The geology of ancient oxygen

Via Highly Allochthonous comes this fascinating account of how the air we breathe became breathable. Being a science geek, I can’t help being fascinated by little details like the following:

In today’s oxidising atmosphere, when minerals like pyrite (an iron sulphide) and uraninite (uranium oxide) and siderite (iron carbonate) are exposed by erosion, they are quickly broken down. When you look at very old sedimentary sequences in Australia, South Africa and Canada, however, you sometimes find rounded clasts of pyrite and uraninite that have clearly been eroded and transported some distance by rivers without being altered. This can only happen in low-oxygen conditions (less than 1/1000th of the present atmospheric concentration of O2).

Of course, as an ex-creationist, I also can’t help remembering that, according to traditional creationism, those strata were laid down by the Flood, and contain the bones and stones of the things that existed prior to the sixth chapter of Genesis. Which means that there was virtually no breathable oxygen in the Garden of Eden. Nor would a Flood have done much good.–after all, if you’ve learned to get along without oxygen during the good weather, you’re not going to drown no matter how much it rains.

Not exactly current, but still good

At the suggestion of ausyoyo, I went looking for articles by Sam Harris on witchcraft, and I found a good one. Imagine we lived in the early 16th century, when witches (instead of atheists) were the popular scapegoats for everything that went wrong in life. What if you were in the tiny minority of people who didn’t believe in witchcraft?

If your name is Sam Harris, you may produce two fatuous volumes entitled The End of Magic and Letter to a Wiccan Nation. Daniel Dennett would then grapple helplessly with the origins of sorcery in his aptly named, Breaking the Spell. Richard Dawkins — whose bias against witches, warlocks, and even alchemists has long been known — will follow these books with an arrogant screed entitled, The Witch Delusion. And finally Christopher Hitchens will deliver a poisonous eructation at book-length in The Devil is Not Great.

What sort of criticism would these misguided authors likely encounter?

He then proceeds to take critical reviews of recent anti-Christian books, and substitutes witchcraft for Christianity, Devil for God, and skeptic for atheist, to see if it changes the logic or relevance of the arguments in any way. Guess what?

A great article, and highly recommended reading.

Pretty please?

After ORU faculty members passed a “no confidence” vote against Richard Roberts, son of ORU founder Oral Roberts, the beleaguered university president is asking for second chance.

Richard Roberts told professors Wednesday that if he stepped down now, the public would think he was admitting to wrongdoing, said Donald Vance, a professor of biblical languages and literature, who attended the meeting.

Translation: I haven’t done anything wrong, and I promise I’ll do better. Now will you please stop trying to find out what I did?