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Science on the Tree 2

Here's the second of a series of holiday photo-blog posts showing some of the ornaments we have, and providing explanations for how they're really all about the science. It starts to get a little harder here: "Dude," you say, "that's a teapot. What does that have to do with science?" Thermodynamics, of course. The making of tea is all about boiling water, and what is that, but applied thermodynamics? Heat transfer, the latent heat of vaporization, phase transitions-- it's all there, symbolized by this little teapot. There's a tea cup, too, which isn't in this picture because it doesn't…

No Blog For You!

Our DSL was down for a good chunk of the evening, which means I didn't get to pre-write any blog posts. It also means I haven't been able to keep up with the comments on recent posts, which is actually probably a good thing, because given how tired I was last night, I probably would've said something really regrettable to a Dawkins fan by now. However, I'm giving an exam at 9:00, and Kate's out of town, so I have to deal with Emmy, Queen of Niskayuna myself, which means I don't have time to post, well, much of anything. So, amuse yourselves with the archives, or this sory about the Barber…

Chemistry Nobel for Eukaryotic Transcription

The Chemistry Nobel Prize was announced this morning, and goes to only one guy (which is somehwat unusual in this age of massively collaborative science): Roger D. Kornberg of Stanford University, "for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription". I am very much not a chemist, so all I can really do is sound those words out, and get that "eukarote" is a term for a type of organism, and "transcription" usually seems to involve DNA, so this must have something to do with getting messages from DNA to other parts of the cell. Well, OK, I can also read the press release, which…

Shtetl of the Times

I forgot to link to Sunday's New York Times article about D-Wave and their controversial claim to have made a working quantum computer, which prominently features quotes from the world's second funniest physics blogger: Scott Aaronson, a theoretical computer scientist at the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo in Canada, fired the first shot. He wrote in his much-read blog, called "Shtetl-Optimized," that Orion would be as useful at problem-solving as "a roast beef sandwich." In an e-mail message to me, Dr. Aaronson denounced Orion as "hype." He said that he could…

Vitale in the Hall of Fame?

Stealing a topic from sports radio: Dick Vitale is a finalist for the Basketball Hall of Fame. Should he get in? Much as I hate the guy, I think I have to say yes. He's an absolutely terrible game announcer at this point-- more often than not, he's so busy babbling about other teams, other sports, and Jim Boeheim's hot wife that he forgets to actually comment on the game he's being paid to watch. But he is widely liked by casual fans of the sport, and has been instrumental in raising the profile of college basketball, so he probably does deserve recognition. Of course, some people think…

Federal Agency or Basketball Conference?

This idea is stolen from Colin Cowherd, a pinhead on ESPN Radio, but even a blind pig finds the occasional acorn. I'm going to list a bunch of abbreviations below, and you tell me which are the initials of conferences in Division I basketball, which are agencies of the US Government, and which could be either. For example, "MVC" would be the Missouri Valley Conference, which is a basketball conference, while "NACIC" would be the National Counter-Intelligence Center, a government agency. "ACC" could be either the Atlantic Coast Conference or the Air Combat Command. The full list of twenty…

links for 2008-10-25

Roe vs. Wade? Bush vs. Gore? What are the worst Supreme Court decisions? - Los Angeles Times Legal experts weigh in. (tags: law politics us history society) Quantum Hyperion | Cosmic Variance Is Saturn's moon there when nobody's looking? (tags: science quantum physics astronomy planets) ...My heart's in Accra » Woices, and weird windows on the world "I want to build windows between these spaces. We'd place videoconferencing systems unobtrusively in walls within these spaces - possibly something no more complicated than a flat-screen monitor and a webcam. They'd connect, at random, to…

links for 2008-10-18

Don't scrap the squiggle! -- Crooked Timber "My only complaint about the crawler is that CNN removes it from the screen when the debate finishes. I absolutely wish that they continued to show the favourable/unfavourable reactions of the dial-testing focus group to the talking heads on the news afterwards; you'd be able to see the worm plunging every time Wolf Blitzer opened his gob." (tags: television politics society silly social-science) Tony Womo Out Three To Four Weeks With Bwoken Widdle Fingey | The Onion - America's Finest News Source "Team doctors originally believed Womo's poor,…

