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Vatican Forgives John Lennon

And on behalf of John Lennon, I say: "Kiss my ass, Vatican..." (Though I'm sure John would not have said exactly that.) A Vatican newspaper has forgiven the late English singer John Lennon for saying four decades ago that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus. In an article praising The Beatles, L'Osservatore Romano said Lennon had just been showing off. Lennon told a British newspaper in 1966 - at the height of Beatlemania - that he did not know which would die out first, Christianity or rock and roll. At the time, the comparison sparked controversy in the US. ... which then led to the…

Sunday morning eruption of evil

The Nielsen Haydens filled my morning with horror, so I'm going to make you suffer, too. Behold, a Danish disco band pretending to be Apaches: It goes on for an interminable 4½ minutes; seriously, you've done your penance if you watch 20 seconds, long enough to spot the sequins and the Groucho mustache on the keyboardist. I recommend you turn it off before the Apache maidens emerge from behind the teepee—that was just too much. Say, that Making Light thread led me to another cheesy video by Army of Lovers, and since I was soliciting suggestions for a menacing makeover, it gave me an idea:…

Sarah Palin Not On Top

... of the geography game: ...Perhaps one of the most astounding and previously unknown tidbits about Sarah Palin has to do with her already dubious grasp of geography. According to Fox News Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron, there was great concern within the McCain campaign that Palin lacked "a degree of knowledgeability necessary to be a running mate, a vice president, a heartbeat away from the presidency," in part because she didn't know which countries were in NAFTA, and she "didn't understand that Africa was a continent.. Apparently she thought it was a country. A lot of…

Cobol Blue

In July, citing a budget shortfall, the Governor of California ordered the salaries of 170,000 State employees to be cut to the Federal minimum wage. Not so fast, said the State Controller. Because California's payroll systems are written in antiquated Cobol code, it would take six months to implement the change and nine months to restore salaries later. That's if we had the Cobol programmers to do the job, which we don't, because you fired them last week, Governor. And we can't hire them back because nobody's going to take a pay cut from Social Security to program Cobol for minimum wage.…

John Nash Has Died

In less happy news, there is this: John Forbes Nash Jr., a mathematical genius whose struggle with schizophrenia was chronicled in the 2001 movie “A Beautiful Mind,” has died along with his wife in a car crash on the New Jersey Turnpike. He was 86. Nash and Alicia Nash, 82, of Princeton Township, were killed in a taxi crash Saturday, state police said. A colleague who had received an award with Nash in Norway earlier in the week said they had just flown home and the couple had taken a cab home from the airport. Nash won the Nobel prize in economics for his work on game theory, but he also…

Maybe My Next Book Should Be About Atheist Gatherings

As you have probably guessed from the blog drought around here, it's the end of the semester. That means tons of grading, office hours, meetings with students, deadlines to meet, and all around not much time for blogging. Final exams are this week. Once those are graded I reach the promised land of summer break. So regular blogging will resume shortly. In the meantime, here's a guest post I wrote for the Oxford University Press blog. I offer a few thoughts about my two recent experiences with atheist gatherings: The Reason Rally and the American Atheists Convention. I enjoyed both…

Blasphemy is always good for a laugh

Here's a fine list of 20 blasphemous events, rated by vulgarity, criminality, religious impact, political impact, and deaths. My favorite has to be number 13. Rude Buddha A sculpture of Buddha with a banana and two eggs strategically placed was happily on display at the Royal Academy of Arts this summer, but when it was moved to the sculptors' home city of Norfolk it raised hackles amongst the local police force's hate crime unit. DC Dan Cocks ordered it to be removed from the gallery. The artist said he aimed to show that in a global village everyone can take offence at something. I know,…

The Grim Cirriculum

I had a terrible nightmare last night. Starcraft II came out, and I was playing it opening day with lots of other people... and like, I totally forgot how to play Starcraft. All my soldiers were dying. My rocket launchers were getting blown up. And for some reason I had a ton of money and no structures... and the ones I did build were placed all wrong... It was awful. Needless to say Im excited about Starcraft II, and I didnt really mind their 'Real ID' registering thingie that was causing all sorts of trouble. The guys at Penny Arcade pretty much nailed it: "Of course it doesnt bother…

Arnies long-lost cousin

Since Arnie was a street dog when I found him, his parentage has always been in question. It doesnt help that he is a 'pit bull', which could mean any number of things-- line up 50 'pit bulls' and you will get short-and-stout to long-and-lean and everything in between. Black, white, red, big spots, small spots, brown with black stripes, black with brown stripes, everything. 'Pit bulls' are like a Dr. Seuss book. Arnies round, doe-eyes and alligator smile definitely put him in the 'pit' camp, but his ears/profile are rather labrador-ish, and I think from watching this obedience training…

Chris Mooney on InfidelGuy tonight next Thursday!

