jrosenhouse | March 26, 2007The ID folks put on one of their dog and pony shows in Knoxville, TN this weekend. My curiosity piqued, I decided to check it out.
So I left big bowls of food and water for the cats, piled into the Jason-mobile, pointed it South, and wound up in Knoxville six hours later. Things got off to an inauspicious start when I discovered that the highway exit recommended by MapQuest was closed for construction. Resourceful guy that I am, I overcame this difficulty and found my hotel. Killed the rest of Friday walking around the University of Tennessee campus and engaging in a fruitless effort to…
jrosenhouse | March 23, 2007In the mood for a good brain workout? Well search no farther! The fourth installment of the Carnival of Mathematics has arrived! Just look beneath the fold for some first rate math blogging:
Over at Universe of Discourse, Mark Dominus gets us started with some wise words about Bernoulli Processes. Also have a look at this post, in which continued fractions are employed in the service of the age old question: How old are you, really.
Then move over to Fightin' the Resistance of Matter for a heavy-duty post on homological algebra, from sirix. Brought back some bad memories from my…
jrosenhouse | March 22, 2007Speaking of cranks, all of the recent fuss over Al Gore's testimony to Congress on the subject of global warming has seen the revival of statistician Bjorn Lomborg. You might remember him as the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, the book that was going to set us all straight on the subject of environmentalism. According to Lomborg, everything is much better than we've been led to believe.
I only made it through about half of Lomborg's book before conking out. I was not really in a position to assess a lot of his claims. There were some crank warning signs, like the conversion…
jrosenhouse | March 22, 2007Over at Red State Rabble, Pat Hayes has some further thoughts on the Darwin quote I discussed yesterday. Turns out Dembski's even more vile than I thought. After reproducing the quote in question, Hayes writes:
And Dembski, of course, drives home the point that these sorts of views, while once popular, are now beyond the pale by adding: "What a great mind, indeed. What a wonderful human being. What a marvelous vision of the human family."
Is this what Darwin really believed? Is it true that Darwin's theory of evolution, as the comments to Dembski's post attest, is the basis for racism,…
jrosenhouse | March 21, 2007While I was slumming over at Dembski's blog I cam across a link to this article, by right-wing superhack David Horowitz. Apparently Dembski's crew thought this little essay was helpful to the cause.
Horowitz is discussing the horrors perpetrated by Women's Studies Departments in the name of “Social Constructivism:”
A year ago the biggest issue in education after budgets was whether “Intelligent Design” should be taught in the nation's schools. Opponents called it a form of “creationism” and the press dubbed the ensuing legal battle as the biggest clash between faith and science since the…
jrosenhouse | March 21, 2007In yesterday's post I remarked that people seem to lose their minds upon deciding to become anti-evolution advocates. There is no better case in point than William Dembski. Ten years ago he was the star of the ID movement. A well-credentialed scholar with shiny new ideas holding down an actual academic position and publishing books with credible publishers.
Those days are long gone. Nowadays he only seems to find time to post brief missives at one of the most cartoonishly ignorant blogs on the Web: Uncommon Descent. I stopped paying attention to the blog a while back, figuring Dembski…
jrosenhouse | March 21, 2007As a companion piece to yesterday's post, have a look at this article from today's New York Times. It begins:
Damage to an area near the center of the brain, several inches behind the eyes, transforms the way people make moral judgments in life-or-death situations, scientists are reporting. In a new study, people with this rare injury expressed increased willingness to kill or harm another person if doing so would save others' lives.
The findings are the most direct evidence to date that humans' native revulsion for hurting others relies on a part of neural anatomy, one that likely evolved…
jrosenhouse | March 20, 2007I only have time for quick blogging today, so why not have a look at this article from The New York Times? It discusses the evolutionary origins of morality. Here's the opening:
Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days.
Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the precursors of human morality. They further…
jrosenhouse | March 19, 2007So far I haven't been participating in the anti-Egnor festivities. For those who don't know, Michael Egnor is a medical doctor who lately has become the flavor of the month over at the Discovery Institute's Blog. They get very excited, you see, when someone with actual credentials can be found to parrot their talking points. In Egnor's case he's harping the meme that doctors don't need to know anything about evolution.
Since I know next to nothing about medical practice I've been content to allow bloggers more qualified than I explain the numerous ways in which Egnor is confused. For a…
jrosenhouse | March 19, 2007After all of our hard work last week, let us begin with something a bit lighter.
Via Larry Moran I came across this post, at Cosmic Variance, regarding the great muffin joke debate.
I reprint the joke below the fold. I find it very amusing indeed, but, incredibly, there seem to be others who disagree. Let me know what you think:
So there are these two muffins baking in an oven. One of them yells, “Wow, it's hot in here!”
And the other muffin replies: “Holy cow! A talking muffin!”
Actually, this joke reminded me of another one I heard when I was in college. Finding it funny or not is said…
jrosenhouse | March 15, 2007While I am laying down the law regarding the proper usage of controversial words, allow me to express a few thoughts about spirituality.