Adopted Physicist

I signed up for the Adopt-a-Physicist program run by the APS, and I've been "adopted" by three high school classes. The program pairs professional physicists with high school classes, and provides a web forum both groups can access. The students ask questions, and I answer them. I'd love to be able to link directly to the forums, but they're password-protected, so you can't get in. The questions so far have been really good, though, and I'm enjoying providing answers. Some of my answers have included pointers to the blog, so I thought I'd give a shout-out here to the classes that have "…

Televisual Wonders

If you're looking for something to fill your science-related entertainment needs while I'm in Canuckistan pondering the future of society, and thus not blogging much, here are a couple of things you might want to check out on tv (whose producers sent me helpful emails letting me know of their programs): "The Next Big Bang," airing tonight on the History Channel. If you're too far from Geneva to go to the (sorta-kinda) start-up of the Large Hadron Collider, you can watch this documentary instead. "How to Build a Better Being", airing tonight on the National Geographic Channel. This uses the…

Express an Opinion, Win a Prize

Sunday's a travel day for me, as I take a tiny little prop plane to the exotic land of Canada, for the Science in the 21st Century workshop. After an hour and a half bent double in a goddamn Cessna, I'll probably be too sore to type, so don't expect much blogging from me. If you're looking for something to fill the blog-shaped hole in your day, though, you could enter the Millionth Comment Contest ScienceBlogs is running. The lucky winner will get an all-expenses-paid trip to New York to do see cool science-y stuff, and have dinner with a blogger of their choice. All you need to do is give…

Reading this post will damage your brain

John is right. This is in the running for the dumbest theist argument ever. The atheist might say, "Well, I can reason just fine, and I don't believe in God." But this is no different than the critic of air saying, "Well, I can breathe just fine, and I don't believe in air." This isn't a rational response. Breathing requires air, not a profession of belief in air. Likewise, logical reasoning requires God, not a profession of belief in Him. Of course the atheist can reason; it's because God has made his mind and given him access to the laws of logic—and that's the point. It's because God…

What Theoretical Physicists Think

Last week, I was asked my expectations about the LHC, and offered my half-assed guess. If you prefer your speculation from people with relevant knowledge of the subject, Sean Carroll weighs in with his oddly-precise guesses. On a related, less theoretical note, Tomasso Dorigo posted a summary of the constraints on the Higgs boson mass last week, which serves to illustrate why people are so anxious to see it-- given what we know about other particles, it really ought to have been detected by now-- the most likely predicted mass has already been excluded, and they're pushing out toward the edge…

We Agree on the Important Things

Via Will Wilkinson, James Pethokoukis at US News considers the state of the economy, and draws the same conclusions I did, for exactly the opposite reasons: My theory is that the amazing resilience of the American economy through this slowdown--as well as the lack of a bad recession in a generation--is indirect proof that the 25-year economic expansion that started in 1982 made us far richer as a nation than the economic numbers suggest. I have continually offered that the inflation numbers used by the government have for years overstated how much prices have risen. Plus, the wage numbers put…

links for 2008-07-22

Mary Catelli's Erraticly Updated and Exceedingly Ill-Organized Journal - Religion and World-Building Notes for people thinking about inventing a religion for a fantasy story. (tags: SF religion writing history humanities culture) How to blog, get tenure and prosper: Starting the blog | john hawks weblog Part one of four, from a recently-tenured academic who knows. (tags: blogs academia jobs internet culture society) Bloggasm » The ethics of hate mail: Should bloggers post email correspondence without permission? The connection between "Crackergate" and William "Sheethead" Sanders. You…

Quantum Teleportation (for Dogs)

I gave a talk at Boskone in the prime Sunday 10 am slot, on quantum teleportation. I read the opening dialogue from Chapter 8 of the book, and then did a half-hour (or so) explanation of the real physics behind quantum teleportation. If you weren't one of the thirty-ish people who watched at least part of the presentation, you don't know what you missed. But you can get a little flavor of it by looking at the PDF version of my PowerPoint slides (1.1 MB). I think they're mostly comprehensible on their own, but even if they're not, there are cute dog pictures galore. So, you know, there's that…

