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Ack! ChopraWoo!

Usually Deepak Chopra's nonsensical writings at the Huffington post about mind-body healing are so vague and bland I don't bother addressing them. The mind controls the body, the mind is powerful, blah blah blah, who cares right? Well, today Chopra pulled back the curtain and we see the crank within. It's a reminder that behind the facade of all the touchy-feely nonsense of the alties is a campaign against science and legitimate medical practice. We start with the standard quack appeal to the individual, which sounds nice, but in practice basically means they have no consistent method to…

Wow Orac, you found a real winner

Does Tim Slagle strike anyone else as being a crank? I feel like we should lend Orac a hand. He's had to deal with the anti-global warming denialism from this guy all on his own. Let's do a take down of this wise man's approach to global warming science. Let's start with this genius article " Every Breath You Take" We have the exaggeration of GW alarmism: Despite the anticlimactic leaks that have been circulated for the past month or so, I'd like to wager a guess: The Earth is going to warm, the oceans are going to rise, and humanity will be destroyed as plague famine and pestilence…

Happy THIRD birthday Tet Zoo

Oh my god. Two years at ScienceBlogs have passed, and Tet Zoo has now been going for three years. It all started on January 21st 2006 when, for no good reason at all, I started a blog over at blogspot.com. Yes, Tet Zoo is three years old. Time to look back at the past year of operation. For starters, should you want to know more about Tet Zoo's origin and history of operation, read Happy first birthday Tetrapod Zoology part I and part II (both at ver 1), and Happy second birthday part I and part II. Last year, I included a 'what happened in tetrapods during 2007'. I'm not going to do the…

Happy second birthday Tetrapod Zoology (part I)

January 21st 2008 was Tet Zoo's second birthday, but due to its clashing with the launch of the EDGE amphibian site I didn't have the chance to write about it. So, better late than never, I'm doing that now. It's time to reminiscence on a year gone by, on a year when so much happened in the world of Tetrapod Zoology... The move to Science Blogs The real personal big deal for 2007 was, of course, the migration of this blog to the wonderful world of Science Blogs. I initially decided that this wouldn't change my blogging habits, but eventually it did, as the constant quest for more hits has…

Haskell: the Basics of Type Classes

One thing that we've seen already in Haskell programs is type classes. Today, we're going to try to take our first look real look at them in detail - both how to use them, and how to define them. This still isn't the entire picture around type-classes; we'll come back for another look at them later. But this is a beginning - enough to really understand how to use them in basic Haskell programs, and enough to give us the background we'll need to attack Monads, which are the next big topic. Type classes are Haskell's mechanism for managing parametric polymorphism. Parametric polymorphism is a…

Ask a ScienceBlogger: The Effects of Criticism

This week's "Ask a ScienceBlogger" is an interesting one, but *very* tricky to answer. The question was proposed by fellow SBer [Dave Munger:][munger] **"What's a time in your career when you were criticized extremely harshly by someone you respect? Did it help you or set your career back?"** [munger]: http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/ I have to tread carefully while answering this one. It's a good question, but it involves people who *could* be reading the blog. Overall, I've been remarkably lucky in my career. For the most part, I've had excellent mentors who've been kind and helpful…

Dissecting Ozbert the ostrich

After last week's look at an emu dissection, it seemed only logical to follow up with dissection pics of another ratite. So when John Hutchinson of the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) mentioned his dissection photos of Ozbert the ostrich, I asked politely, and received. Note that all photos are © John Hutchinson and Jason Moore, and are used with permission. Ozbert's suspended cadaver is shown here [note the gigantic calf muscles and extruded phallus]. Ozbert, donated by a British ostrich farm, was huge, tipping the scales (when plucked) at 129 kg (the world record is supposedly 160 kg) […

Wikipedia, just like an Organism: clock genes wiki pages

The October issue of the Journal of Biological Rhythms came in late last week - the only scientific journal I get in hard-copy these days. Along with several other interesting articles, one that immediately drew my attention was Clock Gene Wikis Available: Join the 'Long Tail' by John B. Hogenesch and Andrew I. Su (J Biol Rhythms 2008 23: 456-457.), especially since John Hogenesh and I talked about it in May at the SRBR meeting. Now some of you may be quick to make a connection between this article and its author Andrew Su and A Gene Wiki for Community Annotation of Gene Function, published…

Republicans? Who's that?

