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On the "vise," the "wedge," and creationism

Reposted from the old TfK, for your enjoyment while I drive out to the NCSE. I don't mind creationism. I know this comes as a bit of a shock, but I don't. For our purposes, creationism is the belief that a supernatural force or being created, designed or otherwise shaped the universe and life in it. I don't have any broad beef with that idea. I don't necessarily buy it, but I'm not necessarily against it. I say this because Billy Dembski has expanded on his Vise strategy (previously discussed in "Beware the simple machines"). He creates a taxonomy of "Darwinists": those who advocate…

Impressionism and the Neurology of Art

As I note in my book, the most famous impressionists all suffered from serious medical problems: Monet became blind (but didn't stop painting the bridges of Giverny). Vincent Van Gogh, drinker of kerosene, turpentine, and absinthe, probably thought the coronas he painted around stars and streetlamps were real. Edgar Degas became severely myopic, which led him to do more and more sculpture ("I must learn a blind man's trade now," Degas said.) Auguste Renoir, poisoned by his pastel paints, became a rheumatic cripple. Now scientists are able to simulate exactly what Monet would have seen…

ScienceOnline09 - an interview with Cameron Neylon

The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January. Today, I asked Cameron Neylon from the Science in the open blog to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background? My background is in protein chemistry and biochemistry. Broadly speaking what I do is take…

It's the end of the world as we know it (annotated)

For your consideration: Two possible, if not probable, future scenarios for the human race should the business of fossil fuel combustion continue as usual for the next few decades. The first, an ABC-TV special that aired this Tuesday night, "Earth 2100." The second, a film by UK documentarian Frannie Armstrong, "The Age of Stupid." The former depicts a world that is increasing hostile to civilization as the century draws to a close, the latter an even less habitable planet, not just for humans, by 2055. Are either visions realistic, or just more worse-case scenarios that grossly exaggerate…

Columbia Scholarly Communication Program Speaker Series Videos Now Available Online

Check them out here (unfortunately, no embed codes, so you'll have to click and watch there, or download on iTunes): Know Your Rights: Who Really Owns Your Scholarly Works?: In this panel discussion, experts on copyright law and scholarly publishing discuss how scholars and researchers can take full advantage of opportunities afforded by digital technology in today's legal environment, and suggest ways to advocate for positive change. The panelists are Heather Joseph, who has been Executive Director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC); Michael Carroll,…

My visit to Purdue

Jen has the full account, complete with a video, of my talk. I was a rude boy. Right now, I'm in Bloomington, at the "Current Frontiers in Evolution, Development and Genomics" conference. I gave the keynote last night — which means I am now free to sit back and simply enjoy the meeting without fretting over a silly talk any more. I think I'll be able to get online in the auditorium, so you may be subject to more live-blogging of evo-devo over the course of the day. I see we've got events scheduled all day long, up to 11pm. I might die.

Only two shoplifting days until Christmas!

Strapped for cash? Don't know how you're going to afford a few gifts for the family? Don't worry about it, just steal them! It's OK because a priest says it is, and they've got the backing of God. Just remember: don't rob the little stores, always hit the big ones, since they've got capital to spare. And they've also got the really good stuff. I'm a little behind the times. I did all my Christmas shopping online, where it's really hard to shoplift. Would it be OK if I stole some credit card numbers, Father? How about if I give the church its 10% cut?

How We Evolve

The most recent issue of Seed Magazine has a cover story that readers of this weblog might find of interest, How We Evolve. It's not online, but its basic core is the acceleration of recent human evolution. John Hawks seems to be the primary source. The author, Benjamin Phelan, made a good faith effort to explain concepts like linkage disequilibrium, the Shifting Balance (by implication) and haplotype structure. I have some qualms about the piece, which I will moot at some point in the near future, but I think if you find some of the population genetics references on this blog opaque…

Vatican official not gay - not that there's anything wrong with it

If you haven't seen it, this is a hilarious story: Vatican Official Insists He's Not Gay: A Vatican official suspended after being caught on hidden camera making advances to a young man says he is not gay and was only pretending to be gay as part of his work. In an interview published Sunday, Monsignor Tommaso Stenico told La Repubblica daily he frequented online gay chat rooms and met with gay men as part of his work as a psychoanalyst. He said that he pretended to be gay in order to gather information about "those who damage the image of the Church with homosexual activity."

