September 15, 2008
The Anglican Church has decided to apologize to Darwin for the rude manner in which their nineteenth century forebears responded to evolution. That's decent of them, I suppose.
Spearheading the effort is Malcolm Brown, Director of Mission and Public Affairs. In this article, entitled “Good…
September 12, 2008
Brain Greene had a useful op-ed in yesterday's New York Times. He's discussing all the fuss about the Large Hadron Collider:
After more than a decade of development and construction, involving thousands of scientists from dozens of countries at a cost of some $8 billion, the "on" switch for the…
September 12, 2008
I liked Matt Damon even before this, but now I am definitely going to see any movie he is in:
I think there's a really good chance that Sarah Palin could be President, and I think that's a really scary thing. Because I don't know anything about her. I don't think in eight weeks I'm going to know…
September 10, 2008
Yes, another political post. What can I say?
Here's Michael Kinsley providing still more evidence that the Sarah Palin seen on television and discussed by the media bears little resemblance to the Sarah Palin that has been governing Alaska for the last two years:
Sarah Palin thinks she is a…
September 8, 2008
Here's the latest bit of wisdom from Sarah Palin:
McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, speaking in Colorado Springs, Colo., said Fannie and Freddie had “gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers.” The companies, however, aren't taxpayer funded but operate as private companies.…
September 4, 2008
Anyone surprised by how the Republican Convention is going?
The McCain campaign to this point has been nearly one hundred percent negative, and the convention has continued that trend. There are several reasons for this. One is simply that they have nothing to run on, having made a hash of…
September 4, 2008
I've already received quite a few submissions for the big Carnival of Evolution. Alas, I have also received a few submissions which, while good, were outside the parameters of what I had in mind. So let me offer two clarifications:
I'm looking specifically for writing first posted on blogs.…
September 2, 2008
In a number of recent posts I have remarked that when it comes to Biblical analysis, I think the young-Earthers have more going for them than is sometimes acknowledged. I have also commented that I have been generally unimpressed with the more highbrow sorts of Biblical exegesis I have seen with…
September 2, 2008
Good news! Thanks to the pioneering efforts of Daniel Brown, there is now a Carnival of Evolution. Better news! I will be hosting the next installment. So send your best evolution related writing to me at rosenhjd@jmu.edu. I'm looking for good, original writing on anything related to evolution…
August 30, 2008
Time to wrap this up. So here are a few more interesting moments from the conference.
The one genuinely interesting talk I attended had nothing to do with science at all. It was entitled “A Critique of the Precreation Chaos Gap Theory,” and was delivered by John Zoschke, a pastor from Kansas.…
August 29, 2008
By now I'm sure you have heard that John McCain has chosen Alaska governor Sarah “Teach the Controversy” Palin to be his running mate. I think The New Republic has the most sensible take, by Peter Scoblic:
But surely a campaign that has been charged with being too naive to manage rogue state…
August 29, 2008
This article, from Mother Jones, has some smirk-worthy quotable bits. It's subject is the recent convention of the Fellowship of Christian Magicians:
To demonstrate one of his favorite bits of legerdemain, Laflin selects a boy named Drake and asks him to mark a quarter. "This quarter represents…
August 27, 2008
The big Monty Hall book is working its way through production. Just received the proposed catalog copy on my destined for a Pulitzer masterpiece. Seems my book is, among other things, “light-hearted yet ultimately serious.” Why yes, come to think of it, I suppose it is!
But we're having a little…
August 26, 2008
Here are a few more vignettes from the big conference.
A fellow named Mark Matthews gave a presentation arguing that the Earth was located at or near the center of the universe. Most of the talk was given over to a discussion of the so-called “Fingers of God.”
According to the ever-useful…
August 24, 2008
An interesting exchange took place during the Q and A of a talk entitled “Georgia Public School Board Members' Beliefs Concerning the Inclusion of Creationism in the Science Curriculum.” The speaker was Kathie Morgan of LIberty University.