If you are one of the many people who cant get Luskin Mooney to give you a straight answer to your questions/comments/criticisms of his 'Unscientific America' fap-fest, whether because youre banned from his blog, he defriended you on Facebook, or he just plain ignores everything you say because youre a damn dirty atheist/retarded scientist, why dont you give Reggie a call when he opens up the line to questions on tonights next Thursdays episode of InfidelGuy? 8 pm Eastern. Alternatively, if you are sick of watching Luskin Mooney masturbating, InfidelGuy has a ton of free shows up, including…

Good News From the Campaign Trail

From Robert Novak's column in today's Washington Post: Shortcomings by John McCain's campaign in the art of politics are alienating two organizations of Christian conservatives. James Dobson's Focus on the Family is estranged following the failure of Dobson and McCain to talk out their differences. Evangelicals who follow the Rev. John Hagee resent McCain's disavowal of him. The evangelicals are not an isolated problem for the Arizona senator. Enthusiasm for McCain inside the Republican coalition is in short supply. During the four months since McCain clinched the nomination, he has not…

Congratulations to Lynch and Lehrer!

Impressive company I'm keeping! Two of my SciBlings have recently received some deeply cool honors. Over at Stranger Fruit, John Lynch has received the Carnegie/CASE professor of the year award for the state of Arizona. Very nice! Meanwhile, Jonah Lehrer of The Frontal Cortex has snagged a place on Amazon's ten best science books of the year list for Proust Was a Neuroscientist. Again, very nice. Congratulations to John and Jonah. As for everyone else, have a Happy Thanksgiving! Driving tip: If you're travelling from Virginia to New Jersey via I-95 on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving…

Ira Levin Dead at 78

The New York Times is reporting that author Ira Levin has died of apparently natural causes at the age of 78: Ira Levin, a mild-mannered playwright and novelist who liked nothing better than to give people the creeps -- and who did so repeatedly, with best-selling novels like “Rosemary's Baby,” “The Stepford Wives” and “The Boys From Brazil” -- died on Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 78. No specific cause of death had been determined, but Mr. Levin appeared to have died of natural causes, his son Nicholas said yesterday. Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives are two of my favorite…

Physics of Snow Photo Contest

A couple of weeks ago, I got a cool picture of snow hanging off SteelyKid's playset, and posted a call for people to suggest physics-y ideas about that. I only got one response, probably because nobody really read the Internet over the holidays. Anyway, the next time I'm likely to have the free time to write anything substantive is next Tuesday morning, so let me renew that call now, while people are trapped indoors by the POLAR VORTEX! with nothing to do but think about the physics of cold things. So, if you have physics-related ideas about the photo above (there's a view from a different…

Why'd it Have to be a Mathematician?

From The San Francisco Chronicle: A California university professor has been charged with peeing on a colleague's campus office door. Prosecutors charged 43-year-old Tihomir Petrov, a math professor at California State University, Northridge, with two misdemeanor counts of urinating in a public place. Arraignment is scheduled Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court in San Fernando. Investigators say a dispute between Petrov and another math professor was the motive. The Los Angeles Times says Petrov was captured on videotape urinating on the door of another professor's office on the…

Historical Physicist Smackdown: Thermodynamics Edition

The question of who is the greatest physicist of the physicists who are household names-- Newton, Einstein, Maxwell, etc.-- has been debated thousands of times, and will undoubtedly be debated thousands of times in the future. What isn't as often discussed is the ranking of physicists who aren't in that rare group of household names-- people whose surnames are attached to equations that GRE takers struggle to memorize, but whose given names and life stories are mostly forgotten. Well, this post is for them: The following poll presents a list of important figures from the history of…

Green UMM

One of the goals of my university is to go green: we're working on wind and biomass power, we support local foods, we're making a major initiative to add environmental studies to our curriculum, and we're about to build a green dorm on campus. One interesting tack the green dormies are taking is to keep the public informed with a Green Dorm blog. So far, it's awfully dry reading and its not really taking advantage of the medium well — each post is little more than a link to a pdf document from the planning process — but they are open to comment, at least. Maybe they should consult someone…

