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Lilies that fester

They that have power to hurt and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show, Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow, They rightly do inherit heaven's graces And husband nature's riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but stewards of their excellence. The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, Though to itself it only live and die, But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than…

It's big! Way too big!

If there's a comet that should contain its enthusiasm, it's this. Such a large ego in so little a package, like a baby wearing adult's shirt and gaily roaming around the house! From the linked page: Formerly, the Sun was the largest object in the Solar System. Now, comet 17P/Holmes holds that distinction. Spectacular outbursting comet 17P/Holmes exploded in size and brightness on October 24. It continues to expand and is now the largest single object in the Solar system, being bigger than the Sun I suppose, like me, you have a minor quibble with how 'big' is defined. I mean, where do you…

Cleaning the laptop keyboard

The keyboard design for most laptops is just hopeless. Under the keys are multiple ecosystems hosting bacteria that are rapidly evolving to eat your fingers. Today morning I used a USB powered cleaner to clean the keyboard of my work laptop (I got the cleaner as a gift from the sibling after she saw the keyboard on a bright day). The cleaner worked much more efficiently than I imagined. I say this because as I muzzled in the cleaning airbrush under the keys, I saw what looked like dog hair in compromising positions hastily get out and run. Before you start imagining things, I want to…

Miss Playfoot can't wear the Silver Ring Thing in School

Beebs reports of the recent case here in the UK. A school girl joins a chastity club and wears a ring that marks her chastity to school. School asks her not to be so snotty and chastizes (oh, sweet pun) her. Lydia Playfoot was told by Millais School in Horsham, West Sussex, to remove her ring - which symbolises chastity - or face expulsion. The school denied breaching her human rights, insisting the ring was not an essential part of the Christian faith. Miss Playfoot filed a case against the school's faithless stand and lost. Teenage pregnancies is a serious problem in the UK. A religious…

Now, tie a thread around earth's equator...

Imagine this: Tie a thread around the earth's equator. Then, say, you let the thread out by 2*Pi metres (Pi=Ï, the mathematical constant) to make a thread circle that stands slightly above the earth's equator. Now, how far above the surface of the equator will the thread stand? In other words, what's the difference between new radius of the thread circle and the original radius (original radius being the earth's equatorial radius)? This question was posed by Ramanujan, the mathematical genius from India, to a young student he was tutoring in Madras. The answer is so counter-intutive that I…

Are sugar substitutes unhealthy?

I was having breakfast with a friend last week. I noticed him avoiding sugar substitutes and asked why. He didn't know of any scientific studies but said he preferred food that doesn't pretend. His reasoning went like this: Sweeteners mimic natural taste. This is dishonest and not the way we should treat our biology. That was a more nuanced reasoning that isn't the same as "natural is good, artificial is bad" (the natural-artificial reasoning is, IMO, luddite - a sorry excuse for being lazy). It is still not the same as conclusions drawn from scientific studies. Nevertheless, it strikes…

Religious Faith is Hopeless

A fundamental difference between religious faith and science pertains to hope. Underlying religious faith is the belief that God knows everything and controls everything. In any religion, human capacity is at best subservient to God's will. This is a sorry state to be in for any human. Religious faith takes away any hope of advancing one's own understanding of the world. It takes away purpose from our lives. God is hopelessness and purposelessness deified. Science, on the other hand, is squarely aimed at furthering our understanding of the world. It is eternally hopeful of advancing our…

So, what's the purpose of music

You would think it is easy to explain. Some evolutionary psychologists suggest that music originated as a way for males to impress and attract females. Others see its roots in the relationship between mother and child. In a third hypothesis, music was a social adhesive, helping to forge common identity in early human communities. That's nice. Can the evlutionary psychologists prove it? ``They're completely bogus explanations, because they assume what they set out to prove: that hearing plinking sounds brings the group together, or that music relieves tension," he [Steven Pinker] says. ``But…

I'm afraid I've been thinking

A dangerous pastime, you know. If you've been around the blog for the past day, I'm sure you've seen that there's been a new...blog...from PepsiCo. Sci's not sure what she thinks of it, but it's not positive. I know we had GE and Shell and stuff...but that felt different, somehow. Being as Sci has recently been looking in to a lot of food and reward related mechanisms and issues associated with things like binge eating, she is more than a bit uncomfortable. So she needs some time to think about it. Posting will resume when I've had my think. In the meantime, thanks so much for the…

