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What I'm reading now:
The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture
God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible by CJ Werleman
Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life (this is excellent. Well written and fascinating. Highly recommended)
God Is Not Great (Hitchens is extremely erudite but I agree with him a lot here. Excellent so far)
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Listening to the audio version. Excellent!)


What I just finished:
Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language
Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Recommended. The first half is a great read. Thorough and detailed but easy to understand.)
Letting Go of God (I listened to the audio version. It was poignant and funny. Highly recommended!)
His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass) (best trilogy I've ever read!)

Series

Happy Atheist Love

Liquid Glass Is Groovy!

Happy Darwin Day everyone! Today is Darwin’s birthday and in honor of him, I thought I’d post this article about Liquid Glass, which could possibly be the coolest nanotech material I’ve seen in some time. I think it’s so cool mainly because of its versatility and the fact that it’s already in use in Germany, the UK and Turkey.

Why am I talking about nanotech on Darwin’s birthday? If you think about it, without evolution, we wouldn’t be able to manipulate our world so deftly and with such finesse. About 195,000 years ago homo sapiens first appeared in the fossil record. We started leaving Africa about 70,000 years ago, and migrated as far as the Americas 14,500 years ago.

A mere 10,000 years ago, we were mostly hunter-gatherers in nomadic groups. The first proto-states were developed only 6,000 years ago. Think of that! Look how far we’ve come in [...]

Hate Darwin? Then Give Up Your Luxuries

creationistpostermedSo you’re a creationist or a fundamentalist, whatever. You know what? That’s fine. I don’t really care what you believe for yourself. Personally I don’t think you should be allowed to raise your kids in such a way as I think it’s cruel, but whatever. That’s just me being silly, thinking kids should have a fighting chance by teaching them what is real and how best to get along in the world, not teaching them that there was a talking snake and 2 naked people in a garden that screwed everything up for everybody. Oh, and a man died and came back to life and then flew to heaven and that’s why the kid drinks a sip of wine and eats a cracker every sunday. But oh yeah, Santa Claus was just a story his parents told him to keep him in line. Yeah, makes perfect sense.

Anyhoo… back [...]

I Need A PrayerMAX 5000!

I saw this commercial for the PrayerMAX 5000 awhile ago on Pharyngula, but I was busy and never actually watched it. Silly me! This is awesome! I need two of these things!

Fold It- Play A Game For Science!

This is the neatest idea on so many levels. So you need to unwind and play a game. You’re tired of windows solitaire. How about playing a game that could contribute to curing a disease? How about helping science with your big awesome brain!?

You can go here to read about the science behind the “game”.

So basically, in a really simple nutshell, you’re using your intuitive awesome brain to do something that would take computers a huge amount of time and expense to do.

Proteins are part of lots of diseases, so understanding how they fold on themselves is very important. [...]

A Solar Revolution In Our Future

In a giant leap for clean energy, MIT professor Daniel Nocera and his team, have developed a simple method to split water molecules and produce oxygen gas. This paves the way for large scale use of solar power.

Getting energy from the sun isn’t the hard part, it seems. It’s storing that energy that has been a problem.

These guys at MIT were inspired by how plants perform photosynthesis. Their revolutionary method uses abundant, non-toxic natural materials.

I won’t get into all the details, but I just wanted to share it with you because it seems pretty important and wonderful.

Here’s a link to MIT where they have a video of Daniel Nocera describing the new process and a lot more details.

This is just the beginning though. It’s still not really cost effective, but other scientists will be able to run with it and [...]

Stretchable Silicon Camera “Eye”

The University of Illinois and Northwestern University have developed an “eye” camera. It combines stretchable optoelectronics and the design is inspired by nature. The layout is based on the human eye, so this camera is the next step towards an artificial retina, a la The [...]

Farm Fountains and Aquariums

How about a self contained living river ecosystem in your living room? I love the idea of combining art into something practical, useful and also great for the environment, so this really fits the bill. [...]

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