January 25, 2007
The current issue of Nature features this interesting essay by Nigel Goldenfeld and Carl Woese. The essay's point is that recent discoveries about genomic interactions among microbes, particularly the phenomenon of horizontal gene transfer (HGT), is forcing us to reevaluate certain basic concepts…
January 24, 2007
As I mentioned, Sam Harris has already replied to Sullivan's essay. Let's consider some highlights:
Contrary to your allegation, I do not “disdain” religious moderates. I do, however, disdain bad ideas and bad arguments--which, I'm afraid, you have begun to manufacture in earnest. I'd like to…
January 24, 2007
Following up on my previous post about the blogalogue between Andrew Sullivan and Sam Harris, here have now been a few more entries. Picking up where the previous post left off, let's look at Sullivan's reply. Since Harris has replied in turn, I will content myself with a few brief points.…
January 24, 2007
There was only one small part of Bush's State of the Unon address that really jumped out at me. Here it is:
This war is more than a clash of arms -- it is a decisive ideological struggle, and the security of our nation is in the balance. To prevail, we must remove the conditions that inspire…
January 23, 2007
I was really impressed by this post from Polymathematics. He discusses a proof of Morley's Theorem, which is a result from Euclidean geometry. Start with any triangle. Trisect each of the three angles. Then the points of intersection of pairs of adjacent trisectors from the vertices of an…
January 23, 2007
Be sure to go say hi to the newest member of the all-encompassing Science Blogs combine. ScienceToLife is written by Karen Ventii, a graduate student in biochemistry at Emory University. Looks like she's especially interested in health related stories. Good stuff!
January 23, 2007
On the subject of basic concepts, here's an essay I orginally posted back in June. In it I try to explain what infinity is all about. It seems appropriate for this series, so I thought I would bring it back. Enjoy!
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Think for a minute about basic arithmetic.…
January 23, 2007
Many of my SciBlings have been doing posts in which they define basic concepts in various scientific fields. For example, physicist Chad Orzel has done posts on Force and Fields, biologist P. Z. Myers has covered Genes, computer scientist Mark Chu-Carroll offers up wise words on Margin of Error…
January 20, 2007
Via Andrew Sullivan's blog I came across this account of a recent talk given by former FEMA director Michael Brown:
Political storm clouds gathered again over the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina as former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown said party…
January 20, 2007
Kent Hovind, one of the slimiest of the young-Earth ignorance peddlers, has been sentenced to ten years in prison for tax fraud:
Pensacola evangelist Kent Hovind was sentenced Friday afternoon to 10 years in prison on charges of tax fraud.
After a lengthy sentencing hearing that last 5 1/2 hours…
January 19, 2007
I'd like to put together a comprehensive list of math bloggers. By this I mean either anyone who regularly blogs about mathematics, or professional mathematicians who blog (on any subject). The only two that I that I read regularly are Good Math, Bad Math and Polymathematics, but I have no doubt…
January 19, 2007
Larry Moran has weighed in on the question, raised in yesterday's post, about whether it is fair to criticize Richard Dawkins for lacking the theological and philosophical chops to discuss the topics raised in The God Delusion. I especially like his closing paragraph:
The onus is on believers to…
January 19, 2007
In the comments to yesterday's post Josh Rosenau has left a lengthy response to my criticisms. I have now left an equally length reply to that response. Just wanted to let you know it was there, in case you are interested.
January 18, 2007
Since I have the sad task of criticizing my fellow science bloggers today, we may as well have a look at this post, from John Lynch.
He is responding to this post from P. Z. Myers, which discussed this review of The God Delusion written by Steven Weinberg.
Lynch takes issue with the following…
January 18, 2007
My SciBling Josh Rosenau had a different reaction to the exchange between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan. Sadly, he gets most of the important points wrong.
Rosenau writes:
As for “the myth that a person must believe things on insufficient evidence...,” I'd merely note that this ought to lead us…
January 18, 2007
Beliefnet is hosting a blogalogue between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan. Harris is defending the entirely sensible view that religious faith, especially in its monotheistic form, is a lot of twaddle, while Sullivan takes the view that reasonable religious faith is not an oxymoron. Here are a few…
January 17, 2007
Bashing religion is fun and all, but occasionally a religious public figure does manage to say something sensible. Here's one example, as reported by Keith Olbermann on Monday:
Number one, Rich Cizik, the vice president representing the National Association of Evangelicals, after a meeting with a…
January 17, 2007
Christianity Today has posted this interview with Francis Collins. Collins' goal is to persuade us that evolution and Christianity are compatible. Let's see if he's right:
How does evolution fit with your Christian faith?
[Evolution] may seem to us like a slow, inefficient, and even random…
January 16, 2007
Just when I thought I had seen every wrinkle on the Monty Hall problem, Raymond Smullyan has to go come up with another one. Here's an excerpt, from his book The Riddle of Scheherazade and Other Amazing Puzzles:
“And now,” said Scheherazade, “I have a paradox for you. There are three boxes…
January 16, 2007
Chris over at Mixing Memory has this post about cognitive factors that can make it difficult for children to learn about evolution. This is from his conclusion:
So that's my contribution. I've presented three factors that make the job of biology teachers more difficult when they're trying to…
January 16, 2007
The New York Times offers this brief, but useful summary of some of the evidence for human-caused glboal warming. Since it now seems incontrovertible that the planet is, indeed, warming up, the right-wing line has shifted to a rejection of humanity's role in the trend. I suspect as more data…
December 29, 2006
Next week I'll be travelling to New Orleans to participate in the big Joint Mathematics Meetings. The “Joint” refers to the fact that it is cosponsored by the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America (no Life of Brian jokes please.)
As you can see, on Saturday the…
December 29, 2006
Update: December 30, 2006: Somehow it slipped past me that P.Z. Myers had already shredded the Hitchens piece. Sorry about that. By all means have a look at his eloquent demolition as well.
Here's Peter Hitchens weighing in on the evolution/ID dispute, writing for The Mail on Sunday, which I…
December 29, 2006
Raymond Smullyan is name that is probably familiar to a lot of readers of this blog. In addition to being a mathematician and philosopher, he is known for being a master of using brainteasers and other puzzles to illuminate sometimes deep ideas in logic, especially Godel's theorems. He is perhaps…
December 29, 2006
One of my projects for the winter break has been to read some of the Iraq War books that keep showing up in the local Barnes and Noble. First up: Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post.
The book makes for strange…
December 28, 2006
The response to Tuesday's post, currently at 97 comments, has been very interesting. Since some of the commenters appear to be growing restless, I will put off until tomorrow my epic Iraq war post (based on my having recently waded through all 482 pages of Thomas Ricks' subtly titled book Fiasco)…
December 28, 2006
And speaking of internal Seed business, take a moment to go say hi to the newest member of the great SB combine: Developing Intelligence. As Bruce Willis once said, “Welcome to the party, pal!”
December 28, 2006
Reminiscent of Mrs. McCave, who had twenty-three sons and named them all Dave, it seems that The Seed Mothership is having trouble making distinctions among her progeny. This is EvolutionBlog, folks. evolgen offers a different flavor of delectable bloggy goodness.
Apparently this is not the…
December 27, 2006
The New Republic's Jonathan Chait doesn't like Delaware:
Last night I drove home from northern New Jersey to Washington and it went smoothly enough except that, as customarily happens on such journeys, we hit a wall of traffic halfway through. What was the cause of it? Delaware. Yes, Delaware,…
December 27, 2006
Have a look at at this interesting article, from The New Yorker, about the boom in Bible publishing:
The familiar observation that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time obscures a more startling fact: the Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year. Calculating how many Bibles…