Gleanings from round the net, Apr 1 2010

from "Would dew believe it: The stunning pictures of sleeping insects covered in water droplets," at the Daily Mail Given the day, we find both foolishness and meat. Fun stuff first: Science, Nature Team Up on New Journal - ScienceNOW Does the WTF1 gene trigger the inferior supra-credulus? @edyong209 falls for the whole thing: http://bit.ly/bLlzqx Getting real: Is the Mirror Neuron theory unfalsifiable?: Greg Hickok thinks so. Pfizer paid $35m to MDs and Researchers. Latter claim $ doesn't influence practice.. Somebody's mistaken.http://s.nyt.com/u/N5m Motherly love may alter genes for…

Economic policy as genetic diversification

Sort of. Economist Edward Glasser, via Andrew Sullivan, makes it clear why they call static old industries "dinosaurs." This seems dead-on to me: Across cities, there is a strong connection between an abundance of small firms and local growth. The last thing that the government should be doing is propping up big declining firms. Real innovations are far more likely to come from someone%u2019s garage, which is where Chester Carlson came up with the Xerox machine during the Great Depression. The Big Three automakers pose real policy problems. The government is already on the hook for their…

ionpsych... get it! hahaha.

There's a great blog called ionpsych being run by Dan Simons (of Invisible Gorilla fame). The posts are all by graduate students in a science writing for public consumption class. I'm glad people are starting to teach us overly technical scientists how to communicate in graduate school. I'm not aware of any other class out there dedicated to teaching psychology and neuroscience students how to best communicate their ideas to the world. Anyway, here's one of my favorite posts from Audrey Lustig: How do people judge fashion design? Fashion experts are notorious for using vague criteria,…

How to get laid if you're a primate

A male chimpanzee may beg for food from another chimpanzee by gesturing with an extended arm and open hand. But the same gesture may also be used to ask a female chimpanzee for sex, or between two males as a sign of reconciliation after a fight, said primatologist Frans de Waal, a member of the research team. "Typically they may use it for food ... but they may use the same gesture for something totally different, so for instance a male may invite a female for sex by holding out an open hand to her," Dr de Waal said. Soo... well... do female chimps sometimes get the wrong idea and give the…

Science Blogging Conference North Carolina

The blogging conference in North Carolina--not to be confused with a flogging conference or a logging conference or a jogging conference--is over and I just wanted to share some reviews (due to the nature of the beast, it's been blogged left, right, and center). Check out these links: Aardvarchaeology's overview Jennifer Ouellette's take on the Root of all Evil after the Framing Science talk Our enthusiastic leader Bora's take on the event (plus photos) Abel Pharmboy's take on framing science and herding cats In my opinion, the best moment of the conference was Dave Munger's announcement of…

Bush Administration Hopes to Keep Oceans Noisy

Remember a couple weeks ago how the California courts ruled to protect acoustic feeders and minimize Naval sonar use? Well, NRDC's Kate Wing just informed me that ruling is now being challenged by the Bush Administration who yesterday attempted to override the court ruling. According to NRDC, who instigated the original lawsuit: In an effort to nullify measures established to protect marine mammals from potentially lethal sound blasts, President Bush gave the Navy an unprecedented waiver under the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA), and allowed the Navy a second "emergency" waiver under the…

Why we still need newspapers

From Knight Science Journalism Tracker: Phil. Inquirer: Four part series disembowels the Bush White House version of the EPA Many reporters have dived pretty deep into the legal and regulatory changes wrought at the EPA in the last eight years and into the scientist-administrator Stephen Johnson who imposed them at the behest of the George W. Bush administration... But no other newspaper that the Tracker knows of has torn into the agency with as thorough, focussed and full-hearted a pummeling as seen in the Philadelphia Inquirer for four days this week. .... Sometimes it’s good to let one’s…

Scibling Showdown: Grad School Podcast

The other day, Jason, Sci, Travis and I got together to chit chat about various aspects of grad student life. You know - likes, dislikes, how we ended up in grad school, etc. Anyhow, here's our little chat for your enjoyment: You can also download the MP3 directly for your iPod, etc from this link HERE. Is there anything we left out? Any questions you have about being a grad student, or anything really? We intend to make this podcast (tentatively named "Scibling Showdown") a regular habit, so if you've got something you want to know, don't be shy. PS: Y'all missed the five minutes prior…

Check out the Nature Blog Network!