List of science blogs, with an asterisk

The Times Online has posted a list of science blogs of various sorts, which I was inclined to endorse since they did include me, and also some blogs I hadn't seen before — I am enchanted by 2d goggles, and want to spend the rest of the day reading the archives — but then I got to the end of the list and … Anthony Watts? Crank weatherman and climate change denialist? That's an anti-science blog, sorry. Now I'm a little embarrassed to be on it. I note that the commenters on that site are similarly dismayed at the lack of discrimination in their final choice.

Future prospects for commenting

Seed is planning to roll out some big upgrades to the commenting system here, and they're going to potentially add a lot of new features, which is cool. They also want to know what you think, but they've chosen to get user input in a way I find rather uncomfortable. They're doing it with an online poll. Oh, no. Hoist by my own petard. You better go vote, before the Rapture-lovin' fundagelicals move in and voice their opinions, and we end up with every comment ending in a honkin' big sig with huge-eyed puppy dogs and pink script with sparkly graphic effects.

Around the Web: Personal data ecosystems, Learning to say, "I don't know" and more

Startups in the Personal Data Ecosystem Elements of an Effective Public Education Toolkit The Politics of the New Huffington Post at AOL How to Promote Zotero at Your Institution and Why Disruption, Delivery and Degrees Measuring Impact Beyond Academic Fame: An Alternative Social Impact Factor Character Education for the Digital Age Encouraging Scientific Data Use Time for textbook tycoons to give students a break Publishing science in a connected world Data-security horror stories In Person: Falling Off the Ladder: How Not to Succeed in Academia The Complete History of Social Networking…

Around the Web: The Chicago way, Take a test, Invisible computer labs and more

The Chicago Way: A respected style manual advises scholars against open access To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test Tenure and all that Arsenic, cold fusion and the legitimacy of online critique Teen's Bubble Ball game tops iTunes free app chart (used library book to learn programming) The Invisible Computer Lab Academic Boredom How I Think About E-Books 45% Of Students Don't Learn Much In College My Students Know Far Less Than I Ever Expected Blogging with the Invisible Community - and Why It Matters On building a better blogosphere The Cowbell of Communications Social Media,…

Around the Web: CS Recruitment, Online privacy, Death by Twitter and more

Selling ourselves (short) (attracting students to CS) Online Behavior Tracking and Privacy: 7 Worst Case Scenarios Feedback loops in eBook success Is Twitter Killing You? The Rise of the 'Edupunk' When Social Media Is Irrelevant The Digital Natives / Digital Immigrants Distinction Is Dead, Or At Least Dying All I needed to know about, well, everything, I learned in CS? Decoding the Value of Computer Science A Gresham's Law for Software Do conference build community? (Computer Science) arXiv Business Model White Paper Undergraduates in the Library, Trying Not to Drown Quote for Today: "…

Plea to the godless community

I got a request to mention this, and how can I not? A young boy is battling leukemia, and his family is struggling with the costs. They've had to put up an online donation box in the hope of some relief. If you've got a little to spare (I know, this is not a good time in the history of our economy to expect that), think about giving a little to a family in need…or at the very least, donate to the Children's Cancer Research Fund. And also think about this if our representatives ever get moving on health care reform.

Complex Systems #171

One of the joys of the holidays and the University turning off the heating and locking us out, is that it provides time to catch up on things: papers, refereeing, recommendation letters, grading, syllabi, proposals, all the stuff one can rarely get to during actual working semester hours. And, sometimes, there is time for real life: casual reading, family, catching up online... One of the ye olde blog things I like to look over occasionally is Scott Aaronson's shtetl-optimized, for the latest on P!=NP news, or polemic on quantum computing. This time, what caught my eye was his take on the…

Emphasis on science and the general public at IAS

The Iowa Academy of Science has released its summer newsletter online, and is available here (.pdf). There's a lot going on for scientists and the science-interested at all levels (students, teachers, researchers), so for the Iowa folks (or, those of you in other states who are just looking for some good ideas), if you've not already checked them out or have a membership, give them a look (their homepage is http://www.iacad.org/). They also have new programs focusing on science education for the general public, which I know is an interest for many readers as well.