The talk itself was unremarkable, even by the crushingly…
August 21, 2008
As the Beijing Olympics comes to a close, let us take a moment to congratulate the United States Team for their third place finish in the recently completed International Mathematical Olympiad, held in Madrid. The U.S. Team included Alex Zhai, who obtained one of only three perfect scores in the…
August 21, 2008
Only time for quick blogging today, so go have a look at Peter Buckland's interesting post in response to my reports of the big creationism confab. Here's a taste:
That stereotype exists, but it's not nearly complete as I have surely learned by attending local Science and Religion forums at a…
August 20, 2008
Some of the comments to my posts on the creationism conference reminded me of a scene from the movie Heat, released in 1995. Al Pacino played Vincent Hannah, a detective for the LAPD investigating a crew of professional bank robbers. Robert DeNiro played Neil McCauley, the leader of the crew. (…
August 20, 2008
My account of the big creationism conference will resume shortly, but I really must take time out to discuss this article by Brian Hayes of American Scientist. He is discussing the Monty Hall problem, you see.
The story begins with this earlier article by Hayes. He was reviewing the recent book…
August 18, 2008
Here's a picture to warm your heart:
It comes from the closing presentation of the conference, entitled “The Creation Model: It's Past, Present and Necessary Future,” by Andrew Snelling. Here's another one:
Guess I should stop worrying. Actually, the best moment in Snelling's talk came…
August 17, 2008
Usually I write these accounts in strict chronological order. I will break from that tradition this time since one of my most interesting experiences at the conference came right near the end. I had made a pest of myself during several of the Q and A's after the talks, meaning that by the…
August 13, 2008
My account of the big creationism conference will go up soon, but in the meantime you can tide yourself over with this op-ed from yesterday's New York Times. Olivia Judson explains a few of the reasons it is important to teach evolution in science classes. I especially liked this:
The third…
August 1, 2008
EvolutionBlog will be going dark for the next two weeks or so. I will be leaving my cozy digs in Harrisonburg to enjoy some serious wandering. First is a drive up to Pittsburgh for the International Conference of Creationism. How could I pass that up? Then I will explore the fine points of the…
August 1, 2008
The all-consuming, all-devouring, ScienceBlogs collective has assimilated another victim. Go say hi to Matt Springer, who blogs about physics over at Built on Facts. Matt is a graduate student in physics at Texas A & M university. He writes:
New posts generally appear every morning,…
August 1, 2008
A few posts back I engaged a discussion about Richard Dawkins' metaphor of “Cimbing Mount Improbable” for the proces by which evolution by natural selection crafts complex structures from simpler precursors. Since I did not have his book in front of me at the time, I was working from memory.
As it…
July 31, 2008
Karl Giberson offers up the usual cliches of the genre in in this essay for Salon. Those mean ol' atheists are trying to make a religion out of science, but savvy clear thinkers like him see the problems with that little project. Blah blah blah.
P.Z. has already spanked Giberson in this post.…
July 29, 2008
Continuing my perusal of the new Notices of the American Mathematical Society, I came across this review (PDF format) of John Allen Paulos recent book Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up. The review is by mathematician Olle Haggstrom. Paulos' book has…
July 28, 2008
Via Mark Chu-Carroll, I just finished reading this article by mathematician Keith Devlin. He writes:
Let's start with the underlying fact. Multiplication simply is not repeated addition, and telling young pupils it is inevitably leads to problems when they subsequently learn that it is not.…
July 24, 2008
Time for lighter fare. There are some really good movies out there...
Warning: A few minor spoilers ahead.
First up, of course, is The Dark Knight. Superhero movies just keep getting better and better, but this one is going to be hard to top. It's two and a half hours long, but I wanted to go…
July 23, 2008
There's an interesting discussion going on between Larry Moran and Richard Dawkins. The subject is the title of Dawkins' 1996 book Climbing Mt. Improbable. It started with this post over at Larry's blog. He included Dawkins in his list of good science writers who were nonetheless excluded from…