Northern Illinois

There has been another shooting on a college campus, with a gunman opening fire on a geology class at Northern Illinois, before killing himself. Early reports suggest that the safety measures put into place after the Virginia Tech tragedy all worked properly, and the response from police was as quick as could be hoped. The word "tragedy" is badly overused in modern life, but this is an appropriate place. This is a horrible event, and my heart goes out to the families and friends of those who were killed. I should note that this is not an appropriate time or place for political grandstanding.…

links for 2008-02-14

Highly Allochthonous : Battleships in space! The importance of "Pre-Atomic" steel. (tags: physics nuclear history science space) Particle physicists plumb the depths for Roman lead - 13 July 1991 - New Scientist "Pre-Atomic" steel is for wimps-- real experiments use ancient lead... (tags: physics science nuclear history) Jim C. Hines - The Money Post Financial advice from a writer making much less than John Scalzi (tags: writing publishing books SF) ellameena: Getting a freelance career started How to embark upon the glamorous life of a freelance writer. (tags: writing journalism…

The concern troll clans are gathering

This is getting ridiculous. Now I'm accused of "trying to drive a wedge between those who are against evolution" … because I think belief in angels and demons is absurd. Damn. Just because someone accepts evolution doesn't automatically make them a good guy, and if they're praising evolution and at the same time babbling about demons causing appendicitis or angels warding off curses, they aren't on my side in the cause of increasing rationality. I'm beginning to wonder if there is some psychological transference going on here. People who think that merely believing in Jesus grants them…

Tree of SCIENCE!!! #5

I've been scanting the physics content so far with the Tree of SCIENCE!!! posts, so here's one from my own branch of science: This one is a little Santa/ elf guy with a one-man-band rig, which of course stands for the venerable science of acoustics. There's lots of great physics material in this one. The tone of the bell that he's carrying will be determined by resonance of sound waves inside the cavity of the bell, and the normal modes of waves on a drumhead is a rich and fascinating topic. The mathematics used to describe these situations is the same basic mathematical apparatus used to…

Bleg: Name This Artist

On our first day in Kyoto, Kate and I went to a bunch of temples, including one that was showing a bunch of really cool paintings featuring Buddhist temple accessories come to life and chasing monsters around. They had a sort of demented whimsy to them, and you can get a little flavor of it from the background images in this poster: Of course, neither of us can read a word of Japanese (well, that's not quite true-- I can spot the character for "temple" in the group at the upper left), so we have no idea what the artist's name is, or anything at all about the show. I'm sure that somebody out…

links for 2007-11-28

John Cusack | The A.V. Club "You try to make it as good as you can, but with an action movie or whatever it is, you're doing it so you can get leverage to go do Grace Is Gone or whatever these other ones are. So there's a ceiling on how good you can make something." (tags: movies culture) Carnegie's Vera Rubin to receive Richtmyer Award A well deserved astrophysics prize (tags: astronomy physics science news) 'High Q' NIST nanowires may be practical oscillators Micron-scale wires that vibrate for more than a million oscilaltions before damping out. (tags: physics materials science news…

Tell Me Something I Don't Know

I'm unaccountably sleepy today, and I have work to do, which is keeping me from deep, insightful blogging. So I'm going to punt, and throw this open to you all: Leave me a comment telling me something I don't already know. Well, OK, since I can't reasonably expect you to be mind-readers, that should be "tell me something that you think I won't be likely to know already," but you get the idea. It could be trivia, it could be an important fact about something or another, it could be a pointer to an entertaining book or web page. Hopefully it won't be anything that it's not legal or advisable…

Thursday 3D Toddler Blogging 070810

I got sufficiently engrossed in writing a ResearchBlogging post for tomorrow that I almost forgot today's Toddler Blogging. To make up for it, though, today's post is using those three-dimensional effects that are all the rage these days: Look out! There's a ball coming right at you! What's that? The 3D isn't working? Are you wearing the glasses? Well, there's your problem... As you can tell from the picture, SteelyKid is getting pretty good at throwing things these days. Catching, on the other hand, remains a bit of a problem: (Alternate caption: "Telekinetic toddler moves balls with her…

Links for 2010-07-01

What, If Anything, Is Big Bird? | The Loom | Discover Magazine Determining the species and ancestry of every kid's favorite giant flightless crane. (tags: kid-stuff television silly biology video talks) Reflections on American Academy's Report: Do Scientists Understand the Public? : Framing Science Detailed comments on the inexplicably controversial Mooney article, from everybody's second-favorite science communications blogger. (tags: science politics communication blogs social-science) The Last Airbender :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews ""The Last Airbender" is an agonizing experience in…