ScienceOnline09 - an interview with...me!

One of the education sessions at ScienceOnline09 will be the middle/high school perspective (or: "how the Facebook generation does it"?) session that will be led by Miss Baker and eight of her high-school biology class students. One of these students - Brandon - recently interviewed me via e-mail and the interview is now available online - you can choose the full text or you can opt for excerpts in a video form. I understand that other students interviewed other conference participants and I can't wait to see their interviews as well. I see that Peter Suber already liked it ;-)

More on Pulitzers for online reporting

Remember this? Now Simon Ovens interviewed several key players in this game - Pulitzers Open to Online-Only Entrants -- But Who Qualifies? It's longish, but worth your attention: He did, however, confirm that a blog could hypothetically qualify. "If one or two people call their website a text-based newspaper, would it be eligible?" he said. "Blogs tend to fall into three categories. There are news reporting blogs, there are commentary blogs, and there's a hybrid version of the two. If they're text-based and meet our criteria, then they probably could compete. But it would be up to them to…

Rename Christi Himmelfahrt!

Those wacky, madcap Germans are promoting a little change in their set of national holidays: some people want to change the Feast of the Ascension, celebrating the day Jesus supposedly floated up into heaven, to…Evolution Day! As you might guess, I think this is an excellent idea. There is a petition you can sign, and less usefully, an online poll: Soll "Christi Himmelfahrt" in "Evolutionstag" umbenannt werden? Ich bin dafür (for it)3061 66.30% Ich bin dagegen (against it)1312 28.42% Ist mir egal (don't care)244 5.28% They even have a charming video to go with their proposal.

Unbelievable?

As mentioned previously, my interview on British Christian talk radio is now available — you can download the mp3 directly, and you can join in an online discussion, in which I am accused of "scientism"…which is rather pecuilar, given that in the interview I rather specifically said there were phenomena for which science is not the best tool for examination (although I would also say that there are no phenomena which require something beyond natural mechanisms). The interviewer also thinks Plantinga's arguments are good, which we didn't talk about at all, but which would have triggered some…

Experiment: Open Peer Review

There is another new online biology journal out there, Biology Direct. This journal is particularly interesting because its stated policy is to provide authors and readers of research articles with a novel system of peer review. This system includes making the author responsible for obtaining reviewers' reports via the journal's Editorial Board; making the peer review process open rather than anonymous; and publishing the reviewers' reports along with the articles, thus increasing both the responsibility and the reward of the referees and eliminating sources of abuse in the refereeing…

What Does Your Birthdate Mean?

Your Birthdate: January 31 You're a pretty traditional person. If it's lasted, it's probably good. You seek stability - both in your career and your romantic relationship. In return, you're very loyal and predictable. Which is usually a good thing. Without a partner, you feel lost. Being with someone is very important to you. Your strength: Your dependability Your weakness: You hate being alone Your power color: Midnight blue Your power symbol: Shell Your power month: April What Does Your Birth Date Mean? Another stupid internet quiz. It's good for a laugh, but it is absolutely…

How is Your Punctuation and Grammar?

tags: grammar, punctuation, online quiz You Scored an A You got 10/10 questions correct. It's pretty obvious that you don't make basic grammatical errors. If anything, you're annoyed when people make simple mistakes on their blogs. As far as people with bad grammar go, you know they're only human. And it's humanity and its current condition that truly disturb you sometimes. The It's Its There Their They're Quiz How did you score? And how did the authors of this quiz guess that basic punctuation and grammar mistakes on blogs can drive me to distraction?

think globally act erratically

I have family (in-laws) and lots of old friends in SoCal, so I checked in on the fires on-line this morning - looks bad. But, really, it is a local disaster, right? At lunch the e-mail came in - the San Diego Supercomputer Center is erratic and heading for going down later today. Don't expect it will be up to much this week. Staff were ordered to stay home, power is "erratic"... dammit. We have 100,000 hours to burn on that big iron, this semester, it can't burn down. SDSC just e-mailed. All systems down at noon local time...

