Answering Genesis: "Hiding in the Light"

This is another very "observational science" based episode of Cosmos, so Answers in Genesis really didn't have a huge amount of material to whine about. So, instead they went for their usual fall-back strategy of whining about abiogenesis, whining about the big bang theory, playing the victim and, of course, "it's just historical science! That means I can reject it out of hand and ignore any evidence supporting it!"

I was honestly expecting to not have a lot of a fun with this, but hey, let's have some fun!

Answering Genesis: "A Sky Full of Ghosts"

Yay! Finally caught up with the Cosmos series! And the latest episode was great for a simple reason: It presented a pretty simple and obvious reason why the universe cannot be only 6000 years old, as predicted by biblical creationists, giving Cosmos its first direct attack on young earth Creationists. And boy, did it get Answers in Genesis mad.

The episode itself was pretty interesting, though I'd hoped it had talked more about relativity. Relativity is pretty awesome, but the stuff about black holes was also pretty interesting, though I'd hoped it would talk about Hawking radiation a bit too. But oh well. One of the slightly disappointing things about the new Cosmos series is that the episodes themselves are only 45 minutes long without ads, while the original series had hour long episodes. So there's a wee bit that needs to be trimmed and it does show sometimes.

But that's beside the point. Let's talk about creationists!

Answering Genesis: "When Knowledge Conquered Fear"

I have to admit, the first time I saw this episode, I really didn't see much in there that would object creationists. It pretty much just talks about how comets were originally seen as harbingers of destruction, then explains how Halley, Newton and a few others discovered what they are, how gravity works and some other really cool science. I forgot though, creationists are offended by pretty much any science that doesn't apparently confirm their interpretation of Genesis. So naturally, they got pretty annoyed at this one too.

Why?

Please note: there are several instances of objectionable language in this episode of Cosmos.

... Oh. Wait, what?

Answering Genesis: "Some of the Things That Molecules Do"

The second episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson's Cosmos was considered almost entirely with the subject of biological evolution; naturally, this is not a subject that creationists are happy with, and Answers in Genesis's review of the episode shows that. But, despite everything, Darwin's theory is one of the most well understood and well tested theory in all of science. The only reason people don't accept it, as far as I'm aware, is because they either don't actually understand what the theory is (hence my earlier blog post on it), or they simply refuse to, usually for religious reasons, and can only do this by "interpreting" evidence differently.

I want to make a short disclaimer here first though. I'm not a biologist. My majors were physics and maths, and I did my utmost best to avoid biology at university. I'm not entirely sure why, but hey, what can you do. So my understanding of some of the principles of biology are flawed and I might well make mistakes. Please, please, don't take those as mistakes in the theory of evolution. It's almost certainly a mistake in my own understanding.

But enough of that. Let's get into the review!

Answering Genesis: "Standing Up in the Milky Way"

As most people are probably decently aware, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is currently airing a rebooting of Carl Sagan's famous Cosmos series. As someone who's very interested in science, loves learning about where we came from and how the universe works, I was very pleased to hear this and have been watching it and, for the most part, thoroughly enjoying it. If you haven't seen it yet, or Carl Sagan's original series, I highly recommend it. It's very educational, brings up a lot of very interesting science, and has a lot of interesting and deep thoughts on where we came from and our place in the cosmos.

Naturally though, seeing as a lot of the topic is the scientific understanding of our past, this made a lot of creationists, well, not very happy. Answers in Genesis has been posting a series with their reviews of the Cosmos series, so I want to take this time to look at their arguments, analyse them and, well, defend the Cosmos against them.

So! Let's begin!

Recipe: Single serve apple crumble

I had a few comments intrigued about a Facebook picture I put up last night of my dessert that I cooked up from an idea that I blatantly stole from MasterChef New Zealand.
Specifically, what the thing on the left is. The short answer is, an apple crumble.

It's a pretty terrible picture really.

Now, you probably have your own various fruit crumble recipes but this is the recipe I more or less used. If you think things can be done better, let me know, I might try it out or I might just change what I've written here. It's all a little sketchy because I was kinda making it up as I went along, but oh well, here goes!

This recipe is just for a single serve. Increase the recipe depending on how many people you want to serve and tada!

2012 Transit of Venus

So, most of you have probably heard vaguely of this, but I suspect most people don't actually know what's going to happen in a few weeks. So, I'll basically say this. The last transit of Venus you'll see in your lifetime (Unless you manage to live for the next 105 years) is going to happen on the 5th or 6th of June (Depending on your timezone). What does this mean? I'll go into more detail in a sec, but basically, the planet Venus is going to pass over the face of the sun, similar to a solar eclipse.