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Oh. So that's what the Libertarian dedication to civil liberties looks like

Recently, Rand Paul and Sean Hannity got together to talk seriously about politics. Stop laughing! They said they did, anyway. Paul tossed out a pleasant little comment about how he would run the country. I'm not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they've been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they've been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn't be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the…

Defenders of Kansas

Forgive me, but I find it hard to take Casey Luskin seriously. He's a mouthpiece for the Discovery Institute who always reminds me of a voluble squirrel: he chatters away frenetically, but the brain behind his words is tiny and ill-prepared to cope with any substance. I always feel this urge to throw some peanuts at his feet to distract him. Anyway, his latest frenetic missive is a collection of angry chitterings, protesting that ID isn't about the supernatural at all (it's just about undermining naturalism…hasn't he read Philip Johnson yet?), and no, they aren't trying to sow doubt and…

'Slime-Snake-Monkey-People' of the World, Unite!

Creationist Robert Bowie Johnson Jr. has just published a book detailing Noah's role in Greek art as a known historical figure. Yeah, *that* Noah. Johnson says: "In Greek art, we find detailed, consistent portrayals of the early Genesis themes including: the ancient garden, the serpent-entwined apple tree, the first family, Cain killing Abel, the Flood, and the successful rebellion against Noah after the Flood. Greek artists made the gods look just like people because that's who they were--our ancestors. Socrates himself referred to the gods as such" As this article notes: To shock the…

Behe's Empty Plate

Others have mentioned Jerry Coyne’s shredding of Behe’s Edge of Evolution in The New Republic. I’d just like to highlight this paragraph as it more or less summarizes everything that Coyne has to say: In the end, The Edge of Evolution is not an advance or a refinement of the theory of intelligent design, but a retreat from its original claims--an act of desperation designed to maintain credibility in a world of scientific progress. But it is all for nothing, because Behe’s new theory remains the same old mixture of dead science and thinly disguised theology. There is no evidence for his main…

Is there something you are not telling us?

Nature recently ran a story about, what it termed, the "Arizona experiment," changes that have been occurring here at Arizona State University. The article briefly quoted Robert Pettit, the former director of the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) which was closed in 2005. Today's Nature features a letter by John C. Knight which states that: [A]fter disagreements with the university's president Michael Crow, Pettit was removed from the position and the institute was effectively closed down. All the personnel were transferred to the university's Biodesign Institute. After a year of problems and…

Vonnegut dead at 84

This is sad. Kurt Vonnegut has died. Pessimist, existentialist and damn great writer. As he said in God Bless You Mr Rosewater: "Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies -- 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.' " I've taught his Galapagos many times over the years and Slaughterhouse-Five is a classic that reflects his experiences in Dresden during the fire-bombing of 1945. From Slaughterhouse-Five: "And every day my…

Wilkins, Dear and Darwin on species

A short while back I presented a quote by historian Peter Dear regarding Darwin's ideas about species. Of the quote I commented that it was "so wrong it is not even funny". Professor Dear took exception to that comment (especially after John Wilkins waded in with his view) and commented that "[i]f you want to show that I'm wrong about Darwin here, give me some evidence from Darwin himself, rather than telling us what biologists and philosophers of biology believe nowadays." Now John has provided the first of a series of posts on the development of Darwin's writings on species. Speaking of the…

In memoriam

In memory of those that slipped the bonds of Earth on this day in 1986. I was a freshman in college. The flight started at 11:08 EST - just after four in the afternoon in Ireland - and I remember watching the launch on CNN which was the only channel that was showing the event live. Here James Oberg demolishes seven myths about the Challenger tragedy - including the idea that millions of people saw the "explosion" (and the reason for quotes will become obvious if you read the article) live on television. While some of Oberg's points were not news to me, I had not realized that the "[t]he…

March Molly Madness

Howdy all! This is MG Myers. The competition for the March Mollies was mighty fierce with 23 great nominees. The votes have been tabulated and the winners are <drum roll> onion girl and CJO! These two well-deserving commenters are hereby inducted in the distinguished Order of the Molly. Woohoo! Weehee! Congratulations to both! Now we just need to catch up on the April awards. Who of your fellow commenters do you think is deserving of a Molly award for April and why? Also, in the last Molly thread Mattir had a terrific idea of starting a monthly book club. It would be good to…

