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People of the Book

I rarely review fiction, but I've got a nice book I'd like to recommend. My friend Amy suggested it to me on facebook a while back when I was casting around for a novel to read. The novel is People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. INTERNET WARNING: THIS BOOK IS LIKE FIVE YEARS OLD I DON'T CARE Although a lot of people made a wider range of suggestions on my facebook post, I knew that when I saw Amy's suggestion it was the one I should try. She knows enough about me (we worked together for a few years) to zero in on something that I would appreciate, and she's a person who understand…

The New Crossley Raptor ID Book: You Want It

A couple of years back, the The Crossley ID Guide for Eastern Birds came out and it caused a huge splash in the birdwatching world. For some time now it has become apparent that bird watching, especially the identification part of it, was changing in its approach. We describe it this way, though I think the reality is more complex: In the old days we used logical links to known reliable field marks to turn carefully made field observations into species identifications of varying degrees of certainty. Now, a new approach has been developed where we look at the whole bird and get an…

Discarding the terms "Hypothesis", "Theory", and "Law"

Rhett Allain at Dot Physics has proposed that we stop using the terms "Hypothesis", "Theory", and "Law" because people so abysmally misunderstand them. He proposes replacing them all with the term "model". Take out all three of these “science” words from introductory texts. They do more harm than good. The problem is that people have firm beliefs that they mean something other than what they are supposed to mean. I don’t think we can save these words. We do have a word to replace them. Are you ready? It’s the model – or you can call it the scientific model if you prefer. I'm not sure if the…

SkepchickCON @ CONvergence

Today is the first day of SkepchickCON at CONvergence. CONvergence is the largest fan run fantasy and science fiction convention in the US and or World and possibly Universe, depending. It is held in a suburb of Minneapolis. One gazillion people are in attendance. There are many activities and events, and a double-decker parallelogram of "party rooms" operated by various organizations including but not limited to the Skepchicks, whom you know from the web site Skepchick. Among the activities are panels where interesting people sit in front of a room of interested people and…

The status of this blog

Dear loyal readers, quiet lurkers, constant commeters, and trolls, On or before the 24th of May (hopefully not later) Scienceblogs.com will under The Branding. The Branding is not a phenomenon found in a cultish horror movie involving corn and a school bus, nor will it involve British schoolboys or a buried alien spacecraft. The Branding is when National Geographic's "brand" is imprinted on this site, and we become something of a National Geographic project. From that point forward several things will be different on this blog, some of which I'll mention below. Between now and then there…

"But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground..."

Have you ever read Natural Theology by William Paley? One could say that in it he makes the famous "Watchmaker" analogy. But really, the entire book is little other than the watchmaker analogy. If you were to compare the boringess-interestingness factor of Paley's book with a similar number of pages of anything written by Darwin, it would look like this: ************************************************* Darwin * Paley where being over to the right is more interesting. And that could be ANYTHING by Darwin. I have a small story to tell you (which you may have heard before) and then a…

It is time to start thinking about nesting

Birds don't live in nests. They make nests for specific purposes, use them for that purpose, then abandon them. Or, sometimes they don't abandon them, but rather add on and use them again and again, but in between they don't live in or on them. Well, sometimes they hang out on them a lot. And not all nests are for putting their eggs in. In fact, sometimes a nest is more of a symbol of quality and overall bird sexiness than it is a place to keep the chicks. As it were. Oh, and sometimes they live in the nests, now that I think about it ... It's complicated. But there is a book that…

The Pope is not our friend: he is the friend of irrationalism, dogma, and superstition, so treat him appropriately

Here is a criticism of evolutionary biology: …it is also true that the theory of evolution is not a complete, scientifically proven theory … We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory. If a Bill Dembski or a Michael Egnor or a Ken Ham had said this — and it is exactly the kind of thing they would say — we'd be throwing rotten fruit at them and mocking their ignorance of how science works. Nothing is proven, it's all provisional, but we do have an incredible amount of evidence in support of biology. This fellow is also deeply wrong about what we can do in the lab, and is…

The Expansion of Antarctic Sea Ice and Self Correcting Science

One of the things climate change science deniers say, to throw you off, is that Antarctic sea ice is expanding. They even claim that the amount of expansion of Antarctic sea ice offsets the dramatic retreat of Arctic sea ice (see this for the latest on the Arctic). I've even seen it argued, in that famous peer-reviewed publication Twitter, that there is an inter-polar teleconnection that guarnatees that when the ice on one end of the earth expands the ice on the other end of the earth contracts, and visa versa, so everything is fine. That Antarctic Sea ice is expanding has become standard…

What is killing the bees? It's the neonicotinoids, for sure.

