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pharyngula | March 31, 2006Here's an entirely hypothetical scenario.
You're in a room with two exits, marked Door A and Door B. By each is a guardian, Guardian A and Guardian B. You need to go through one of the doors.
Door A is light and flimsy, easy to open—just turn the knob and you're through it. Reasonably enough, before charging through, you ask Guardian A what's on the other side.
"Joy and delight, an eternal life of perfect happiness, an end to doors and constant traveling…and all you have to do is turn that little knob, and believe."
That sounds too good to be true, so you ask him how he knows, and whether he…
stcynic | March 31, 2006So I'm perusing the MSU debate team webpage, which includes lots of pictures and stories of their national championship victory, and I come across this picture:
That's the coach, and my old friend, Will Repko. Why is he dressed like that? I have no idea. I thought about calling him to find out, but frankly I figure any backstory that leads to him wearing that costume that I might make up is bound to be more entertaining than the real story. So for the moment, I'm assuming that the process that led to this involves large amounts of alcohol and a dare. Either way, this picture will not be…
stcynic | March 31, 2006I began a new project this week that I'm really excited about - writing a book. I've written a few million words worth of essays, but never a whole book, so this will be a new experience for me. Thankfully, I don't have to do it alone. I've got a co-author, Wesley Elsberry, whose knowledge and insight will undoubtedly make me look much better than I am. The subject of the book? The Dover trial. We are aiming at doing a thorough history of the trial from beginning to end and beyond.
We'll trace the changes in strategies employed by the antievolutionists from Scopes through "teach the…
stcynic | March 31, 2006PZ Myers has a thorough takedown of the latest nonsense from the DI's Jonathan Witt. Well worth reading.
stcynic | March 31, 2006Jason Kuznicki and Timothy Sandefur (back from vacation) have begun a spontaneous debate about immigration. I have to confess that this is a subject I've thought very little about other than having a bias in favor of immigration as a general rule. Neither of them is against immigration, of course, but they are debating how best to handle the situation in light of recent legislative action and the public furor over it. And since both begin from a more or less libertarian perspective, it makes for an interesting exchange. My initial thought is that I'm leaning toward Jason's position, but as I…
grrlscientist | March 30, 2006As some of you know, I live with a large group of cockroaches that boldly infest my apartment, along with those of all my neighbors. Call me crazy, but it always seemed to me that the smaller, more numerous, German cockroaches, Blattella germanica, made decisions together, or they appeared to at least consult with each other before hauling off my refrigerator as a well-organized team. But several scientists confirmed my suspicions today when they published their research suggesting that cockroaches are democratic group thinkers.
Cockroaches cannot communicate vocally, but it's known that they…
stcynic | March 30, 2006The Dallas Morning News has an excellent editorial responding to Tom DeLay's ridiculous performance at the "War on Christians" conference in Washington DC this week. They point out examples which show that DeLay, rather than being a martyr for Christianity, is an exploiter of it:
But lest the faithful prematurely canonize Mr. DeLay as a martyr for the faith, they should consider how Team DeLay, with its paladins of public piety, has specifically manipulated sincere Christians for personal gain.
Take Edwin Buckham, a Washington lobbyist who once served as Mr. DeLay's chief of staff and…
stcynic | March 30, 2006You can't find a more perfect statement of the warped mindset that leads to people being threatened with death over their religious views than this statement, from the father - the father - of Abdul Rahman, the Afghani man who faced the death penalty for converting to Christianity and has now fled to Italy and is under the protection of the government there:
Rahman's 75-year-old father, however, believes his son must be punished.
"We are Muslim, our fathers were Muslim, our grandfathers were Muslim," said Abdul Manan, according to the Chicago Tribune. "This is an Islamic country. Imagine if…
stcynic | March 30, 2006Skemono left a link below to a comment at ex-gay watch that he thought might actually be dumber than the comment I linked to at Positive Liberty. Sadly, I have to admit he was right. It's a welter of stupidity so asinine that one wonders how the author managed to master the use of a keyboard. Perhaps this should be a regular feature here and I should have people email me the most ridiculous posts and comments they run across on other blogs.
grrlscientist | March 30, 2006
The newest edition of I and the Bird, the "bird.icio.us!" edition, is now available at Bootstrap Analysis. I and the Bird is a blog carnival that celebrates the best writing about wild birds recently published on a blog and this issue includes a piece that I wrote.
tags: bloog carnival
apalazzo | March 29, 2006Remember that special moment when everything changed. Were you listening to a particular song? Or was it some food? Well a couple of friends just posted about such associations.
