jrosenhouse | July 22, 2006Well, it's amazing what a link from Kos can do. EvolutionBlog has received over 7000 hits today. And the day is young! Greetings to all the new readers.
jrosenhouse | July 21, 2006How bad have things gotten for the ID side? Completely unable to make good on their promise to generate any ID based research, they have now taken to outright lying about the work done by real scientists. Okay, so maybe they've been doing that for quite some time. Still, William Dembski's latest blog entry strikes me as even more brazen than usual.
Dembski writes:
Here is an ID research paper published in PNAS. Note that some important principles of evolutionary theory are criticized in the abstract. This research shows how ID is capable of being applied in biology.
PNAS refers to the…
jrosenhouse | July 19, 2006As incredible as it seems, there are still those among us who think it clever and above it all to say that in America there is only the Republicrat Party. If you're one of those people who persist in saying that there is no difference between the parties, I would urge you to read this article from today's Washington Post:
Yesterday's House debate on same-sex marriage was pure dead horse: The Senate last month rejected -- emphatically -- a constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to ban same-sex marriage, so there was zero chance the amendment could be approved this year. But…
jrosenhouse | July 19, 2006Almost as if to confirm what I wrote in yesterday's post, President Bush vetoed the stem-cell bill. The New York Times has the basic facts.
I won't rehash here the utter vacuity of the arguments made by the anti-stem cell crowd. I would like to point out, however, that after the Presidetn made his appalling statement announcing the veto, the cable news channels couldn't wait to fall into line behind the President.
MSNBC had on, unopposed, Dr. Bernardine Healy to tell everyone that adult stem cells are the way to go.
Fox News had Fred Barnes on, unopposed, to support the President's veto.…
jrosenhouse | July 18, 2006One of the more annoying fictions promoted by the media is the one about John McCain being a moderate. A plain-speaking independent who states it plain and calls it the way he sees it. Of course, it's long been obvious to anyone who's been paying attention that he's a staunch right-winger, but don't tell that to any of the drooling sycophants who host cable news chat shows. The idea that McCain was some sort free-spirit should have been allayed by the sickening spectacle of his embrace of the President in the 2004 campaign. This is the same President who won the 2000 South Carolina…
jrosenhouse | July 18, 2006Recemtly there was a bit of a kerfuffle over at Virginia Commonwealth University regarding the bioogy textbook Essentials of Biology, Sylvia Mader. An adjunct biology professor at VCU protested that the book gave short shrift to evolution and was soft on creationism.
I've not managed to locate a copy of the book for mysel, but I note that Keith Pennock, writing for the Discovery Institute's blog, has this post up, in which he quotes two paragraphs from Mader's textbook. Pennock's intention is to show how silly the adjunct professor was being. Alas, I think there's a different message to be…
jrosenhouse | July 17, 2006Like all sensible people, I'm a huge fan of George Carlin. I regard him as the very best stand-up comedian, ever. Not only are his routines funny and insightful, but they are delivered so skillfully that you can learn a lot about good public speaking simply by studying his technique. I often tell people that Carlin (and Robin Williams) had a far greater impact on my teaching style than any math ed. specialist ever did. After all, stand-up comedians have to command an audience's attention for up to an hour at a time using only their words and their mannerisms. That's pretty much what math…
jrosenhouse | July 17, 2006Mark Chu-Carroll joins the discussion with this interesting post.
But if you look at my writing on this blog, what I've mainly done is critiques of the IDists and creationists who attempt to argue against evolution. And here's the important thing: the math that they do - the kind of arguments coming from the people that Luskin claims are uniquely well suited to argue about evolution - are so utterly, appallingly horrible that it doesn't take a background in evolution to be able to tear them to ribbons.
To give an extreme example, remember the infamous Woodmorappe paper about Noah's ark?…
jrosenhouse | July 15, 2006In Part One of this essay I discussed my answer to the question of whether mathematicians were qualified to discuss evolution. The inspiration for these musings was this post, from Discovery Institute blogger Casey Luskin.
We now pick up the action in the second paragraph of Luskin's post:
The truth is that mathematics has a strong tradition of giving cogent critique of evolutionary biology. After all, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is fundamentally based upon an algorithm which uses a mathematically describable trial and error process to attempt to produce complexity.…
jrosenhouse | July 14, 2006Via Gene Expression I came across this post, at the Discovery Institute's blog, from erstwhile ID lackey Casey Luskin. It's title: Mathematicians and Evolution. Hmmmm. Sounds like something I should read.