Probably. I want to start out by welcoming all you bee experts who think it is not the neonicotinoids, or that it is not so simple, to make your case in the comments. There is a great deal of controversy over what is causing bees to die off. That controversy even impinges on how we describe the thing we are talking about. Notice that I've not used the term "colony collapse disorder" because that is a term that may have been misused, or at least, that people who know stuff have noted has been used incorrectly thus mucking up the discussion. Here's the thing. There is a bee crisis.…

Energy and Climate Change Items of Interest

Every one of these is a topic I'd like to write an entire blog post about but I don't have time right now. So, YOU write the blog post! In Michigan there is an emerging debate and discussion about using the Vast Forests in that state to provide energy. This is a good idea because it does not involve the release of fossil Carbon from fossil fuels. It is a bad idea because it involves the release of Carbon currently trapped in a medium term and important Carbon sink. It is interesting because it highlights a key feature of the whole energy and climate change thing. Sun makes burnable stuff…

Tracking Arctic Sea Ice

A few days ago I made a prediction for this year's minimum Arctic Sea Ice extent. That's still valid. Or not. Either way, it's still my prediction. But looking at the ice over the last few days, we see that for the first time in a while the extent of ice estimated by the NSICD has stopped hugging the -2SD line and is rising upwards like a chilly Phoenix rising out of slush ashes. In fact, one could even say that Arctic Sea Ice has recovered! Just look at the last eight days of data! Think I'm cherry picking? It's possible, let's look at the larger picture, over a whole year's cycle:…

Climate Change Science Search Engine

This search engine will scan a large number of sites known to have good climate change related information on them. Below is a list of sites scanned. If you know of a site that is not included here but that should be, please put a link in the comments. Don't bother with climate science denialist sites, they will not be added. Also note that many sites are parts of larger domains. So if the site you suggest is already part of, for example, Scienceblogs, The Guardian, etc. then it is already on the list by default. This, of course, means that some of the hits from this search…

Definitive Evidence of Liquid Water Activity on Mars

This is very, very cool. Geologically, there are ways in which minerals move around and get deposited with rock. A common phenomenon is for a crack to form due to cooling of molten rock or an earthquake or something, and then this space gets filled in. Stuff might just fall into it. Liquidizer rock (magma) might intrude into it. Hot gasses containing residue might build up a deposit within it, or liquid water might flow through it leaving behind minerals, which fill the crack. The thing is, geologists have studied these processes and have a pretty good idea of what they are, how they…

Top Science Books of the Last Year

These are books that I've reviewed here, and would like to recommend that you seriously consider picking up if you are looking for a cool present for someone and you think they should read more science. I'm including a couple of bird books in this list, but I also recently wrote up a summary of just bird books that you may want to check out. These are in no particular order, and I'm not paying a lot of attention to publication dates. What matters is that I've I've put the book in this stack of books I've got here that I clean out every year about this time; Some are clearly older than…

Which Digital Camera?

I'm looking for a small (will always live in Amanda's purse) point and shoot camera and have so far narrowed the choices down to the following. Anybody have any advice on which one I should get (or an alternative, if you'd like to suggest one)? (Descriptions/details are from Amazon, for consistency) Canon PowerShot ELPH 300 HS 12.1 MP CMOS Digital Camera with Full 1080p HD Video (Silver) World's thinnest digital camera with a 24mm ultra Wide-Angle lens and 5x Optical Zoom and Optical Image Stabilizer. Canon's HS SYSTEM with a 12.1 MP CMOS and DIGIC 4 Image Processor improves shooting in low-…

Bill Nye at the Creation Museum and Russian Security at Sochi

See the link? It is pretty obvious to me. It seems that terrorists who are really serious, reasonably numerous, presumably well funded, and certainly experienced have threatened to attack the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia (both of them). The fallback plan, it is assumed, is that they can't attack Sochi so they pick some other random locations, maybe in Russia, maybe not, and attack them. (That is the part about terrorists being cowards, I assume.) The Russians have security that is probably second to none in the world, or at least on par with the countries that have a lot of…

