debate
grrlscientist | December 12, 2007tags: science, public policy, politics, federal funding, research, reality-based government, 2008 American presidential elections, ScienceDebate2008
I have spoken with quite a few people from CraigsList and other places regarding the logistics and goals for ScienceDebate2008, and have found that there are plenty of misperceptions as to what scientists wish to accomplish. In short; ScienceDebate2008 is not a "science pop-quiz" that demands that the presidential candidates regurgitate a bunch of scientific theories and formulae on television.
Instead, ScienceDebate2008 is focused on clarifying…
laelaps | November 6, 2007Back when I was a blogging greenhorn, right about this time last year, an evangelical YEC thought he had come up with an intellectual coup de grâce to make me see "the light"; "Antony Flew believes in a god, so there." (Ok, so I'm paraphrasing just a bit) Chalk it up to ignorance, but I had never even heard of Antony Flew, and saying that he believed in a deity had about as much effect on me as saying "Charlie Parker thought the sky was purple" (and given his problems with drug addiction, maybe he sometimes did). Still, over and over again Christian apologists have invoked Flew's name and I…
laelaps | November 3, 2007After many false starts I've actually started to write my "treatise" on evolution, some of the pages I've been turning out being in note form (I want to get the ideas down and then fill in the exact details later when I can pick up the proper reference books from the shelf) while others resemble actual passages and are in a near-finished form. My work isn't going to be a chronological overview of the history of life like many other books, but will instead take a more personal approach reflecting how I've come to understand evolution and how it proceeds. Differing rates of change, convergence…
laelaps | November 1, 2007A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending one of the Science Communication Consortium's (SCC) panel discussions on communicating science (moderated by blogger Kate of The Anterior Commissure), and for those who missed the last one another discussion is fast approaching. On November 15th the SCC will host Dr. Lee Silver (Princeton - Molecular Biology), Dr. Gavin Schmidt (Goddard Institute for Space Studies - Climatology), and Dr. Wendy Chung (Columbia - Clinical and Molecular Genetics) at Rockefellar University in NYC to present their ideas on effectively communicating controversial…
laelaps | October 31, 2007Looks like I've got an editorial war on my hands. Yesterday I announced that my refutation of Brad Pironciak's "Social Darwinism" piece was printed in the college newspaper, The Daily Targum, and now I've received an editorial reply from English major Justin Fruhling. I don't have time to respond in full to his comments right now (you can read his piece here), but Fruhling's main complaint is that I didn't take "The Darwin Awards" or falling standardized test scores into account. Entirely missing the main point of my argument (intelligence is not wholly determined by inheritance and we should…
laelaps | October 30, 2007Yesterday I wrote about an absolutely horrible opinion piece that appeared in the Rutgers newspaper The Daily Targum, the author suggesting that those he deemed stupid deserved to die. Although I gave a detailed response on this blog, I wanted to address the Rutgers community as a whole and I shot off an editorial reply to the paper. I didn't hear back from the Targum editors so I wasn't sure whether my piece would run or not (especially since I was critical of the editorial board for not checking Pironciak's piece), but lo and behold, it's been published. There's little in my response that I…
laelaps | October 29, 2007A little more than a week ago, scientist James Watson made a complete idiot of himself with some despicable and racist comments about the intelligence of white people and black people, and Greg Laden justifiably kicked his arse over the ill-founded statements. I was certainly surprised, then, to visit the official Rutgers University newspaper (The Daily Targum) website and see an opinion article by a freshman named Brad Pironciak who apparently has no idea what natural selection is, his piece being an idiotic espousal of Social Darwinism (although he didn't use the phrase that pays, "survival…
laelaps | October 24, 2007Abe: I got a riddle for you, Sol. What's green, hangs on the wall, and whistles?
Sol: I give up.
Abe: A herring.
Sol: But a herring isn't green.
Abe: So you can paint it green.
Sol: But a herring doesn't hang on the wall.
Abe: Put a nail through it, it hands on the wall.
Sol: But a herring doesn't whistle!
Abe: So? It doesn't whistle.
Borrowed from Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar...: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes
Everyone knew it was coming; Ben Stein goes on Bill O'Reilly's show and says that intelligent design has a religious agenda and is concerned with showing people the "…