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stcynic | October 14, 2006Just when you think the Worldnutdaily can't get any more ridiculous, they publish this tripe from Kevin McCullough entitled, Why Liberals Channel Lucifer. I can't even begin to parody that, so I won't even try.
stcynic | October 13, 2006That's a new organization formed by a partnership of the Interfaith Alliance and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. I suspect I will view them very much like I do their parent organizations, agreeing with them most of the time and disagree once in a while. And as usual, I'll be happy to express both points of view.
tqa | October 13, 2006If you've been reading this blog for a while, you're probably familiar with the ongoing series of posts I've been using to get readers and commenters to help me improve my teaching skills. If you're new here, welcome, and if you scroll back over the last month or so you'll see most of those posts. Last week, I was somewhat upset that 20-25% of my students were unable to correctly answer a quiz question when I had basically given them the answer five minutes before the quiz. This week, I gave another quiz on a different topic. There were, again, some distressing results - but this time it's…
stcynic | October 13, 2006Good ol' Hans Zeiger's illogic appears to know no bounds at all. One wonders if he writes papers for his professors at Hillsdale that are as rife with irrational statements as those he writes for the Worldnutdaily. His latest column makes the ridiculous argument that because scientists have said false things in the past, we must dismiss any claims of science he doesn't like. After being informed by a biologist that his claims about "manliness" in a previous column were scientifically ignorant, he responds:
I am aware of the science, and I am also aware that science cannot explain everything.…
stcynic | October 12, 2006So here's what I've been through for the last few days. Two trips to Lansing (an hour away), one in a driving rainstorm and the second in a driving snowstorm. Yes, it's Michigan and we're getting snow in October. On the first trip, I bought a brand new case, motherboard and processor. I brought it home, built it, and the dang thing was dead as a doornail, would not power up. I change out three different power supplies, one of which came out of a working computer, so I know it's not that. So today, I took the whole thing back, the tech plays around with it for a bit and announces what I…
apalazzo | October 12, 2006OK this is officially quantitation week on The Daily Transcript.
Today's number is provided by Gilbert Burnham's group at The John Hopkins: 655,000 deaths due to the Iraqi war. From the Globe and Mail:
Mr. Bush has previously put the number of Iraqi deaths at 30,000. He reaffirmed that number yesterday.
"I stand by the figure," he said. "Six hundred thousand or whatever they guessed at . . . it's not credible."
Even some less self-interested and partisan bodies are skeptical of the numbers, partly because they are many times higher than other apparently independent estimates. For example,…
stcynic | October 12, 2006Yesterday was a very good day for science education in the midwest. I wrote last week about ongoing controversies in Michigan and Ohio as advocates of intelligent design (ID) were trying to find a way, any way, to weaken science education and open the door at least a crack for the introduction of ID in public school science classrooms. I'm happy to report that we won major victories against the anti-science crowd in both states, and on the same day, both involving the state Boards of Education.
In Michigan, the BOE has been trying to adopt new statewide standards in every area of study, as…
tqa | October 12, 2006Update: 14 October.
I just posted another entry on the topic, responding to some of the comments on this post. My conclusions have changed a bit as the result of some of those comments.
As many of you probably know, a study published today in the journal Lancet estimates that just over 650,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the war there. Tim Lambert, Mike the Mad Biologist, and Mark Chu-Carroll have weighed in on the study already (in Tim's case several times), and they think that the estimate and methods were pretty good. Ordinarily, I'd be reluctant to disagree with them, but in this case…
pharyngula | October 11, 2006There is a tradition among the regulars of the usenet group talk.origins to have occasional gatherings, usually at some major locus of evolutionary activity, and accompanied by beer. Such an event will be happening this Saturday, in London.
We'll be meeting on these steps at 2pm:
That's the Natural History Museum here in Kensington. Look for the bearded nerd with a black computer bag and a camera hanging from his neck; that's me. I'll be there with a distinguished and professorial science nerd scholar*; that'll be Laurence Moran. We'll hang about the steps for a while, gathering together any…
stcynic | October 11, 2006You may have noticed my lack of presence on my own blog today. That's because I'm having endless difficulty getting a new computer to run. I've built a new computer, but it won't power up. So far I've tried 3 different power supplies, pulled every single peripheral out of it, found out I had a bad memory chip, got the board to power up momentarily with the third power supply, but then stop working....it's driving me nuts. In the morning I'm taking the whole thing back to Comp USA, where I bought the case, motherboard and processor, and hope that they can figure it out. Unfortunately, that's…
nisbetmc | October 11, 2006Turn out at this morning's presentation at AAAS approached 200, and it looked like the auditorium was completely full. It's a sign that interest in framing as a public engagement tool is really increasing. The Q&A session was a particular highlight for me, with many great comments and insights from attendees. I also really enjoyed the discussions before and after the talk. I will have a summary of the talk and some of the questions raised soon, but for now, AAAS has posted the lecture slides on their site.
