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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

How Far I've Come!

thinking-cat-is-thinkingLast week, I ran some errands with Butch. One of them involved me waiting for him to take a test which he thought was going to be a half hour. It turned out that it was an hour and a half, which was actually good considering they had 3 hours allotted.

I was bored out of my mind after about 12 minutes of sitting in the car, and started to find ways to occupy myself. I got out and wandered around to look at all the different lichens on the trees, but I didn’t have enough light to get any decent pictures. I paced , looking at ants, then sat in the car and read my book for awhile, tried not to think about how much Monster energy drink I had consumed on the way there, and let my mind generally wander around. It was excruciating. ’:P’

Delusions of Calories Dance In Our Heads

funny-pictures-cat-plans-to-eat-a-lot-of-foodAs a typical person trying to watch my weight, I count calories. Not obsessively, but I try to keep an eye on how much I eat. Like a lot of people, even though I watch what I eat, I’m still always fighting to not gain weight, and getting more frustrated all the time.

New Scientist put together a 3 page article called The Calorie Delusion: Why food labels are wrong today and I wanted to share it with you. Here are the main points that I got out of it:

  • Basically, it’s good to balance calories in and calories out to maintain your weight. Common sense, right?
  • Some food labels over or underestimate how much energy your body will get from a food by as much as 25%
  • Eat a meager 20 kcal a day more than you need and you’ll gain about a kilogram [...]

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 [...]

Amazing Futuristic Materials

Stumbling around the web, I found this article on Futuristic Materials. This stuff is just amazing, so I wanted to share it with you. Just think where we’ll be in 10 years if these materials go into products that are mass produced? I say it that way because I know there must be secret flying cars and robots that fold laundry out there, but still, I am driving my little old Subaru and folding my own laundry. And it’s the 21st century!

Anyway, enjoy these groovy new materials. They have awesome potential to change our world. And it makes me think, if I never imagined this stuff, what will they think of next!? Woot!

1. Aerogel: also called “Frozen Smoke”