The problem isn’t religion, it’s ignorance

I was fulfilling my Tyson quota for the day and I came across this gem of a relatively calm interview (he’s very energetic when he’s passionate about something). It touches on the above point and many others that are not just logical, but are empirically observed fact.

I’ve always held this view, but it’s very satisfying to see someone like Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson espouse the same. God is quite safe from science. It’s OK to be religious, just not OK to be pushing ignorance in science class.

Disclaimer: I’m not religious, but I do have a philosophy I go by.

Dr. Tyson Hour

A proposal for dedicating a moment of our day for the betterment of all.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can’t get enough of this guy. I mean set aside the memes for a while, I mean actually listen to him and appreciate the fact that unlike many others in the scientific and even skeptic communities, he prides himself as an educator first. You can sense with every word that he values knowledge for the sake of knowledge more than anything else.

From hence forth I’m going to dedicate one hour of each day (may not be a contiguous hour, but will be 60 minutes total) for Tyson Time.

Here’s a small sample to get you started…

Skip to 15:30 for Tyson Time.

Skip to 11:30 for Tyson Time.

Site of the Week: Richard Nakka

Richard Nakka’s Experimental Rocketry Web Site is a place I came across a year ago and found fascinating. This is one of the most comprehensive web sites on amateur rocketry and rocket experimentation in that it covers calculation, design and recovery and virtually every step inbetween.

Richard Nakka's Experimental Rocketry Web Site

What first caught my attention were designs for a series of rocket engines, which cover everything on the dynamics at work. This really is a go-to site for anyone interested in designing, building and testing rockets.

What’s 29,566 x 14,321 pixels and 91.25Mb in size?

Why it’s the biggest digital image I’ve ever opened on a computer, the biggest and most beautiful image of a nebula and the highest resolution photo (even better than the Hubble Deep Field) I’ve seen. Warning: don’t download and open the image if you’re on a slow computer. Even on my AMD Turion II P546 dual core 2.4Ghz laptop with 6Gigs of RAM took 20 seconds to open it in IrfanView.

Eta Carinae Nebula

Granted this isn’t the largest image ever on the Internet. That honor probably belongs to the version of the Blue Marble adapted by IIPImage. But the nebula is still more attractive.

Site of the Week: Concept ships

From the retro-futuristic to the truly beyond-this-world artistry exploring design concepts for spaceships and other craft. This is an amazing collection of beautiful creations by extremely talented artists.

An online animated spaceship and experimental aircraft art magazine

The site is rather packed with a lot of multimedia so it may take a while to load even on broadband. But it’s well worth the wait.

In addition to science fiction works by authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, it’s visionary imagery such as these that inspired my thirst for space.