For the past several weeks before the election when it was already clear that Obama was going to win, I was looking for it and could not find it. During the election night coverage and the days immediately after, on TV, radio, newspapers and blogs I was looking for it and could not find it. Only in the last two days I found two isolated examples of people who "get it" - here and here. What? The failure of imagination coupled with failure of doing basic math has been missing all along. Everyone is wondering how will the GOP make a come-back, what they need to do to come back, never…

NASA: ups and downs

It was NASA proposal season last month, meant to comment on it, but was so exhausted and pissed off about the whole thing that I needed some space. A typical proposals is 15 pages of main text; including biblio, bios, associated documents and blurbs the final (electronic) package is typically 40-55 pages. NASA's budget is a funny thing. It has the Space Operations Directorate which is basically keeping the shuttle and space station and associated armies of contractors at JSC and KSC in business. $6 billion in round numbers. Then is has Science, Aeronautics (well, not so much anymore) and…

Beyond Einstein IV: Showdown in Chicago

The National Research Council's Assessment Committee for the Beyond Einstein program had a townhall meeting here in the Windy City. Much to my surprise, I was there also. The Beyond Einstein program at NASA is in trouble. With cuts and squeezing by the Exploration Development effort, the original plan for two major missions (Con-X and LISA) and three medium missions (JDEM, BHFP and CIP) combined with an integrated effort in research and EPO is out the door. At the request of the DoE, the NRC is doing a priority ranking, a funding wedge is opening in 2009, one mission can get a startup, the…

As National HIV Testing Day approaches, communities struggle with cuts to HIV prevention, screening services

by Kim Krisberg Just a few years ago in Butte County, Calif., it wasn't unusual for public health workers to administer more than 1,000 free HIV tests every year. In true public health fashion, they'd bring screening services to the people, setting up in neighborhoods, parks and bars, at special community events and visiting the local drug treatment facility and jail. The goal was prevention and education, and no one got turned away. That was before 2009, which is when California state legislators cut millions in HIV prevention and education funds from the state budget. The cut meant that…

What is wrong with journalists?

We've got a couple of appalling examples of awful journalism to scowl at today. The first is this credulous piece by Gordy Slack in The Scientist. I've been unhappy with Slack before — he sometimes seems to want to let creationist absurdity slide — and I got yelled at by some readers for my uncharitable interpretation of his review of the Creation "Museum". Well, I think I've been vindicated now. This article tries to give credit to the Intelligent Design creationists for some discoveries or interpretations. It's wrong from top to bottom. Here's his list, with my brief rebuttal; Jeffrey…

State tobacco prevention funds going up in smoke, threatening declines in smoking rates

By Kim Krisberg Public health vs. tobacco. It's a David and Goliath kind of story. The kind in which the good guys win and everyone sleeps a little sounder knowing that the bigger, richer guys don't hold all the power. Of course, the story isn't so cut and dry. While public health has been slowly and steadfastly winning the battle against smoking in the United States (though progress has slowed and disparities still exist), the opposition hasn't gone away -- in fact, it's still bigger, much richer and working harder than ever to hook new users and undermine successful anti-tobacco efforts. In…

A shot in the dark: Vaccine funding cuts a gamble for good health

by Kim Krisberg It's too early to tell just how many families Elizabeth Frerking and her colleagues at the Saline County Health Department in Marshall, Mo., will have to turn away, but it's likely to be too many. As of Oct. 1 and due to cuts in federal immunization funding, Frerking can only administer vaccines to children with no insurance at all or those with Medicaid coverage. However, it wasn't always like that. "Previously, any family could come here and get immunizations -- we didn't turn anybody away," Frerking, the department's vaccine coordinator, told me. "Now, we get to be the ones…

More voices against ACA repeal: Republican governors and The 27 Percent

As Congressional Republicans continue taking steps toward repealing the Affordable Care Act without providing a detailed, workable plan to replace it, more people are speaking out against ACA repeal. GOP Governors John Kasich of Ohio and Rick Snyder of Michigan are speaking to journalists about how the ACA’s Medicaid expansion has helped their states. Governor Snyder explained to The Detroit News that the state accepted the Medicaid expansion but added requirements for recipients earning between 100% and 133% of the federal poverty level, and that the program is working and has the potential…