I'm Giving A Talk On The Global and Local Impacts of Climate Change

Please join us. It will be at the West Metro Critical Thinking Club on Saturday, December 28, 2013, at 10:00 AM at the RidgePointe Senior Apartments on 12600 Marion Ln. W, Minnetonka, MN. I know these people. This will be a tough audience. This is a well educated and thoughtful group. Also, there are many climate skeptics in the group, and a talk given last September that questioned the strength of the evidence for Global Warming was well received. So, this is going to be interesting and fun! Here's the writeup for the talk, and more info can be found HERE: The Global and Local…

Dare I say it? (TS #Melissa in the Atlantic...) UPDATED

Added: The depression has spun up to form a tropical storm. It will probaqbly remain a storm as it works its way up the Atlantic Ocean avoiding land (though it seems to be aimed ultimately at Greenland). The storm is named Melissa. Details here. ________________ We have had a record breakingly anemic hurricane season in the North Atlantic this year. How anemic? If this year's hurricane season was a rug, you'd have a floor. If this year's hurricane season was a car you'd have a bicycle. If this year's hurricane season was a stack of pancakes, you'd have one pancake. That's now anemic.…

Japan quake, tsunami, nuke news 04

... continuing .. Good news and bad news, mostly just uncertain news. A cable needed to power equipment has been installed. It turns out that one of the reactors uses Plutonium. Ooops. Cable reaches Japan nuclear plant Fukushima on Thursday: Prospects starting to look good 'Worst probably over' The story of the quake- and tsunami-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant continues to unfold, with reports suggesting that the situation with respect to the three damaged reactors at the plant may soon be stabilised without serious consequences. The focus of attention has now moved to…

Getting commented out might be worse than getting rebooted.

You do know that other people can read your thoughts, right? (What? I can see by what you are thinking that no one told you! Oh dear.) Did you also know that Dark Matter is really just the sides of the jar that someone keeps our universe in? If you've ever worked with certain kinds of computer simulation then you'll know what I mean. If you create a two dimensional world for simulated creatures to move around in, there is a problem with the edges. If, for practical reasons, the world you create is a big square matrix of possible spots something can "live" on, then there must be an outer…

Kitzmiller decision--required reading

kay, after going through the whole Kitzmiller decision last night, and damn, it's good. Really, incredibly good. This should be required reading. Jones' disgust at the whole thing comes through loud and clear. On page 29: Although proponents of the IDM (Intelligent Design movement) occasionally suggest that the designer could be a space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist, no serious alternative to God as the designer has been proposed by members of the IDM, including Defendant's expert witnesses. He discussed this at length, clearly connecting the dots between the Discovery Institute,…

The man with two “duh”s in his name

I try to stay away from Dinesh D'Souza's ravings, but when you've got SIWOTI syndrome, the man is like a magnet of wrong. His one saving grace now is that his columns are so bad, I usually can't get through the first paragraph without having to close the window. This one is no exception. One paragraph is all any normal person can take. The real problem with Darwinism in the public school classroom is that it is often taught in an atheist way. No, it is not. I'm about as ferocious an atheist as you'll find in a classroom, and I'm at a university where I have more latitude than I would in a…

Machen's Impostors

Arthur Machen (1863-1947) Arthur Machen's 1895 book The Three Impostors, or The Transmutations, is a delightfully strange read. It consists of a short frame narrative interspersed with six standalone stories told inside the frame. Spoilers and musings follow. First the background to the events, which the reader learns only in the sixth and last story inside the frame. The learned Dr. Lipsius is the leader of a secret Dionysiac cult in 1890s London, focused on sex, drugs and ritual murder. He recruits the young scholar Joseph Walters into the cult. After helping lure a victim to the cult HQ…

January Pieces Of My Mind #3

People who got some very bad ideas drummed into them during the postmodern 1990s are now writing policies for Swedish schools. New study of twins documents that indeed, pot smokers aren't as smart on average as other people. But most likely they become a) stupid and b) pot smokers because of their social environment. Pot smoking is a symptom, not a cause. Of course my new pun "The posthuman always rings twice" turned out to have been already invented. Fiction writer Michael Reaves gets AD and BC mixed up, claims that Akkadian was the lingua franca of the Arabian world until AD 700. Context…

December Pieces Of My Mind #1

There will be a spring after winter! They're planting bulbs down at the Saltsjöbaden Centrum mall. Anglophones, why do you say "might" instead of "may" when expressing uncertainty? If you're certain, you say "I'll eat some bread". If uncertain, you sometimes just say "I may eat some bread". But usually you form a needless subjunctive, "I might eat some bread". Sometimes you even use this mode to express certainty! I sometimes wonder if you aim at grammatical optimisation at all. Do you even know that ”may” and ”might” are the same verb? Some people are angry because they have no voice in…

What's your school board like?

