Mike Dunford is a graduate student in the Department of Zoology at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, where he studies evolution. He's also a contributer to The Pandas Thumb. As is the case with everyone else here, his opinions are his own, and do not necessarily represent those of any organization he is affiliated with.
April 25, 2007
From last night's Daily Show - it's right at the end of the video embedded below the fold. McCain: You tell any enemy when you're leaving, and they'll say, "Right, fine, we'll just wait until you leave and we'll...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 2:22 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 24, 2007
My wife, it would seem, pulled a fast one on me. She was released from her unit in Iraq a few days ago, but she didn't mention that to me. Instead, she just came home. Around 2:45 this afternoon,...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 12:28 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 23, 2007
Over the weekend, another "Egnor" post appeared on the Discovery Institute blog. This one addresses a post I wrote two weeks ago discussing the "Framing Science" article. In his "response," "Egnor" manages to completely distort pretty much everything about...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 6:08 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Reality called. He's wondering if you're ever going to get back in touch. Earlier today, the President met with Gen. Petraeus (the commander of all forces in Iraq) in the Oval Office. The media was there for the photo...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 4:08 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The theme for today is "accidental humor." In that category, we have a potential television entry later on today, a product that gives new meaning to "invigorating showers," the Kremlin trying to prove that they've got less of a...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 3:47 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 22, 2007
This is a repost. Specifically, it's the second of four posts from my old blog about the effects of an invasive insect on an endemic tree in the Hawaiian Islands. I moved the first in the series here last...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 5:25 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 20, 2007
At this point, it's really hard to judge which particular moment during the Gonzales hearing was actually the funniest. I sure can't - so I'm going to let you decide.
Posted by Mike Dunford at 6:10 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
. . . (for someone who is savaging atheism on behalf of religion, D'Souza displays a remarkable lack of intellectual honesty). I'm not going to duplicate Paul's efforts there. Instead, I'm just going to try to answer - again - the question that D'Souza keeps asking:
Posted by Mike Dunford at 7:24 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 19, 2007
Watching Keith Olbermann tonight, I learned that Karl Rove said something nauseatingly dishonest when asked about the decision to go to war in Iraq. When asked whose idea it was to launch a preemptive war in Iraq, Rove replied...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 10:09 PM • 30 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A word of advice for White House staffers: when John Stewart has to take a second or two to tell viewers that he's not making things up, you might have a serious problem: Stewart: "So far, at least five...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 5:10 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 18, 2007
A minute or two ago, I posted this with some commentary, but I just decided to pull my own comments from this - it's so surreal that there's really nothing that can be said. I received the email quoted...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 10:40 PM • 22 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
...To describe that particular argument as asinine would be an understatement of truly monumental proportions; to call D'Souza a "ghoul," as Myers does, is an insult to the mindless undead. Their vitality-impaired condition may have stripped them of the ability to think, but they don't suck the logic and rationality from everyone in a ten mile radius.
Posted by Mike Dunford at 7:10 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This is a repost: Unlike some of the folks here, there really aren't that many of my articles over at the old blog that I thought were worth bringing over here. This is one of the exceptions. It's the...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 4:22 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I took a break from doing the morning roundup yesterday, but everybody's favorite least-read morning "things that I don't have time to really blog about so I'm going to blog about in one fell swoop" post returns today. Today's...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 3:28 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 17, 2007
(I'm not totally sure that he's right, either.) Yesterday, after looking at the first few posts that discussed things like gun control following the VT shootings, Chad put up a post that semi-politely suggested that this might be a...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 1:44 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
One of my favorite teaching tools has always been the "compare and contrast" assignment. If you've gone through enough school to be able to read this post, you know what I'm talking about. Take two books, or essays, or...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 3:33 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 16, 2007
How, in good conscience, could we possibly be expected to shut up right now?
Posted by Mike Dunford at 9:45 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Rob Knop just wrote an article arguing against new gun control laws. He did this hours after someone went nuts at Virginia Tech and shot a whole lot of people. He did so in the full knowledge that many...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 5:43 PM • 60 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
...since the weekend, we've got some interesting new research on sleep problems related to PTSD, a truly superb Bill Mahr piece on "elitism," Rob Knop on gun control, the White House attempt to redefine "partisan" to exclude themselves, and a brief lesson on the problems that can arise -particularly in the bathroom- when water ...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 4:51 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 13, 2007
Dr. Michael Egnor, creationist neurosurgeon and Discovery Institute blogger, has a problem. Either he hasn't figured out that we're way past April Fools Day, or he has just managed to produce what might just be the single dumbest anti-evolution...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 7:12 PM • 45 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The big news here today is all about evolution - we've got the rhesus monkey genome and Tyrannosaurus rex protein sequences published. There's also some cool science policy stuff to look at - there's information on abstinence-only sex ed...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 5:15 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
In what is undoubtedly one of the more spectacular cases of bad staff work in recent political history, Rudy Giuliani flunked the "Mr. Candidate, what's the going price for a gallon of milk?" pop quiz. (His estimates for the...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 4:21 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 12, 2007
...I'm writing today for two reasons: to thank you for your support of emergency war funding legislation that included a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq and to ask you to take an additional step and require that any additional funding for the current conflict be paid for immediately, through a tax increase.
