NERDIST NEWS: SEPTEMBER 28, 2015

NERDIST NEWS: APRIL 8, 2015

NERDIST NEWS: FEBRUARY 17, 2015

KLAVAN & WHITTLE: WHY SCIENCE & RELIGION ARE COMPATIBLE

PJTV viewer Digging4Information asks Bill Whittle & Andrew Klavan about the relationship between science, faith and religion. Are science and religion at war with each other, or perfectly compatible? Klavan argues that faith has never been at war with religion, and that religious people like Isaac Newton were often great scientists. Hear more.

DREADNAUGHTUS: A NEW DINOSAUR DISCOVERY

Drexel University professor Ken Lacovara has recently unveiled a new supermassive dinosaur species he discovered and unearthed with his team between 2005 and 2009. Weighing in at nearly 65 tons, Dreadnoughtus schrani is the largest land animal ever found of calculable mass and also by far one of the most complete skeletons ever found for a dinosaur in this mass range!

TRIFECTA: THERE'S A BLOOD MOON ON THE RISE

YALE PROFESSOR'S NARRATIVE GETS DISRUPTED

Yale Study Finds Tea Partiers Know More About Science Than Liberals, Researcher Shocked!

A finding in a study on the relationship between science literacy and political ideology surprised the Yale professor behind it: Tea party members know more science than non-tea partiers.

Yale law professor Dan Kahan posted on his blog this week that he analyzed the responses of a set of more than 2,000 American adults recruited for another study and found that, on average, people who leaned liberal were more science literate than those who leaned conservative.

However, those who identified as part of the tea party movement were actually better versed in science than those who didn't, Kahan found. The findings met the conventional threshold of statistical significance, the professor said.

Kahan wrote that not only did the findings surprise him, they embarrassed him.

"I've got to confess, though, I found this result surprising. As I pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully expected I'd be shown a modest negative correlation between identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension," Kahan wrote.

"But then again, I don't know a single person who identifies with the Tea Party," he continued. "All my impressions come from watching cable tv - & I don't watch Fox News very often - and reading the 'paper' (New York Times daily, plus a variety of politics-focused internet sites like Huffington Post & Politico). I'm a little embarrassed, but mainly I'm just glad that I no longer hold this particular mistaken view."

THE LEFT'S ARROGANT, ANTI-SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDE

Charles Krauthammer on Interior Secretary Sally Jewell saying "I hope there are no climate change deniers in the Department of Interior."

No, it's not totalitarian, but it is shockingly arrogant and anti-scientific. The idea that science is closed, that science is settled and that anybody who brings evidence or questions is somehow a flat-earther is appalling.

Freeman Dyson, who is one of the great physicists of our time, he's a climate skeptic, he has more IQ in his pinky than the entire political echelon of the EPA put together, and they are saying this man is a scientific illiterate? The entire idea of science is that you are open to contrary evidence, it is the definition of a scientific theory. And particularly, climate science which is young, it's new, built on all kinds of assumptions, and data which contradicts each other -- the idea that it is a closed issue is incredibly unscientific and arrogant and that these bureaucrats and political hacks are decreeing this, I think is scandalous.

Sorry Global Warming Alarmists, The Earth Is Cooling

Global cooling, not warming, is Earth's coming threat

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED!

From the Daily Mail:

Men who are physically strong are more likely to have right wing political views; Weaker men more likely to support welfare state and wealth redistribution...

Men who are physically strong are more likely to take a right wing political stance, while weaker men are inclined to support the welfare state, according to a new study.

Researchers discovered political motivations may have evolutionary links to physical strength.

Men's upper-body strength predicts their political opinions on economic redistribution, according to the research.

And if you disagree with this then you hate science!

At National Review, Dan Foster has some thoughts on the matter:

I also take some issue with the way they phrase the result:

Professor Petersen said: 'Our results demonstrate that physically weak males are more reluctant than physically strong males to assert their self-interest – just as if disputes over national policies were a matter of direct physical confrontation among small numbers of individuals, rather than abstract electoral dynamics among millions.'

It would be just as plausible to conclude from the data that physically weak males are asserting their self-interest in voicing support for resource distribution. If strength is tied to resource security, and weakness to resource insecurity, it makes sense for the weak to hold views that, if enacted, would increase their resource security. Or as Nietzsche puts it, both more elegantly and more brutally: "All sick pathological people, in their desire to shake off a stifling lack of enthusiasm and a feeling of weakness, instinctively strive for the organization of a herd."

Indeed.