Yellow fever, Zika virus, and lessons we have to keep learning

Last week, the World Health Organization stopped short of declaring a yellow fever outbreak centered in Angola to be a public health emergency of international concern, but its emergency advisory committee “emphasized the serious national and international risks posed by urban yellow fever outbreaks.” Angola has reported more than 2,000 suspected cases of the disease and nearly 300 deaths. Cases among travelers from Angola have also been reported in China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya. Like Zika, yellow fever is a flavivirus spread by Aedes mosquitos. Typical symptoms include…

Chris Hedges wastes everyone's time

Chris Hedges wrote a pretty good book on fundamentalism called American Fascists; at least, I thought it was pretty good, but now I have my doubts about his credibility. He has a new book, I Don't Believe in Atheists, and has an essay that summarizes his position. I could not believe how awful it is — it's basically a declaration that all atheists are exactly like Pat Robertson, and then it charges in with nothing but venom and accusations to defend his position. Here's a perfect example. These atheists share a naïve belief with these fundamentalists in our innate goodness and decency. They…

Francisco's Evolving Accusation

I have a feeling that Michael Francisco got a warning from someone who knows what they're talking about, who told him that he was coming dangerously close to defamation with his post at the DI blog, because last night he suddenly edited his post to make it a whole lot less actionable. That was quite predictable, of course, and I archived the original post. The first big lie is still in there, but changed to express a whole lot less certainty. Here's the original passage: Manzari & Cooper explain in detail how the newly elected Dover Area School Board, which campaigned on removing the ID…

Amsterdam man

The long-awaited follow-up to Brighton man and about as exciting for non-runners. If you lack patience, the answer is 3:57. Long introduction - you can skip this bit Just like last time, there is a backstory: after Brighton, I'd decided I was going to do more of this nonsense, and so inscribed again. But next April was a long way away, so I thought I'd see how two a year worked. I looked around and found a new local race, Grafham water marathon in September, and signed up for that. Closer to the time I realised that the all-important Boston marathon was on the same day. Rats: so I cancelled…

"Einstein's Greatest Blunder" was REALLY a blunder!

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." -Albert Einstein Back when Einstein first proposed his theory of General Relativity, his revolutionary picture of the Universe was met with a mix of curiosity, awe, and intense skepticism. It isn't every day that your most cherished of all physical theories -- the theory of Newtonian Gravity that had ruled the cosmos for nearly two-and-a-half centuries -- gets challenged by a newcomer. Image credit: Brooks/Cole - Thomson publishing, 2005. And yet, that's exactly what Einstein did when he proposed General Relativity at the…

Messier Monday: The Second Greatest Globular in Hercules, M92

"[T]he entire globe will soon be wrapped in a glowing envelope through which none of the magic of the Universe can be seen by the naked eye." -George Eslinger Welcome to still another Messier Monday here on Starts With A Bang! Each Monday, we highlight a different one of the 110 deep-sky objects that make up the Messier Catalogue, the first accurate catalogue of more than 100 extended, deep-sky wonders strewn across the expansive night sky! Image credit: ScienceSouth -- Tony's Astronomy Corner. Tonight, the Moon is nearly full, which means the largest natural source of light pollution at…

The Null Hypothesis: It's How I Roll

"If you go through a lot of hammers each month, I don't think it necessarily means you're a hard worker. It may just mean that you have a lot to learn about proper hammer maintenance." -Jack Handey The most common type of question I get asked by people genuinely wanting to know more about the Universe goes something like, "Hey, I saw such-and-such-a-story about some fanciful-sounding-theory, and that could be the explanation for this-weird-thing-that-we-see. What do you think about that?" Well, here's the thing. Image credit: Contemporary Physics Education Project. We've got a set of laws…

Pine Beetle-Caused Forest Death, And Climate Change

There is some interesting new work carried out by researchers at Dartmouth College and the USDA Forest Service on the relationship between the Mountain Pine Beetle, major die-offs of forests in North America, and climate change. The Mountain Pine Beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) is a kind of “bark beetle” (they don’t bark, they live in bark) native to western North America. They inhabit a very wide range of habitats and are found from British Columbia all the way south to Mexico. In British Columbia alone, the pine beetle, though a fairly complex process, has managed to destroy 16 of 55…

Democratic Primaries in Arizona, Utah, and Idaho: Sanders is still in the race

This post was written in two parts, pre-primary and post-primary. To see the result and a discussion of what they mean, skip down to the last part of the post, where I'll discuss why Tuesday's results may mean that Sanders could win the primary. Pre-Primary As already discussed, Clinton is likely to win the Democratic nomination. Sanders is too far behind to catch up without extraordinary results, as outlined here. However, it is also true that Sanders is likely to win a majority of contests from here on out, while at the same time, Clinton is likely to win many (if not most?) of the actual…

Dear Republican, time to make the change, because this is now you.

