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14 February 2013
The Discovery Institute feels sorry for my students
Periodically, I get requests to use my images in publications. It’s very easy to find my photos, because I publish a lot of them on this blog, or on my NOVA website, and they always rise to the top of a Google image search. I got a distinctive one on Monday: Dear Mr. Bentley, My boss Dr. Stephen C. Meyer at the Discovery Institute is finishing up a book that discusses …
17 May 2011
More garbage about impending disasters
Hot on the heels of my discussion of yesterday’s “end is nigh” prophecy, here’s another one, an example that more plausibly wears the cloak of pseudoscience. A cousin sent me a link to this video via Facebook, and asked me what I thought. I sat through it (ten minutes of my life I’ll never get back), and now you can too: [youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jpMmjvMwvw”] If you don’t have the patience to …
16 May 2011
Five days until… nothing much happens
Outside a metro station in DC a couple of months ago, I noticed a group of people with signs, pamphlets, and earnest expressions. They were advertising the “good news” that the end of the world was soon: May 21, in fact. They’ve been getting some more attention since, and since May 21 is this coming Saturday, I figured it’s about time I wrote it up. According to this particular sect …
4 January 2011
Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, by Martin Gardner
Yesterday I mentioned some books that I had sampled on the topic of geologic time over the holiday break. Another book I read in my hammock in the Gulf of Honduras was Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, by Martin Gardner. As with Demon-Haunted World, I got the recommendation to read Gardner from a podcast that I listen to called The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe. When Martin …
Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, by Martin Gardner
Yesterday I mentioned some books that I had sampled on the topic of geologic time over the holiday break. Another book I read in my hammock in the Gulf of Honduras was Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, by Martin Gardner. As with Demon-Haunted World, I got the recommendation to read Gardner from a podcast that I listen to called The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe. When Martin …
Callan Bentley is Associate Professor of Geology at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. For his work on this blog, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers recognized him with the James Shea Award. He has also won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, and the Biggs Award for Excellence in Geoscience Teaching from the Geoscience Education Division of the Geological Society of America. In previous years, Callan served as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine, President of the Geological Society of Washington and President the Geo2YC division of NAGT.