Wind and Snow

We caught only a glancing blow from the latest Snowpocalypse event, with maybe six inches of light, powdery snow. It's difficult to estimate depth, because it's so light and powdery, and very, very windy. To give you an idea of the local conditions, here's a picture of the thistle-seed feeder hanging outside our front window: What you see there is a couple of inches worth of snow that blew through the fine screen on the outside of the feeder, and piled up inside. The wind continues to howl 'round the outside of Chateau Steelypips, so while the roads are plenty clear enough for travel, I don'…

Carnivalia and an open thread

I'm on an airplane on my way to Washington DC, for an event sponsored by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. It should be good — I've heard that Blue Gal, D-Cup, Phil Plait, and some of the gang from Corrente will be there…and we'll find out who else. I'll report back later! Until then, here are a few carnivals to browse. Skeptics' Circle #73 Carnival of the Liberals #51 Four Stone Hearth #27 Linnaeus' Legacy, a brand new carnival dedicated to classification Friday Ark #164 And of course, feel free to talk among yourselves! Except any lingering denialists. You…

Cranky Toddler Poll

SteelyKid had a check-up yesterday, and got three shots (chicken pox, MMR, and seasonal flu). This may or may not be related to her high fever and general misery last night; whatever the cause, she was not a happy camper. Since she can't very well go to day care like that, I'm staying home with her this morning. I'm also leaving for the Sigma Xi meeting this afternoon, which is outside Houston, so I'm going to go from dealing with an unwell toddler to feeling like an unwell toddler as I deal with the air travel system. Whee! In honor of spending the morning trying to distract an unhappy…

links for 2008-05-14

Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » The bullet-swallowers "Some connections are obvious: libertarianism and MWI are both are grand philosophical theories that start from premises that almost all educated people accept (quantum mechanics in the one case, Econ 101 in the other), and claim to reach conclusions that (tags: blogs politics quantum science physics silly economics) The Quantum Pontiff : Political Interpretations of Quantum Theory "So if many worlders are the libertarians of interpretations of quantum theory, what political parties do the other interpretations of quantum theory…

Accelerate and Switch

There's been a lot of talk about REM's decision to finally sound like a rock band again for their new album, Accelerate. I rather like the first single, "Supernatural Superserious," which sounds like the REM I remember, rather than some bloodless adult contemporary act. So I bought the album, and it's been of shuffle play with a bunch of other stuff for a few weeks now. And you know what? The rest of it is pretty tedious. It is a departure from their recent stuff in that it's at least loud and tedious, rather than adult-contemporary tedious, but I'm not liking it all that much. I just wanted…

Sunday Mighty Hunter Blogging

Here we see the mighty hunter returning from a successful pursuit of the elusive Red Snow Squid. (It's a nice sunny day, here, and the snow storm of a few days ago left a nice coating in the back yard. It occurred to me that the snow makes a nice contrast with Emmy's black coat, and I still need some more good pictures of her for the book, so we romped around in the back yard for a while with a squeaky toy (a Kong Wubba), taking pictures.) (That was half an hour ago, and already Her Majesty is flopped on the floor in the pose of the Most Neglected Dog in the History of the World, because we…

Answer to the Monday Night Mystery

Loxocera cylindrica rust fly (Diptera: Psilidae) Urbana, Illinois The unmistakable antennae on these amorous insects mark them as psilid flies, and commentator Chris Grinter (of The Skeptical Moth) correctly surmised the species as Loxocera cylindrica. Nine points to Chris, and one to FormicidaeFantasy who was the first to pick the order. This brings us to the end of June and to the announcement of the overall mystery points winner for the month: Ted MacRae, of the excellent entomology blog Beetles in the Bush, has accumulated ten points and is entitled to either a guest blog post here on…

Name That Ant

Over at the Ant Farm Forum they're having another round of Name That Ant: the mystery ant - photo by forum participant 'Harpegnathos' Lodge your answer here. While I'm on the topic of the Ant Farm Forum... The internet strikes me as a tremendous boon for ant enthusiasts.  Anting is not one of those hobbies like, say, model rocketry or gardening, with sufficient interest to sustain local clubs that meet regularly.  So ant people have historically carried out their activities in solitude. Now that the internet allows ant enthusiasts from around the world to interact, it's probably much…

