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Page to Screen: Homicide

I've been watching Netflix DVD's of the late, lamented Homicide: Life of the Street lately, and a little while back, I went through the DVED's of the first season of The Wire, which shares some of the same creative team. In particular, both series were based in part on work by David Simon, whose Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets tracked the Homicide unit of the Baltimore Police for a full year. I've been curious about the book for a while, and finally checked it out of the library a couple of weeks ago. It's a fascinating story in its own right-- Simon had unprecedented access to the…

Death of a salesman

A somewhat unfair title; the person in question is Marcel Leroux and the "death" is the deletion of his wiki page. The "sales" is his wacko views on GW. I don't think ML is particularly interesting - wiki certainly thought not - but perhaps the way wiki deals with minor characters is. Background: anyone is free to create a new page on wikipedia (there is probably a brief qualification period, but this is a trivial barrier), but there are various mechanisms for getting rid of pages that are junk, just offensive, or for some reason better not present. Any admin can delete a page; there is a…

Obama and Romney on GW

From The Top American Science Questions: 2012. Which starts with: "Whenever the people are well-informed," Thomas Jefferson wrote, "they can be trusted with their own government." Well, that's you yanks totally f*ck*d then, ha ha. Not that we're any better off. still, at least we manage to believe in evolution and we're not a pile of religious fanatics :-). So anyway, enough random insults, what do Da Man and Dah Challenger haz to say? First off, lets look at the question Climate Change. The Earth’s climate is changing and there is concern about the potentially adverse effects of these…

IAC review of the IPCC

It am all de rage, as they say. But is it any good? And who are the IAC anyway? Go on, hands up, before they were asked to do this: had anyone heard of them? Thought not: I certainly hadn't. This is an organisation so well-known that the wikipedia article on [[IAC]] (note: that is today's version; I assume that someone will add it, eventually) doesn't even include them, although it has space for 15 or so other IAC's. Although Gavin seems to quite like the report, I'm less sure. So before getting down to reading the report, here is another piece of meta-analysis: if you read the exec summary…

"Will" I be able to think of a witty title for this post?

BS has the definitive answer to the George Will nonsense. Or read John Fleck, who conveniently links to our joint paper. Until I started typing this, I had an even better answer: I ignore it, it's a pile of toss. But alas, I'm unable to resist joining in, even though I have nothing new to say. And indeed, I haven't even bothered to read what he wrote, so uninterested am I in his errors (yes yes, I know dearest septics, but life is too short). Andy Revkin (a page, incidentally, that the vaunted Chrome displays very badly) f*cks this up badly, effectively painting Gore and Will as equivalents.…

The Kerry Flap

Speaking of grotesque misrepresentations of people's words, a few thoughts about the Kerry flap. Here is what Kerry said to students at Pasadena City College: You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq. The right-wingers were all over this, of course. Here's the elitist Kerry calling our troops stupid and uneducated. It is ridiculous that Kerry, a veteran himself, would actually think such a thing. But even if by some fluke he did think it, he would not…

Ultra-rare "back-to-back eclipses" coming your way!

"Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul." -Victor Hugo Everyone knows the Earth revolves around the Sun, which takes a year, and the Moon revolves around the Earth, which takes just under a month. So why, then, don't we have 12 solar eclipses and 12 lunar eclipses a year? If you didn't know any better, you'd expect that each time the Moon passes between the Earth and Sun, its shadow would fall…

Climate Scientist Andrew Weaver Wins Key Lawsuit

Andrew Weaver is a Canadian climate scientist with numerous publications. The National Post is a Canadian newspaper generally recognized as having a conservative and Libertarian leaning. Between 2009 and 2010, the Post published four articles that seemed defamatory of Dr. Weaver’s reputation as a scientist. Weaver sued the post over this, and yesterday, the B.C. Supreme Court agreed that the articles were in fact defamatory. The defendants in the case were Terence Corcoran, Financial Post editor, Peter Foster, National Post columnist, Kevin Libin, a contributor to the Financial Post, National…

Climate Peril: The Intelligent Reader's Guide to Understanding the Climate Crisis.

