.

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