The first is from Tall Med Student, a former Harvard postdoc who is now a med student at the University of Calgary.
In his ode to Boston, he writes:
Korean food. Three places come to mind: Café Han River at St. Mary's, Korea House in Chinatown, and best of all, Buk Kyung II in Alston. At that last place, I was introduced to jajang myeon, which was spectacular there. Interestingly, one day while in Ä°stanbul last…
stcynic | March 29, 2006Just heard from my father that I am an uncle again. My younger brother Rick and his wife just had a baby boy. His name is Quin Ulrich Brayton. Don't congratulate me, I had nothing to do with it. But I think it's pretty cool.
grrlscientist | March 29, 2006A new study will be published tomorrow revealing that, on average, human brains mature later in those people who have the greatest intelligence. This research was done using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to visualize the regions of children's brains as they matured (example of an MRI pictured, right. Source linked from image). The scientists' data show that the outer portion of the brain, the cortex -- or the thinking part of the brain -- thickens and then thins during early childhood years, when the children were approximately 6 years old. However, they found that kids with greater…
grrlscientist | March 29, 2006The 50th edition of the long-running blog carnival, the Tangled Bank, is now available at Island of Doubt. As always, TB is packed full of great information about science, nature and medicine, including a piece that I wrote (and forgot that I'd submitted).
tags: blog carnival
stcynic | March 28, 2006A reader writes to inform me that the action by the Liberty Counsel to threaten to sue a blogger for a parody of an Exodus International billboard while using their logo is rather ironic given their own past troubles in that area. It seems that for a long time, their page on the "war on Christmas" included a picture of the Grinch with a large "ACLU" on his hat, but the estate of Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, made them stop using it because they owned the rights to it. Now it just features a little candy cane graphic instead.
tlambert | March 28, 2006Over at Crooked Timber, John Quiggin has organised an on-line seminar on Chris Mooney's War on Science. Lots of interesting reading, including two guest posters: someone called Tim Lambert and Steve Fuller. PZ Myers wasn't real impressed with Fuller's contribution.
stcynic | March 28, 2006Not Liberty. For the second time in three years, Michigan State won the collegiate National Debate Tournament championship. After starting the year with a win at the Wake Forest tournament, they had to beat Wake Forest in the finals and they emerged with a 6-1 victory. Congratulations to Will Repko and Mike Eber, the head coach and director of the MSU debate program, and to seniors Ryan Burke and Casey Harrigan. I'll have more later when I return from running some errands this morning.
I can't tell you how proud and pleasantly astonished I am to see how successful Will has become as a college…
stcynic | March 27, 2006Here is the matchup for the national championship:
Wake Forest CH v. Michigan State BH
If MSU wins, it will be their second national title in the last 3 years. That's an incredible accomplishment by any measure, made even more amazing by the fact that they didn't even debate NDT until the two organizations merged.
stcynic | March 27, 2006Please Note: There is an update to this post below the fold with the semifinal matchups.
Here are the 8 teams to make the quarterfinals. I don't know what the quarterfinal matchups are, or who they beat in octofinals to get there:
northwestern bc
dartmouth bm
harvard km
wake forest ch
berkeley bw
wayne state fm
michigan state bh
emory cg
Josh Branson of Northwestern was top speaker and Harvard won the Copeland Award. More updates as the rounds happen.
Update: Found the pairings for quarterfinals. They are:
MSU BH (aff) v. Berkeley BW
Harvard KM v. Wake CH
Dartmouth BM v. Emory GP
Wayne FM v…
stcynic | March 27, 2006On Friday, Baylor University officially notified Francis Beckwith that he was not being granted tenure for his position as associate director of the JM Dawson Institute for Church/State Studies. This is causing a good deal of hullaballoo, with claims of bias and, inevitably, accusations that this denial has something to do with us evil "Darwinists". As someone firmly on the anti-ID side who is friendly with Frank Beckwith and relatively familiar with the politics at Baylor, I thought I should speak out on this one.
The first thing that needs to be said is that the denial of tenure has nothing…