I'm sure that many of you, while looking for fantastic, outdoorsy, nature blogging, have stumbled across Nature Blog Network. If you haven't, it's definitely worth checking out. Nature Blog Network is a list of over 950 blogs that you can peruse for free. They rank them according to a metric like pageviews, so you can see which ones everyone else likes, too. Blog topics range from birds, bugs, plants, herps, hiking, oceans, to ecosystems, and every other natural topic. Every month, they also feature one of the nature blogs on their site, as a way for people to get to know the various nature…

Weekly dose of cute

This week's cute is a newborn Sifaka (Propithecus coronatus) named Tahina from a French Zoo. She's a beautiful baby girl, whose name means "needs to be protected." In the wild, this little girl would be carried in her mother's mouth until she was strong enough to hold onto her fur by herself. Devoid of a mother, the little lemur was given a teddy to cling to. Like all lemur species, Sifakas are found only on Madagascar, and are on the verge of extinction. This little girl is one of only 17 in captivity, and her species natural habitat is shrinking every day. The IUCN Red List states the wild…

aaaaaaaand.... We're Back!

It's been a very long month or so. Family matters of various sorts have kept me running around through most of the Eastern Seaboard for the last several weeks. Fortunately, things have finally started to settle down. We've got pretty much everything unpacked in our new digs in family housing at Ft. Rucker, Alabama. It's the first time - at least to my knowledge - that I've lived somewhere named after a Confederate, but I'm drawing some comfort from the knowledge that at least one very well-known liberal spent some time living here. Over the next few days, I'll start catching up on…

Meet "Pete"

Salon has an interview with "Pete", the blogger who mistook an Onion humor piece for a real article. Reached by phone at his Virginia home a week after his initial post about the Onion story, Pete said, "You write some article off the cuff and throw it out there and you never know what's going to happen. The next thing I know there are people calling me from all over the world and telling me what an idiot I am!" It was surely the most public of embarrassments, an example of how the intersection of varied voices and ideologies and sensibilities in the brutal wild West of the new, new…

A Versatile Strategy

I've been sorting through books lately, in an effort to cull and control my ever-burgeoning collection, and of course I have to browse through each book to decide if I want to keep it. It's a slow, but rewarding process. This evening I was wandering through Migraine: The Complete Guide, when I happened across this delightful anecdote from a fellow migraineur: Many migraine patients feel that emergency departments treat them with disrespect and with disregard for the seriousness of their condition. Emergency-room personnel, they say, do not consider severe migraine a true emergency.…

How To Train Women For Their Futures

Martin Rundkvist has kindly posted for us all a photo of a gender-training kit now available in stores. Don't delay! You'll want to make sure your daughter or niece learns her place in life early on. If she insists on a career, let her know that maids are in need in all hotels and many of our finer families' homes. Sigh. If only they sold that dreamy-looking maid-y dress in the picture to go along with it, and in pink. What more does a little girl need? Put down those legos, and, yes, "let us cleaning!" Pretty! Oh, Martin, I hope you shielded your daughter's eyes when you happened…

Post Full of Semi-Random Links

Perusing Google Reader tonight, and here are some items of note: Absinthe seems to be in a bad way, at least as regards blogging and the blogosphere. Doesn't seem to be much we can do to cheer her or change her mind, as she promises to delete all comments from her blog post. It's a shame to see her dismantling so much of her blog. There's an interesting post at Fairer Science on Five Myths about Girls and Science, with a link to a story on the NSF website. Check it out. Female Science Professor's life never ceases to amaze. Read the tale of her second encounter with the moron who…

Science Bloggers in India

Bora notes that some people are wondering why there aren't more Indian (or Serbian) science bloggers. Bora links to an interesting post from Selva on this topic. This is all very ironic to me because just two days ago I discovered the blog Nanopolitan (which, as it turns out, Selva has on his blogroll, so I could have discovered a lot sooner and by a lot less circuitous route than the one I followed). Nanopolitan is written by T. A. Abinandanan (Abi for short). Abi recently had an interesting series of posts on possible gender discrimination in India's top engineering institutions (TEI's)…

Great Start for the Donors Choose Campaign.

