Seed Media Group

Search this blog

Profile

profile.jpg 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.



Bloggers Unite - Blog Action Day

DonorsChoose Blogger's Challenge




Election 2008




Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories

Blogroll

August 31, 2007

The Edge of Humanity

Category:

Lucy went on display today at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and there was no way I could resist paying her a visit. I went in to the exhibit with very mixed feelings about it. A lot of...

Read on »

August 30, 2007

Wells on Moths: A Case Study In Misrepresentation

Category:

Michael Majerus has spent countless hours conducting research on the Peppered Moth (Biston betularia). He's observed them in the field, bred them in the lab, watched them get eaten by things, kept careful count of the things that he's...

Read on »

California: The Saga Continues

Category:

From the archives - the following article was originally posted on my old blog back in August of 2005. For reasons that will become clear shortly, I've been reposting this series of stories over here. This is the final...

Read on »

Still More on the California Creationist Lawsuit

Category:

From the archives - the following article was originally posted on my old blog back in August of 2005. For reasons that will become clear shortly, I've been reposting this series of stories over here. There's one more after...

Read on »

August 29, 2007

More on the California Creationist Lawsuit

Category:

From the archives - the following article was originally posted on my old blog back in August of 2005. For reasons that will become clear shortly, I'm going to repost this and a couple of follow-ups to the story...

Read on »

The Consequences of Creationism

Category:

From the archives - the following article was originally posted on my old blog back in August of 2005. For reasons that will become clear shortly, I'm going to repost this and a couple of follow-ups to the story...

Read on »

August 28, 2007

Chess and Artificial Intelligence

Category:

Daniel Dennett just wrote an article on chess-playing computers and Artificial Intelligence, and a few bloggers are already talking about it. I'm sort of surprised that the concept is getting so much attention. To me, the answer to the...

Read on »

Astroturfing To Protect Their Hidden Government Subsidies

Category:

...The complaints are really an admission that the billion dollar profits of the academic publishing industry are nothing more than a hidden government subsidy. Your tax dollars are used to conduct the research that is reported in the papers. Your tax dollars are used, in many cases, to pay for portions of the publication process. Your tax dollars are...

Read on »

August 24, 2007

How Many More Will Die to Protect America's Tax Cuts?

Category:

Most of yesterday's news about Iraq focused - to the extent that today's media can be said to "focus" on anything - on our President's latest inept attempt to explain why we need to keep troops in Iraq, and...

Read on »

August 22, 2007

Iraq = Vietnam, According to White House

Category:

In yet another moment guaranteed to make you wonder if there's been a mass defection of writers from the Daily Show to the White House, President Bush is expected to argue later today that the war in Iraq is,...

Read on »

August 21, 2007

Poetry and Motion

Category:

It's good to take the train every now and then. It lets you get a taste of something special, something that you don't find much any more. Modern air travel sucks the soul out of the journey. It takes...

Read on »

August 20, 2007

New York Pictures

Category:

Here's a few pictures from the New York event. I might post a couple of more in the next couple of days, but most of the pictures I took are really similar to the stuff some of my other...

Read on »

New York, New York

Category:

If you read the blogs here, you probably noticed the lack of posts on Friday and Saturday, but you definitely shouldn't tale that to mean that things were quiet in the Scienceblogs world. A large group of Sciblings got...

Read on »

August 17, 2007

Continuing Adventures in Airport Hell.

Category:

They've got a while to go before they catch up to Southwest in my personal pantheon of airline demons, but ATA seems to be getting set to give it a real good try. When we woke up - already...

Read on »

A Google News Juxtaposition

Category:

Every now and then, the placement of stories on Google News can be slightly amusing. Here's two stories that turned up, one on top of the other, this morning. It's always nice to know that we're getting the important...

Read on »

"Customer Service" at Southwest Airlines.

Category:

After about five minutes, the flight attendant got back on the intercom and apologized for rushing us. It seemed that the plane wasn't actually quite ready to go just yet, because there were still a couple of empty seats up front that they needed to fill before we could leave. Two empty seats on the whole darn airplane, and wouldn't you know it, they were both in the cockpit. We finally got in to Chicago's Midway Airport at 8:09 pm. Our connecting flight had departed at 8:00. And that's where our fun with Southwest really began.

Read on »

August 16, 2007

A couple of bird pictures

Category:

Here are a couple of pictures I took of a Great Frigate Bird (Fregata minor) that was cruising around near Flat Island, just off Kailua, Oahu back in March....

Read on »

The "Sensible Centrists"

Category:

Paul has a post up with a really great political cartoon. I just printed it and stuck it on my refrigerator. You should, too....

Read on »

August 15, 2007

Planning for Stormy Weather

Category:

Right now, I'm sitting under one of the outer rain bands associated with newly-formed Tropical Storm Erin. We're seeing a moderately heavy thunderstorm right now. The rain's coming down fast and heavy. There's a lot of lightning right now,...