Links for 2010-05-17

Art - Lapham's Quarterly It takes seven steps to get from Kevin Bacon to Mark Twain (tags: books literature history art music pictures movies culture silly) Shocking: Michael Faraday does biology! (1839) « Skulls in the Stars "These experiments are fascinating and paint an amusing picture: Faraday and up to three assistants sticking their hands in the water repeatedly, zapping themselves [on an electric eel]. (I can't help but visualize Faraday speaking like Christopher Guest in this classic video clip: "What did this do to you? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity so be honest…

Wanted: Short Films About Lasers

Physics Central is having a contest: Do you love lasers? Ever wanted to unravel the mystery of the stimulated emission? Then the LaserFest video contest is for you. Take any laser you want and use it to somehow express a physics concept. Shine, lase, bounce and wave your way into physics history. The winner will receive a trophy lovingly made by APS staff from some of our favorite laser toys as well as $1,000 cash. All entries must be received by May 16th at midnight. If you know how to make videos for YouTube, and know something about physics, here's your chance at (Internet) fame and (…

Media Demographics of the Construction Industry

The classroom across the hall from my office is currently being remodeled into interview rooms for the Psychology department (we traded it for some laboratory space in the basement). As a result, my usual office soundtrack of KEXP streaming over the web has been supplemented by, well, whatever the guys doing the remodeling happen to be listening to. Thus, I can report that carpernters and electricians listen to classic rock radio, while painters appear to favor Rush Limbaugh. I'm sure this information is the key to some deep insight into American mass culture, but I have no idea what it means…

Climate Sensitivity: not so much?

A recent model study of some hypothetical effects of biological feedbacks of climate sensitivity to doubled CO2 came into the comments here. The paper was referenced in an article on the Register and is being misused as a revelation that the world is not going to warm so much after all. mandas had a good go at it, identifying the assumptions and qualifications that the paper explicitly enumerated and the Register article completely ignored. I thought readers might also be interested in this video debunking from "potholer54" on youtube. Just an aside: it is funny how worthless models are…

Medicinal mavericks

Consensus is a dirty word when it comes to climate change experts, but put in just about any other context, expert consensus is what we all would want. This Marc Roberts cartoon casts that issue in the best light: Just imagine getting medical assistance from Lord Cristopher Monckton... Oh look! We don't have to imagine. I began to think that Viscount Monckton might be a formidable opponent during the debate. Then he told me that he has discovered a new drug that is a complete cure for two-thirds of known diseases - and that he expects it to go into clinical trials soon. I asked him…

Nicely said!

This, from adelady, is so well put I just had to highlight it. It is a response to the usual "we'll just deal with whatever climate change throws at us later" inactivist argument: The one thing we do have in our favour is our astounding intelligence - it's also astounding how we fail to use that intelligence intelligently. As far as dealing "with any changes that occur", why on earth would we not use our wits to ensure that changes are minimised or directed in a way that best suits us? Cleverness, innovation, imagination - these are not mysterious, magical properties that will emerge in…

Spam filter

This is just a quick note to let people know that I get a lot of legitimate comments caught in the spam filter here, and unfortunately I am not very conscientious about cleaning it out. If you submit a comment and it does not appear, don't hesitate to let me know via email (see my email address here) . I regret that this happened to a pair of comments that were submitted a couple of days ago, because the poster clearly put some time and effort into them and they also contain a lot of technical detail about IR absorbtion by CO2. They had fallen off the "Recent comments" list before they made…

Rich on Conservative Violence

Some time ago I mentioned that there would be an OpEd piece in the New York Times in a couple of days relating recent astroturfing and teabagging activities to a broader, more historical context. Well, the OpEd is out, and as expected, it is quite good. The Guns of August By Frank Rich "IT is time to water the tree of liberty" said the sign carried by a gun-toting protester milling outside President Obama's town-hall meeting in New Hampshire two weeks ago. The Thomas Jefferson quote that inspired this message, of course, said nothing about water: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from…

FDA: Limits on Acetaminophen

Acetaminophen dose recommendations will be lowered significantly by the FDA, and some products will be pulled off the market, because of concerns over liver damage. If you look up "Tylenol" on Wikipedia as I write this, you see the following: Indeed. From MSNBC: Despite years of educational campaigns and other federal actions, acetaminophen remains the leading cause of liver failure in the U.S., according to the FDA. Panelists cited FDA data indicating 60 percent of acetaminophen-related deaths are related to prescription products. Acetaminophen is also found in popular over-the-counter…

Are Japanese Scientists Making Frankenmonkeys?

