This Forum

The never ending story of this forum:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124008307

Also, thank you, Dean Rowe, for posts that consistently rise above the noise.

Absolutely. I often think this forum is pointless, because as the article says: "...facts may not be as important as one's beliefs. "

On the other hand, I have learned more of the science thanks to Dean and a few others here.

This might have been good enough when we were living in small groups with primitive technology and Nature was eating us as often as we were eating it, but now we make a BIG dent in the planet's systems. Oh, I forgot, you don't think we are capable of such grandiose effects. Too bad the piece didn't really emphasize the way beliefs tend to hang together into coherent wholes, and not be evenly assorted across populations. Evolution tends to eliminate individuals with faulty cognition, or entire species.

Jess Tauber