If you're interested in the new type of matter, here's the post by
Carl Franzen of TPM; it's not a bad job, and Carl has finally learned not to say "Dog particle" or whatever he used to say. Read it for the basics if you're interested in the physics.
Read the comments if you're interested in religion as a force for opposing science. By no means are all the commenters radical, but even the ones who are not, irritated me today. Here's an excerpt from a comment; I'll show mercy and not identify the commenter:
...
... 2. There does seem to be a major issue in the world today of a lack of ethics and morals. Where do those come from lacking religion? (recognizing that religious people are pretty bad as well) ...
...
Oh, yeah, I know what s/he means. Like the other day, there was this woman in Ireland, not Irish and not Catholic but Hindu, pregnant, who had the misfortune to miscarry while in Ireland. Any Irish woman would have known that miscarrying while in Ireland is both a sin and a crime. Fortunately, the doctors at the hospital were trained in "ethics and morals" because they were not "lacking religion"; they knew the fetus was beyond any hope of survival, so they stood watching, waiting for the fetal heartbeat to stop, while the mother, in agony, begged them to terminate the pregnancy, only to be told "This is a Catholic hospital" by the docs, who stood there watching the fetal heartbeat monitor as the mother... slowly... horribly...
excruciatingly*... died of septicemia. It was a good thing those docs had "ethics and morals" and weren't "lacking religion"; otherwise, that 31-year-old woman might have lived a long, possibly happy, possibly productive life. And that would have been a tragedy.
Here ends today's lesson in "ethics and morals" from people not "lacking religion." Please be generous with your offering when the plate comes your way...
* Word chosen quite deliberately.
....Reminds me of Wallace Stevens: 'Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame. Take the moral law and make a nave of it and from the nave build haunted heaven.'
ReplyDeleteA High-Toned Old Christian Woman, Harmonium (1923).
Heh... my thesis advisor was always telling me to read Wallace Stevens; maybe now I'll finally get around to it!
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