For those of you who haven't looked over at the sidebar, the DonorsChoose campaign is off to a start that far exceeded my wildest expectations. Yesterday, five donors kicked in an outstanding $687.06. That's more in one day than I had targeted for the entire drive last year, and enough to bring us more than 40% of the way to the total. To everyone who's donated so far, thank you very much. Some of the other blogs at scienceblogs are offering incentives to donors. I'm trying to think of something, and promise that I'll get some sort of idea up in the next day or two. There are also some…

It wasn't just shoddy, it was fraud

The infamous Andrew Wakefield study that claimed to find a link between autism and vaccinations is still being scrutinized, and the latest investigation has uncovered evidence of faked data. A new examination found, by comparing the reported diagnoses in the paper to hospital records, that Wakefield and colleagues altered facts about patients in their study. The analysis, by British journalist Brian Deer, found that despite the claim in Wakefield's paper that the 12 children studied were normal until they had the MMR shot, five had previously documented developmental problems. Deer also…

Rethinking the Cambrian

Ever since Gould's Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, the popular view has been that the Cambrian was an "explosion" of living forms, and for some, usually but not always creationists, this has been touted as contrary to "Darwinism" (whateverthehell that is) or even evolutionary theory. PvM at Panda's Thumb has a nice post about this and recent work. And I'm not just saying that because he links to one of my articles on the web. One point I would make, that he doesn't mention, is that figures derived from "genera" or "classes" in the fossil record are weak signals…

Pell may be censured by Parliament

Cardinal-Imam George Pell, who threatened Catholic politicians with excommunication indirectly (and exclusion from the sacraments directly) if they voted in favour of stem cell research being permitted in a new Bill, is liable to being held in contempt of the NSW Parliament, just as his west Australian counterpart, Archbishop-Imam Hickey has been. This appears to be a coordinated campaign by the Catholic Church, as commenters noted similar actions in Scotland and Wales in my first post. In other news, the Catholic Church is opposing Catholics getting involved in Amnesty International, in…

Another depressing election story

Lauren Rose went to vote yesterday, wearing a t-shirt that read "liberal anti-theist". Her polling place was in a church (as is mine, as are a great many polling places across the country), and the poll-workers tried to get her to cover up, and when she refused, started loudly praying for her. All this at a polling place splattered with Republican campaign signs. This is something that ought to change. Why are the polling places so dominated by churches? It's about the only time I ever have to enter one of those temples to hate and ignorance, and I'd rather not go at all, especially if they'…

Ann Coulter and the Creationist Science Textbook Revisited

Oh dear, there is certainly a lot of discussion over Ann Coulter's new book - in particular, her breathtaking views on evolutionary theory. Hmmm, when I wrote Chapter Titles From My Creationist Textbook, I had no idea that it already existed or was perhaps in the process of being written, since it's clear that this must be the sort of reading she's basing her arguments on. Or maybe my original query and edit (below) leaked out somehow? ...Reviewing a few immunology textbooks, which led (of course) to procastination, which ultimately led to this. cheers, dave ng LIST SUBMISSION: HEADINGS…

Truisms 6

Truism 6: Apart from physical kinds like basic particles, everything is in flux Scholia: If we know things, we know them as temporary objects. An "object" is thus something within which change doesn't trigger a change of equivalence class. We know changing things by knowing the rate of change, and the rates of change in rates of change (second order derivatives) and so on. Commentary: Heraclitus set the western philosophical project going by asking if we could step in the same river twice. This set up the problem solved by Plato with his eternal forms (eideai) and Aristotle with his…

Trashcan: chaotic remnants

Siris has an interesting piece on the nature of the liberal arts. I loves me some 13th century, I does. Bora objects to Obama's choices being characterised as "elites" and therefore bad. On the other hand, the term "groupthink" was coined to characterise the elite advisors of the first American Camelot. And an open letter to Obama here on the failures of the Healthcare Information Technology proposals in the US. IT won't solve problems that aren't informational in nature. PM of Notes from the Floating World discusses the constitutionality and sense of the proroguing of the Canadian Parliament…

Off to talk religion and evolution

Okay, so in the AM I am off to drizzly Melbourne, my old home town, to address a conference on the implications of the project of naturalising religion, especially in terms of evolution, to an audience that may, or may not be religious. So if you never hear from me again, I was probably burned at the stake. By the atheists... Anyway, I get to meet Lawrence Krauss. Yes, that Lawrence Krauss. He's going to be a keynote speaker, as I am (preen, preen). So assuming they make me actually work for my meal, no blogging for a few days. No doubt something great will pop up in the interbugs while I'…

Casual Fridays: More mystery photos!

