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.
January 31, 2008
Category: "Supporting" the Troops
It's safe to say that 2007 wasn't the best year of US Army 1st Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside's life. She started off the year with a bullet wound to her torso that damaged, among other things, one lung, her liver,...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 1:29 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 27, 2008
Category: Anti-Evolutionism
Very early this morning, the Discovery Institute's Rob Crowther posted an article over at the DI's "why's everyone always picking on us" blog. I'm not exactly sure what inspired Rob to get some work done late on a Saturday...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 2:51 PM • 31 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 24, 2008
Category: Biology
Over at Evolving Thoughts, John Wilkins has a post that criticizes a recently-published journal article. Normally, I agree with John - in fact, if it's true that the best measure of someone's intelligence is how often their views match...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 1:24 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 23, 2008
Category: Anti-Evolutionism
Over at the Discovery Institute's blog, Rob Crowther is playing up the "Dissent from Darwinism" list. Again. The list is nothing new. They've been working on it for several years now, and have managed to accumulate "over 700" signatures...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 3:00 PM • 117 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 19, 2008
Category: Truly Misc
Unlike many of the denizens of ScienceBlogs, I'm not in North Carolina for the 2nd Annual ScienceBlogging conference. I figured that any party that PZ Myers isn't at isn't worth attending. Now, I find that he's gone and snuck...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 10:52 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 18, 2008
Category: "Supporting" the Troops
Via today's Daily Kos Cheers and Jeers, I learned about a story in yesterday's Denver Post that details allegations that the Army is deploying troops who should be left at home (I missed Olbermann's take on it last night)....
Posted by Mike Dunford at 9:39 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Presidential
It's been a couple of days since I posted on the New Hampshire recount. At the time, I fully expected that I wouldn't do another post on the topic, but a couple of things that have happened since then...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 10:59 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 16, 2008
Category: Presidential
In the week since the New Hampshire voting, a number of people have become increasingly concerned about some of the things that they've seen in the results. Two things, in particular, have gotten a lot of attention. The first...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 1:57 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 14, 2008
Category: Science
Today's big science news is the Messenger flyby of Mercury. The Messenger spacecraft is scheduled to do a flyby of the planet about four hours from now, en route to it's final destination - Mercury - which it will...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 10:26 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 11, 2008
Category: Medicine
The Bush Administration has once again managed to reach new levels of self-parody. This time, the subject is stem cell research, and they've taken a position on funding new research that incorporates the classic Catch-22 problem. Sadly, though, the Catch-22 lacks anything that bears the faintest resemblance to humor when it's used to block funding for potentially lifesaving research.
Posted by Mike Dunford at 9:45 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 9, 2008
Category: 2008
As the dust settles in New Hampshire, people are starting to talk about the winners and losers, and what it all means in the grand scheme of the election. Some are looking for excuses reasons why Obama didn't actually...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 11:02 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 8, 2008
Category: Biology
Over the last couple of decades, a great deal of research has been done on the effect of global warming on coral reefs. The vast majority of that research has focused on the currently observed and potential future effects...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 3:56 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biology
Today is the 185th anniversary of Alfred Russel Wallace. He's best known, of course, as the young(ish) scientist who, while recovering from malaria somewhere in Indonesia, independently came up with the same ideas about evolution that Darwin had been...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 11:51 AM • 26 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 7, 2008
Category: Science, Policy, and Management
Chris Mooney's recently-published article in Seed magazine has stirred a bit of discussion about the role of the Presidential Science Advisor, and just who would be a good choice for that position. Of the two questions, the first is...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 9:19 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Medicine
Today's Wall Street Journal has a page A1 article (and accompanying blog post) about John Edward's decision to invoke the Nataline Sarkisyan case in his campaign-trail discussions of health care. Sarkisyan, you may remember, was the 17-year-old California girl...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 11:56 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: The Blog
I haven't been blogging much over the last couple of weeks, for a variety of reasons. But it's a new year, a couple of side products that were sucking away my will to live have been wrapped up, and...
Posted by Mike Dunford at 7:50 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