According to John Berger, author of the newly released book Climate Peril: The Intelligent Reader's Guide to Understanding the Climate Crisis, time is running out. The climate is changing in ways that will bring unwanted results, and we as a species are slow off the mark to do something about it. Climate Peril: The Intelligent Reader's Guide to Understanding the Climate Crisis begins with a description of the global climate in the not too distant future, 2100. It is of course a guess, perhaps fiction. But Berger's description of the world in 2100 is plausible, and much of it probable. We…

How Will Clinton And Sanders Do On Tuesday? (Updated)

Most polls and FiveThirtyEight predict a Clinton blow-out on Tuesday, with her winning all five states, in some cases by a large margin. My model, however, predicts that each candidate will win a subset of these states, but with Clinton still win the day. I’ve been working on a model to predict primary outcomes for the Democratic selection process, and generally, the model has proved very effective. After each set of primaries I’ve adjusted the model to try to do a better job of predicting the upcoming contests. The most important adjustment is the one that affects the current model. The…

A Labor Day Big Announcement

"But I'm also talking about American businessmen doing what they were born to do. Make things. We've stopped making and become a country of consumers. Well, I, for one, am done consuming. And I'm ready to make." -Jack Donaghy, 30 Rock I don't normally write about what's going on in my personal life, but this is an important development, and it affects what I do here at Starts With A Bang, so here goes. Most of you know how a career as a physicist is supposed to go, much like any academic/science career. You're supposed to get your degree, go to graduate school and get your Ph.D., work at a…

Why Dark Matter Rules Mini-Galaxies!

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." -Max Planck (For Alan L., from the comments on this post.) When you look out at the night sky, with the deepest, sharpest eyes possible, what is it that you see? Image credit: NASA, ESA, R. Windhorst, S. Cohen, M. Mechtley, M. Rutkowski, R. O'Connell, P. McCarthy, N. Hathi, R. Ryan, H. Yan, and A. Koekemoer. Galaxies! Lit by hundreds of billions of suns each (and that's just on average),…

The real meaning of Trump's Al Smith fiasco

A presidential election season involves a series of debates. After the last debate, a day or a few days after, the main candidates attend and speak at a charity dinner run by the Archdiocese of New York, to raise money for Catholic Charities. It is the last event at which the candidates will appear together, and the format is that of a roast. That is more or less the tradition. Last night, Secretary Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were at the Al Smith dinner. Here is are the salient facts: Trump spoke first. He had two or three pretty funny jokes, but the one that I think will go down in…

Best Bird Book Of the Year So Far: What The Robin Knows by Jon Young

There was a dead rabbit in the middle of the road today. I suspected such a thing, nearby, just out of sight, and edible, because I noticed some crows taking off whenever a car went by. Then, when I went over, I could see the rabbit that they were feasting on between drive-bys. I had been looking for rabbits lately, because of this: the cat had switched to hanging out by the upstairs window, the better to observe the just arriving Juncos (snow birds, it is fall). She had previously spent most of her time observing rabbits from the lower, ground level windows, until just the other day when…

Update on the Michigan Bill

Or bills, in this case. It turns out that there are now two bills in the state legislature - HB 5606, sponsored by Rep. Palmer, which contains the "arguments for and against" language that will inevitably open the door to ID; and a Senate bill, sponsored by Sen. Kuipers, that doesn't yet have a bill designation and which doesn't contain such language. 5606 has passed the House and has been referred to the Senate Education Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Kuipers. Kuipers doesn't have to bring that bill up for a vote if he doesn't want to, and at the moment it appears that he is going to…

Gabler gone, but it makes no difference

A few years ago, Mel Gabler died, and I put up my response below. Now his wife, Norma Gabler, has also died. Good riddance at last. Those two did an awful amount of harm to American science education by inflicting their ignorant opinions on textbook selection in Texas. I read this which led to this, where I learned a few months late that Mel Gabler was dead. This Mel Gabler. I don't like to speak ill of the dead, but Gabler had a good 89 year run in which he spread poison and ignorance and lies, and made his wretched mark on the textbook industry. He was a dishonest old man who reviewed…

ACLU Threatens Suit in Toledo

The press release says: The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio today sent a letter to the Toledo Public Schools demanding that they cease allowing staff to teach intelligent design in science classrooms throughout the district. "Intelligent design has been proven to be nothing more than a thin cover for those who wish to teach creationism, a faith-based idea of human origins endorsed by certain Christian denominations, in science classes," said ACLU of Ohio Legal Director Jeffrey Gamso. "While people have a right to teach their religious beliefs to others in churches, mosques, synagogues…