purepedantry | October 11, 2006The NYTimes is reporting that an aircraft has crashed into a residential building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan:
A small plane crashed into a high-rise on the Upper East Side, raining down debris on Manhattan and unleashing what witnesses reported was a gigantic fireball, police said.
The aircraft struck 524 E. 72nd Street, a 50-story condominium tower.
The aircraft struck the 20th floor of a building on East 72nd Street, said Fire Department spokeswoman Emily Rahimi. Witnesses said the crash caused a loud noise, and burning and falling debris was seen. Flames were seen shooting out of…
cortex | October 11, 2006Apparently, it's time to dump on science journalists. Plenty of bloggers, it seems, just accept it as a statement of fact that science journalism sucks, and is in desperate need of fixing. Various solutions have been proposed, from the supply side (educate ignorant journalists) to the demand side (make people want to know more about science).
Personally, I think these complaints are ridiculous, and that scientists don't know how good they have it. Let's review the facts, shall we?
1) Most science stories in the mainstream media are simply paraphrasings of press releases put out by the…
stcynic | October 11, 2006Dembski has a completely substanceless post on his blog about Chris Mooney, where all he does is quote from a brief bio of Mooney prior to one of his appearances. He writes, "Yes, this is the same Chris Mooney who attacks ID and has written THE REPUBLICAN WAR ON SCIENCE" and proceeds to quote the following:
Chris Mooney '99 recently spoke at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on behalf of the Campus Freethought Alliance (CFA). Mooney, who is copresident and a founding member of the Yale College Society for Humanists, Atheists and Agnostics, addressed the issue of discrimination…
stcynic | October 11, 2006Katherine Harris continues to be the gift that keeps on giving for those of us who enjoy watching politicians make fools of themselves in public (and who doesn't?). Just check out this report from her own website, which reports that she now leads incumbent Sen. Ben Nelson despite all the public opinion polls showing that she's going to lose badly. The basis for that claim? She won a straw poll at Politics in the Park in Lakeland and has declared herself ahead:
Harris Beats Nelson -- Leads 54% to 45%
Congresswoman Katherine Harris, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate, soundly…
stcynic | October 10, 2006To give you some idea of just how sophisticated and well educated our opponents are on evolution and ID, just look at some of the letters to the editor in the Detroit Free Press. My personal favorite:
Here are my questions for those who believe in evolution: How did the Big Bang happen? How is it that water appeared on this new planet we call Earth? How is it that life suddenly appeared after this bang?
And this person can vote. Yikes.
stcynic | October 10, 2006Gotta love this kind of hatchet job on a man running for an appeals court position in Texas. They've outed him as an atheist and are claiming that he will therefore refuse to do his job:
Should Franks be elected in November, one would have to conclude that he will hold true to his out of touch "atheist" belief system and ignore the laws and Constitution of Texas.
Only if one is a blithering idiot, of course. And that would appear to be a requirement for being in the Texas Republican party, home to the likes of David Barton and Terri Leo.
stcynic | October 9, 2006All of the posts prior to this one for today were written and scheduled to post last night. When I woke up this morning, my computer was dead - I mean dead, no power at all. So either I've got a bad power supply or a bad motherboard. I may have it fixed tonight, or it may take a day or two. In the meantime, I've hooked up a very old (Celeron 600 with 128 meg of ram and a 10 gig hard drive) computer to this connection so I can at least do the bare minimum. So bear with me while I get back up and running.
stcynic | October 8, 2006Despite widespread criticism even from conservative scholars, Bush continues to issue ridiculous signing statements. The latest is on the homeland security bill passed recently, which included requirements that the FEMA director actually be qualified for the job. Since Bush apparently still thinks "Brownie" did a "heck of a job", he decided to essentially negate that section of the bill:
Bush signed the homeland-security bill on Wednesday morning. Then, hours later, he issued a signing statement saying he could ignore the new restrictions. Bush maintains that under his interpretation of the…