The Questioning Librarian

I recently finished David Goodstein's Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil . It made for a few more sleepless nights as a whole, to say the least. It was more technical than other pieces I've read on peak oil, with most of the book being devoted to the technical aspects of engines (more than I wanted to know) with the first and last parts of the book looking at first Hubbert's peak, then ending with alternative sources of energy. For those out of the loop, Hubbert's peak was developed by a geophysicist M. King Hubbert, working for Shell Oil, in the 1950's when it seemed that America's oil boom would never end, with frequent discoveries in Texas, etc. He correctly predicted peak oil for the continental U.S. (Alaska excluded), in which new discoveries peaked in the 1950's and peak production was reached in the early 1970's, declining perpetually afterward. His model has been used in countries and, more importantly, for the entire world. We know, of cour...

Well it seems that, once again, I don't have to search very hard to find something to write about. Take Chris Taylor, for instance, once a teacher in the great state of Texas who decided to spill his guts on Twitter, perhaps being overly-burdened by the fact that he never made these beliefs known while he was in the classroom. After proclaiming his desire to go back to teaching, he promises to "shove my beliefs down the throats of my stds." Just in case you were wondering, he means students, not STDs. I'm not concerned with some of the political statements that follow, about Israel re-annexing the Gaza Strip and the need for Canadians to listen to Beck and Limbaugh to become smarter (up for debate in their own right, but not my concern here; everyone is entitled to their own political opinion, no matter how uninformed and ignorant it may be). No, my concern is with his blatantly evolution-denying posts (well, in fairness, I'm concerned about most of them, but th...

I place a great value on education and real learning (not indoctrination); it is a process that has had a great impact upon my own life and the lives of many I know. There is a joy in the discovery and discussion of new ideas, facts and thoughts. It has, truly, the power to change lives, to liberate minds and to truly revolutionize the world...if only you let it! The process of education has, for me, been not only a life-changing, mind-liberating process, but it has been the process of helping to give me the tools that I need to get me through life; not mere information, but the tools of learning. These are the basic devices that any educated person needs; good reading skills, good writing skills, the ability to sort out useful information from nonsense in all its guises. Perhaps most important of all is the humbling realization of my college years; the fact of the matter is, the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. Every fact illuminates three further areas in which ...

One of the newer features on the Answers in Genesis website purports to explain the phenomena of ice ages (or, in their view, the single ice age allowed by their reading of Scripture). Just like any good creationist argument, they see a gap in the understanding of modern science and rush to fill it in a perfect "God of the Gaps" moment. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/ee2/ice-age Pointing out that so-called "secular" science doesn't have a good mechanism to explain the "on-off" switch of repeated ice ages, the creationists throw the Bible as a wedge to get into the door, positing that the aftermath of the Flood is a good mechanism to explain the single ice age that they accept as having occurred. The Flood, as one might expect, put a lot of moisture into the air which allowed for the formation of great glaciers, and the tectonic shifts that accompanied the aftermath of the Flood served as the actual trigger for an ice age, which convenient...

I'm a glutton for punishment. I was at the library a while ago and, looking at the cart of books being sold, I found the Revised & Expanded Answers Book , with one of the authors none other than Mr. Ham. Immediately excited at the prospect of several hundred pages of his comedy stylings (and those of the odious Safarti) I purchased it for about fifty cents, which means I got a lot of intellectual contortions for my money. Quickly into the book, we hit on the real reason why creationists like Ham don't accept evolution; the alleged consequences of the theory. A nice illustration sums it up; with "Creation" at the foundation, we are shown a wholesome society with "God's Word", "Laws", "Marriage", "Standards" and "Meaning of Life" ascending from that. But when we have "Evolution" at the foundation (cue ominous music and lightning) we have listed "Man's Opinion", "Lawlessness", ...

Listening to NPR this morning while I was getting ready to leave, I was struck by the feature story that I was hearing over the airwaves, about the intersection of climate change and religion in Kiribati. In this little nation, where the overwhelming majority are deeply religious, many of the 33 islands are but six and a half feet above sea level while the most modest projections for sea level rise are around three feet according to IPCC estimates (which, according to the book I'm in the process of reading by Peter Ward, failed to take into account several factors which makes this estimate moot anyway; the actual rise in this century will be much higher, followed by endless centuries of rise). But even in this nation, surely a sign of the grim reality of climate change, as certain freshwater sources become increasingly saline and undrinkable, deniers exist. One interviewed man based his opposition on the Biblical Flood story of Noah in which, after the Ark landed on dry land, say...

I was emailed a link to this story from the far-right rubbish mill known as World Net Daily. A bastion of birthers, Obama-haters of all spread, evolution and climate-deniers, and just right-wing nutties in general, the column I was given a link to attacked Michelle Obama's Healthy-Eating Initiative, her attempt to encourage parents to make healthy choices in the foods that they feed their children. http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=261065 Implied in the title is that, of course, the First Lady doesn't really care about children, her push for healthy eating is simply yet another "liberal do-gooder" attempt to control every aspect of all of our lives. It faults her for not tackling the, very real, problem of sex trafficking and sex slavery, instead using her position to "bully restaurants" into serving smaller portion sizes. What, and no similar outcry that former First Lady Laura Bush didn't speak out against sex slavery, instead ...