My current model (subject to change) puts Arizona in the Clinton Column. This is the prediction that has resulted in the most head scratching from those observing this, but it turns out that the Clinton Campaign seems to agree. Clinton surrogates, including Chelsea, Michele Obama, and Bernie Sanders will be in the state over the next few days. Frankly, I worry about good people going to Arizona stumping for a Liberal Democrat. Perhaps that is because of my own experience living there for several weeks. During that time a local desperado was arrested and made a court appearance, and his…

The Sciencedebate.org Presidential Debates and Questions

Sciencedebate.org has managed a seemingly impossible task. They developed 20 distinct (but often interrelated) questions about science policy, based on vast amounts of public input, and then got all four presidential candidates to address them. Congratulations to Sciencedebate.org. This is important, and I know that was not easy to do. The questions, and answers, are here. Here are my reactions to the candidates responses for some of the questions. 1. Innovation. Science and engineering have been responsible for over half of the growth of the U.S. economy since WWII. But some reports…

"The Dark Matter Crisis?" Hardly.

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." -Plato Imagine, if you will, the year 2200. Forget about the flying cars and robotic exoskeletons, though. I'm thinking about the incredible scientific tools we'll have at our disposal, as well as the huge set of information we'll have available about the Universe. One day, the latest telescope project gets completed, and we're finally able to make detailed measurements of an extra-solar planet's surface! We'd already been able to learn much about this planet, including…

Convincing a Young Scientist that Dark Matter Exists

"The Universe is made mostly of dark matter and dark energy, and we don't know what either of them is." -Saul Perlmutter When I was starting out as a graduate student, one of the most exciting (and daunting) tasks facing me was to piece together a scientifically accurate and useful picture of the Universe, including its composition, structure, and history. (And I owe a huge shout-out to my PhD advisor, who helped me immeasurably in that task.) The big question facing me, as far as I was concerned, was deciding whose ideas were right, and which were the ones I should spend my time and energy…

Junk DNA Redux

Rusty has posted another response on Junk DNA. It's a few days old but I'm just now getting around to answering it. If you're following along, you'll find Rusty's original post here and my response here. The basic assertion up for dispute is Rusty's test for creationism: Further research will reveal function for so-called Junk-DNA sequences. Although considered by evolutionists to be a closed case, the Creation Model predicts that currently held scientific opinion on this issue will eventually concede that function is inherent in the Junk-DNA sequence. The failure of this test would be a…

"Excuse me, there's some food in my bugs!"

We were talking about insects, and eating insects, and this reminded me of something funny. I was traveling in the most remote part of Central Africa, several days walk from any place you could possibly drive a car, visiting uncharted villages mainly occupied by people who had moved into the deep forest because they were in trouble with the "law" in some way (usually for perfectly good reasons in this lawless country). I was traveling with a Lese Villager and his sister, who was hired as our cook, and three Efe Pygmy men. We visited a village that was not exactly uncharted, but which…

No place to sit down (or, why do the Efe let some insects live?)

I knew a couple who had spent a lot of time in the Congo in the 1950s. He was doing primatology, and she was the wife of the primatologist. And when she spoke of the Congo or Uganda, where they spent most of the time, she always said "The thing about Africa is that there's no place to sit down." Now, I've been all over Africa, and I've sat down in Nigeria, Kenya, Lesotho, Botswana. I admit having had a hard time finding a place to sit down in Namibia but that's because I've only been in places with no chairs but there were a lot of rocks. I once sat for a long time on a curb in Rwanda.…

Manspace

In an old colonial-looking restaurant that served ten kinds of steaks, I met up with an experienced explorer and a local farmer, to have dinner and discuss plans for an upcoming research project that would be managed by The Explorer and that would partly be on The Farmer's land, which adjoined a rather extensive and remote wilderness area. I don't remember a lot about the conversation, but one memory of the evening stands out: That was when The Farmer, rooting around in a bag for some cash to tip the waitress, pulled out this big-ass gun ... a small cannon, really ... that was in the way.…

How effective is the flu shot?

