Sunday Reading: Spaceplanes, Silencing Scientists, and Skepticism

Hey, look at that! We’ve got a little light alliteration in our title today, inspired in no small part by the excellent Canada’s Least-Watched Political Podcast. We’ve had CLWPP as a member of spillway(radio) for a couple of months now, and it’s been a blast. Big things are on the horizon with that show, and Greg, Will and I are very excited about the conversations we’ve been having about it. It’s a sunny day in Ottawa and, after breakfast, spillway’s Top Dog and I took a walk by the river.…

TEDx Is Not Dead. But Science Education Might Be.

A Natural News article was circulated on Facebook recently with the title “TED aligns with Monsanto.” Loosely, it claims that the organizers of TEDx events, which are independently organized events similar to the well-known TED conferences, are shutting down talks about contentious issues, as though it were becoming a more hardened, conservative organization. What is true about this is that TEDx isn’t going to be quite as generous with their stamp of approval in the future. Some months ago, complaints were made on the /r/tedtalks subreddit about the quality of speakers…

Sunday Reading: 07/04/2013

Who’s Responsible For The Obesity Epidemic? – Massimo Pigliucci, Rationally Speaking   To set the stage here, I’m going to quote directly from Massimo’s article: The current situation in the United States is hard to believe: one third of adults are clinically obese, and so is one fifth of all children; a whopping 24 million Americans are affected by type II diabetes, usually the result of a poor diet. And the numbers are getting worse in much of the rest of the developed world as well. This is going to…

Sunday Reading 03/02/2013

It’s another Sunday, and that means it’s another edition of Sunday Reading! Folks, I had a Saturday off yesterday and it was about the best thing ever. I forgot what that feels like. I may be working more and harder than I ever have in the past but you know what? I HAVE SATURDAYS BACK. That’s okay. Saturday, in this week’s case, meant spending time with family, hunting stuff with which to pamper the impending puppy, and generally resting up. How’s your weekend been? While you ponder your own downtime,…