Mike Dunford
tqa
Posts by this author
July 1, 2008
Charles Darwin was not the father of atheism - Telegraph
Decent article on Darwin and religion in yesterday's Telegraph.
(tags: religion Darwin atheism)
Science and maths exams are harder than arts subjects, say researchers | News crumb | EducationGuardian.co.uk
Kicking things off, we've got an…
July 1, 2008
It's a little bit loud at the new Authority Family residence right now. The guys in the picture are practicing right overhead at the moment. The dog's in the bathtub, and the cat just did a backflip.
As always, feel free to click the thumbnail above for the full size version. That picture was…
June 30, 2008
Dispatches from the Culture Wars: AFA's Search/Replace Function Works Perfectly
This has got to be one of the funniest screw-ups I've run into in a very long time. There's nothing like watching the American Family Association repeatedly call the fastest man in the world gay a homosexual - over and…
June 30, 2008
For a number of reasons, I've been gone from my own blog for most of the last couple of months. Moving had something to do with it, but I think the biggest reason was that after two years as part of the ScienceBlogs collective and something like a year or so on my own before that, I just plain…
June 8, 2008
Senator John McCain, it appears, is not a fan of William Jennings Bryan. In a recent interview with USA Today, the Republican Party's nominee for President compared the three-time Democratic nominee for president from the turn of the last century to the Party's current nominee:
"I believe that…
May 14, 2008
The following quote is taken verbatim from the transcript of an interview that President Bush did with Politico.com yesterday. I'm presenting it without any further comment, because there really isn't a hell of a lot than can be said - and we're still stuck with the shallow little twit for the…
May 5, 2008
Since the beginning of March, I've been putting in a lot of time at a part-time job. I needed to get out of the house a lot more than I had been, and a friend needed people for his smoothie cart business. It's not rocket science, but it's not all that bad a way to kill time while making a little…
May 5, 2008
You may have noticed a lack of new posts on this blog over the last few weeks. There are a few reasons for this, most of which involve being busy doing other things. I've been working a lot of hours at a part time job that doesn't allow for much online activity. We're also getting ready to…
April 30, 2008
Back at the beginning of April, ATA airlines suddenly went out of business. With no prior warning, they filed for bankruptcy and suspended all flights. This decision was sparked by FedEx's still unexplained decision to drop ATA from the group of airlines that they use to fulfill their military…
April 22, 2008
Senator Hillary Clinton has apparently decided to join John McCain in calling for a "gas tax" holiday for the summer. Their plan would suspend the 18.4 cent per gallon tax on gas (and the 24.4 cent tax on diesel fuel) from Memorial Day to Labor Day, giving consumers a temporary break from the high…
April 22, 2008
On Sunday, Chris Mooney and Randy Olsen both tried to make the case that Ben Stein's "Evolution Caused the Holocaust" movie was a success at the box office. Both of them have been rather spectacularly condemned for calling Expelled a success, but I'm not sure that they're entirely wrong. I just…
April 17, 2008
Casey Luskin is currently in the middle of a multi-part "rebuttal" to Michael Shermer's review of Expelled. In the latest installment of his whine, Casey (again) brings up the case of Richard Sternberg. Sternberg, some of you might remember, orchestrated the publication of a pro-Intelligent Design…
April 14, 2008
Bruce Chapman has an article up over at the Discovery Institute's Media Complaints blog that is really a must read. There are several statements in there that would qualify as absurd even by DI standards (like the one where he talks about someone being "outranked" by other scientists), but one in…
April 7, 2008
The anticipation of reading is almost always wonderful, but the actual reading is often frustrating. You can spend hours enjoying the wonderful indecision of the bookstore before you walk away with the comforting weight of a new release hardcover in your hand. The book can sit on the coffee table…
April 3, 2008
This one probably isn't the hardest quiz I've come up with, but give it a shot anyway. Here's the question: how is the specific airplane in this picture connected to atmospheric science research?
