jrosenhouse | April 23, 2007Well, Richard Dawkins had his little run-in with Bill O'Reilly tonight. No doubt surprised to have an A-list guest on his show, O'Reilly managed to keep the stupidity to a minimum (though, as we shall see, he certainly did not manage to eliminate it entirely). He was also on his best behavior. Since Fox News, unlke MSNBC, does not make transcripts of its shows freely available, I have taken the liberty of providing one for you. Should tide you over until the video turns up. There were places where the two were talking over each other and other places where words were garbled, but I will…
jrosenhouse | April 23, 2007For my Virginia based readers, Nikhil Rao, founder of the group Conservatives Against Intelligent Design, will be speaking to the Alliance for Science tomorrow, April 24. The talk will be held at the Arlington Central Library, 1015 N. Quincy Street in Arlington, VA. More information is available here.
Conservatives Against Intelligent Design? Sounds like an oxymoron to me! Guess I better go check it out...
jrosenhouse | April 22, 2007Over at William Dembski's blog, GilDodgen asks the following:
Even the most vociferous and vehement ID opponents (e.g., Richard Dawkins) admit that design in nature appears to be self-evident. Why then, the heroic efforts to explain design away, with such silliness as random variation and natural selection providing the engine that produced highly sophisticated biological software and information-processing systems?
I remain completely bewildered by the fact that intelligent, educated people cannot recognize this obvious act of denial and desperation. On the other hand, perhaps they don't…
jrosenhouse | April 22, 2007With everything else that has been going on lately, I never got around to discussing Pope Benedict's latest statements on evolution.
Here's what Reuters had to say on the subject:
Pope Benedict, elaborating his views on evolution for the first time as Pontiff, says science has narrowed the way life's origins are understood and Christians should take a broader approach to the question.
The Pope also says the Darwinist theory of evolution is not completely provable because mutations over hundreds of thousands of years cannot be reproduced in a laboratory.
But Benedict, whose remarks were…
jrosenhouse | April 19, 2007Some of the commenters to my previous two posts have suggested that they are tired of this subject. But since Matthew Nisbet himself stopped by to alert me to this post over at his blog, I figure the least I can do is reply to it.
The bulk of the post consists of comments from Steve Case, an assistant director of the Center for Science Education at the University of Kansas. Case is supportive of the Mooney/Nisbet thesis about the importance of framing in discussions of evolution. Let's consider his remarks in full:
OK, here is a from the hip Monday morning rant . I have been reading all…
jrosenhouse | April 18, 2007In my previous post on this subject, I described the main faults I see in the Mooney/Nisbet thesis regarding the importance of proper “franimg” in presenting science to the public. In this post I would like to focus specifically on their Washington Post article. In particular, I would like to chastise them for some rather ill-considered remarks contained therein.
We start at the beginning of the article:
If the defenders of evolution wanted to give their creationist adversaries a boost, it's hard to see how they could do better than Richard Dawkins, the famed Oxford scientist who had a…
jrosenhouse | April 18, 2007My SciBlings Chris Mooney and Matthew Nisbet have created quite a stir recently, first with this article in Science and later with this article for the Washington Post. The basic premise is that scientists need to become more effective communicators, especially on controversial issues like evolution and global warming. In particular, they need to “frame” scientific issues in a way that will have resonance with specific groups of people. In some cases this might mean eschewing a discussion of the scientific minutiae in favor of discussing more practical ramifications of the issue at hand.…
jrosenhouse | April 17, 2007Here's Franklin Graham, from last night's Scarborough Country, reminding us of what's important about the VA Tech shooting:
First of all, we know that God loves us and God cares for us. And there is a devil in this world. There is evil, and we have seen this manifest itself today in the life of one individual who took the lives of these students. It's a tragedy. But God loves us very much, and I don't think we should ever forget his love for us that he has provided a way for us to be with him in heaven and that's through his son Jesus Christ.
And later:
Well, I don't blame God for it,…
jrosenhouse | April 16, 2007In light of the events today at Virginia Tech, I'm suddenly not in the mood to talk about framing, or Imus, or the Pope's statement on evolution. At this point the death toll is up to thirty-three people.
Blacksburg, VA, where Tech is located, is a roughly two-hour drive from my home in Harrisonburg. I just spent the weekend at a local math conference that included quite a few faculty members and students from Tech. I made some new friends, and renewed some old aquaintances. I do not know if any of them were directly affected. It's hard to imagine that after the high spirits and light…
jrosenhouse | April 9, 2007First, the good news: I will be attending the spring section meeting of the Mathematical Association of America this Friday and Saturday. The meeting is being held at Roanoke College, and as you can see here, I'm giving one of the Big Shot talks. Lucky me! I'll be talking about the Monty Hall problem. In particular, I will show how you can teach an entire course in probability centered around nothing more than variations on the basic scenario. If you live anywhere near Roanoke, stop by for a visit!