I wish that I was made of stone

Wilkins has posted a poem about churches and mentioned that he goes into churches when he travels ... as do I. My favorite poem about such - if you can count a Nick Cave lyric - is "Brompton Oratory": Up those stone steps I climbHail this joyful day's returnInto its great shadowed vault I goHail the Pentecostal mornThe reading is from Luke 24Where Christ returns to his loved onesI look at the stone apostlesThink that it's alright for someAnd I wish that I was made of stoneSo that I would not have to seeA beauty impossible to defineA beauty impossible to believeA beauty impossible to endureThe…

What it takes to stand out in Southern California

The city of Lake Forest, California has given a talented young boy scout the job of designing the city's logo. The presentation of his Eagle Scout project to the city council must have been dramatic: he displayed his carefully crafted graphic arts project to them, and they voted 3 to 2 in favor of giving him the project. His design must have exhibited great style, panache, and technical expertise to dazzle them so. And here it is! Why, he must have worked for weeks on that. It's bold, original, and wonderfully crafted. Well, errm, actually…it looks like he whipped it out 2 minutes before the…

Thought for the Day

Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing: Here's a question: Does Tony Blair get to bring his laptop on his government plane? Can Laura Bush keep her lipstick with her on Air Force One? Does Dick Cheney take off his shoes and get them x-rayed before he flies? How about Condi Rice's knee-high lace-up boots? Is her mission to Israel delayed while she tries to re-lace them while balancing her laptop bag on one shoulder and trying to get her watch back on? It seems to me like our glorious leaders are pretty good at setting out the "minor inconveniences" that the rest of us have to put up with, but when…

Book meme

Book meme from Janet: 1. One book that changed your life? Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species 2. One book you have read more than once? Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species 3. One book you would want on a desert island? The Complete Works of Plato 4. One book that made you laugh? Anything written by ID supporters. 5. One book that made you cry? Anything written by ID supporters. 6. One book you wish had been written? Women: A Guide for the Perplexed 7. One book you wish had never had been written? I don't know if I would wish that any book had never been written. As Oscar Wilde said, books…

Mel Plays the Martyr Once Again

Poor alcoholic Mel! I haven't been able to find the police report from his fateful drunken driving incident, but I did find a humorous one that I'm sure is almost as crazy as the real thing! Some highlights? After attempting to flee the scene, Gibson shouted that "Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." These outbursts continued for the next five minutes. Mr. Gibson claimed the Jews were also responsible for: the death of Jesus; the impalement of William Wallace; the disfigurement of The Man Without A Face; the ransoming of his son; the plot holes in Signs; and the overall…

Telling Some "Fibs" Of My Own

Whilst perusing my latest copy of SEED magazine, I came across an interesting poetry structure not unlike a haiku. What I'm talking about is "the Fib," which is a poetic structure based on the Fibonacci sequence; the lines consist of 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 (and so on) syllables. While SEED published the "fib" poetry of Jason Zuzga, I thought I'd try my hand at them in my very own forum right here. Shyness Fish dive deeply, mouths agape, fins proud and ragged, filtering the oceans apart until shimmer-hooked and then flopping in boat bottoms, when gills heave, gasp, drowning in air; eyes…

A Jogging Flower (Reprise)

Our most popular post from our Blogger days did not fair so well in the migration to SB and Movable Type. I am reposting it here now for posterity. A relative of the starfish, crinoids are neither abundant nor well understood. Also known as "sea lilies" or "feather stars" the strange creatures consist of a mouthpart, feeding arms and generally have a stem that connects them to the sea floor. Scientists have long known that crinoids were capable of moving themselves, albeit at a very slow pace, to outmaneuver predators such as sea urchins. Their fastest speed had been clocked at .6 meters per…

Drunken Elephants Electrocute Themselves

As reported in the AP, six Asiatic wild elephants were electrocuted after drinking alcohol in northeast India and going berserk. Apparently the animals have developed a taste for rice beer, fermented by farmers in plastic drums, and come looking for it when they enter villages. Perhaps taking a cue from the aforementioned self-immolating squirrel, the elephants then uprooted a utility pole and, sadly, zapped themselves. "It's great to have such a huge number of elephants, but the increasing man-elephant conflict following the shrinkage in their habitat due to the growing human population is…