Who Do You Think Will Die in Harry Potter Book Seven?

tags: online poll, Harry Potter Here is a poll for you to answer regarding Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. According to JK Rowling, the author, two main characters will die in this book, so I have decided to ask you who you think will die in this book? Why do you think those people will die? Feel free to leave comments below. This poll will only be available until Saturday evening (July 21st) sometime, when I will collect the results and post them, along with who really dies. Poll closed. Go here to see the poll results. Thanks for voting!

Anthro Blog Carnival

The eighty-sixth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Testimony of the Spade. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology! Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to Krys at Anthropology in Practice. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. The next vacant hosting slot is on 10 March. It's a good way to gain readers. No need to be an anthro pro. And don't miss Ed Yong's piece on the first genome for a prehistoric human, a Bronze Age Greenlander who's spent 4000 years in permafrost!

Marzipan Gold Hoard

In 1995 a gold hoard was found at Vittene in Norra Björke parish, Västergötland. Its contents had been amassed over two centuries, and it was committed to the earth in the 3rd century AD. A fine book on the find and subsequent settlement excavations has recently been published and is available in full on-line. Below is a picture of the Vittene hoard. Above is a picture of a replica of the hoard made of marzipan and gold leaf by Sören Elmqvist for the 1995 Christmas market at the county museum. Thanks to Niklas Ytterberg for the tipoff.

Fornvännen's Autumn and Winter Issues On-line

Is this part of the Stone of Mora? After some issues with the image resolution in the PDFs, we've now put Fornvännen 2010:3-4 on-line. Read new research for free! Middle Neolithic festival site in Scania Roman bronze coinage found in the woods of northern Sweden Roman mirror shard found on the coast of Western Bothnia Pre-demolition documentation of a richly be-muralled Medieval church in SmÃ¥land produced in the 1820s 1st millennium AD gardening Thieves, counterfeiters and murderers in Birka What happened to the Stone of Mora onto which Medieval Swedish kings were hoisted at their…

How unusual was autumn 2006 in Europe?

Gosh this is fun... you wait ages for a paper on a warm event and then 2 come along together :-). Anyway, thanks to FB for pointing out How unusual was autumn 2006 in Europe? in Climate of the Past. This is almost but not quite the same thing as the 2003 event so I had all the code ready and submitted a little comment. Since its on-line open access you can see it, just click on the interactive discussion. Looking in the Chase et al. style hemispheric context, 2006 doesn't look so unusual, even when looking at T1.5m.

Testing…

You scored as Scientific Atheist, These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future. Scientific Atheist 100% Militant Atheist 67% Angry Atheist 50% Spiritual Atheist 50% Apathetic Atheist 42% Agnostic 42% Theist 17% What kind of atheist are you?created with QuizFarm.com (via…

Fornvännen's Autumn Issue On-Line

14th century pilgrim's badge of St. Bridget found in the River Fyris at Uppsala. Fornvännen 2015:3 is now on-line on Open Access. Lars Larsson on an unusual Late Neolithic burial monument at the record-breaking 1st millennium site of Uppåkra. Christina Fredengren on deposition of human and animal bodies in the waters of inland Uppland. Lars Liedgren and Ingela Bergman on a previously unpublished 1921 excavation of a Late Medieval farmstead near Luleå. Birgit Maixner on the confusing and counterproductive results of Norwegian counties interpreting heritage law regarding metal detector…

Fornvännen’s Summer Issue On-line

Fornvännen 2014:2 is now on-line on Open Access. Hans Göransson on Middle Neolithic vegetation history. Frans-Arne Stylegar reinterprets a famous Viking Period grave find with smith's tools. Ronnie Carlsson & Christian Lovén on the urban parish churches of Medieval Uppsala. Anders G. Nord & Käte Tronner analyse the paint residues on Medieval church sculpture and murals. Påvel Nicklasson on Eva Brag and Ida Nilsson, two Swedish women in 19th century archaeology. Håkan Svensson argues that the current setup of Swedish contract archaeology and metal detector legislation poses a constant…

Links for 2011-08-23

'Infinite Jest' Imbues Decemberists Video by Michael Schur - NYTimes.com "It is a project that so fully combines Mr. Schur's favorite book -- the first he ever read that he felt was written the way he thought and spoke -- and favorite band, he says he would have been crushed if anyone else had gotten the assignment. "If Scorsese had directed it," he said, "I would have been like, why does he get that gig?" The video, which makes its online debut on Monday, depicts the playing of Eschaton, a game invented by Wallace that he describes about 325 pages into "Infinite Jest.""