Friday Beetle Blogging: Spider Beetle

Gibbium sp. Spider Beetle, Arizona Spider beetles are not predators like their namesakes but are instead pests of stored grain.  I was surprised at how difficult they were to photograph.  Their round bodies were hard to fit into a single focal plane, while their reflective elytra were prone to harsh glare.  I could not do much about the first problem, but the lighting was solved by placing the beetle inside a white box and firing an off-camera strobe into the box but away from the beetle. Gibbium sp., Arizona photo details (both images): Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS…

Friday Beetle Blogging: Priacma Bleach Beetle

Priacma serrata - Bleach Beetle California Priacma serrata is an enigmatic insect from the conifer forests of western North America and is one of a handful of species belonging to the relictual beetle suborder Archostemata.  It is often thought of as a "living fossil", bearing a strong resemblance to the earliest known beetles that pre-date even the dinosaurs. Males are attracted to the scent of bleach, presumably because it resembles a female pheromone, and are sometimes collected off air-drying laundry.  In spite of its unique evolutionary position, the biology of Priacma has not been…

Friday Beetle Blogging: Beyer's Scarab

Chrysina beyeri - Beyer's Scarab - Arizona Arizona's Jewel Scarabs emerge after the onset of summer rains. These large insects have something of a cult following among collectors, and enthusiasts from around the world descend on the Sonoran desert every monsoon season with their mercury vapor lamps and blacklights to entice the lumbering beetles into their traps.  The effects of this mass harvesting on Chrysina populations have not been studied, but they should be.  I'd hate to lose such an attractive species. Beyer's scarab, the largest Chrysina in the United States, feeds on oak foliage…

New Species: Lachnomyrmex amazonicus

Lachnomyrmex amazonicus - Feitosa and Brandão 2008 The new world tropics continue to be a rich source of species discovery.  Today's issue of Zootaxa contains a monograph by Rodrigo Feitosa and Beto Brandão revising the ant genus Lachnomyrmex, a small yet delightfully wrinkled group of soil-dwelling ants.  Of the 16 species recognized in the new paper, ten were previously unknown.  For the mathematically-challenged, that's more than half. Lachnomyrmex amazonicus, pictured above, is one of the new species.  It has been recorded from lowland humid forests in the states of Amazonas, Para…

New Species: Pheidole pegasus

Pheidole pegasus Sarnat 2008 Fiji Eli Sarnat, the reigning expert on the Ants of Fiji, has just published a lovely taxonomic revision of a group of Pheidole that occur on the islands. Pheidole are found in warmer regions worldwide, but Fiji has seen a remarkable radiation of species that share a bizarre set of spines on the mesosoma. Eli sorted through hundreds of these things to determine that the group contains seven species, five of which had not previously been described. Pheidole pegasus is largest and among the most distinct of the group.  It was collected only once, from the…

Yes, I really will be back

A convergence of personal and professional issues have left me little or no time for blogging the last week or so. But many thanks to you for checking in here and even e-mailing to say hi. I actually have a couple of good science topics in the hopper but haven't been able to execute them fully. But as Arnold once said, I'll be back. Let me also express my gratitude to my research and wine mentor, and stealth co-blogger, Erleichda, for his great Friday Fermentable column about wines of the Northern Italy Lake Country. In the meantime, check out the DrugMonkey-recommended post from…

Tom Ritter's claim

I chuckled at Ritter, the creationist suing a Pennsylvania school district, but now I've actually seen formal legal complaint, and I'm not giggling anymore. It's more like the kind of roaring guffaw that would make Brian Blessed sound like a feeble titterer. I don't think he had any legal counsel in drafting that. At least he took the time to retype it from the original draft, which was probably done in purple crayon on a Big Chief tablet. Does he even have standing in this case? That's not a lawsuit anyone needs to worry about, except perhaps for Tom Ritter, who will at best be publicly…

Australians are laughing at us Americans!