Let's try something new this week: email your answer to me at dunford@scienceblogs.com instead of…
April 1, 2008
Given that today really is April 1st, let me start by saying that although Behe is a fool, this post isn't a joke. Everything you're about to read is real. This is the third part of my post on the summary judgment decision in the California Creationist Case. Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here.…
April 1, 2008
(This is Part 2 of a three part post on Friday's summary judgment ruling in the ACSI v. Stearns creationism lawsuit. Part 1 is here; Part 3 will be up later today.)
If you read Judge Otero's ruling on the summary judgment motions in the California Creationist Case, you'll see that he discovered…
April 1, 2008
On Friday, Judge James Otero of the Central District of California issued a ruling granting the University of California's request for partial summary judgment in the California Creationist Lawsuit. I've written about this case several times before now, but it's been a long time since the last…
March 31, 2008
Last week, SUNY Stony Brook neurosurgeon and anti-evolution mouthpiece Michael Egnor decided to keep driving on with his "you don't need to understand Darwinian evolution to understand antibiotic resistance" crusade. His post is - predictably enough - a mass of loosely connected logical fallacies…
March 30, 2008
One of several reasons that my posting frequency has been low lately is that my internet connection has been miserable. As in dial-up speed miserable. As in so slow that the online tools that measure connection speed have been showing me that I'm getting download speeds that I haven't had to…
March 25, 2008
It's been just over 5 years since the start of the Iraq war, and we've just passed another of those morbid little milestones that get so much attention in the press. This particular milestone has a nice round number on it - 4,000 - which apparently makes it somehow more important, or significant,…
March 20, 2008
PZ Myers got expelled from the line to see the movie Expelled tonight, apparently for the crime of actually being PZ Myers. That's definitely ironic, and possibly hypocritical. His family and his guest were allowed to go in and watch the movie. His guest was Richard Dawkins. Yes, that Richard…
March 20, 2008
There's an island visible in the picture below. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to identify the island, it's location, it's relationship to science, and (for extra credit) its relationship to American pop culture. The answer (or a hint) will be posted on Monday.
(as always,…
March 20, 2008
I'm not Zuska, but I suddenly find that I've got an almost uncontrollable urge to puke on someone's shoes. There's a new breaking story out about Hillary Clinton, junior senator from New York, and Democratic Presidential candidate. It's so shocking that over 1300 news articles have already…
March 18, 2008
In Saturday's photo quiz, I posted a very cropped version of a picture, and asked people to identify the item that's in there. This was simultaneously one of the most and least successful photo quizzes I've posted so far. It was successful in the sense that it's attracted more comments than most…
March 14, 2008
This photo quiz is a bit different from the others I've done so far. Instead of giving you a full picture, I'm going to put up a piece of the image and a hint. Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to try to figure out what this is a picture of.
First, the picture:
Now, the hint…
March 13, 2008
Dr. Michael Egnor, of SUNY Stony Brook and the Discovery Institute, doesn't think that evolution is relevant to trying to figure out how to combat the spread of antibiotic resistance. The interesting areas of research, he believes, lie in other areas of biology:
The important medical research on…
March 12, 2008
Someone once pointed out that when a dog pisses on a fire hydrant, it's not committing an act of vandalism. It's just being a dog. It's possible to use that analogy to excuse a creationist who takes a quote wildly out of context, I suppose, but I don't think it's really appropriate. Creationists…
March 10, 2008
Last Tuesday, I posted another one of my picture quizzes, asking what a particular device is, and what it's used for. Jonathan was the first to get the correct answer - it's a Niskin bottle. A Niskin bottle is used to collect a sample of water at a particular depth. It's put into the water with…
March 9, 2008
The President devoted yesterday's radio address to explaining why he vetoed the Intelligence bill Congress sent him. He concluded the address with the following gem:
We have no higher responsibility than stopping terrorist attacks. And this is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have…