Remember these photos from earlier this week? Readers were intrigued with the idea that we can tell which photo is a face, despite the fact that the photos are just 12 by 14 pixels! That brings the question: can we identify faces with even *less* information? This week's study may help answer that question. You'll be presented with eight images of different resolutions. Some will be faces, and some won't be. Can you tell the difference? Click here to participate As usual, the study is brief, with just 8 quick questions, so it should only take a minute of your time. You have until 11:59 p.…

The world's best science feed

Do you read Cognitive Daily via Google Reader's "Science" bundle? Then you'll also want to subscribe to the ScienceBlogs Select feed. It was formerly only available internally to ScienceBloggers and editors, but now it's been made public. I think it's the best science feed in the world -- it consists of two or three handpicked posts per week from each blog on the network. It aggregates the posts the bloggers themselves most want to share with each other, and now it's available to you, too. Go check it out! Speaking of ScienceBlogs, why not check out the newest blog on the network, Rob Knop's…

Kiss-in at the UM!

The University of Minnesota Twin Cities is to be blessed with a visit from Brother Jed on 16 September…and the Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists plan to be waiting for him with a special event: As a counter protest to the preacher Brother Jed, we want to get as many people as we can to share a kiss with their significant other. Our goal is to get many same-sex couples, but all couples are encouraged to partake in the event. We want to show Brother Jed and the rest of the campus that we don't support the hatred we portrays and that all people deserve to be with the ones they love.…

A Book to Check Out

In the poli-sci literature--politics and science, not political science--an important new book has come out; and no, I'm not talking about my own book in paperback. It's a more scholarly take on the problem, entitled Rescuing Science from Politics: Regulation and the Distortion of Scientific Research, a collection of essays edited by Wendy Wagner and Rena Steinzor, both legal scholars who helped me out a bunch as I worked on The Republican War on Science and who are doing some of the most important thinking about this stuff. The book has a prologue by Don Kennedy, who writes that "though it…

Still More on "The Environmental Wars"

Well, there's nothing like a little controversy to make a conference well attended...and now it appears that all of the back and forth on this blog about the upcoming Skeptics Society conference has indeed triggered such a "controversy." John Rennie over at SciAm Observations has done an entire post about it, complete with his take on the matter and a response to the criticisms that you folks have made from Michael Shermer. I encourage you to check it all out. At some point I plan to say a bit more myself; for now, I will only say that I'm attending, debating, and am sure it will be a great…

Good Night, and Good Luck With That Hurricane

I watched the Oscars last night, and was rather ticked off when Good Night, and Good Luck got skunked. It was a great film, in my opinion, and carries an extremely important message at the present moment. I was even more annoyed once I found out something else about CBS's Edward R. Murrow: When he wasn't busy taking on Joe McCarthy, he took time out to broadcast from a flight into Hurricane Edna, in 1954. Apparently the broadcast included this deeply memorable quotation: In the eye of a hurricane, you learn things other than of a scientific nature. You feel the puniness of man and his works.…

Please, do this some more

There is a wonderful program in place at a bible camp in Massachusetts: the children get phone calls…from God. He tells the kids to proselytize for him, to be just like Jesus, and if they're really, really good, that he'll swoop in some day on his magic sleigh and harvest their souls to bring to heaven with him (OK, that last bit is an extrapolation). I like this plan, though. It sets the kids up with concrete expectations that will be shattered later, and then there's always the wonderful day when Mommy and Daddy explain that that really wasn't God, it was just Pastor Greg pretending to be…

Vegas, Baby, Vegas!

