Above is a picture of a lightning strike east of Camelback Mountain last night. The monsoon season has officially started here in Phoenix, so we’re looking at a few weeks of increased humidity and thunderstorm activity. A good enough reason to skip out of town. Tuesday sees me head off to England for the ISHPSSB bi-annual conference – the premier meeting of historians, philosophers and social scientists interested in biology. Four days of talks and socializing with people such as John Wilkins. Good fun, though I hear there is flooding in the SouthWest of England that might disrupt travel from London to Exeter. Gack!.

Interesting, no Intelligent Design proponent who claims to be a humanistic scholar of biology (e.g. Stephen Meyer, Paul Nelson, John Angus Campbell, Bill Dembski, Richard Weikart, or even Jonathan Wells) is scheduled to give a talk. None showed up at ISHPSSB 2005 in Guelph, so I’m not expecting any to be in attendance in Exeter. Just goes to show that they are as much in the mainstream as philosophers and historians as they are as scientists. And by that I mean, not at all.

In any case, this is me saying that I wont be posting again until early next week. Today in Science is, however, scheduled to appear as usual. Enjoy the Monsoon season!

[Picture credit: David Wallace/ Arizona Republic]