It's shocking. How dare they. The Australian writes about our puritanical television viewers and how British television has to be stripped of religious criticism before it's aired here, or our citizens get all Muslim-cartoon-rioter over it. It's not as if those real Americans are pretending to be thin-skinned. This is not faux outrage. They are genuinely shocked that outsiders do not take Christianity as seriously as they do. Oh, yeah? We're thin-skinned zealots from the land where "God can't take a joke"? We'll teach you what's funny. The cruise missiles and predator drones are standing by…

"We figured out during the case that it was saying hamburger"

From today's article by the always-interesting Sarah Avery at the News & Observer: After several failed attempts to extract the item, Manley was referred to another doctor, who suggested removing the entire left lung. "I said, no, I wouldn't be doing that," Manley says. That's when he decided to seek a second opinion at Duke University Medical Center. We've heard of "hot tub lung" and "popcorn lung" but my chest hurts just thinking about "jagged, fast-food implement lung." If this case does not make it into the New England Journal of Medicine, I will be disappointed. Photo credit: Duke…

Fantastic academic posts by Female Science Professor

As I've been more than swamped as of late, I wanted to offer up some of insightful posts my colleagues around the blogosphere (I can just get in about 20 of the my most recent feeds from Google Reader while making the coffee, although putting the laptop on the range top is probably a bad idea.). Dear Freshman - FSP's take on a nine New York Times essays on advice for the incoming college student What To Expect When You're Clueless - Two students with comparable records are applying for grad school. Which of the two faculty reactions do you have in response to Student 2? Regular programming…

Want to be a Scienceblogs Super Reader?

If you'd like to join a sort of Scienceblogs elite reader club, you've got two days to send me an email. Each blog here can nominate two readers for access to one massive club account on del.icio.us. You'll be asked to tag (using del.icio.us bookmarks) three ScienceBlogs posts per week that are especially worthy of sharing with the rest of the blogosphere. They don't have to be from this blog--though that would be nice. Those posts will then run into an RSS feed that will be displayed on the homepage. If you want to be part of the process, email me by Thursday night: jamesh (at) scienceblogs…

AVN likes me!

I was told by several people that AVN was quite happy with me, which caused me some consternation. The Australian Vaccination Network? That horrible anti-science group that campaigns against giving children protection from disease? Oh, no, what have I done wrong? But then, as it turns out, to most of the world AVN stands for Adult Video News, the big organization that reviews and markets pornography and gives awards to sexy movies. I was so relieved! That's so much better. Anyway, They praise me fulsomely in an article which is only safe for work if you have a good ad-blocker on your browser…

Guaranteed to enrage Michael Egnor

Most readers probably have heard of Michael Egnor, the DI's pet neurosurgeon. Egnor has been harping on about what he perceives as the lack of utility of evolution - which he, of course, equates with "Darwinism" - in medicine since 2007, and various folks here have commented on what has been termed his "egnorance". This is going to annoy him. Jerry Coyne has in the past argued that evolutionary biology "doesnât have much practical value in medicine" but has now changed his mind based on evidence presented by David Hillis. Dr Egnor could take a lesson from this illustration of evidence leading…

Darwin Day 2009 in Oklahoma

Abbie (of ERV fame) and I after my talk at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Natural History Museum. It went well, I think. About 350 folks in the audience and the local NPR and PBS stations will apparently be offering audio and video at some stage. No questions from creationists (surprisingly) and, while the theme was the Darwinian Revolution, I got to get in a few comments regarding SB 320 and science education, and managed to plug Oklahomans for Excellence for Science Education. Abbie tells me that she’ll blog something about the talk at some stage. We didn’t get to chat much, but will be getting…

"Darwinist" seen at Neo-Nazi conference

According to Expelled, this guy must be some kind of "Darwinist," right? He’s Tony Zirkle and he’s seeking the Republican nomination for Congress in Indiana. Above he is addressing a bunch of like-minded individuals - at a birthday celebration for Hitler no less. Visiting his campaign site is like spending time in a sewer. He graduated from Andrews University, a Seventh Day Adventist school in Michigan, where he has also been an adjunct faculty member. He attended Andrews University Theological Seminary (but didn’t graduate). He (and I’m guessing his little shaven-headed buddies) are as…

The World Is Ending (or at Least a Website)

One RSS feeds I subscribe to is the one at http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/. I mean, if the world is going to end, I certainly want Google reader to be the first to tell me. But today's RSS update is, instead of the traditional "no", different: Bye bye everyone. This domain is not being renewed. It's been fun. Which means that soon when you check www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com, you may not get an answer. Which may or may not mean the LHC has destroyed the world (oh noes!) Or it may just mean that your going to find a web page filled with spam from a domain name squatter.…