Anthro Blog Carnival

The forty-first Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Remote Central. Archaeology and anthropology, and all about Nswazwi. It's a village in the Central District of Botswana, located close to the border with Zimbabwe. The village has primary and secondary schools and a clinic. The population was 1,741 in the 2001 census. The next open hosting slot is on 16 July. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me. No need to be an anthro pro. But you must not have any trouble pronouncing "Nswazwi", just like I haven't.

Science Online

I thought I had mentioned it on Twitter enough, but as several people were surprised to see me last night, it's probably worth saying more prominently: I'm at the Science Online 2013 conference in Raleigh, NC this week. This is making me tremendously popular with my class, who are taking an exam tonight... Anyway, if you weren't aware that I was going to be here, now you know. If last night and this morning are any indication, I may not have any voice left by the end of the conference-- the bar was LOUD last night-- but if you're around, say hi.

Beer Geek Website

When I give talks about Internet subcultures I like to say that I could devote the entire talk to on-line forums for retired Spanish-speaking transvestites. That's how niched groups a global communication network makes possible. Myself, I'm on a Swedish site for skeptics, a US site for science bloggers and two sites for boardgame geeks (in English and Swedish). And now Dear Reader Tsu Dho Nihm tells me that there's a beer geek site with a huge reviews database: Beer Advocate. Awesome! Beer as culture, beer as baseball stats, beer as philately. Though an abstainer myself, I highly recommend…

Harunian omission

Iâm a little put out that Turkish anti-evolutionist Harun Yahya has never seen fit to send me a copy of his Atlas of Creation while other folks here at ASU have received one. I thought I was a bigger fish than that! How does Yahya think Iâm going to fairly represent his magnum opus when I lecture on Turkish opposition to evolution? Yeah, I know itâs online in e-copy but thumping a copy down on the desk would surely impress my students as to the weight of evidence supporting Yahyaâs assertions. In any case, check-out this post on the Harunian omission.

Netflix Prize Awarded

The Netflix prize for movie rankings has been awarded with the winner being BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos. This is very cool, but since it's Monday I think we need a good dose of reality. So here is the first comment on the New York Times Bit blog: This sounds like an interesting project, but they ought to emphasize acquiring more movies for their online streaming than telling people what to watch. - kt Good work, BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos, but could you work on that tube that delivers my potato chips without me having to get up to go to the kitchen?

Happenings in the Quantum World: January 16, 2007

Graphene quantum dots as qubits, Quantum Zeno effect, and the APS March meeting. A group in Zurich has made quantum dots in graphene and demonstrated Coulomb blockade opening up yet another material of promise for quantum dot qubits. Journal article here. Lev Vaidman has an itneresting News and Views on some recent work related to the quantum Zeno effect and in particular on this recent Physical Review A article. The March meeting of the APS now has its program online. The best way I can figure out of finding sessions sponsered by GQI is going to this page and searching the text of that…

Darwinius masillae Among Most Blogged Stories at NY Times

The publicity success of Darwinius masillae aka Ida continues on with Tuesday's New York Times story among the most blogged at the paper. The top 10 list as of this afternoon: # Overhaul Likely for Credit Cards # U.S. to Offer New Mileage and Emission Standards # Thriving Norway Offers a Lesson in Frugality # Obama to Offer Plan to Regulate Derivatives # Seeking a Missing Link, and a Mass Audience # U.S. Retail Sales Fall for a Second Month # Food Companies Try, but Can't Guarantee Safety # G.M. Dealers Wait to Learn Their Fate # New Starbucks Ads Seek to Recruit Online Fans # The Times and…

Bizarre Experiments

Times Online details 10 of the most bizarre experiments ever devised. I rather doubt some of these would have made it past institutional review today: 7) Turkey turn-ons Martin Schein and Edgar Hale, of Pennsylvania State University, devoted themselves to studying the sexual behaviour of turkeys in the 1960s, and discovered that the birds are not choosy. Taking a model of a female turkey, they progressively removed body parts until the males lost interest. Even when all that remained was a head on a stick, the male turkeys remained turned on. Read the whole thing, and wonder to yourself who…

Airport Porn?

