jrosenhouse | August 24, 2006That's the title of this article from the August 2006 issue of GeoTimes. The article is by Kathryn Hansen. The article details some of the difficulties faced by national parks and museums in communicating science to the public.
It begins as follows:
STOP: This exhibit is about animal thinking. It contains some things you may agree with, some you may disagree with, and others that may even trouble you. Come explore and see what you think.
This disclaimer, attached to a bright red stop sign, is the first material offered to visitors at the Think Tank, an exhibit about animal cognition at…
jrosenhouse | August 23, 2006The cable news channels have been falling all over themselves for the last few days, desperate to find something new to say about the JonBenet Ramsey fracas. Meanwhile, what do you suppose the lead story was on yesterday's edition of The Colbert Report? Grigory Perelman's refusal of the Fields Medal for his proof of the Poincare conjecture. Not only that, but Colbert even got the math right. An impressive performance, and another sad reminder that Comedy Central is just about the only place on television for serious news.
jrosenhouse | August 23, 2006The Daily Howler has this disturbing report about the Q&A session from a recent presentation by Ann Coulter. Try to believe that a sentient human being actually asked the following question:
QUESTION FROM SOMEONE EZRA KLEIN DOESN'T KNOW (7/28/06): Hi. My name is --, I'm a sophomore at Bucknell University and a summer intern at the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute. In your book, Godless, you completely tear apart the theory of evolution and I was just wondering how scientists can still believe in such an implausible theory, especially since you don't disprove it based on Biblical facts…
jrosenhouse | August 23, 2006Anyone familiar with D. James Kennedy, leader of Coral Ridge Ministries, knows that he is one of the vilest ignorance peddlers in the business. When I lived in Kansas I listened frequently to his sermons on the local Christian radio station. He managed to stand out even on a station where lies and ignorance were the norm.
So it is no surprise that they would put together a documentary called “Darwin's Deadly Legacy,” alledging among other things that Hitler was an evolutionist, and that this in some way shaped his political views.
Of course, the idea is ridiculous on its face. It's not as…
jrosenhouse | August 22, 2006My latest essay for CSICOP's Creation Watch site is now up. This time: Why you should be suspicious of creationist and ID arguments even if you know very little of the science involved. Enjoy!
jrosenhouse | August 22, 2006A few weeks ago, Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary joined the team over at William Dembski's blog Uncommon Descent. This presented her with a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, she is surely aware that she knows nothing at all about science. But here she was expected to write regularly on the subject. How would she handle that state of affairs?
Well, she has now posted enough to give us a partial answer: By relying on childish, above-it-all arguments that will allow her to sound savvy and street-wise to UD's sycophantic admirers, without actually having to engage any science.
For…
jrosenhouse | August 21, 2006I'm afraid I have to blog and run today. I have to scamper off to Dulles Airport an hour from now to retrieve a friend. (Don't worry, I've already set the VCR to tape the premiere of Prison Break!) So why not have a look at Slate's take on the Poincare conjecture. It includes this memorable description, attributed to mathematician Christina Sormani, of what the conjecture actually says:
The Poincare Conjecture says, Hey, you've got this alien blob that can ooze its way out of the hold of any lasso you tie around it? Then that blob is just an out-of-shape ball. [Grigory] Perelman and […
jrosenhouse | August 18, 2006A reader asked me, in response to yesterday's post, why I failed to make any mention of the Mobius Strip. Addressing that topic seemed like a good way to close the week's blogging.
Imagine that you take a long thin strip of newspaper. Hold it at the top with your thumb and index finger, and let the bottom dangle loosely. Now grab the bottom and give it a half-twist. Take the narrow side at the bottom, and bring it up so the short edge meets up with the corresponding short edge where you are holding the newspaper. Tape these ends together. The result is a Mobius Strip. Click here for…
jrosenhouse | August 17, 2006Tuesday's New York Times had this lengthy article about progress on one of the great open problems in mathematics: Poincare's conjecture. Actually, it looks increasingly likely that the problem is no longer open:
Three years ago, a Russian mathematician by the name of Grigory Perelman, a k a Grisha, in St. Petersburg, announced that he had solved a famous and intractable mathematical problem, known as the Poincaré conjecture, about the nature of space.
After posting a few short papers on the Internet and making a whirlwind lecture tour of the United States, Dr. Perelman disappeared back…
jrosenhouse | August 16, 2006While I was away, William Dembski offered up this revealing post. He describes how he met philosopher Barbara Forrest and asked her to autograph his copy of Creationism's Trojan Horse. She signed it, “To Bill, With Thanks.” Dembski writes:
Indeed, what is she thanking me for? If ID is such a vicious evil, a more appropriate inscription might have read:
To Bill,
You malignant subverter of science, you despiser of all that is wholesome and right. May you rot in hell, if there is such a place (which I doubt).
