Archives for July, 2007
Why New York is Cooler than North Carolina
Posted by jrosenhouse on July 25, 2007 There are many reasons, of course. But here’s an especially compelling one: DON’T jump to conclusions now. Just because Wendy Bullard of Raleigh, N.C., isn’t allowed to walk her dog through the Streets at Southpoint, an outdoor mall in Durham, doesn’t mean that when she visits New York she can’t walk little Mick Dundee, an…
Luskin Being Silly
Posted by jrosenhouse on July 24, 2007 Here’s Discovery Institute flak Casey Luskin commenting on an article about evolution posted at MSNBC’s website. The MSNBC article is available here.: Question: What do you do when a theory logically predicts both (a) and not (a)? Answer: Apparently you heavily promote it. MSNBC recently published two articles promoting Darwinian just-so stories to the public.…
The Democrats on Church and State
Posted by jrosenhouse on July 24, 2007 Here is one of the questions from last night’s bizarre CNN/You Tube debate with the Democratic candidates: QUESTION: Hi, I’m Zenne Abraham in Oakland, California. The cathedral behind me is the perfect backdrop for this question. This quarter reads “United States of America.” And when I turn it over, you find that it reads “liberty,…
Say it Ain’t So!
Posted by jrosenhouse on July 24, 2007 Have you seen that show Man vs. Wild on the Discovery Channel? I first saw it a few months ago and was hooked after one episode. I quickly placed it in the pantheon of all-time great non-fiction series, right alongside Good Eats and Mythbusters. In each episode former British Special Forces soldier Bear Grylls gets…
Humes, Slack, Chapman
Posted by jrosenhouse on July 23, 2007 Incidentally, I think Kevin Padian gets things just about right in his review of the three books on the Dover trial. For the record, the three books are Monkey Girl, by Edward Humes, 40 Days and 40 Nights by Matthew Chapman, and The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything, by Gordy Slack.
Dembski’s Reputation Impugned!
Posted by jrosenhouse on July 23, 2007 Here’s William Dembski protesting a recent book review in the journal Nature: Indeed, the review and its inclusion in NATURE are emblematic of the new low to which the scientific community has sunk in discussing ID. Bigotry, cluelessness, and misrepresentation don’t matter so long as the case against ID is made with sufficient vigor and…
Ranting at the Press
Posted by jrosenhouse on July 23, 2007 One of the sillier myths to have widespread acceptance in our culture is that the mainstream media, especially The New York Times, has a liberal bias. Anyone who actually reads the Times knows better. After all, these are the folks who kept the worthless Whitewater story alive during the Clinton administration, who published every phony…
I Might Have to Check This Out!
Posted by jrosenhouse on July 19, 2007 Via David Heddle, I came across this announcement for a conference in Texas entitled “Intelligent Design in Business Practice.” From the announcement:
TIME Thinks We’re Terrific
Posted by jrosenhouse on July 19, 2007 In a brief essay describing renewed efforts to raise the profile of science in the national discourse, Time magazine writer Michael Lemonick offers the following (see the original for links):
Moran Resists the All-Powerful Science Blogs Collective
Posted by jrosenhouse on July 19, 2007 During my absence it seems that Larry Moran, one of my favorite science bloggers, has declined an invitation to join ScienceBlogs. Outrageous! Though I find it regrettable, I fear he now has to be crushed. I mean, if one blogger is allowed to turn down such an invitation and get away with it, pretty soon…
Nisbet and Kitcher
Posted by jrosenhouse on July 19, 2007 I see that my fellow bloggers have not been idle during my absence. Matt Nisbet has another one of his Dawkins bashing posts up. This time his champion is philosopher Phillip Kitcher. Nisbet quotes Kitcher as follows, from a recent podcast of Point of Inquiry:
What I Did on my Summer Vacation
Posted by jrosenhouse on July 19, 2007 Okay, I’m back. Did I miss anything? England ended up being a lot of fun, though it didn’t start out that way. For reasons I won’t try to explain here, Dominic and I took different flights. His landed early. Mine was two hours late. We had flown through the night, so it was now early…
Math in England
Posted by jrosenhouse on July 5, 2007 On Sunday I will be flying across the ocean to participate in the 2007 British Combinatorics Conference, at the University of Reading. If you peruse the book of abstracts, you will see that I will be delievering an edge-of-your-seat barn-burner of a talk entitled, “Decomposition Theorems for Cayley Graphs of the Modular Group Over a…
Forrest States it Plain
Posted by jrosenhouse on July 5, 2007 The Center for Inquiry offers up this excellent summary (PDF format) of the nature and goals of Intelligent Design Creationism. Its author is philosopher Barbara Forrest, whose expert testimony in the Dover trial played a significant role in the successful outcome of the case. Think of it as the Cliff’s Notes version of her excellent…
Brayton Says I’m Wrong. What Nerve!
Posted by jrosenhouse on July 2, 2007 In his post on atheism and civil rights, Ed Brayton takes me to task for my assertion that books like those written by Dawkins and Hitchens are not the cause of the public image problem faced by atheists. I had written: Atheists don’t face a public image problem because of the books of Dawkins and…