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Back from Montreal. I'm quite tired. But for a 24-hour flying visit, it was loads of fun: saw friends, ate wonderful food, unexpectedly bought clothes. (I'm not sure I needed a bias-cut Lycra-heavy dress with snug bodice, handkerchief hem, and inch-wide black and acid green stripes. But I have one now.)

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Happy Birthday to texaslawchick!

And happy belated birthday to javahousejihad -- this is what I get for being a lazy-ass and just relying on my friends list to notify me about birthdays.

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I guess that answers the question of "Do they turn the lights out at night here?" You know, if anybody was wondering.

Am I just the slowest writer ever, or what? It's taken me until now to produce a 1300-word article out of 8 pages of interview notes and the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine's website. I don't think this is entirely due to spending too much time on LJ.

On the bright side, I think the article reads pretty well. On the not-bright side, it's a quarter to 10 and I've been here 12 hours, so am I even able to judge at this point?

And I haven't had dinner, either. I think I deserve a taxi home.

I believe this is where raithen steps up and gives me the stern look. I deserve it, too.

hmmm.

fairoriana, funny coincidence after your post today:

No, I think the environmental costs of a religious worldview have to do with the habits of mind it encourages. Consider the tragicomic fiasco currently taking place in Kansas.

The hearings in Topeka, scheduled to last several days, are focusing on two proposals. The first recommends that students continue to be taught the theory of evolution because it is key to understanding biology. The other proposes that Kansas alter the definition of science, not limiting it to theories based on natural explanations.

"Not limiting it to theories based on natural explanations." This, my friends, is not "changing the definition" of science, it is abandoning science.

This is an extreme case, but once you start thinking of processes in the natural world as issuing from supernatural causes, you have left science behind. (The Kansas board, unlike many of their critics, if forthright about this.) And once you leave science behind -- along with the mental habits of rigor, constant testing and retesting, comparison against empirical evidence, openness to new explanations -- you don't get it back.

-- http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/5/16/163641/438