With all good wishes,
Barbara Forrest
But she didn't. She thanked me. Why was…
jrosenhouse | August 15, 2006Prior to my break, there was some discussion, in the comments to this post, about the Day-Age Theory. This refers to the idea that the “Days” in the first chapter of Genesis actually refer to very long periods of time. This is a desperation move made by Biblical literalists who are uneasy rejecting the considerable evidence in support of an ancient Earth.
During my break I started reading The Challenge of Creation: Judaism's Encounter With Science, Cosmology, and Evolution, by Rabbi Natan Slifkin. I'm currently about half way through it, and I expect to have a great deal to say about it in…
jrosenhouse | August 15, 2006Things have settled down a bit here in Harrisonburg. The JMU Math Department has now nestled in to its new digs in the appallingly named, but otherwise attractive, Roop Hall. Sadly, my office currently has no shelves on the walls, a state affairs I expect to persist for several more weeks. So much of my stuff is still in boxes. Sigh.
Meanwhile, Operation: American Dream proceeds apace. Contracts have been signed, mortgage applications completed, title companies notified. Tomorrow morning comes the building inspector. Hopefully he will have only nice things to say.
Back to blogging!
jrosenhouse | August 3, 2006Sorry for the lack of blogging lately. I'm in the process of buying my first house, which means most of my time lately has been spent either dealing with that, or sitting around worrying that I'm making some terrible mistake. Making matters worse, the math department here at JMU is about to move in to a new building, which means I'm going to be without a computer for a while during the transition.
So as satisfying as it would be to gloat about Mel Gibson's recent travails, or to thank the sane people in Kansas for producing an impressive election victory, I think I will have to take some…
jrosenhouse | July 28, 2006Following up on yesterday's post, the July 21 issue of Science also contained this review article, entitled “Evolution of the Molecular Machines for Protein Import into Mitochondria.” The authors write:
Here we look at how protein import pathways were established to create mitochondria. The protein import pathway is driven by a set of molecular machines, and these machines are of modular design. Each machine has a core module that seems to be common to all eukaryotes. Additional modules have been added to each machine over time, with these add-ons being common only to particular…
jrosenhouse | July 27, 2006While the blathering know-nothings of ID pound their chests and predict the imminent demise of Darwin, real scientists are look to the future. A recent conference at Trinity College in England explored the future of Darwinian thinking in biology. Eors Szathmary (coauthor, with John Maynard Smith, of the excellent book The Major Transitions in Evolution) reports on the conference for Science. He writes:
Many regard the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection as one of the most important and powerful theories of our times, in the good company of the general theory of relativity…
jrosenhouse | July 26, 2006During those rare moments when I am not doing mathematics or blogging, I am usually reading. I read a lot of nonfiction, mostly books related in some way to science or mathematics. I also read a lot of fiction, and here I generally stick to a steady diet of mysteries, horror, science fiction and political thrillers.
But every once in a while I get the urge to read something good. A Les Miserables or a Moby Dick. That sort of thing. Recently I got it into my head that I really ought to read some Dickens. I've never read any of his novels. Theoretically I read Great Expectations in high…
jrosenhouse | July 25, 2006Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) made the following statement on the floor of the Senate last Tuesday. He was speaking in support of federal funding for stem cell research:
Substantively, there is no doubt this is the right thing to do. But I put it in a broader context. There is a group of people of deep faith. I respect that faith. I've been in enough inner city black churches, working class Catholic parishes, rural Methodist houses of worship and small Jewish synagogues to understand that faith is a gift. The trouble with this group, which I call the theocrats, is they want their faith to…
jrosenhouse | July 24, 2006Michael Ruse has this interesting op-ed in the Florida newspaper The Tallahassee Democrat. He begins:
This has been a good year for evolutionists. First, at the end of 2005, a judge in Pennsylvania - a conservative appointed by President George W. Bush - decreed that so-called Intelligent Design Theory is not genuine science and hence cannot be taught in publicly funded science classrooms.
Intelligent Design Theory - Creationism Lite - is the latest attempt by religious fundamentalists, biblical literalists, to argue that the origins of organisms were not evolutionary but the result of…
jrosenhouse | July 22, 2006In my recent post criticizing John McCain for his remarks about teaching ID, I quoted the following remark, from the article in the New York Sun reporting on McCain's speech:
Responding to a question about a report that he thinks “intelligent design” should be taught in schools, the senator mocked the idea that American young people were so delicate and impressionable that they needed to be sheltered from the concept, which says God had a hand in creation and which has been challenged by Darwinists as unscientific.
I responded with:
Incidentally, in light of my previous post, we shouldn't…