Purple Frogs, an Evolutionary Wonder

Hey there, ladies. I'm just a lonesome, evolutionary mishap who loves to party. The Purple frog or Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis can be described as a "living fossil." These strange creatures split evolutionarily from other frogs nearly 150 million years ago giving them features unique to any amphibian, so unique in fact that they have been put in their own taxonomic family. Purple frogs were officially discovered by scientists in 2003 in the hilly jungles of Western India. Making them particularly difficult to locate is their propensity for burrowing deep in the jungle floor and only…

Giant Prehistoric Organism Identified

For over a century the nature of prototaxites has been a source of mystery and debate among scientists. Growing over 20 feet tall and a yard wide, the organism grew straight up like a tree trunk, but had no leaves or branches. Prototaxites fossils from between 420 and 350 million years ago have been found throughout the world. Speculation as to whether prototaxites was a lichen, algae or fungus has divided researchers since the first fossil was found over 100 years ago. After advanced chemical analysis, the verdict is finally in: prototaxites was a huge friggin fungus. University of Chicago…

Brain surgery with a banjo

The BBC has film footage of the legendary Bluegrass musician Eddie Adcock playing the banjo whilst having his brain operated on. Adcock is suffering from essential tremor, a progressive neurological condition characterised by tremors in the arms which appear during voluntary movements and which are thought to occur as a result of degeneration of cerebellar Purkinje cells. The film shows neurosurgeons at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee treating Adcock with deep brain stimulation (DBS), in which electrodes are implanted into the thalamus. Together with the…

In U.S. Trip, Pope Makes Climate Change the Moral Message

From the UK's Independent: The Pope is expected to use his first address to the United Nations to deliver a powerful warning over climate change in a move to adopt protection of the environment as a "moral" cause for the Catholic Church and its billion-strong following. The New York speech is likely to contain an appeal for sustainable development, and it will follow an unprecedented Encyclical (a message to the wider church) on the subject, senior diplomatic sources have told The Independent. It will act as the centrepiece of a US visit scheduled for next April - the first by Benedict XVI,…

SUPERMAN V. CLIMATE CHANGE: New Movie Presents Sea Level Rise Scenario that Parallels Melting of Greenland and Antarctic Ice Shelf

I was lucky enough to snag a ticket to see Superman Returns tonight at the Uptown Theater in Cleveland Park. Here is the scoop, without spoiling the movie: Superman foils a plot by Luthor to create a new Fortress of Solitude-like continent in the middle of the North Atlantic. As Luthor explains with the aid of maps and visuals, the emergence of a new landmass in the middle of the ocean would displace enough water to flood most of the coastline of N. America, Europe, Africa, and S. America, and in the words of Luthor, "killing billions." Though climate change is not mentioned in the film,…

They Just Keep Piling On

Governor Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky uses his State of the Commonwealth speech last night to plug intelligent design: As I close, let me recognize Kentucky's veterans. You have served to protect our liberty and the freedom that spurs our quality of life in this nation. Please know that this administration is committed to supporting you. And where does this freedom come from that many have died to protect? Our founding fathers recognized that we were endowed with this right by our creator. So I ask, what is wrong with teaching "intelligent design" in our schools. Under KERA, our school…

Blog Notes

I'm back from Pittsburgh, where the blogging-meet-science writing workshop went very well. Science writers are definitely curious, although you could hear some moans about the end of dead-tree publishing (a bit premature, in my opinion). Amy Gahran, my fellow panelist, is going to post a podcast on her blog, Contentious. I will update the post with a link when it is available. UPDATE: PODCAST AVAILABLE HERE I will be getting back to blogging about new research this week once I've settled back in at home. In the meantime, I'm trying to clean up the comments, which continue to be a bit buggy.…

Growing Up With Dinosaurs

I can't remember the first time I saw the dinosaur fossils at the American Museum of Natural History, but they've been good friends for over thirty years. We've all changed a lot over that time. I've grown up and gotten a bit gray, while they've hiked up their tails, gotten a spring in their step, and even sprouted feathers. I plan to take my daughters to see the new exhibit at AMNH, Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries, this spring, and it will be strange to watch them get to know these dinosaurs all over again. In January I got a chance to slink around the exhibit while it was still…

