Snow depth

Last year, Environment Canada predicted that this winter would be a relatively long and cold one. We have La Nina, a cooling of the Pacific Ocean’s surface waters, that generally goes with this pattern. It’s certainly shaping up to give us a lot of snow.

The depth of color here shows the snow depth.

Who believes in God?

In one of the comments on a discussion thread in Pharyngula, Steve M. said:

More and more I think that religion and belief in a diety in general is simply a desire to remain a child. A child with a loving parent that will never die, will tell you what is right and wrong, hug you when you’re sad, tell you fanciful stories of how thunder is angels bowling and rain is god’s tears etc.

Atheists have simply “grown up” and decided to face the world like an adult. To reason what is right and wrong, to find out what really makes thunder and rain, and to find others to whom to give their love.

This artist [under discussion] is still a child (regardless of his true age) who can’t imagine what it would be like to be an adult without an eternal parent to watch over him and give him everlasting unconditional love. That is what he means when he says, “I don’t think atheists can even know love”. To him, love is what comes from his parents, not an emotion he may feel for another. So he imagines that without god he would not know love, just like a 5 year old would imagine his parents leaving him.

Time to grow up and realize that God really is just Santa Claus for children who only think they are adults.

UPDATE: I now have a poem to go with this:

Santa loves me, this I know;
For my Clement tells me so.
I am meek for he sees all;
I’ll get gifts if I don’t fall.

What to tell students about evolution

Greg Laden’s Blog has an excellent article, “Teachers Under Fire,” about resources for teaching evolution. I particularly like one of the comments from a former teacher in the United Kingdom:

The correct response to the intervention of any of the brainwashed is: “Either you are parrotting someone eles’s lies, or you are, yourself, lying.”

Point them at all the avilable resources, and remind them that at least 99.999% odf all biologists, and 99.9% of all scientists, on the basis of huge amounts of evidence, are convinced that evolution, as presently understood (and that bit is important) is the only available explanation that fits the known facts.

“If you have some previously-unknown facts that upset this view, we’d be VERY happy to hear them - but, be warned, we already know that every so-called “point” raised by the cretinists (including the DI) is false.”
—G. Tingey