USA Today is reporting that Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport will next month begin trials of backscatter x-ray screening. And how are the TSA ensuring that "naked" pictures of passengers wont appear online? At airports, they will be programmed to shade or blur travelers' bodies and medical devices. Screeners will view the images in remote rooms and delete them instantly. Yeah, that will work. (The above picture, by the way, is of Susan Hallowell, director of the TSA's security laboratory, who said "It does basically make you look fat and naked - but you see all this stuff".)

Encephalon 53 & Hourglass

The 53rd edition of Encephalon is online now at Ionian Enchantment and includes entries about grid cells, cochlear implants and how culture affects the perception of faces. The carnival comes back to it's original home for the next edition - I'll be hosting it here on 15th September. If you'd like to contribute, send permalinks to your neuroscience and psychology blog posts to encephalon{dot}host{at}gmail {dot}com. Also, there's a new blog carnival called Hourglass that you might like to take a look at. It's about biogerontology (the biology of aging), and the first and second editions are…

On the Virtual Radio Tomorrow

Tomorrow (Wednesday) at 4 pm EST I'll be a guest on Science and Society, an online radio show. You can listen live or visit the site later for a podcast. I'll do my best to be interesting on all things evolutionary, but fortunately I'm sandwiched between two scientists who should be definitely worth a listen: Steven Salzberg, who has sequenced the genomes of humans and flu viruses and just about everything in between, and Zach Hall, the president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which was set up to make California the world's envy in stem cell research.

In a clear attempt to appear "cool" to the kiddies ...

Don't really know what to make of this. National Review Online has unleashed its "top 50 conservative rock songs of all time" featuring such noted conservative thinkers as The Who, The Beatles, The Sex Pistols, and Blink 182. By the time I read “Rock the Casbah” by The Clash (#20), the sound of Joe Strummer rotating in a grave was clear; when I read “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Iron Maiden (#29), I couldn't get my jaw to remain closed. Taking "proof texting" and quote mining to a whole new level, this is a freekin hilarious list of songs that "really are conservative". Check it out.

The Primate Diaries Was Selected for The Open Laboratory

   The Open Laboratory?! You're kidding? Woo hoo!!!!!!!!My post for Nature Network, Male Chauvinist Chimps or the Meat Market of Public Opinion? has been selected for this year's Open Laboratory as an example of the year's best online science writing. For those who have followed the developments of Ardipithecus ramidus, it will interest you to know that Owen Lovejoy used this study as the basis for his argument that male provisioning was responsible for the origin of bipedalism. Many thanks to Bora and Scicurious (this year's guest editor) for selecting my piece. They should be…

Medical Weblog awards---the news is good

Blog buddy and all-around great guy lucite box of diodes, Orac of Respectful Insolence, has won "Best Health Policies/Ethics Weblog of 2008", sponsored by MedGadget.com. According to the website: Orac of Respectful Insolence has been chosen as the Best Health Policies/Ethics Weblog of 2008. As one of the members of Science Blogs, Orac attempts to bring sanity to the world full of medical quackery. His efforts at exposing the dangers of alternative medicine, pseudoscience, and evolution deniers have made Orac one of the most recognized online activists against medical fraud and pseudoscience…

The Science Fiction Contest

The Science Fiction Contest was announced a few months ago to give an opportunity for those who want to make their mama proud. Time, you may not have realized, passes. We now have thirty more days before the contest closes its door to work out the winners. That's four more weeks. 2592000 seconds (thanks google) and counting down fast. What are you waiting for? Ideas? May I interest you in some tasty bits? All the stories entered into the contest will be featured online at thescian.com/scifi for your reading pleasure after the winning announcements are made.

I'm that kind of an atheist...

Talk about skewing the results with a leading question... but anyway: You scored as Scientific Atheist, These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future. Scientific Atheist 92% Agnostic 83% Militant Atheist 58% Spiritual Atheist 58% Apathetic Atheist 42% Angry Atheist 17%…