The Center for Inquiry in Austin hosted a meeting that asked the question, Will Texas Support 21st Century Science Education? The good news is that the place was packed, and there are a lot of rational, intelligent people in Texas who are fed up with the lunatics running the show and are motivated to do something about it. That's kind of the theme here; we're having a rising grassroots revolution here that's going to throw these rascals out. But here's the bad news: we've been slacking off, and the raving fundie nitwits have taken a lot of political power. Here's why the situation for science…

PPE for Ebola: This is how Emory does it

Remember how I said my lab wanted to do a PPE response video to Sanjay Guptas terrifying attempt? But we couldnt for liability reasons? Now there is an even better option! We can all take a peek into how Ebola patients are treated at Emory University, and get to see their protocols for putting on/taking off PPE: Emory Healthcare launches Ebola protocols website as resource on prevention and patient care But before you can see their videos, you have to 1) register, and 2) agree not to hold Emory University responsible if you get infected with Ebola. The information provided on this site,…

'Scientists on brink of HIV cure'. Ugh. UUUUUUUGH. *sigh*

*sigh* *heaviersigh* One of the many problems we have when treating HIV patients is that HIV can hide (latent). So a cell can be infected with HIV, but not show any signs of being infected. The HIV provirus is just chillin in the host cell DNA, not making any viral proteins/babby viruses, so the individuals immune system doesnt even have a chance to kill it. Periodically, those 'hidden' proviruses will activate, and make more viruses. Its fun to look at in a phylogenetic tree-- alovasudden, a virus collected at, say, 5 years post infection, looks like the viruses that were circulating 1 year…

Kinda sorta not really therapeutic HIV-1 vaccine (but its still a step in a positive direction)

Everyone has been wanting to know about this news item: Scientists say vaccine temporarily brakes HIV Therapeutic HIV Vaccine Shows Promise Huge Breakthrough In HIV Research Brings Us Closer To A Vaccine This is the actual paper: A Dendritic Cell–Based Vaccine Elicits T Cell Responses Associated with Control of HIV-1 Replication They did something super cool-- Took viruses out of HIV+ patients. Grew up a bunch of virus. Heat inactivated the virus (killed it). Took dendritic cells out of the same HIV+ patients. Fed the DCs the dead virus. Put the DCs back into the patients (virus + cells…

The petites sauvages of Pharyngula: old Mollies, new Mollies, and open enrollment

The always perspicacious Chris Clarke is talking about us, in a post where he talks about the pleasures and perils of managing comments on a blog. I'd be lying if I said I never appreciated a good bar brawl of a comment thread. And some blogs make the free-for-alls work: Pharyngula comes to mind as an example of a wonderful, worthwhile blog with a laissez-faire comment policy. But few blogs have that winning Pharyngular combination of high traffic, sharp focus, distinct blogger personality, and devoted constructive regulars. The chance of a typical low-to-mid-traffic blog ripening into…

Pirate DNA of Pirate DNA in DNA: Non-retroviral endogenous viruses

ARR! I mean, ERV! I mean, NIRV! Phylogeny, integration and expression of sigma virus-like genes in Drosophila As my blag tagline goes, 'If we are made in Gods image, God is made of gag, pol, and env', the components of retroviruses.  Our, and other organisms, genome is inhabited by lots of bits of selfish DNA, including retroviruses. But retroviruses are not the only group of viruses who have made themselves right at home in our DNA-- once we started looking, it turns out that there are allllll kinds of viruses just hangin out! Its not hard to imagine how endogenous retroviruses came to be--…

The Antarctica Files: I told you penguins were kinky.

The Antarctica Files: Penguin Sex. ... I didnt notice it at the time, but I did after my bud uploaded this to YouTube: Please note that while several of the penguins in the vicinity just sat on their eggs, minding their own business-- there is a creeper penguin, like, right there, just staring... staring at the other two penguins having penguin sex... breathing... I laughed really hard at that. But then I realized that we were even creepier creepers, recording and watching two members of a different species having sex. :-/ BUT ITS FOR SCIENCE! Apparently, humans have a long history of being…

The Pill for HIV: No, really, this is a bad idea

So some panel at the FDA just approved this antiretroviral drug, Truvada-- they say its okay to prescribe this drug for HIV negative people to keep them from getting HIV. Im going to this news the nicest way possible: I think there were a lot of MDs, and very few PhDs, on this FDA review panel. If you know what I mean. :-| ... :-| I have been over this before-- The Pill for HIV-1 The Pill for HIV-1: Never mind The Pill for HIV: A bad idea, actually --Prescribing an antiretroviral to negative individuals to prevent HIV is a neat idea. When it comes to this particular antiretroviral, it…

Why havent we cured cancer yeeeeeeeeet?

