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, or something than less neat numbers like 2526, or 3981, or 1135. The media's spent a little while circling over the battlefield, waiting for the 4,000th American corpse to hit the ground. The milestone arrived and passed more or less on schedule, and the media will settle back down and wait for the…
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 Dawkins. That particular move was so amazingly stupid that they're gonna need to come up with a new word for it.
No, I'm not kidding. No, this isn't a premature April Fools joke. No, it's not an attempt at satire.
It's just creationists managing to shoot an own-goal hat trick.
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, you can click on the image for a higher-resolution version of the shot).
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 appeared. Everyone seems to have gotten behind this one. The AP has several articles. The Washington Post made note of the story. CBS seems to think it's news. ABC apparently thinks that the story falls into the category of "investigative journalism". The Boston Herald's totally into this one.
The…
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 of the previous photo quizzes have; it was unsuccessful in the sense that it seems to have been too easy.
Here's the full image (as always, you can click on it for a larger view):
Nathan was the first to post a comment, and the first to get the answer. This is the first stage of a Saturn V…
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: This item shares a name with a place where it's never been.
I'll post the answer (or possibly a new hint) on Tuesday.
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 antibiotic resistance in bacteria deals with how the mutations that give rise to resistance arise, exactly what those mutations are and how they work, and what can be done to counteract them. The important medical research involves genetics, molecular biology, and pharmacology. Darwin's theory is…
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 might indulge in quote mining with the same casual disregard for public decency as a male dog telling his neighbors that he's still around, but, unlike dogs, the creationists are presumably capable of self-control. We've simply grown blase about their propensity for twisting other people's words…
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 both ends open, so that water flows through it freely as it descends. When it reaches the desired depth, the two ends are sealed and water trapped inside. As Dave S. notes, the bottle in the picture is a small one, and it's being used in a low-tech setup.
The picture was taken during a field trip…
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 a proven track record of keeping America safe.
What are these practices that our terrorist-loving Congresscritters so nicely asked the President to abandon? They're nothing special - just you're run-of-the-mill-Spanish-Inquisition-torture-type-stuff.
It's frustrating enough watching the…
Everybody's favorite creationist neurosurgeon is back. Today, Michael Egnor brought forth yet another remarkably inept attempt to find a way to justify egnoring the relationship between natural selection and antibiotic resistance. This time, he's apparently decided that there's no hope in finding a substantive argument, so he's resorting to nothing more than a childish rhetorical game. One of the authors of a recently published scientific paper that examined antibiotic resistance left a comment at The Panda's Thumb noting that his research did in fact rely on Darwinian evolution. In a…
Henry Gee and I have been talking, on our blogs, about how the public views science, and what can be done to change that. That's hardly a new topic for scientists. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen or heard the topic discussed. It's a water cooler conversation topic at universities and government labs. It gets raised on email lists, discussion boards, and blogs. It's featured in journal editorials, at seminars, and at conferences. There's a widespread consensus that we could, should, and must do a better job of talking to the general public. On this issue, the consensus is…
First, the Discovery Institute didn't seem to know about the anti-evolution bill introduced in Florida last week. Now, they don't seem to actually understand what the bill does. Both of these things are quite strange, considering that the Discovery Institute folks actually wrote all of the substantive parts of the bill.
Rob Crowther just devoted most of an article over at the Discovery Institute's Media Complaints Blog to scolding the media for their coverage of the Florida legislation. Apparently, most of the news coverage made the outrageous claim that the "Academic Freedom Act" would…
For the next few weeks, I'm going to be busier than normal - I'm picking up a few bucks by working for a friend who has a beverage concession at the Houston Rodeo. I'm mentioning this in part because working at the Rodeo has inspired a few thoughts that are relevant to a blog discussion that I've been having with Nature editor Henry Gee. I'll probably have my response to his latest post up sometime after I get home from work. His post focuses on how scientists have been getting scientific information to the public. He focuses on the problems with the media's usual treatment of science, and…
Here's another picture quiz for you. The picture below was taken in February of 2005, just off the coast in Oahu. Can you identify the piece of equipment that the two people in the picture are using, and do you know what it's used for? The answer will be posted on Thursday.
In Friday's picture quiz, I posted a picture that I took that contained two Hawaiian Monk seals (Monachus schauinslandi), and asked you to take a guess at what percent of the total population of the species appears in the picture. As David noted, if you're asking that sort of question, the answer isn't likely to be good. It certainly isn't good in this case.
The Hawaiian Monk Seal has been on the Endangered Species List since 1976. A five-year assessment of the seal's current situation was concluded in August, and examined whether or not the species has met the three biological factors…
On Friday, Florida State Senator Ronda Storms introduced an anti-evolution bill to the legislature. She did so quietly, and without fanfare. No press release was issued, and so far the legislation has not received any attention in the press. It also doesn't seem to have attracted any attention from the Discovery Institute or any of the other major anti-evolution websites, either. That's actually a bit of a surprise, since the bill in question is remarkably similar to a "Model Academic Freedom Statute" that the Discovery Institute posted on a website that they (and a media company) set up to…
In a post over at the Nature Network, Henry Gee notes that over the last twenty years, he's seen "an increase in ... a siege mentality among scientists". He's probably right. When there's a horde of angry, armed people outside your walls, and they start settling in and making themselves at home, you might start to wonder if you're looking at a siege. When the catapults come out and rocks, stones, jars of burning oil, and diseased animal carcasses start flying over the walls, the folks inside often feel besieged. By the time the attackers disappear in the middle of the night, leaving behind…
By now, there's a good chance that you've read something or another about the whole "Is John McCain a "Natural Born" Citizen" thing - it's caught quite a lot of attention over the last few days. It's certainly caught mine - not because I'm concerned about the question of whether military brats born overseas can be president, but because so many people are acting like complete idiots.
If you're not familiar with the story, here's a quick rundown. The Constitution requires that the President be a "natural born" citizen. John McCain was not born in the United States. He was born in the Panama…
I took the picture below at Ka'ena Point, Oahu in January of 2006. In this picture, there are two Hawaiian Monk Seals. (They can be hard to spot, so I've marked the two animals in a second version of the picture below the fold.) Here's the quiz question that goes with this image: without recourse to Google, estimate the percentage of the total population of the species that can be seen in this one picture.
(Click on the pictures to view larger versions.)