I'm pleased to announce that along with PZ Myers and Wendy Northcutt (genius of the Darwin Awards), I'll be heading up the science panel at Yearly Kos, Friday, June 9 in Las Vegas. This is the progressive blogosphere's mega-convention; its theme is "Uniting the Netroots." The keynote speaker will be none other than Harry Reid. The event itself will run for four days (June 8-11) and will be located at the Riviera Hotel in Vegas. Thousands are expected; you should be one of them. I'm honored and excited to have been invited to speak and to be part of this massive and important event. As I said…

A mathematical explanation of hallucinations

Chris Chatham has an excellent summary of a talk by University of Chicago neurologist / mathematician Jack Cowan, who has come up with a mathematical explanation of a variety of common hallucinations. The development of orientation and spatial frequency maps in V1 [a region of the brain which maps images as they are transmitted from the eyes] can be simulated with some fairly "simple" (maybe simple to Jack Cowan, but not to me!) self-organizing functions, such that "orientation and spatial frequency are the zeroth and first order spherical harmonics" and "the coefficient of the first order…

Nuclear Energy? Not Yet.

This week at NexGen we're taking on nuclear energy, but be assured your resident blogger has some serious reservations. Two words: Radioactive Waste. High-level radioactive waste is too irradiated for normal industrial disposal because exposure would pose a general health hazard to human and animal populations. Going nuclear means producing substances that can never be released back into the normally recycling industrial environment. Ever. And of course, there's Yucca Mountain: Oh and don't forget that pesky concern over how to transport radioactive waste from different parts of the…

Blogging on Air

Well folks, I've converted. Officially. This post comes straight from my new MacBook Air. Now I know all the naysayers had plenty to tell me about the merits of the MacBook Pro over the streamlined Air, but keep in mind what I was looking for. I've been searching for a machine that's small, lightweight, compact, and easily portable--not as a primary computer for data, but rather a writing tool for travel and coffeehouse composition. My post over at Correlations is now up on the new features I've discovered exploring Appledom and so far, I'm extremely impressed. And here's the thing--if I…

Mary Midgley wastes our time, once again

At least we can dismiss her latest fluff in the first sentence: Is physical science - as some people say - omnicompetent? Can it (that is) answer all possible questions? "As some people say" is one of the more perniciously lazy phrases in the English language. And setting up a straw man as the starting premise of an article is not encouraging. The answer to both is no. We don't know all possible questions, and science is just a tool. A very successful tool, but one with no alternative in sight (and Midgley certainly offers none). To be fair, Midgley goes on to chatter about some very…

Back to The Hill

This weekend I'm returning to my old stomping grounds to brief Hill folks on oceans, climate, and their interface in the policy realm. I'm looking forward to catching up with friends and Autumn is a wonderful time to be back because the humidity has finally subsided. While my heart is always with New York, I appreciate that DC is deliciously unique. Everyone bustles about making their way in the world, and for the most part, residents don't settle in for more than a few years. A land of nomads from everywhere with big dreams on a million different trajectories. The District is seductive…

'Framing Science' Without Chris and Global Warming in the 80s

Well, you might have noticed I tend to keep things light on Fridays and this one's no exception. I won't be posting again today because I'm holding a roundtable on (you guessed it) Science Communication. I'm in good company with Dietram, Matt, Abel, and a few other leading experts on how messages resonate with the public and policymakers. So I'll be tied up all day, wishing Chris were able to be here with all of us too. For really, what is 'Framing Science' without my favorite SciBling and coblogger? And now without further ado, (with special thanks to Kraig for allowing us to post this…

Al Gore and IPCC WIN the Nobel Peace Prize

Congratulations to Al Gore and the IPCC! Evidence it's not only the climate that's a changin... Hold on tight for November 2008! The Nobel committee said that Mr Gore and the IPCC should be honoured "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change". The committee praised the IPCC for creating an "ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming", by involving thousands of scientists and officials from over 100…

I Fought God and, God Won

[God: "Go ahead, make my day."] I have been staying out of the science and religion mess lately--although I think it's already known that while I'm personally non-religious, I agree with Nisbet that going head-on at people's faith probably isn't a very good strategy if you want to defend the teaching of evolution in the USA. But in any event, what harm can come from a tiny little post? (Grinning fiendishly.) So here's my contribution: I merely wish to point out a good analysis of polling data over at Pew that strongly supports the broad Nisbet perspective. The gist: The American public doesn…