Small Town Benefits

Living in a small rural town is hard. Jobs are often difficult to come by (in the Northwest this is particularly true of towns that have suffered the slow fall of the timber industry.) The county where I grew up, Siskiyou county, currently has an unemployment rate north of 18 percent. And yet, there are small towns where, well you might not have a good job, but you have something else which has tremendous value. Here is the view from near the top of my run this afternoon above Yreka, CA The volcano to the right is Mt. Shasta and the one to the left is Goosenest (a great place to camp and…

Laser Cooler Next Energy Secretary

Well I'm sure the physics blogosphere is abuzz with the news that Steven Chu is expected to be named by President-elect Obama to head the Department of Energy. Wait let me look. Yep: heisendad, varyingsean, chunothsu, angryphysicist, nanodude, lubotic, toinfinityandbeyond and thedeterminantsnotzero. (OK that last comes from non-physicists, but I couldn't resist a linear algebra joke.) Since I have little to add besides the fact that laser cooling rocks, I present the first few lines of a song that was sung by a band at Berkeley concerning the person Chu shared the Nobel prize with, Cohen-…

Professor Demoted For Video Game Designer

Say it ain't so Hasbro, say it aint so. From an NPR story on a makeover of the game "Clue": The characters have changed, too. Miss Scarlet has a first name: Cassandra. Colonel Mustard left the military; he's a former football star. Victor Plum, formerly the professor who was always known as the smartest man in the room, became recast as a self-made video game designer -- a dot-com billionaire. Take that you stuffy academic professors, with your padded elbows and your pipes and your uncombed Einstein hair: you're no longer the smartest person in the room (unless you've made a video game,…

The World Market is Five Quantum Computers

From the bits blog at the New York Times, a list of technology famous quotes which may or may not have been said. Two of which I believe I've used before (doh!): "640K ought to be enough for anybody." This quotation is attributed to Bill Gates, but Mr. Shapiro suspects that it is apocryphal, and is seeking the person who either said it or first attributed it to Mr. Gates. ... "I think there is a world market for about five computers." This is a attributed to Thomas J. Watson, Jr., but Mr. Shapiro suspects it of being apocryphal and is seeking the person who either said it or first attributed…

A Notice to Subscribers

Based on some feedback from subscribers and my own nosing around, I've decided to switch the subscription system to Bloglet. While this requires you to create a user name over at bloglet.com, the result of this minor chore seems better to me. The main attraction is that links and such don't turn into ugly, unreadable HTML. I will continue to send out the pre-bloglet notifications to those who have it, but you may want to switch over to the new system. Please drop me a note to let me know if you want to be taken off the old notification list. Any further comments you may have will be most…

The Genes Behind Big Brains

Here's a new development in the search I described last week for the genes that make us uniquely human. Science's Michael Balter reports on a new study about a gene that's crucial for making big brains. Mutant versions of the gene produce people with tiny brains--about the size that Lucy had 3.5 million years ago. Comparisons of the human version of the gene with other mammals shows that it has undergone intense natural selection in our own lineage. Size is far from everything, however. While humans have huge brains compared to other mammals, new kinds of wiring may have been more important…

Communicating Climate Change: Talk at NASA Goddard

On April 8 at noon, I will be giving a talk on climate change communication at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. Below are the details. The talk is open to all NASA staff as well as the public. Communicating Climate Change: Why Frames Matter to Public Engagement Bldg 8, Management Conference Center Time: 12:00 PM Building broad based public engagement on climate change requires a more careful understanding of the U.S. public's views on the issue as well as a reexamination of the assumptions that have traditionally informed public communication efforts. In this…

In Defense of Negativity in Politics

A perspective from Vanderbilt University professor John Greer: When a candidate goes on the offensive to show the harm in an opponent's preferred policies or an inconsistency between an opponent's words and their actions, it helps set an important comparison point for voters. When those attacks are false or play on the opponent's race, gender, ethnicity, or religion, it's under these conditions that attack politics harm democracy. Of course, it's important that attack politics, no matter how substantive, do not occur in a vacuum. The news media has to play an important role as "fact…

At AAAS, Ken Miller on Evolution & Design

Brown University has a news advisory out about Ken Miller's presentation at the panel on "Communicating Science in a Religious America." From the release: Kenneth Miller, a professor of biology and a leading defender of the theory of evolution, will argue that pro-Darwin forces need to acknowledge the public appeal of "intelligent design" and make the case that science itself, including evolutionary biology, is predicated on the idea of "design" - the correlation of structure with function that lies at the heart of the molecular nature of life. Miller will make his case in a Feb. 17, 2008,…