Luskin writes:
As recently highlighted here, mathematics is an academic locale where scientific skepticism of Neo-Darwinism can survive the current political climate! Discovery Institute recently received an e-mail from someone commenting on the Scientific Dissent from Darwinism List where over 600 Ph.D. scientists from various fields agree that they are “skeptical of claims for the…
jrosenhouse | July 13, 2006Writing in National Review Online, John Derbyshire provides a nice characterization of what it's like to argue with creationists:
I'll also say that I write the following with some reluctance. It's a wearying business, arguing with Creationists. Basically, it is a game of Whack-a-Mole. They make an argument, you whack it down. They make a second, you whack it down. They make a third, you whack it down. So they make the first argument again. This is why most biologists just can't be bothered with Creationism at all, even for the fun of it. It isn't actually any fun. Creationists just chase…
jrosenhouse | July 12, 2006I have written previously that the current mainstream of modern American conservatism lies with the religious, anti-science, fanatically pro-Bush folks. More evidence of that is provided by a recent spat between the National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru and Time's Andrew Sullivan. Writing at NR's blog, Ponnuru said:
Since another panelist had quoted one of [Sullivan's] sermons as evidence of intra-conservative strife, I also observed that I know no serious conservative who considers him a conservative. I am prepared to believe that there are a few misguided conservatives, unbeknownst to me, who…
jrosenhouse | July 11, 2006Michael Kinsley has an excellent column up at Slate about the inconsistency of the anti stem-cell crowd:
Against this, you have the fact that embryonic stem cells are extracted from human embryos, killing them in the process. If you believe that embryos a few days after conception have the same human rights as you or me, killing innocent embryos is obviously intolerable. But do opponents of stem-cell research really believe that? Stem cells test that belief, and sharpen the basic right-to-life question, in a way abortion never has.
And later:
In short, if embryos are human beings with full…
jrosenhouse | July 10, 2006Check out my most recent review. Maybe I've been too hard on this site....
jrosenhouse | July 10, 2006Also while I was away, Nature published its list of the top blogs by scientists. EvolutionBlog was listed in a tie for the twentieth spot, based on my Technorati rank (whatever that is). Cool. All such lists have to be taken with a grain of salt, of course, but it's always nice to be noticed.
It was also nice to see The Panda's Thumb, to which I am proud to contribute, ranked second. P. Z. Myers earned a well-deserved spot at the top of the list. And congratulations to all the other SB'ers on the list.
jrosenhouse | July 10, 2006I managed to find time during my break to catch the new Superman movie. It mostly holds your interest, though it could certainly have been thirty minutes shorter without losing anything. The action sequences are impressive, and the acting is good (especially Kevin Spacey, whose even better than the always excellent Gene Hackman as Luthor). On the other hand, Luthor's evil scheme is utterly preposterous and Superman himself is such a stiff, humorless, bore that you find yourself sympathizing with Luthor.
More below the fold, including a few spoilers.
So, let's see. Luthor's big plan is to…
jrosenhouse | July 8, 2006The World Open went well. I managed six points out of a possible nine. Sadly, you needed six and a half to win any money. Did manage to pick up a handful of rating points, however. My final tally was four wins, three draws, one loss, and one half-point bye, which I will explain in a moment. The full details are available here.
I was playing in the three-day schedule, meaning I had to play my first five games in one day, at an accelerated time control of game in 45 minutes. If you use more than 45 minutes, you lose (with very few exceptions). Since I tend to be better at slower time…
jrosenhouse | June 29, 2006The annual chess extravaganza known as The World Open will be taking place in Philadelphia this weekend. I will be participating, of course. That means I will be out of town for the next week or so. Regular blogging will resume upon my return.
jrosenhouse | June 29, 2006A few people have sent me e-mail to tell me that certain comments, rather than being posted immediately as they should be, are getting placed in a queue waiting for my approval. I now make it part of my daily routine to clear out such comments, so there is no need to write to tell me about them. The bigger issue is that I'm not sure why these comments are not being posted immediately. Most people do not seem to be having this problem. I will be travelling for the next ten days or so, but when I return I will try to determine what is going on.
jrosenhouse | June 28, 2006Shortly after finishing Monday's post, I discovered that the new issue of the Reports of the National Center for Science Education had turned up in my mailbox. It contained the following item:
Arthur Shapiro is a professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California, Davis. Starting in 1981 and continuing through 2004, he was running a long-term study of the frequency of hybridization and its relation to population density in a particular species of butterfly. The research was undertaken at a ranch in northeastern California. The ranch's owner had no problem…