July 22, 2008
James Carse directed the Religious Studies Program at New York University for thirty years. In this interview with Salon, regarding his new book The Religious Case Against Belief, he gives us a taste of what he learned from all that study:
And yet, you've just told me that you yourself don't…
July 21, 2008
The new issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society turned up in my mailbox today. It features an interesting, if slightly disturbing, editorial (PDF format) by CUNY mathematician Melvyn Nathanson. He wonders about how confident we can really be regarding the proofs that appear in…
July 14, 2008
For Part One, go here.
Let us return now to the weighty topic of great locked room mysteries.
In Part One I focused on the works of John Dickson Carr, who is certainly a central figure in the history of the genre. There are plenty of other works to be acknowledged, however, and we turn to that…
July 12, 2008
Andrew Sullivan was not amused by P. Z.'s post:
It is one thing to engage in free, if disrespectful, debate. It is another to repeatedly assault and ridicule and abuse something that is deeply sacred to a great many people. Calling the Holy Eucharist a “goddamned cracker” isn't about free speech;…
July 11, 2008
As I was mulling over what I wanted to say about the PZ Myers / William Donohue kerfuffle, I came across this post (via Bora) by Jeff Fecke, that said perfectly exactly what I was thinking. Go read it.
The basic story line here is that Webster Cook, a student at the University of Central Florida…
July 10, 2008
Somehow I'm not in the mood for a heavy post today. So how about an essay on another of my favorite topics: Locked Room mysteries.
Here are the first two paragraphs of what I regard as the finest detective story ever written:
To the murder of Professor Grimaud, and later the equally incredible…
July 8, 2008
Let's see. An op-ed in the New York Times entitled “Doubleday and Darwin”, with the following opening paragraph:
As I sat in my high school math class one day, my teacher asked a question that I doubt will find a consensus opinion in my lifetime: “Was math invented or was it discovered?” To this…
July 7, 2008
Remember a few posts back, when we saw Michael Ruse lecturing Richard Dawkins as follows:
More seriously, Dawkins is entirely ignorant of the fact that no believer-with the possible exception of some English clerics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries-has ever thought that arguments are…
July 6, 2008
During my recent trip to the Creation Museum I picked up a copy of David DeWitt's book Unraveling the Origins Controversy. DeWitt is the Director of the Center for Creation Studies at Liberty University. It's been a while since I've read an actual YEC book, and I was growing nostalgic for the…
June 30, 2008
I've just got back from a road trip to Marrowbone, KY (!!). Mostly I was there for a friend's wedding. Here's the church where the wedding took place. Pretty, but truly in the middle of nowhere. And, yes, I did find time to pay another visit to the Creation Museum, even though it is in an…
June 25, 2008
Theistic evolutionists have a bumper crop of books to choose from this summer. I've already reviewed Ken Miller's new book Only a Theory. Michael Dowd's Thank God for Evolution! is on deck in my “To Read” pile. The subject for today, however, is Karl Giberson's Saving Darwin: How to Be a…
June 24, 2008
I am totally drooling right now.
(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan).
June 24, 2008
Over at Slate, Christopher Hitchens provides some much needed pushback against the deluge of Tim Russert hagiography:
Last on the list of miracles (and do please beware anything that comes in threes) was the apparition of a huge and beautiful rainbow arcing over the Potomac as the mourners came up…
June 23, 2008
The new issue of New in Chess magazine arrived in my mailbox this weekend. It contains an article by British grandmaster Daniel Gormally about what it is like to be addicted to the Internet Chess Club. I know the feeling well, and can affirm that this is only a small exaggeration:
Wake up around…
June 23, 2008
George Carlin was absolutely the very best stand-up comedian in the history of the business. Only Robin Williams in his prime was even in the same league. I have quite a few of his albums, and I find I can still listen to them with pleasure even though I have most of the routines memorized. The…
June 21, 2008
I have spent the last few days working my way through Ken Miller's new book Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul. (OAT) Short review: Worth reading, but also a bit disappointing. Now for the long review:
My first published piece of writing on evolution was a review of…
June 21, 2008
Thanks to David Killoren for directing me to this excerpt from Bloggingheads. Science writers John Horgan and George Johnson spend a few minutes disucssing the Monty Hall problem. Johnson recently reviewed Leonard Mlodinow's book The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, which…
June 20, 2008
That's the title of an interesting article from the current issue of The Atlantic, written by Nicholas Carr:
Over the past few years I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn't…
June 12, 2008
I'm going to be hitting the road this weekend for one of my periodical tours of some of the great highways in the Northeast. I'll be visiting the 'rents at my New Jersey office, will jaunt on up to Brooklyn to see big bro and the niece and nephew, and will probably putter around Princeton for an…
June 10, 2008
Here's a delightful article from today's New York Times:
The operation in the private clinic off the Champs-Elysees involved one semicircular cut, 10 dissolving stitches and a discounted fee of $2,900.
But for the patient, a 23-year-old French student of Moroccan descent from Montpellier, the 30-…
June 10, 2008
It seems giraffes are now considered kosher:
I don't know how this escaped me, but a rabbi named Shlomo Mahfoud (which sounds like a made-up name, in the “Zohan” sense) has declared that giraffe meat is kosher. This must come as a huge relief to the vast Jewish population of the Serengeti.
So…
June 9, 2008
From Robert Novak's column in today's Washington Post:
Shortcomings by John McCain's campaign in the art of politics are alienating two organizations of Christian conservatives. James Dobson's Focus on the Family is estranged following the failure of Dobson and McCain to talk out their differences…
June 8, 2008
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Wheaton College English Professor Alan Jacobs argues that religion is overrated as a social force. My SciBling Razib has already written a lengthy response.
Jacobs gets down to business in the third paragraph:
Of course, I can't universalize my own experience…
June 7, 2008
Here's an interesting essay from Michael Ruse, published in the Georgia newspaper the Rome News-Tribune:
So why should we take the idea seriously? Why should we ever think that it could ever be much more than a “theory,” meaning an iffy hypothesis like speculations on the Kennedy assassination?…
June 7, 2008
An interesting article from today's New York Times:
The rapper RZA, a founder of the Wu-Tang Clan, sat in a suite on the 48th floor of the Mandarin Oriental hotel overlooking Central Park, staring at a chess game through a pair of sunglasses. His hand was frozen a few inches above the board as he…
June 5, 2008
Here's the Hamas Deputy Minister of Religious Endowment exposing a heretofore unexpected Jewish threat:
“There are also theories that were invented by non-Jews, but they disseminate them, knowing that they are scientifically false, such as the theory of Darwin. Darwin was not Jewish, but they…
June 5, 2008
Here's the latest from William Dembski:
Colorado Governor Bill Ritter's signing of a transgender anti-discrimination bill points up the lunacy that ensues in a world without design.
He then links to this article by Ross Kaminsky in the right-wing magazine Human Events.
I have no comment on…
June 5, 2008
The New York Times provides an update on the latest shenanigans of the ID folks:
Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are “creationism” or “intelligent design” or even “creator.”
The words are “…
June 3, 2008
Looks like an exciting weekend in our nation's capitol. The sevetneenth edition of the World Humanist Congress will be in Washington D.C. from June 5 to June 9. I think I can be persuaded to go check it out! Click Here for all the details.
June 2, 2008
Be sure to have a look at the crossword puzzle in today's New York Times. It's the bestest, most awesomest crossword ever!
Actually, I haven't seen it yet. The Times does not make their crosswords freely available online (is there no end to their treachery?). And it's not so easy to find a print…