A Word from a Former Alito Clerk

Blue Mass Group has an interesting interview with Kate Pringle, a former clerk for Samuel Alito as well as for Stephen Breyer and Sandra Day O'Connor (how's that for a resume?). Unlike Alito, Pringle is a liberal and a Democrat who was highly involved in John Kerry's campaign. Nonetheless, she is a staunch supporter of Alito's nomination. To some extent, that's inevitable; former clerks tend to be fiercely loyal to the judges they clerked for. But Pringle offers some pretty good arguments for her position as well: I wondered what Pringle meant by a "strong conservative intellectual approach…

Can Obama's Organizing For Action (OFA) help save the planet? The jury is out.

You've gotta love South Minneapolis. My friend Sharon Sund passed me an email this morning about an Organizing for Action meeting in South Minneapolis to discuss climate change activism. Sharon and I had been talking about local climate change activism earlier in the week so she thought I'd liked to go to this meeting and see what they are up to. Organizing for Action(OFA) is an offshoot of the Obama campaign, a grassroots non profit that is separate from any campaign committee (so they don't support or run candidates) that organizes in favor of Obama's issues like getting some sensible gun…

Ubuntu Linux Made Easy

I checked out the book Ubuntu Made Easy: A Project-Based Introduction to Linux by Rickford Grant and Phil Bull (No Starch Press). With any book like this, the trick is matching it to the correct user. If you are the kind of person inclined to install the latest version of Ubuntu on your computer, you probably have already done enough with Linux to not need this book. If you are the kind of person who believes the trash talk about how bad Linux is, or who is frightened of the idea of stepping away from Windows or your Mac for any reason, run away now. This book is not for you. But, if you…

Persecution in the schools

You can't trust that tyrant Terwilliger. He's an awful, awful man, and once he made school principal, he used his vast autocratic powers to make every Christian suffer. He threw them to the lions. He crucified them upside down. He beheaded them and shot them with arrows. He tied them to stakes and set them afire. He lashed them and flayed them. He burned their bibles and slapped them when they dared to pray in the lunchroom. He made them stop wearing offensive t-shirts that said other members of the student body were going to hell. Oh, wait. He didn't do any of those things, except the last…

Did you hear my interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson today?

Did you year the interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson today? If not, that's OK, it's a podcast. But first, a hint for those of you who want to do interviews. There's a trick to make it go well. Interview someone like Dr. Tyson, with his knowledge, enthusiasm, and experience in public media; Ask him a couple/few questions; Sit back and listen to all the good words that come out. Break occasionally for commercials if needed. I did actually have a strategy, which was fairly simple: I wanted to avoid the most obvious topics that have been covered so often in interviews with a person who must…

Yeah, Screw You Too, Academia

I recently received a long-awaited verdict on an official complaint I had filed: there was in fact nothing formally wrong with the decision by the Dept of Historical Studies in Gothenburg to hire Zeppo Begonia. Since the verdict didn't go my way, as planned I am now turning my back on academic archaeology. The reason is that qualifications don't count in Scandyland. Being friends with people inside, and preferably being a local product, is what gets you academic jobs here. I need to cut my losses and move on. I would call this post a burning of bridges if there were any to burn, but there are…

What makes an IDiot?

While Creationists get a free-pass to call scientists 'Nazis' and 'liars' and 'baby killers', Larry Moran gets a lot of crap for calling IDiots, 'IDiots'. While Ive always found that pet name more than apt, some people get their panties in a wad over it. I think maybe what we need is a nice example of IDiot behavior to illustrate, for everyone, why 'IDiot' is such an accurate descriptor for the major proponents of Creationism. Luckily, Casey Luskin has just provided me with just that! A perfect example to demonstrate what makes an IDiot an IDiot. So we are left to decipher his jargon-…

The Bottleneck Years by H.E.Taylor - Chapter 88

The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 87 Table of Contents Chapter 89 Chapter 88 Going North, June 15, 2060 I was worried about going North and leaving Edie alone while she was pregnant. She had another opinion. "Don't be silly. I'm a big girl, Luc." She took my hand and held it to her barely showing stomach. "I can take care of myself, besides I have Anna and my friends to protect me. You go and do what you have to do." She had that look about her. I knew it would be no use arguing. We compromised by arranging for Mark, the share-crop gardener, to check in when he did the garden…