From the BBC: Genetically modified primates that glow green and pass the trait on to their offspring could aid the fight against human disease. They will also be easier to find when they escape. Though primates that make a glowing protein have been created before, these are the first to keep the change in their bloodlines. Future modifications could lead to treatments for a range of diseases. The "transgenic" marmosets, created by a Japanese team, have been described in the journal Nature. This means the every generation, scientists can change the monkey more and more until they get ....…

Godzilla Boat: Big Giant Science

... during its design ... the ship became known as "Godzilla-maru", so unusual and top-heavy were its projected lines. "We started planning the Chikyu about 15 years ago, and there were some people who thought we were too ambitious," he recalled. "But now we can see that the ship is doing what it is designed to do and is opening up new possibilities." ... The idea was simple. Scientists wanted to drill down into the Earth's crust - and even through the crust - to get samples from the key zones 6 or 7km down where earthquakes and lots of other interesting geological processes begin; but that…

‘Tube atheists

Lots of people have been emailing me about this: YouTube is getting weird about censoring accounts by atheists. This one fellow, Nick Gisburne, with a long history on the service had his account abruptly deleted due to its "inappropriate nature"—he'd read some excerpts of violent passages from the Koran, with no commentary at all. It's bizarre—it's apparently not that he was espousing atheism, which YouTube does not seem to object to, but that he read quotes that put Islam in a bad light. This is a remix of the ungodly CNN panel, with refutations and arguments imbedded in response to the…

Remember the Floppy!

My first storage medium was paper tape. Narrow strips of tape with holes punched out of it to store programs and data, could be printed out of a tape-puncher attached to a paper-based TTY terminal, or read into the terminal. Then, I used punch cards. Eventually I upgraded to a casette player for small data sets, and a tiny magnetic rectangle for my TI 59. And I can relive all of these experiences with a walk down memory lane. ... Computer Data Storage Through the Ages -- From Punch Cards to Blu-Ray By the way, when the 5.25 inch floppy disk was replaced with with the 3.5 inch plastic…

Science Bushed

Emily Badger writing at Miller-McCune's blog has a thoughtful piece on how George Bush ruined science for everybody: Barack Obama received a relatively quiet endorsement on Aug. 23 from 61 of the country's Nobel laureates in physics, medicine and chemistry -- scientific heavyweights who used the occasion to both call for a scientific renewal in America and critique the state of American science at the end of the Bush era. "During the administration of George W. Bush," their open letter charged, "vital parts of our country's scientific enterprise have been damaged by stagnant or declining…

Latest LHC Press Release

LHC to restart in 2009 Geneva, 5 December 2008. CERN today confirmed that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will restart in 2009. This news forms part of an updated report, published today, on the status of the LHC following a malfunction on 19 September. "The top priority for CERN today is to provide collision data for the experiments as soon as reasonably possible," said CERN Director General Robert Aymar. "This will be in the summer of 2009." The initial malfunction was caused by a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator's magnets. This resulted in mechanical damage and…

Graphical Mounting

and unmounting. In Linux. Here's the problem. With upgrades to Linux Kernel 2.6 for autoplugging devices, and hotswapping of USB devices, etc., mounting has become more complex. At the same time, the spread of Ubuntu and some other Linux distributions among the wider unwashed masses has lead to the stupification (or perhaps I should say the degeekification) of the Linux User Space. As a result, things like: /sbin/mount -o nosuid\,nodev /dev/cd0a /CDROM just don't cut it anymore. What you really want is a graphical user interface with dancing hard drives and icons for USB ports and such…

Michele Bachmann for Governor?

There is increasing evidence, or at least informed conjecture, that there will be a redistricting in Minnesota leading to the vaporization of a congressional district. If this happens, even if the Republicans are in charge for that process, there is a reasonable chance that Michel Bachmann ... loved by the undermenchen masses of her white trashy sixth district, but perceived liability for the ubermenchen Republican Big Chiefs ... will be squeezed out of the House of Representatives like so much peppermint flavored goo from a sample-size tube of toothpaste. But the undermenchen are known to…

Kyle will give Maine a pass

But Nova Scotia will take it in the neck, so to speak. Kyle has made a pretty hard right turn and is going to make landfall in Nova Scotia. This changes the landfall estimate by many hours, because of the complex shape of the New England/Maritime coast. Indeed, Kyle is essentially already there, with the windiest conditions expected to occur over the next several hours in SW Nova Scotia. Here's the relevant part of the official forecast: A HURRICANE WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR THE COUNTIES OF DIGBY... YARMOUTH...AND SHELBURNE IN SOUTHWESTERN NOVA SCOTIA CANADA. A TROPICAL STORM WARNING…

Roy Zimmerman is NOT Bob Zimmerman. He's funnier. Otherwise he's exactly the same.