Now, sadly, the bad news. The preparations for the conference, coupled with all of my…
jrosenhouse | April 6, 2007John Wilkins has a post up criticizing P.Z. Myers for criticizing Elaine Pagels for criticizing Richard Dawkins. Maybe we'd better start at the beginning.
An interview with historian Elaine Pagels appeared in Salon. The first two thirds of the interview addressed Pagels' work on the Gnostic Gospels. The final third dealt with questions about faith and science.
There's much to discuss in the interview, and I recommend reading the whole thing. I found Pagels' comments about the Gnostic Gospels interesting and thought-provking. Alas, I found her comments about faith and rationality…
jrosenhouse | April 5, 2007One of the nice things about being a Big Shot science blogger is that sometimes people are willing to send you free copies of their books. One such person is John Farrell, who graciously sent me a copy of his book The Day Without Yesterday: Lematire, Einstein and the Birth of Modern Cosmology, published by Thunder's Mouth Press. He sent me the book some time ago, and I owe him an apology for taking so long to review it.
This is a really excellent book. It is a combination of biography, focusing particularly on the often ignored Georges Lemaitre, and science popularization. The book traces…
jrosenhouse | April 5, 2007Sorry for the light blogging this week. I've been spending my time doing all of the things I should have done last week, but didn't because I was writing long blog entries about my experiences in Knoxville.
You might want to have a look at this brief but interesting article from today's New York Times. It describes some recent work on the genetics of dog size.
Here's how the article begins:
If it weren't for IGF-1, Paris Hilton's life would be a lot less elegant.
She'd be lugging around an Irish wolfhound in her purse.
Scientists have just discovered which gene fragment controls the size…
jrosenhouse | April 2, 2007Two weeks ago I joined the chorus of Science Bloggers bashing Michael Egnor for his posts at the Discovery Institute's blog. I pointed out a fairly straightforward error in one of his posts. At that time I mentioned that I hadn't jumped in earlier because Egnor's arguments revolved around medical practice, which is a subject I know little about. I also wrote this:
I figured I would weigh in when he started parroting those insipid probability arguments creationists find so appealing.
At the time I was being facetious. I didn't think he would really go there. I mean, really, no one with…
jrosenhouse | April 2, 2007The folks over at Uncommon Descent have unveiled a new blogger: mathematician Granville Sewell. He's the latest know-nothing to convert a comically simplistic version of the second law of thermodynamics into an anti-evolution argument.
Of course, this is one of those shark-jumping, litmus-test arguments that tell you immediately you are dealing with a crank. The second law of thermodynamics and modern evolutionary theory are not in conflict. That is a fact, not an opinion. Anyone claiming they are in conflict is confused about at least one of them, and probably both.
I have previously…
jrosenhouse | April 2, 2007Paul Cohen, one of the giants of twentieth century mathematics, has died of lung disease at 72.
Cohen's major claim to fame was his resolution of the Continuum Hypothesis. Here are the basic ideas:
Suppose you have two finite sets and you want to show they contain the same number of elements. You might try to do that by counting the number of elements in each set. But another method would be to pair up elements of one set with elements of the other. If the sets run out at the same time, then you know they have the same number of elements.
As an example, suppose you have a group of…
jrosenhouse | March 30, 2007Read: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four.
I walked back to the convention center with the sixteen year old. The rest of the posse went a different direction. He seemed keen to persuade me of the absurdity of attributing consciousness to the purely physical properties of the brain. The most interesting part of this conversation was his complete confidence that animals, not even chimpanzees, are not conscious. “That's what it means to say we are created in God's image,” he informed me.
Thanks to the long line at Subway, we arrived back at the convention center more than halfway…
jrosenhouse | March 29, 2007Read: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
So I'm standing on line at Subway, contemplating the very long wait between me and my turkey on wheat, when I happen to overhear part of the conversation going on among the people immediately in front of me. There were four people, an older woman and three teenagers. At this point I thought the woman was the mother of the three teens, but later I would learn they were not related.
The woman was talking animatedly to the kids. “Did you see those people with the Happy Atheist shirts?” she said. “They were handing out leaflets.”
I perked up.…
jrosenhouse | March 28, 2007Read Part One and Part Two.
Stephen Meyer was next up. Strobel and Richards played their parts well, but, let's face it, the conference thus far had mostly been amateur hour. Strobel stepped in it every time he mentioned something vaguely scientific, but he's not exactly thrust forward as one of the major intellects of the ID movement. Richards presented his goofy argument with sufficient eloquence, but there was too little of substance in his presentation to make him worth too much emotional energy.
But with Meyer we hit the ID big time. Meyer, you will recall, is the one who managed to…
jrosenhouse | March 27, 2007Read Part One of this series here.
At this point Strobel and Meyer left the stage. The room grew dark, and a video came on the large screen to my left. It was an excerpt from the The Privileged Planet, based on the book of the same title. The book was written by astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez and theologian Jay Richards, and represented yet another gloss on the fine-tuning argument.
Richards was the next speaker. I had not read The Privileged Planet when it was published, and therefore was only vaguely familiar with its arguments. After hearing Richards speak, I'm not inclined to buy…