My Thoughts on Terry Schiavo

I've not said a word about the Terry Schiavo situation. Frankly, I'm sick to death of hearing about it. And after reading Radley Balko's take on it, I don't really have much to say. Balko nailed the situation completely, as far as I'm concerned. He makes several points, all of which I agree with entirely. 1. Multiple courts have heard testimony from all sides and determined that Terry herself had clearly expressed her desire not to be kept alive if she was an invalid. In the absence of a living will, that is really the only determination that matters. I've been in this situation before with…

Could Worldnutdaily Writers Be Any Dumber?

David Bass, in another of those famous Worldnutdaily "exclusives" - which means an article so mind-numbingly moronic that only WND would even consider publishing it - has written an absolutely hilarious column about the decision by the Canadian Supreme Court that the legislature could legalize gay marriage. What makes his article so amusing is that it's incredibly obvious that he hasn't actually bothered to read it. The evidence begins in the very first sentence: Many words in the English language can be used to describe the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling on Thursday condoning homosexual…

Radio Report

Last night's radio appearance with Herb Titus went pretty well, I thought. Jim Babka invited me on the show to discuss the 14th amendment and incorporation with Titus primarily because I had written critically of a brief he filed in the McCreary ten commandments case that is currently before the Supreme Court. In that case, the court will be deciding whether two displays of the ten commandments at courthouses, one in Kentucky and one in Texas, violate the establishment clause. The brief linked to above, written by Titus and William Olson on behalf of a variety of conservative religious groups…

More Good News from Iraq

From the "could this administration possibly be any more incompetent" file comes this report: The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations. The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons…

Sullivan Nails It Again

From his second post on the subject of Mary Cheney's name being brought up: In many speeches on marriage rights, I cite Mary Cheney. Why? Because it exposes the rank hypocrisy of people like president Bush and Dick and Lynne Cheney who don't believe gays are anti-family demons but want to win the votes of people who do. I'm not outing any gay person. I'm outing the double standards of straight ones. They've had it every which way for decades, when gay people were invisible. Now they have to choose. Let me give you an example of the double standards here. I remember once being driven around…

Contradictory Explanations from the Moonies

The Moonies have issued a press release hammering us evil bloggers for our coverage of the Moon coronation story. They seem to be a bit tweaked that so many of us have dared to call Moon the nutjob that he is. Get used to it, kids. It's only gonna get worse. Here's the funny thing about the new press release - it completely contradicts the statement they made on March 30th about the event. The new version is that it was just a nice man being honored for his tireless efforts on behalf of world peace: Among the nearly 100 Crown of Peace awards presented to civic, religious and diplomatic…

McCullough on New Jersey Ruling

One thing has become very clear: you can always count on Kevin McCullough to bring the crazy when it comes to gay rights (and pretty much anything else). Take a gander at this column responding to the New Jersey gay marriage ruling. Despite all that their angry-mob front groups argue in front of television cameras to the contrary, radical homosexual activists despise the institution, and more importantly the sanctity, of marriage. That is the fundamental reason why they are seeking to destroy the institution. Of course, Kevin, you've cracked the code and you've got it all figured out. Jason…

Victims of Communism Memorial

Timothy Sandefur has started a campaign to encourage people to donate to an organization that wants to put up a Victims of Communism memorial. Yesterday he wrote an essay on why communist systems lead to repression and barbarism, which I find mostly quite accurate. I think he's slightly off on his initial premise: I suspect the biggest obstacle that the Victims of Communism Memorial faces is the sympathy for communism that is so startlingly common in the United States. Terrified of being labeled a McCarthyite, many people refuse to acknowledge the fact that there is a great deal of lingering…

We “amoral” atheists

You would think Yale would attract a smarter class of stude…oh, wait. I forgot what famous Yalies have risen to power in this country. OK, maybe it's not surprising that a Yale freshman would raise the tired canard of the "amoral atheist". Recent years have seen an influx of anti-religious publications in the Western world, as well as a growing audience for such publications. From Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" to Christopher Hitchens' "God Is Not Great," anti-theistic works have poured into bookstores as atheists in the United States and elsewhere have taken on a more strident tone in…