Read on »

I guess he did know what would happen in Iraq.

Category:

Deadeye Dick Cheney, talking about why we shouldn't invade Iraq: That was back in 1994. It's sad how right - and prophetic - he was ten years before the big screw-up started....

Read on »

August 12, 2007

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...

Category:

It seems like just yesterday that AT&T was telling us that their decision to silence Pearl Jam's critique of President Bush during their webcast of the Lollapalooza concert was an "unfortunate mistake" that shouldn't have happened and wouldn't happen again. Hopefully, it won't. But based on the past behavior of AT&T, I'm not making any large bets on that.

Read on »

August 9, 2007

New Fossils and Our Understanding of Human Evolution

Category:

There are a lot of news articles out today that feature some just-published research on early human research. The research itself - a paper in the journal Nature by a team of scientists including the mother-daughter combinationon of Meave...

Read on »

August 8, 2007

How Can They Do That To Their Children?

Category:

I accidentally heard a very disturbing conversation. A young boy, probably five or six years old, was asking his mother about the moon. She proceeded to explain to him how the moon got here. It was created by God, she told him, on the fourth day.

Read on »

Today's Major Schmuck: Mitt Romney

Category:

Today, Mitt "I Like To Veto, Veto" Romney outdid himself in the "things candidates say" category of hysterical stupidity. After Mitt called for a "surge of support" for the war in Iraq at an Iowa campaign stop today, he...

Read on »

It's Called "Political Cover"

Category:

The ones who voted for it can go back home and tell folks that they're hard on the terrorists, and are willing to make the tough sacrifices (like your freedoms) that are needed to fight it. The ones who voted against it can go home and tell folks that they tried, but the Republicans were just too tough for them. The cowards can go home and tell the left that they didn't vote for it and the right that they didn't vote against it. And the leadership can breathe a sigh of relief, because the administration can't accuse them of being obstructionists when matters of vital security.

Read on »

August 7, 2007

Christian Soldiers

Category:

In the news today, we've got two more examples of inappropriate behavior conducted by Evangelical Christians in the military. Both of the stories are very scary, for different reasons. The first story comes courtesy of Ed Brayton. He reports...

Read on »

August 6, 2007

Dividing With God

Category:

Citizens of the great state of Texas, where I now live, are very proud of their state. Proud enough, in fact, that they've got their very own state pledge of allegiance. We found out about this a few months...

Read on »

More On Political Speech in Uniform

Category:

John Lilyea of "This Ain't Hell" just left a comment on yesterday's post about political speech in uniform. He brings up a couple of points that I'd like to address in some detail. First, here's Lilyea's comment in full:...

Read on »

A Hint of the Mental Health Problems to Come.

Category:

So far, there hasn't been a lot of good news for the US Military in recently published scientific papers this month. A few days ago, there was the JAMA paper that looked at the increase in child abuse and...

Read on »

August 5, 2007

Political Speech In Uniform

Category:

Right wing blogs of various types are beating drums on behalf of an as-yet-unidentified US Army soldier who got into a bit of a confrontation with the moderator at a YearlyKos panel discussion. The soldier was a sergeant in...

Read on »

August 4, 2007

End Up Like A Dog That's Been Beat Too Much.

Category:

From Paul Kane's column in today's WaPo: Throughout the spring newly empowered Democrats watched their approval ratings plummet, with a liberal base upset at their inability to stop the Iraq war and independents complaining that not enough meaningful legislation...

Read on »

The Big Difference Between Creationism and Intelligent Design

Category:

Denyse O'Leary notes some of the differences between creationists and Intelligent Design proponents: Then the creationists in turn help the ID theorists by making clear what creationism is and what it is not. Creationism is about the BIBLE, see?...

Read on »

August 3, 2007

God, I Love New York.

Category:

Only in New York could something like this happen: A man in a Revolutionary War-era submarine was cited by the U.S. Coast Guard for drifting into a security zone, and for unsafe sailing in New York's East River near...

Read on »

A quick dose of accidental humor.

Category:

Today's dose of accidental humor comes (like most, these days) from our Commander-In-Chief. Today, while meeting with his counterterrorism team, he said: We take a clear-eyed view of the world. The people on this team, assembled in this building...

Read on »

Behe on Colbert

Category:

Need I say more?...

Read on »

August 1, 2007

Another note from the homefront

Category:

Retired army General Barry McCaffrey testified before the House Armed Services Committee yesterday: No one is actually at war except the Armed Forces, their US civilian contractors, and the CIA. There is only rhetoric and posturing from the rest...

Read on »

Casualties on the Homefront

Category:

There's a paper in today's edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association that examines the impact of combat deployments on child abuse and neglect. The authors found that the overall rate of abuse and neglect increased by more than 40% when a parent was deployed in support of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. That result might not be very surprising, but some of the details were - and all of it is alarming.

Read on »

Search All Blogs

Blogs in the Network

Top Five: Most Active

Top Science Stories

powered by SEED - seedmagazine.com