Last time I talked about why treating cancer is so hard: Why havent we cured cancer yeeeeeet? Briefly, scientists did complete genome sequencing of seven individuals prostate tumors, and things were all kinds of jacked up. Not only were all seven tumors different, but one tumor had over 200 chromosomal rearrangements. Like taking your genome and shuffling it like a deck of cards. As if that kind of complexity isnt bad enough... Another group of scientists sequenced the genomes of acute myeloid leukaemia patients pre- and post-treatments: Clonal evolution in relapsed acute myeloid leukaemia…

Links for 2012-03-09

Still not as bad as Division I revenue sports § Unqualified Offerings Still, at the end of the day, there's at least some notion of accountability and standards behind the assessment movement. I don't think it's been a very effective effort at accountability and standards, but somebody somewhere was clearly pushing for standards. However, I haven't heard a peep about assessment in more than a year. I have, however, heard all about graduation rates. Now, they swear up and down that they want to raise standards while raising graduation rates, and they've even put token money toward pilot…

Links for 2012-03-05

What the research says | National Numeracy The Skills for Life survey (2011) measured the numeracy levels of 16 to 65 year-olds in England, finding that: 22% of the population (7.5 million adults) are working at Level 2 or above - roughly equivalent to A*-C at GCSE - compared with 26% (8.1million adults) in 2003. The comparable figures for literacy are 57% of the population (19.3 million adults) in 2011 and 44% (14 million adults) in 2003. What's the matter with white people? - 2012 Elections - Salon.com Both the right and left suddenly have a lot of complaints about white people,…

Christmas Songs That Don't Suck, 2011

A predictably stupid discussion of this xkcd cartoon in a place I can't link to reminded me that I haven't posted the list of Christmas songs that don't suck yet this year. This has expanded somewhat since last year, thanks to some recommendations from readers, so it's worth posting again to see if there's anything else I ought to add. These are the 49 songs in my "Good Christmas" playlist that are rated 4 or 5 stars on iTunes. The full playlist is 129 songs, but most of those are three-star "it's ok in December, but I wouldn't want to hear it the rest of the year" songs. These ones, I won't…

The Advent Calendar of Physics: Introducing Energy

Moving along in our countdown to Newton's birthday, we start to deal with equations that Sir Isaac never would've seen, because they deal with more abstract quantities than he worked with. The first and in some ways most important of these is energy: This is the full and correct expression for the energy of a particle with mass m moving at speed v. The notion of energy traces back to Newton's contemporary and rival Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, but this particular equation involves the same square-root factor as Saturday's definition of momentum. That tells you for sure that this particular…

Links for 2011-04-16

By Ken Levine: How to create a hit network drama "Fame and riches can be yours! Procedural/action dramas are in and you too can create one if you just follow these very simple steps: Always start with a couple. He must be boyishly handsome and she must be smoking hot. You can go "mature" but then one has to be an established television star, and the other has to be a J. Crew model. In rare cases you can go "both mature" (CSI: NEW YORK) but then one has to be a former movie star and the other has to be an established television star who's had a lot of work done. A LOT of work done. In the…

ICQ Gender Wars

A pretty Chinese maths teacher said hello to me on ICQ the other day, hoping to marry a Westerner. This inspired me to dig out and re-post the following entry from November 2006.For many years I have spent most of my working days alone at a computer. Alone, but thanks to the internet and messaging software, not lonely. As mentioned before in connection with the story of Lennart, International Casanova, it's good to have a chat now and then with other solitary souls over ICQ. They become your workmates even though they may be located on the other side of the planet in meatspace terms, to use a…

New Archaeological Exhibit Offers Questions, No Answers

The Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm has recently completed a new permanent exhibition about Swedish prehistory. It was planned under the stewardship of the controversial Kristian Berg, a non-archaeologist whose attitude to the museum placed in his care may be summarised as politically expedient, instrumental and post-modernist. I haven't seen the new exhibition, and so can't have any opinion of my own about it. But I am not surprised to find that it is getting some very bad press, and with a recurring theme. This exhibition is asking questions and not providing any answers. "...…