Just so you know. Bob Dylan's original name was Bob Zimmerman and he is from the Iron Range region of Minnesota. He actually named (it is said) the busy business student neighborhood by the main campus here at The U: "Dinkytown" ... because he thought it was like a town, and it was dinky. The Watchtower (as in "All along the...." is a big ol WPA (I guess) built stone tower overlooking University Avenue in the elite Prospect Hill neighborhood. And so on. Roy Zimmerman is much funnier than Bob Dylan, and he is here in the Twin Cities making fun of the Republicans. (Hat Tip PZ Myers).…

Go ahead — take the Lord's name in vain

Scott Aaronson has a revelation: it's OK for a "disbelieving atheist infidel heretic" to refer to a god. What I'm trying to say, Bill, is this: you can go ahead and indulge yourself. If some of the most brilliant unbelievers in history — Einstein, Erdös, Twain — could refer to a being of dubious ontological status as they would to a smelly old uncle, then why not the rest of us? For me, the whole point of scientific rationalism is that you're free to ask any question, debate any argument, read anything that interests you, use whatever phrase most colorfully conveys your meaning, all without…

Headlines For the Mathematically Literate

Around here it's the last day of classes for the fall semester. Yay! So how about we mark the occasion with some math humor. Over at HuffPo, math teacher Ben Orlin contrasts actual headlines with what they would say if people were more mathematically savvy. Some examples: Our World: Market Rebounds after Assurances from Fed Chair Mathematically Literate World: Market Rebounds after Regression to the Mean Our World: Firm's Meteoric Rise Explained by Daring Strategy, Bold Leadership Mathematically Literate World: Firm's Meteoric Rise Explained by Good Luck, Selection Bias Our World: Gas…

Head cases

What the heck is a zebibah? The zebibah, Arabic for raisin, is a dark circle of callused skin, or in some cases a protruding bump, between the hairline and the eyebrows. It emerges on the spot where worshipers press their foreheads into the ground during their daily prayers. I didn't really want to know. I especially didn't want to know that this injury caused by bashing one's head into the floor is considered a signifcant accomplishment. "The zebibah is a way to show how important religion is for us," said Muhammad al-Bikali, a hairstylist in Cairo, in an interview last month. Mr. Bikali…

To New York Via Pittsburgh!

EvolutionBlog will be going dark for the next two weeks or so. I will be leaving my cozy digs in Harrisonburg to enjoy some serious wandering. First is a drive up to Pittsburgh for the International Conference of Creationism. How could I pass that up? Then I will explore the fine points of the Pennsylvania Turnpike as I shoot on over to visit the 'rents in my New Jersey office. There follows a quick train ride up to New York for the big blogger meet-up. I will also be sure to take care of the two most important things in any trip to New York: The visit to big bro over in Brooklyn, and…

Wiley Apologizes

I am happy to report that the little dust-up between Shelley Batts and Wiley has ended peacefully. Wiley has apologized for their rather heavy-handed treatment of the matter. When I read the good news over at Shelley's blog, I had a number of reactions. Happily Rob Knop has saved me the trouble of having to write them down. So congratulations to Shelley for weathering the storm and emerging victorious, and an extra loud “Boo! Hiss!” to the blogger who criticized her for caving to Wiley's pressure by taking down the disputed graphics. It's easy to talk tough when you're not the…

Get to Know Me!

This Monday, February 12, I will be giving a talk to the JMU Freethinker's Club on the subject of evolution and creationism. The talk will be from 7:00-8:00 in room 303, Taylor Hall on the James Madison University campus. If you live anywhere Harrisonburg, VA, stop on by! Then, on Saturday, February 24, I will be speaking at the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, NY. There will be a screening of “Inherit the Wind” in the afternoon, followed by my talk in the evening. The topic: Legal Developments in Evolution and Creationism. This assumes, of course, that upstate New York is not buried under…