Posted by Mike Dunford at 7:06 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I took a stroll over to the Campus Center here at UH Manoa a couple of hours ago, and was treated to an interesting sight. UH has been engaged in discussions with the Navy for a couple of years...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 5:57 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
. . .a new local invasive species threat, something more on the troop extension (and some gratuitous mocking of a general), and a local lesson on the difference between "political expression" and "being a flaming moron."
Posted by Mike Dunford at 4:27 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I wrote a little bit about this earlier today, but I was a little too angry at the time to write anything meaningful or coherent. I'm still pretty angry, but I'm going to take another swing at it anyway....
Posted by Mike Dunford at 5:41 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Kurt Vonnegut passed away today at the age of 84. As John Stewart put it at the start of the interview embedded below, he's the man who made adolescence bearable for a lot of us. The best Vonnegut quote...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 2:15 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 11, 2007
The more you look for news, the more you find, I guess. It's another morning with a lot of interesting stuff happening. In the quick roundup/commentary today, we've got John McCain's brains continuing to liquify and escape, a really...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 5:28 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
In a just-called Pentagon press conference, Defense Secretary Gates just announced that tours of duty for all Army soldiers in Iraq are being extended from 12 to 15 months. Speaking as someone who has an immediate family member deployed,...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 4:46 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I know what I feel, and I don't like it. I don't know what to say, and I don't like that, either. I've been trying to write this post for two hours and three beers now, and I've spent...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 6:29 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 10, 2007
I've got no problem with the idea of changing facts, as long as it's done properly. To change a fact properly, what you do is work. You come up with a plan, you work very hard, and if you are both good and lucky you might just be able to get reality to turn out the way you wanted. But that's the hard way.
Posted by Mike Dunford at 8:44 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
. . .Also on the political front, there's more to be said about framing science, the diplomatic messing around with the IPCC report, and how those two concepts relate to each other. All is not gloomy in the world of science today, though, because Jake Young found one of scientific papers that make you really want to read the materials and methods section - a real-time brain imaging study of ejaculation. . .
Posted by Mike Dunford at 4:17 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Bill Dembski says that "framing" is bad. Good lord, I feel like I've been hit over the head with a two-ton block of solid irony.
Posted by Mike Dunford at 2:45 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I just found the time to read the two different versions of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II's summary for policymakers, and I'm pissed as hell. I'd heard the reports about the epic battle between...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 2:31 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 9, 2007
During a weekend that was marked by the release of another of the IPCC's summaries for policymakers, the hottest topic here at Scienceblogs was (still) the Nisbet/Mooney "Framing Science" paper. (It's also a bit of a water-cooler debate topic...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 9:45 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
It's another one of those days - there's just too much out there to blog about, and not enough time to do the blogging. It's partly my fault this time, of course. I've got this bad habit of taking...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 3:30 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 5, 2007
The latest issue of the journal Science includes a policy forum piece written by Sciencebloggers Chris Mooney (The Intersection) and Matt Nisbet (Framing Science). In the article, they argue that scientists do not, for the most part, use effective...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 5:35 PM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 4, 2007
President Bush today continued his efforts to extort money from Congress by holding the American Military hostage. In a speech made to soldiers at Fort Irwin, California, Bush stayed on his basic message: give me the money with no...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 8:24 PM • 28 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Creationist brain surgeon Michael Egnor has been busy over the last couple of days, posting first a "response" to Orac's challenge then a "response" to Mark ChuCarroll's repeated attempts to explain the concept of tautology to him. There have...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 3:30 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Update - I've written a second post on this topic in response to the President's speech at Fort Irwin earlier today. Mr. President, meet the Constitution. Constitution, I'd like to introduce you to President George W. Bush. It's been a...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 3:58 AM • 176 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 3, 2007
Senator (and Presidential candidate) John McCain toured parts of Baghdad the other day. He wasn't alone, of course. He had a few friends with him. Senator Lindsey Graham was there, too. So were Representatives Mike Pence and Rick Renzi....
Posted by Mike Dunford at 4:04 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Another gem from the West Wing - this time from the season finale from Season 3: TOBY: He's at the Yankee game right now? SAM: Local news covered it. He said this was how ordinary Americans got their entertainment....
Posted by Mike Dunford at 12:57 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 2, 2007
The Supreme Court of the United States has, in a 5-4 decision (pdf), just ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency's decision not to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the clean air act was, "arbitrary, capricious, or otherwise...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 1:32 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 1, 2007
Me: "It's about a DVD" Child #1: "What gender is it." Me: "I wasn't aware that DVD's have a gender." Child #1: "The gender. You know, is it comedy, or drama, or action?"...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 10:17 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I really, really, should have guessed....
Posted by Mike Dunford at 4:23 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