Howard Williams Invites You to his Tudor Manor

My friend Howard Williams teaches archaeology at the University of Exeter, England. He's joined me in Sweden three times so far, once for a rural bike trip, twice for co-directed excavations, and he's soon returning for yet another jaunt around the country's sites, museums and archaeology departments. Attend his lectures there if you can! Here's a guest entry by Howard about his fieldwork during the past summer. I would have been there too but for my paternal duties. Stokenham Fieldwork, July 2007 By Dr Howard Williams This summer I led the third season of fieldwork exploring the Medieval…

The conservative case for carbon dividends

By the Climate "Leadership" Council: a who’s who of conservative elder statesmen, this statement is the first time leading Republicans put forth a concrete, market-based climate solution. The idea is essentially Hansen's fee-and-dividend, though naturally they don't mention H; and thankfully they're prepared to say "tax" instead of H's weaselly "fee". Although they do lead with the idea of "dividends"; the inevitable tax component is only visible if you read on. The initial rate is $40 per tonne, which is fair enough. The Carbon Tax Center seem happy enough. As they say, there's a political…

Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy?

It seems a shame to be not discussing the greatest political scandal of the age wasting clickbait: Exposed: How top university helped secure £9million of YOUR money by passing off rivals' research as its own... to bankroll climate change agenda. That is by David Rose, who is an idiot1, in the Daily Fail, which is a stereotypically unreliable source. You can, of course, discuss it in the usual swamps - and I see ATTP, who has a strong stomach, has. However it seems to have been curiously uninteresting to the folk in White Hats; I wonder why that is? Possibly because it is a stormette in a…

The Story of the One Little Pig, the Nice Wolf, and Materials Science

I want a story. The story about one little pig, and the wolf. I'll need you to help me with it, OK? Yeah. OK, once upon a time, there was one little pig, and he... What did he do? He built a house out of straw. Right. He was a little bit silly, so he built himself a house out of straw. Which is a terrible material to build a house out of. So, then, one day, a big wolf came along, and said [scary wolf voice] "Little pig, little pig, let me in!" But he was a NICE wolf. Right, so he said [scary wolf voice] "Little pig, little pig, let me in! I'm a nice wolf, but I sound like this because this…

Ha ha: Lennart Bengtsson leaves advisory board of GWPF

So says the Onion, Germany's finest news source. This has so many shades of "Chinese academy endorses NIPCC report". The back story: Lennart Bengtsson, sounding somewhere between very naive and emeritus, joins the GWPF, talking the usual nonsense (I believe most serious scientists are sceptics) indicating that either he really doesn't know what's going on, or is deliberately obfusticating. Now, it seems, his various respectable colleagues have pointed out his silliness to him. So he's ditching the GWPF, because he doesn't want to be an outcast. But he hasn't got the grace to admit the foul-…

How science goes wrong goes wrong

Browsing the vast pile of unread clutter I came across a copy of the Economist from October, featuring How science goes wrong and Trouble at the lab. Somewhere - but I don't know where - I discussed these, but since I can't find it I'll repeat myself. The first point is that whilst HSGW notices the pernicious effects of publish-or-perish in its analysis, it doesn't mention it in its how-to-fix-it. And yet, in my humble and now totally disinterested opinion, its the core of the problem. People are judged by their number of papers, and by the citations of those papers. The more senior you get…

Nice letter from a Creationist

Despite the wackaloon letters PZ gets, Im being serious! It really is nice! I encourage everyone to leave questions in the comments or send me emails if they want to know more about a topic, and I am just as happy to oblige a evilutionist as a Creationist. Especially when theyre nice about it! So I got a Q from a nice fellow a couple days ago: Hello there. I noticed your article in regards to the HIV variant that resulted in a new protein-protein binding site as a counterexample of one of Behe's claims (that we have not observed such a thing in HIV). I just finished reading EOE and…

REPOST: Morons in Microbiology

This is a repost from the old ERV. A retrotransposed ERV :P I dont trust them staying up at Blogger, and the SEED overlords are letting me have 4 reposts a week, so Im gonna take advantage of that! I am going to try to add more comments to these posts for the old readers-- Think of these as 'directors cut' posts ;) So like, you know when people go all Monty-Burns-as-Howard-Hughes and start seeing germs everywhere? I dont have that. But I kind of have that. Somehow, I work viruses into every aspect of my life... Including poop. So I gotta say to PalMD: Its not the bacteria! Its bacteria…