Comment by Nelson on January 10, 2010 at 11:40am

another SMS Sir!
i went through my Google Reader shared items and found i could add some links from the last week. so without further ado:
-Matt McCormick at Proving the Negative asks how we could ever vet a supernatural claim even if we wanted to.
-The Teapot Atheist smacks down Answers in Genesis (AIG) for their assertion that for the rules of logic to be true the bible must be true/god must exist.
-it appears as if orcas (killer whales) may be separating into two distinct species.
-the results of new research have implications for abiogenesis theories
-ever wonder what exactly gets taught in a homeopathy course? wonder no longer; seethe with anger at the deadly dangerous stupidity of it all.
-cleaner fish punish cheats who offend their customers. notice the implications for the grounding of fairness and, ultimately, morality in simple self interest.
-tetrapods are older than we thought! new fossil footprints push back the transition onto land by tens of millions of years! so cool! Ed Yong blogs on the find too.
-biological warfare between our ancestors and viruses have left its scars on our genome. 8% of our genome is made up of ERV's (endogenous retroviral insertions) as a result!
-ABC News gives weight to Jenny McCarthy and in the process joins her in killing kids
-Sam Harris responds to Karen Armstrong's ridiculous article with a withering critique that's also quite humorous. Jerry Coyne comments.
-we hear all about the clergy who disgustingly work to deny civil rights to a large chunk of society, how about recognizing the ones who stand up for those rights?
-Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy offers a graph showing measles cases from 1950 to 2001 and then tells the anti-vaxxers, "vaccines work. bite me. we win." relatedly, there's more evidence that refusing immunization puts kids at risk.
-the clusters of higher rates of autism in California have a very simple explanation.
-modern humans: still evolving.
regarding the recently described Qeiyafa Ostracon, there's little reason to believe the hype. Douglas Mangum at Biblia Hebraica has a roundup of links. discuss the ostracon on TA in the forum here where you can find some more links.

congrats to recently featured members (top of the page) Christine, Sky, Gregory, Adriana, Danielle, Jeff, and Shiny!
check out Gregory's new group A Skeptic's Guide to History, some valuable informative discussions going there that you might otherwise have missed.

my thanks to all for another week of intellectual stimulation and camaraderie. hope you had a great weekend. :)

Comment by Gary Bergeron on January 10, 2010 at 1:14pm

The Jupiter article was awesome. We float in a universe that is 13 billion light-years wide which contains a billion trillion suns. In the face of this information, how can someone believe that a personal god is concentrating on us? There is something more wonderful and magnificent going on than any religion could ever explain. I urge everyone to do a little star-hopping at least once a week. It's a humbling experience.
Thanks for another top-notch service, Johnny! Have a great Sunday!

Comment by Shine on January 10, 2010 at 2:12pm

Great set of links as usual, Johnny. :) I just wanted to add that Cosmos is also available on Hulu.

Comment by Gary Bergeron on January 13, 2010 at 11:32pm

Hi Johnny, I just wanted to correct something I wrote just above....The universe does NOT contain a billion trillion suns, the correct estimate is 10 billion trillion suns! :)
So sorry for the mistake, you see, I was reading Carl Sagan's Cosmos (again) and he corrected me....lol!
Have a great week and see ya Sunday!

Comment by Johnny on January 14, 2010 at 12:02am

Ehhh, what's a zero in estimates between friends? Especially with that many zeros in a row.

:P

Thanks for the correction!

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