There are several answers to this question. One was overheard the other day among a bunch of well educated people oriented towards science who were taking a break from their job. Person 1: "So, how effective is the seasonal flu shot?" Person 2: "I heard about 1%. If you get the flu shot, you'll have a 1% difference in if you get the flu." Person 3: "That's crazy. I don't know where you are getting your data from. It can't be 1%, but I admit I don't know what the actual answer is, but it can't be that." Persons 4 through 6: "Well, if YOU don't know, and HE says 1%, I'm going with the 1%.…

The Visual Presentation of Misleading Information, Anti-Asian Bias Edition

In which the skewing of a data plot in Ron Unz's epic investigation of college admissions makes me more skeptical of his overall claim, thanks to the misleading tricks employed. ------------ Steve Hsu has a new post on a favorite topic of his, bias against Asians in higher ed admissions. This is based on a giant article by Ron Unz that I don't have time to read, and illustrated with the graphic that's the "featured image" for this post (which I will also reproduce below for the convenience of RSS readers). What does this show? There's a tangle of colored lines representing the fraction of…

Another Fake Clinton Scandal

The AP is breathlessly reporting that 85 out of 154 people coming from private interests (as opposed to governmental functionaries) who met with Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State were also donors to the Clinton Foundation. The headline: “Many Donors To Clinton Foundation Met With Her At State.” Perhaps you are wondering why this is news. Big donors to the Clinton Foundation are generally major players in world affairs, and those are precisely the kind of people the Secretary of State will naturally meet with. Were the people in question unworthy of a meeting with the…

Judicial Activism and Intellectual Consistency

One of the hottest selling books at the moment is Mark Levin's Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America, currently at #8 on the New York Times bestseller list. I've not read this book, but I know the arguments in it. Anyone who has paid attention to conservative rhetoric at the talk radio level of discourse has heard all of the arguments before. Such books are aimed at what one might call the "pedestrian right", as opposed to the intellectual right. No serious conservative scholar would be anything but appalled by the low brow partisan boilerplate that is served up in the…

More Insiders Criticize Administration Policy

One of the most astonishing things about the Bush administration, in my view, is how many former officials have come out and criticized things the administration has done, and how little impact it has had politically. This can partially be chalked up to an uninformed populace, of course, but also to the Bush team's ability to destroy those people in the public eye. Now let's add a couple more to the list. First, it's newly retired Lt. Col. Anthony Christino, former Pentagon military intelligence officer. The Observer reports: Prisoner interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, the controversial US…

Idiot of the Week: Todd Pierce

Too many idiots, too little time. My monthly award is going to have to be a weekly award now. Let's pray it doesn't become daily. John Scalzi has a very amusing post about Todd Pierce that links to another one, written by Teresa Nielsen Hayden. That post concerned Mr. Pierce, a professor at Clemson University, who gives spectacularly bad advice to aspiring writers to make up publishing credits to get an editor to look at their submissions - and no, I'm not making that up. Since Hayden is an editor herself, she saw fit to criticize Mr. Pierce rather strongly for that advice, and rightfully so…

The case against fluoride

Although I just play the role of a scientist on the internet, my father actually is one. As well as being a medical doctor, he is a retired professor of biophysics. I am telling you this because he has recently co-authored a book on a subject that might interest readers of ScienceBlogs: fluoridation of human water supplies. The book is entitled "The Case Against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up in Our Drinking Water and the Bad Science and Powerful Politics That Keep It There" and you can read a detailed review of that book here [PDF]. At my request, he has written up a guest post…

Flight 447 and the ITCZ

I had never felt airsick before, or since. But now I was a nauseated rag doll flopping around in the middle row of a six seater prop plane and I was ready to hurl at any moment. BBC depiction of the path of Flight 447. I find it astonishing that the most important weather related feature on the planet is a "place where there are a lot of thunderstorms" or often not even identified at all. This is equivalent to a plane crashing into the Cascades and the news reporting that the aircraft went down in a "place with some hills" or not even noting the existence of the mountain range at all,…

XMRV and antiretrovirals

H/T to The Lay Scientist for getting my butt in gear to write this post. Imagine you arent feeling well. You go to the doctor, they run some tests, and it turns out you have a tumor. Well... your physicians arent sure if you have a tumor or not, but they sent some of your blood to a lab, and a non-FDA approved test said you might have a tumor. Maybe. When your blood was sent to other labs, they couldnt find anything. And even if you do have a tumor, you have no reason to believe that its actually causing a disease-- it very well could be benign. They dont know how its effecting you, if at…