P.Z. Myers gave this post, in which he comments on the awarding of the Templeton Prize, the following title: “Spirituality?” Another Word for Lies and Empty Noise.
Mark Chu-Carroll took a different view, in this post:
So what do I mean when I say spirituality? There's something more to my life than just a bunch of chemical reactions. I love my wife. I care about other people. I core about the way the world is, and work for things that I think will make it a…
jrosenhouse | March 15, 2007On Tuesday I discussed a post by my SciBling Rob Knop on the subject of spirituality in an age of science. In that post I made three main points: (1) That Rob was badly mischaracterizing the views of Richard Dawkins on the question life's ultimate purpose, (2) That in downplaying the role of God as creator he was conceding many of the major points made by people like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, amd (3) That his reconciliation of science with religion depends on a notion of Christianity that leaves out many of the things people generally consider essential to Christian faith.
Since…
jrosenhouse | March 14, 2007Allow me to direct your attention to the cover story from the current issue of Newsweek. It provides a useful summary of recent developments in human evolution.
It's a decent article, and I recommend reading it through to the end. There are, however, a few irritating points:
The science of human evolution is undergoing its own revolution. Although we tend to see the march of species down through time as a single-file parade, with descendant succeeding ancestor in a neat line, the emerging science shows that the story of our species is far more complicated than Biblical literalists would…
jrosenhouse | March 13, 2007That last post makes a nice lead-in to this post, from my fellow Science Blogger Rob Knop. This post is a follow-up to this previous post, in which Knop professed his own Christian faith, and protested what he perceives as a bias towards atheism here at SB. The present post is entitled, “What is the Purpose of Religion and/or Spirituality in a Scientific Age.”
Let's have a look.
Referring to his earlier post, Knop writes:
In that post, I make it very clear that religion is no good at explaining the processes of the natural world. Once upon a time, that was a big part of what religion was…
jrosenhouse | March 13, 2007I've just finished rereading Ed Larson's book Summer for the Gods. I first read this book in graduate school, before I had developed any serious interest in evolutionary biology.
The book is about the Scopes' trial and its aftermath. As an account of the trial itself, it pales in comparison to L. Sprague de Camp's much better book, The Great Monkey Trial. But Larson does provide more historical context than Sprague de Camp.
It is striking how many of the themes of the Scopes trial still have resonance today. Local control of school curricula vs. the establishment clause of the first…
jrosenhouse | March 13, 2007I'm a little late to the party, but do go have a look at the third installment of The Carnival of Mathematics over at Michi's Blog. Lots of good procrastination material!
The fourth installment is set to go up on March 23. And I will be the host! If you write any sort of math-related blog entry, let me know about it by Wednesday the 21st. Go here if you want to submit an essay, and many thanks to Alon Levy for making the submission process so simple. No more than two contirbutions per author plese. I've already received a fair number of submissions, and the deadline is still a ways away.
jrosenhouse | March 8, 2007It seems tha P.Z. Myers is is turning 50 today and, following the example of Richard Dawkins, we're all supposed to write him a poem.
Seems like a good way to wrap up the week's blogging. So here's my poem, with apologies to Edgar Allen Poe:
THE MYERS
Once upon a bleak December, back in Kansas I remember
P'rusing vapid, foolish volumes of bombastic ID lore
While I sat there calmly reading, musing over creo pleading
Suddenly my eyes were bleeding and my head became quite sore
“Who,” I cried, “will face this rot and vanquish it forevermore?”
“I need a hero, nothing more.”
Hopeless seemed the…
jrosenhouse | March 8, 2007With all the fuss lately about the atheistic books of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, it is easy to overlook another glut of books that tend to threaten religion. I am referring to the series of books intending to provide a scientific basis for the prevalence of religious belief.
Examples of the genre include Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained and Scott Atran's In Gods We Trust. In each case the idea is to show that a propensity for religious belief is the result of evolution by natural selection.
This week's New York Times Magazine featured this cover…
jrosenhouse | March 7, 2007According to this news brief, the Idaho Science Teacher's Association has come out against teaching ID in science classes:
Science teachers in Idaho are officially against teaching intelligent design in the state's public schools.
The Idaho Science Teachers Association has approved the official position, saying teachers in public schools are charged with teaching methodology that's been approved by the scientific community.
Intelligent design contends that complex living organisms must have been created by a higher being.
The Association's president says the teacher's group isn't taking a…
jrosenhouse | March 7, 2007Have a look at this brief account of a recently unearthed fossil dinosaur. As reported by the International Herald Tribune, it provides yet another example of those transitional forms creationists say do not exist:
Ryan named the new dinosaur Albertaceratops nesmoi, after the region and Cecil Nesmo, a rancher near Manyberries, Alberta, who has helped fossil hunters.
The creature was about 20 feet (6 meters) long and lived 78 million years ago.
The oldest known horned dinosaur in North America is called Zuniceratops. It lived 12 million years before Ryan's find, and also had large horns.…