Stealth Creationists and Illinois Nazis

I'm having the sort of morning where I feel like lobbing a grenade at somebody, and the predictable outrage over yesterday's story about a creationist paleontologist is as good a target as any. The issue here is whether it's appropriate for Marcus Ross to receive a Ph.D. for work in paleontology, given that he's a young-earth creationist. His scientific papers are all perfectly consistent with modern understanding, speaking of events taking place millions of years in the past, but he himself believes the earth is less than 10,000 years old, and was created as described in the Bible. The usual…

Conservatives on Campus

An article from the Chronicle of Higher Education has landed in my inbox, describing efforts to recruit students to conservative groups: Ryan J. Sorba stands before a table covered with mini-cupcakes and whoopie pies, calling out to students as they pass. A sign lists the prices: $6 for customers under 18; $3 for 19-year-olds; $1 for 20-year-olds; 25 cents for 21- to 39-year-olds; and free to those 40 and over. "Don't get screwed by Social Security, support private accounts," says Mr. Sorba, a conservative activist who has come here to Bentley College's Student Union to help recruit new…

Quantum Consciousness and the Penrose Fallacy

Over at Neurophilosophy, Mo links to an article by a physicist, posted on the arxiv, that claims to explain visual perceptions using quantum mechanics: A theory of the process of perception is presented based on von Neumann's quantum theory of measurement and conscious observation. Conscious events that occur are identified with the quantum mechanical ``collapses'' of the wave function, as specified by the orthodox quantum theory. The wave function, between such perceptual events, describes a state of potential consciousness which evolves via the Schr\"odinger equation. When a perceptual…

Ask a ScienceBlogger: "Maybe You Should Cut Your Losses"

I've been kind of bad about responding to the "Ask a ScienceBlogger" questions lately, but they've had a lot of stuff up there that I just don't have a response for. The most recent question is something I probably ought to post about, though: 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? This is a question that grew out of back-channel discussions of the adversarial culture of science, which are a major part of the arguments about why there are so few women and minorities in science. Accordingly, most…

Michael Jackson Thrilled The Kids in Zaire

I have only one Michael Jackson story. Michael Jackson was an international pop icon for a very long time, because he started his career so early. He was also African American. Bob Marley predated Jackson, and was Afro-Caribbean. For these and various other reasons, the face of Bob Marley and the face of Michael Jackson adorned the walls and backbars of clubs and taverns throughout Zaire in the 1980s. Moreover, these were the ONLY faces one saw in these contexts. Now, you have to understand that Zaire is to Afro Pop music what New Orleans is to Jazz. Or more so. Actually, Afro Pop…

The Origin of the Human Smile

A colleague and grad student of mine, Rob, just sent me the following question, slightly edited here: A student in my intro class asked me a good question the other day to which I had no answer. When did smiling cease to be a threat gesture? I have a couple of ideas. One is that with reduced canines, smiling became a way to say "look, I have small canines, I am not a threat to you." The other is that smiling is based more on a "fear-grin" than a threat. Under this idea, smiling might have been a way of showing deference to others. If everyone shows deference, it would be egalitarian, until…

A Cultural Climate Measure from Iron Age Africa

South of the Zambezi River, along the eastern side of Africa, things get dryer and dryer as you go south, until you finally reach the southernmost end of the continent where things become a little bit moister again. A couple of thousand years ago cattle keeping people speaking Bantu languages and possessing mainly Banutu cultural traits ... the ancestors of the present day Shona, Venda Tswana, Zulu, etc. .... were living in this area, keeping their cattle, and doing all sorts of interesting stuff. As climate fluctuated year to year and decade to decade, there moved north and south a kind of…

The Next Step in The Franken-Coleman Senate Race

I live in Minnesota, and our team is the Vikings. So I know something about losing, and from this perspective, I can explain to you what Norm Coleman is doing. First, the context. Tomorrow, Saturday, the canvassing board will open and count absentee ballots and add that to the mix. As I demonstrated to you mathematically it is highly unlikely that this will change the current situation, in which Al Franken is ahead. To be more exact, the Worst Case Scenario estimate that I made predicts that with 650 or so ballots to open, there is a better than 75% chance that the count will not change…

The Splendid Spice: You can have as much as you want cheap!