Heroes

Here's a pair of brave women. Twenty years after a horrific rape, Liz Seccuro pressed charges on her creepy, oblivious rapist. It was a horrible situation, and she could have run away from the conflict…but she faced her fears and got the rotten guy locked away after he tried to resume a friendly conversation, as if nothing had happened. Amina A. is a gay woman living in Syria — and she and her father faced down a pair of thugs who threatened to rape the lesbian out of her. These were the local 'security services' who try to enforce a religious propriety on every one; just living in the…

Idealogy Versus Isotopes

Imagine you're a columnist. You decide to write something about how the National Park Service is allowing a creationist book to be sold in their Grand Canyon stores, over the protests of its own geologists, who point out that NPS has a mandate to promote sound science. Hawking a book that claims that the Grand Canyon was carved by Noah's Flood a few thousand years ago is the polar opposite of this mandate. So what do you write? Well, if you're Republican consultant Jay Bryant, and you're writing for the conservative web site Town Hall, you declare that this as a clear-cut case of Darwinist…

Question of the week

As Janet and RPM have noted, the mothership has initiated an "Ask A ScienceBlogger" feature - a weekly question that us SBers will (briefly) tackle. This week the question is "if you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why?" Like Janet, my first impulse was to answer "cell phones" and (also like Janet) I then realized that it wasn't the phones but the idiots who use them (loudly) in public or when they should be concentrating on something else (driving, child care, listening to people ...). RPM's answer - nuclear weapons…

The state of science literacy

If only to contextualize the Harris Poll I mention below, it is worth pointing out that science literacy in this country is fairly appaling. Witness the bi-annual NSF Science & Engineering Indicators (2004), which found that forty percent believe that astrology is either "very" or "sort of" scientific. This drops from 49% to 25% as education rises. It clearly should raise alarm bells if a quarter of college graduates feel that astrology can be even "sort of" scientific. Read the whole report ... it should depress you even if you are an ID supporter. The demographic for this survey was 7…

Twenty years tomorrow

On January 28th 1986, the shuttle Challenger broke up 73 seconds into its tenth mission. Here James Oberg demolishes seven myths about the Challenger tragedy - including the idea that millions of people saw the "explosion" (and the reason for quotes will become obvious if you read the article) live on television. I was a freshman in college at the time. The flight started at 11:08 EST - just after four in the afternoon in Ireland and I remember watching the launch on CNN which, as Oberg notes, was the only channel that was showing the event live. While some of Oberg's points were not news to…

Darwin's Nemesis ... despite Dover

The next big thing for the ID movement will be the publication of Darwin's Nemesis: Philip Johnson and the Intelligent Design Movement in April. I have previously discussed this festschrift for Johnson here and here. Over at Uncommon Descent, Dembski - whose "retirement" from blogging doesn't seem to have slowed his posting - is shilling the volume, noting that he managed to insert some comments on Dover into the preface. As you can imagine, Dembski manages to spin the decision into a good thing for ID. Just as a tree that has been "rimmed" (i.e., had its bark completely cut through on all…

Luskin either slips up or is telling lies

Casey Luskin, lawyer and program officer for public policy and legal affairs at the DI has this to say about the El Tajon creationism class: Intelligent design is different from creationism because intelligent design is based upon empirical data, rather than religious scripture, and also because intelligent design is not a theory about the age of the earth. Moreover, unlike creationism, intelligent design does not try to inject itself into religious discussions about the identity of the intelligence responsible for life. Creationism, in contrast, always postulates a supernatural or divine…

Left and Right Agree on Microcosm!

Had another author told me his publisher was sending me a copy of a book on Escherichia coli, I would have been perhaps quietly unenthusiastic. But best selling science writer Carl Zimmer is a master story teller and superb researcher. He's also renowned for effortlessly slipping a giant payload of scientific knowledge into the reader, sweetened with human drama, one so comprehensive a student struggling with a dry textbook would have had to hammer into their head over the course of an entire semester. Carl didn't disappoint: within a few short pages he had me completely, delightfully hooked…

Frankenstein Freak-outs

Radiolab is a show about science that briliantly uses radio's greatest strength--sound--to bring stories to life in ways we print goons can only dream about. I wrote a story about how animals sleep. The Radiolab folks played the sound of brain waves from a sleeping cat. And so on. I'm particularly fond of their latest podcast, which you can listen to below. It's about chimeras, synthetic biology, and other threats to our conventional notions of life. Full disclosure: I am acquainted with Robert Krulwich, one of the hosts, and in recent months he and I have spent a fair amount of time…

GOOOOOOOAAAALLLLL x 2 !!

