The Checkerboard Illusion

Can you tell when two things are the same color? Maybe not. When you've looked at that, also see here.

"The Moon is God" Says Astrophysicist

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Bill O'Reilly Proves God's Existence - Neil deGrasse Tyson
http://www.colbertnation.com/
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> Video Archive

BTW: The title of this post is a misquote made on purpose to make fun of sensationalist journalist who quote people out of context.

NCSE's Blast from the Past

The National Center for Science Education has uploaded an enormous amount of video material from the 1980's. Absolutely classic stuff and worth passing on to your young earth creationist friends:

http://www.youtube.com/user/NatCen4ScienceEd

Also worth reading is the debate between Henry Morris and Kenneth Miller here:
http://ncse.com/creationism/general/miller-morris-debate-1981

Morris was entirely misleading in this debate. He trots out his second law of thermodynamics argument:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CF/CF001.html

Get out an encyclopedia and read the entry on the second law of thermodynamics. It has nothing to do with evolution one way or another. Most of Morris' quotes and what-not can be searched for and debunked here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/project.html

Paulos on the Decline Effect

John Allen Paulos has written a very interesting and brief column on "The Decline Effect" (the tendency for later scientific studies to overturn the fantastic results of earlier studies):
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=12510202

Paulos is the author of Innumeracy and Irreligion

Obesity and Atheism

That marvelously unbiased website Conservapedia has reported that there is a correlation between being fat and not believing in God. So, if you're a fence-sitting agnostic, you have a sort of pascal's wager before you: believe and be a skinny, healthy person, or don't believe and be a fat, unhealthy bastard. Believing in God, it turns, has lots of little side-incentives. Here's the link:

http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_obesity

The article is written in a very hilarious manner in which the subject is often changed in the same paragraph. Examples:

As of December of 2010, the most popular YouTube channel run by an atheist is TheAmazingAtheist YouTube channel which has over 175,000 subscribers. TheAmazingAtheist YouTube channel is produced by an overweight atheist.[27] In one video, TheAmazingAtheist exclaimed "Why am I so fat?"[28] The popular Christian YouTube producer Shockofgod posed the question "What proof and evidence do have that proves that atheism is accurate and correct?" to TheAmazingAtheist and he was unable to provide any proof and evidence supporting atheism.

Carrier on Jesus

Luke over at Common Sense Atheism just posted an hour long interview with Richard Carrier. Very interesting, and I can't wait for Rick's new book on the subject of Jesus! Until that book comes out, you'll just have to tide yourself over with The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails, which was last year's great success: it provided a very powerful and thorough challenge to Christianity of both liberal and conservative stripes.

Poll: What's the Best Evolution Book?

Leave a comment and tell me what you think.

My preliminary comments: I understand that Neil Shubin's book Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body (Vintage) has been wildly popular, and certainly, it is a great introduction to evolution. However, I think that most of the good and unique stuff in the book was expounded in this article. As great as it is, I wouldn't label it "my favorite".

The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution is a fine book, which gathers together many examples of evolution from genetics, and is overall highly convincing.

The 29 Evidences for Macroevolution is a fine document, although it could potentially be too hard to understand for those who don't know much about evolution. And it's not a book. But it does deserve an honorable mention.

Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters is a colorful, well-illustrated, and informative guide to the massive fossil evidence for evolution.

Personally, I'm tempted to name Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution Is True as the best evolution book. It is a beautiful, excellent explanation of several of the lines of evidence for evolution. Note the keyword there: tempted. My own personal favorite is Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.

btw, Happy New Year!