I like to cook, and I am good at it and know something about it. So I therefore am somewhat attracted to certain information streams including, for instance, Lynne Rossetto Kasper's "The Splendid Table" on National Public Radio. (Although this show comes out of the Twin Cities, Kasper and I have only crossed paths a couple of times, and very uneventfully. Some day I'd love to actually talk to her. I have some questions about garlic.) But I have some issues related to cooking and elitism. Gourmet cooking is an elitist activity, and a large share of the cooking enterprise in general in the…

Replace Michele Bachmann Web Carnival #4: "We Told You So"

This week's edition of the Replace Michele Bachmann Web Carnival is the fourth in the series, and is named the "We Told You So" edition. This is because there are several of us living here in Minnesota who have been blogging about Michele Bachmann for some time. There is the Dump Bachmann web site, for instance. PZ Myers at Pharyngula has been talking about Bachmann all along. "I'll get you my pretty, and your Bill of Rights, too!" A few weeks ago, Stephanie Zvan and I hatched a plot, I mean developed an action plan, to provide a weekly carnival of posts regarding Michele Bachmann.…

Ice Breaker Card Tricks

Today was the first day of classes for the spring semester. I have a light teaching load this term, which is my reward for having an especially heavy teaching load last term. Just two classes, and they both meet in the afternoon, no less. For a night-owl like me that's a good deal. One of my courses is second-semester calculus. Since this is the continuation of a course I taught last term, I get to see a lot of familiar faces. That's always nice, since it usually takes me a while to learn everyone's name. On tap are lots of exponential functions, logarithms, and trigonometry. Also, I…

Politics and Stuff

You've probably noticed that I haven't been blogging much lately. That's partly because this is an especially busy time of the semester. Try grading a thousand midterm exam problems in a few days and see how many brain cells you have left over for blogging. Mostly, though, it's my general unhappiness with the way the Presidential election is going. I think it's pretty likely that Romney is going to win. For the moment Obama is still maintaining his firewall in Ohio, but the polls have tightened there considerably. Meanwhile, Florida seems to be solidly red at this point, and the polls in…

Alienating Moderates

In the course of a generally favorable review of Among the Creationists over at The Panda's Thumb blog, Matt Young wrote the following: Nevertheless, he takes a dim view of, for example, an argument that reinterprets original sin as the selfishness that drives evolution. I will not go into detail, but this kind of thinking ultimately leads Rosenhouse to conclude that the creationists are essentially correct and that evolution and Christianity are not compatible. In this sense, he has the same narrow view of religion as the creationists – that it is all or nothing – and he risks alienating…

Wrapping yourself in 'pro-woman' language doesnt mean youre 'pro-woman'

Despite his apparent random and brief moments of lucidity, I cant say Im a 'big fan' of Oklahoma senator and physician Tom Coburn (click here to read his completely insane 'analysis' of HIV/AIDS). He says hes 'PRO-LIFE' yet he held up funds for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention in Africa because some of the organizations that would receive this funding offer family planning services which include abortion services. Killing 'babies' while they are unfeeling, unthinking barely multicellular organisms: BAD! Killing very real, very thinking, very feeling babies via long, painful deaths via AIDS…

Jocks vs Nerds

[rant on] There are holes in SciBlogs*. I usually dont notice them until I have a question that SciBlogs cant answer. I mean, we have a ton of super smart, super skeptical people here on just about every topic. What I love about 'our people' is that we dont have to be experts on everything. I know a lot about viruses. I dont have to know a lot about global warming. Other people have that base covered. I dont have to know everything about developmental biology. I dont have to know everything about astronomy. The concept of 'I dunno, I dont study ___' totally baffles Creationists. The…

Gingerich on Genesis

In a number of recent posts I have remarked that when it comes to Biblical analysis, I think the young-Earthers have more going for them than is sometimes acknowledged. I have also commented that I have been generally unimpressed with the more highbrow sorts of Biblical exegesis I have seen with regard to the text of Genesis. Let me give you an example. I just finished reading a book called Is God A Creationist?, an edited anthology of essays published in the eighties defending various sophisticated approaches to Genesis. One of the contributors was Owen Gingerich, a professor of Astronomy…