HOLY FUCK. Italy scores TWICE at the end of a 0-0 overtime!!!!!!!! This game is amazing!!!!! To top it off, the refs actually did their damn jobs correctly for once!!! Hats off to Germany for an excellent Cup. I hate to see you guys lose after such an effort. I expected a dynamite game but wow, this was something else. Both teams played an intense first half, trading off control of the midfield. By 70 minutes, you could tell that everybody was starting to wear down. The second half did drag a bit. The substitutions picked things up a little and both teams played excellent defense…

State of the Statistics: A Nonlinear Non-Diebold Effect?

UPDATE: Diebold effect explained? Marc has an excellent summary of a flurry of Diebold-related discussions between me, "T", Marc, and Sean. Sean also has a network model of the apparent Diebold effect. I think we'll soon hear from Brian Mingus (who's running a meta-classifier) and Steve Freeman (an expert on machine-effects in elections) as well. At bottom is a disagreement over how to infer causality in observational data, and how to diagnose the functional form of a data set. The good news is two-fold: there may not be a large "Diebold effect" when nonlinear methods are used, and reason…

Blogging on the Brain: 3/29

Recent highlights from the best in brain-blogging: Is our sense of morality localized to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex? More reasons for caution when beginning sentences with the phrase; "Only humans are cognitively capable of ......." Are wild monkeys in a stone-age of their own? Spatial memory in single-celled organisms. Continuing debate about the correlation between intelligence and gross indices of brain size. More reasons to think that glia are not merely "support cells" after all. So, what is a brain "area" anyway? More neurons is better, right? Not true, at least in terms of…

Scientia Pro Publica #23 at Pleiotropy

The latest edition of Scientia Pro Publica has been divided between eight blog posts based on theme. True to form, a single edition has influenced multiple posts in the blogospheric version of pleiotropy. Beginning | Biology | Conservation | Ethics | Medicine | Physics | Psychology | Conclusion This edition is massive with contributors from the following blogs providing the best science writing on the net: A DC Birding Blog Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog Bioblog: Biology in the News Code for Life Deep Sea News Deep Thoughts and Silliness (a Nature Network alum w00t!) EcoTone EnviroBuzz…

Haiti: What If You Had Twenty-Four Hours To Live?

Haiti-born hip hop artist Wyclef Jean has been one of the leading artists promoting Haitian relief since the earthquake. In this Creole version of his song "24 Heures a Vivre" (24 Hours to Live) on his 2004 album Welcome to Haiti: Creole 101 he asks the following: Et si t'avais 24 heures à vivre Aurais-tu chanté? Aurais-tu dansé? Aurais-tu pleuré? Ou dit : oh non j'veux m'en aller! And if you had 24 hours to live Would you sing? Would you dance? Would you cry? Or would you say: I don't want to go away! (Note: this is my rough translation of the French) Jean lost fifteen family members…

Haiti: Time To Build a Just Society

       Image: Gideon Mendel / The GuardianJournalist William Fisher of the Inter Press Service News Agency has just used my recent work on Haiti for his story on the need for transparency and equality in the development aid that the West provides to Haiti: Journalist Eric Michael Johnson, writing in The Huffington Post, notes that "Haiti has a historically unhealthy dependence on foreign commerce and finance, from the colonial days of the sugar trade to the current assistance provided by developed countries." "Now the same politicians and financial elites that helped create this mess are…

Experiment--woo woo journal club

This is just for kicks, and requires a little work. I recently became aware of a dreadful article that I'd love to share with you, but then I thought, "my readers are pretty damned smart; let's see what they have to say first." The article in question, "External Qi of Yan Xin Qigong differentially regulates the Akt and extracellular signal-regulated kinase pathways and is cytotoxic to cancer cells but not to normal cells" just seems ripe for feeding into the dewooificator. Now, the full text is behind a paywall, and it wouldn't do for me to share my full text copy with you. I certainly can…

