Tweed is taking a couple weeks off, but we had some “Wednesday” videos we wanted you to see. Happy and safe holidays to everyone!
William Castleman, a professor of veterinary pathology at the University of Florida, created this stunning time-lapse video of this morning’s lunar eclipse. If you didn’t get to see it in person, and even if you did, this is worth two minutes of your time.
Via Popsci
Lane Kimble, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, used Playmobil figures to create this sweet audio-slideshow depicting his college experience.
Contrary to an earlier report that campus library raves seemed to be dying out, we’ve seen several this month like this one on the eve of finals week at Champlain College.
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10 Responses to Video Wednesday, the Tuesday Edition
keis8427 - December 8, 2011 at 11:39 am
Wrong…religion explains the human soul or lack of one (ahem…)
renellin - December 8, 2011 at 11:45 am
Which is why the term ‘scientism’ comes into being. You easily dump all religion, an incredibly broad subject which you later pare down only to dogmatic religion into your notion of what is represented by that term–which you hint with such terms as ‘cling’ is a lesser animal. Yet you consider all science to be pure and clean, and you simply don’t consider the bombardment of what we face in this society today of those with political, commercial, or other agendas claiming to rely on ‘scientific facts’ and further claiming extra credibility by the term scientific being applied.
3rdtyrant - December 8, 2011 at 12:20 pm
I don’t know a decent scientist who believes that science has a monopoly on anything. They all agree with agent K from Men in Black: “1500 years ago, everybody knew that the
Earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago, everybody knew that
the Earth was flat. And 15 minutes ago, you knew that people were alone
on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”
renellin - December 8, 2011 at 12:45 pm
Clearly you are not paying attention. Since you’ve already made up your mind, no explanation will suffice.
Me - December 9, 2011 at 10:54 am
“Most of the founding fathers were atheists but didn’t have the balls to admit it and neither do the modern versions” This is historically demonstrably false. Unless Socratease2 proves to be both a mind reader and a time traveler, there’s very little here but an broad assertion about people whose writings don’t convey the reality Socratease2 insists must be so. The founding fathers includes the signers of the Declaration, a much broader group than the collection of deists Socratease2 seems to be focused on. Even among that group, many demonstrated evidence for belief in a God of some kind. Jefferson, for example, took the trouble to construct his own version of the Bible, cutting out parts he disagreed with or found dubious. While this can be found to be heretical or sacrilegious, it does not demonstrate the psychology of an atheist.
Clearly, cynicism is not a particularly rigorous methodology.
Me - December 9, 2011 at 11:02 am
This kind of pithy nonsense may satisfy hard-core anti-religionists, but when you consider that people like Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and others dedicated their lives to noble causes in large part because of religion-derived understanding, it reveals itself to be a rather petty and self-serving view of the world.
And to those who would make reactionary references to things like the Crusades, Islamic terror, etc., there is no question humans have used religious excuses for their own evil ends, but wiser heads know the difference between hypocrisy and sincerity.
viwap - December 9, 2011 at 11:28 am
I wonder why you haven’t found any “non-boring” atheists…there are many of us out in the open–and probably many more still in the closet!
Socratease2 - December 9, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Well, yes, time travel is a penchant of mine, how did you know? But ask my wife, she will certainly tell you I am no mind reader. As for cynicism, it is not a methodology in any sense (which I am sure you are well aware) but can you you think of a better critical perspective to take in understanding commonly accepted views of American political history? Yes, my rhetoric was a bit over the top but I am not going to argue who was an atheist, a theist or a deist (or some combination) among whatever group we designate as “the founding fathers.” I would need to do more background research to argue further. I said “most” not “all” so I guess we can quibble over how many early political figures really believed in the god of the bible or not. Change it to “some” if you find that more accurate, but the point remains. I still argue that many (here we go again!) people today across all walks of private and public life, nominally present themselves as Christians or Jews, or whatever faith, but the reality is they are just afraid of not being labeled “abnormal,” “immoral” or of not “fitting in” with the mainstream or their families. Regardless of how many people profess to have faith in some supernatural being, how many people truly live their lives fully in accordance with the tenets of that faith? When push comes to shove, a paltry few I say. For the Christian or Muslim faithful, if the next life is going to be so grand, why do people not want to hurry to get to heaven and leave this mess of a world behind right now? Now that would be an expression of true faith! Damn, I think I was cynical again, I think will go comment on the cute puppy blog, it is easier to be up-beat there.
major_ray - December 9, 2011 at 2:37 pm
Truth includes science, but is not limited to science no more than bread is limited to peanut butter. you can make the best peanut butter sandwich in the world and boast about how great you are for doing it. But as a Christian who is also a scientist I can tell you that the truth is both peanut butter and jelly. The truth can be found by working at the interface between the two layers, not by leaving off the jelly or the peanut butter. In any case, you just can’t get all the nuts out of the peanut butter or the lumps out of jelly. Faith in the Word of God is the jelly and this truth comes from the heart, not the brain.
adamreed - December 12, 2011 at 4:06 pm
Randall’s “We don’t know” is a cop-out that evades a plain fact: for every claim that “science can never explain X” made more than some time t ago (fill in “magnetism,” “life,” “intelligence” etc. for X, two centuries or so for t) science has in fact explained X. This is an “empirical law:” with time, the probability, that science will explain any fact X, approaches 100%. Cosmologists are already working on explaining the “Big Bang:” our “universe” is likely to be an internal sub-universe of one (very large) black hole – every black hole has one. And Hutchinson’s “analogy” between history and religion is bizarre: historians have evidence to explain; religion has none. Disappointing…