My Review of Expelled

I went to see Expelled yesterday. I am happy to report it was a private screening. Had the theater to myself. Last time that happened was when I saw Snakes on a Plane (a far more scientifically accurate film, by the way). Granted, it was a Monday night. Indeed, when I go to see movies I nearly always do so on Mondays or Tuesdays specifically to avoid the crowds. The fact remains that for a new release I can typically count on about a dozen people watching the film with me. And let's not forget that I am living in a town that is -- how shall I put this? -- somewhat right of center…

Easterbrook Sort of Defends Religion

Over at BeliefNet, Gregg Easterbrook writes the following: Israelis and Palestinians are killing each other by the hundreds in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Hindus and Muslims are slaughtering each other in India, herding neighbors into house or trains then setting them afire. Catholics and Protestants continue to kill each other in Northern Ireland. Sunnis and Shias have their arms wrapped around each other's throats throughout the Islamic world. And of course, on Sept. 11, 19 Muslims were so determined to murder helpless Christians and Jews that they were willing to die to shed the…

A Probability Puzzle, Part Two

The response to Tuesday's post, currently at 97 comments, has been very interesting. Since some of the commenters appear to be growing restless, I will put off until tomorrow my epic Iraq war post (based on my having recently waded through all 482 pages of Thomas Ricks' subtly titled book Fiasco) and talk about probability instead. Here's the puzzle, in case you missed it the first time: A shopkeeper says she has two new baby beagles to show you, but she doesn't know whether they're both male, both female, or one of each. You tell her that you want only a male, and she telephones the fellow…

Very Belated LonCon Write-Up

I'm up way too early with jet lag, looking over Twitter, and ran into Nick Falkner's report on the TED panel I moderated at Worldcon, which reminded me that I never did write anything about the con. Late is probably still better than never, so here are some quick long-after-the-fact comments about my program items: -- Only one person showed up for my Kaffeeklatsch, probably because it was at dinnertime on the first day of the con, and also the Kaffeeklatsch rooms were in a place that didn't look like somewhere you were allowed to go. My one guest was a guy I've exchanged emails with for many…

TED@NYC Recap

On Monday afternoon, I walked into the TED offices in lower Manhattan just as Zak Ebrahim was starting his practice talk, a powerful story about being raised by a father who subscribed to an extreme form of Islam and eventually assassinated a rabbi and took part in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. And I said "What the hell am I doing here?" My science-is-awesome shtick seemed pretty weak tea compared to that. I managed to get past that pretty quickly, without anyone noticing, but the first hour or so I was there was another Impostor Syndrome: Activate! moment. It was a pretty amazing…

What a Chess Tournament Looks Like

  The US Amateur Team East is one of the biggest and most exciting chess tournaments on the calendar. The comraderie of playing as part of a team, coupled with the complete absence of cash prizes, makes for a generally mellow experience. Having not played in a year I was a bit worried about some Caissic corrosion, but the first round helped me warm up.   This game was a reminder of how much fun chess can be when your opponent makes little attempt to cut across your plans. As usual we were paired down in the first round, meaning we were playing a team that was substantially lower…

My Contribution to Restoring Sanity

Your humble blogger went to the big rally yesterday. Here's what it looked like:   I never noticed it before, but the National Mall looks a lot like the Vienna/Fairfax Metro stop. But let me start at the beginning. I hit the road at 8:30 in the morning, which normally would get me to DC well before noon. I figured there would be traffic and delays, but I did not feel obligated to attend the whole, three-hour event. Maybe I get there by one, I thought, and still have two solid hours of rally fun! It had occurred to me to drive to DC the night before and find a place to stay for the…

Coyne is Right, Mooney is Wrong

Another little blogfracas has erupted on the subject of accommodtaionism between science and religion. Chris Mooney, channeling Barbara Forrest, reiterated the standard complaints against those of us who argue that science and religion generally, and evolution and Christianity in particular, are not compatible. The specific target of his ire was Jerry Coyne's recent, largely negative review of the current accommodationist books by Ken Miller and Karl Giberson. Coyne has replied in some detail to Mooney. Mooney has now posted two partial replies to Coyne here and here, and has promised…