Competition horses calmed by lavender

Image of lavender fromGFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=322384 While lavender aromatherapy has been documented to reduce stress in humans, little is known about its potential for reducing stress in veterinary medicine. Horses can develop elevated heart rates and stress hormone levels when they are confined to horse trailers and transported to new competition venues. Therapies to reduce stress in competition horses are regulated and often prohibit the use of sedatives or oral supplements. Kylie Heitman, an undergraduate student at Albion College, was interested in…

The obese marathon mouse

Dummerstorf marathon mouse, Image from Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology As the name implies, Dummerstorf marathon mice are bred to run. If allowed to be sedentary, these animals can build up quite a bit of fat within their peripheral tissues even if they do not overeat. If given an exercise wheel, however, they burn fat very quickly. In a new study published in the Journal of Comparative Physiology - B, researchers discovered that the livers of these mice have an increased ability to not only store fat but to also rapidly mobilize fat when necessary for exercise. If they are able…

Will Santa have to find replacements for his reindeer?

New research presented at the British Ecological Society, Liverpool shows that reindeer are shrinking. These findings come from a survey conducted between 1994-2010 in Svalbard, a Norwegian island, which found the animals have lost about 12% of their body mass over this timeframe. The research team thinks the shrinking reindeer phenomenon might be caused by global warming as females have increased access to grasslands and give birth to more calves annually than in the past. This translates to less nutrients available to support each gestation causing lower birth weights and more competition…

Sailing Spiders

Research published July 3 in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology supports the idea that some species of spiders can catch the wind to "sail" across bodies of water, which they suggest might be why certain spiders seem to be all over the world. While some spiders were already know to catch the breeze to travel by air relatively short distances, and some are known to be aquatic, the researchers in this study were interested in examining just how well spiders could actually walk on water. So, they collected 325 wild spiders and dropped them on water to see what would happen. All of the…

The light of death

Dying nematode worm. Image: Cassandra Coburn Dr. Gems, University College London, and colleagues  were studying aging using nematode worms. They discovered that dying nematode worms emit a wave of blue light from dying cells. It was previously thought that damaged components of aging cells collect in lysosomes forming what they call lipofuscin, which fluoresces. His team refuted that long-held belief and showed that the dying light was produced instead by anthranilate, a substance that is inactive in the acidic environment of the gut but becomes activated when cells die (necrosis) and…

Energy Efficient Hornets

In the search for energy efficient animals, I came across this neat little bug, the Oriental hornet (Vespa orientalis) that can apparently derive energy from the sun. These bugs will actually work their hardest when the sun is at its peak, which is in contrast to similar species that work hardest in the morning when it is cool. Researchers have long known that if you shine light on them, an electrical current is generated across their exoskeleton. This means that their exoskeleton acts like a solar panel since it can convert light energy into an electrical current. Last year, researchers…

Discussion question: Transparency in teaching

I've been doing some on-and-off thinking lately about teaching (summer is a great time for that, away from the pressure of the school year). One of the things I've specifically been thinking about is the idea of "transparency". I'm curious to hear what you, faithful readers, think/do in terms of transparency when you teach. So, here's today's discussion question, for those of you who teach: How "transparent" are you in your teaching? Do you spell everything out for the students up-front, or do you save the explanations for "why did we just do this" until after the fact, allowing for…

Why are there so many bogus criticisms of Kellermann?

gzuckier explains, in detail, what is wrong with Lott's criticism of Kellermann. For some reason, Kellermann's work seems to provoke badly flawed criticism. In another posting gzuckier demolishes three other critiques. In an earlier posting I noted that a critique by Kopel and Reynolds got all its facts wrong. And in a AEI event promoting Lott's new book, Carl Moody claimed: The second cut is, as you say, is the data available to other researchers [inaudible], and the answer is no for Kellermann, so I think he's lying. He's refused repeated requests for his…

Diasaster at the Louisville, Kentucky Public Library

Louisville was hit with a massive rainstorm that overwhelmed the sewer system and caused massive flooding everywhere. It took out the bottom floor of the library. Preliminary damage is assessed at $1M, but I would expect that to go higher (see). I divided a session at CIL with Greg Schwartz a few years ago. He works in the system and his tweets and attached pictures show how horrible this is. Steve Lawson has set up a way for librarians to donate. Others can also check this blog to get the address for the library foundation. Update 8/7/2009: The library director is interviewed by Library…