July 16, 2009
PZ Myers doesn't care for Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future by Chris Mooney, Sheril Kirshenbaum. In objecting to it, he quotes Jerry Coyne's objection:
I could find little in Unscientific America that has not been said, at length, elsewhere.
Setting aside the…
July 15, 2009
There are a number of people who, even when they are right, get things very wrong.
To whit, Michael Gerson, former Bush speechwriter, reacting to Francis Collins's nomination as NIH director (h/t Joel). He notes that Collins is well-qualified, and that it's odd how a few people are agitated that…
July 14, 2009
Apparently disagreeing is the same as "dissembling."
July 14, 2009
The local Fox affiliate did a story on the controversial issues workshop I'm part of here in Florida. You can see me talking to the teachers about a minute into the video above.
Alas, the reporter got the story a bit wrong. Teachers were never forbidden from saying the word "evolution," the…
July 13, 2009
I'm in Florida at this teacher workshop, so bloggery will be limited. I had a good talk with the assembled teachers about the history of creationism and education.
My ability to accomplish anything at all was a bit of a surprise. My flight was scheduled to arrive in Florida at 12:30 am, which was…
July 10, 2009
Back when Yoko Ono was suing the makers of Expelled over their use of John Lennon's "Imagine," the Discovery Institute was a hotbed of copyfighters. Disco. DJ Bruce Chapman called Ono a "censor" and pitched it as a battle for free speech. Chapman complains about an Ars.Technica post which rightly…
July 7, 2009
Sorry that blogging has been extra-crappy lately. Honestly, no Independence Day post? WTF?
Well, it's like this.
A while back I met Debra Berliner. She was smart and cute and made the same sorts of jokes I liked to make and laughed when I made them and enjoyed the same sorts of projects I do.…
July 6, 2009
Ross Douthat is reputed to be a pretty smart guy. He blogged for the Atlantic before being given Bill Safire's old op-ed column at the New York Times. Safire, despite being wrong in may ways, was a sharp observer with good sources in DC, an analytical eye, and a sparkling intellect. Safire was…
July 3, 2009
Sarah Palin is utterly batshit.
Look, I can see not running for reelection: she wants to run for president in 2012.
That alone is pretty dumb, since she was less popular than John McCain, and McCain/Palin couldn't beat Obama in 2008. In 2012, all signs suggest we'll have national health insurance…
July 1, 2009
Martin Cothran has, he likes to remind people, written a book on logic, and teaches the subject at the high school level. Alas and alack, this stooge of the Disco. Inst. and Focus on (your own damn) Family cannot seem to apply it correctly in his writings. Today, he illustrates rather starkly the…
July 1, 2009
Zombie Michael Jackson has not yet risen to devour LA's few remaining brains. Thankfully, CNN is following this breaking story.
June 25, 2009
In the course of a long and often annoying back and forth with Jerry Coyne, Chris Mooney comes up with a succinct explanation of where science/religion accommodation comes from:
Insofar as I’m an accommodationist, then, it’s not because I don’t see the incongruity between relying on faith, and…
June 25, 2009
Can society persist without Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon?
And will the hubbub over Michael Jackson's death do what the Iranian government couldn't: destroy Twitter?
June 24, 2009
Sean Carroll, one of the sharpest guys out there, says that science and religion are not compatible. I happen to think he's using an idiosyncratic (but not necessarily wrong) definition to reach that conclusion:
are science and religion actually compatible? Clearly one’s stance on that issue will…
June 23, 2009
Students of the creation/evolution conflict know the Thomas More Law Center as the conservative legal group who encouraged the Dover school board to undertake their disastrous policies. TMLC lost badly, and left Dover on the hook for over a million dollars in legal fees. TMLC dropped plenty of…
June 22, 2009
I haven't blogged about Iran at all, and I don't really feel bad about it. Obviously, it's the big news story, but I don't know what will happen, and the people I'm reading don't seem to have a clear idea either. I'm optimistic that honest election results will be posted, and that the genuine…
June 18, 2009
Netroots Nation is rolling out their panels for the next meeting (August 13-16, Pittsburgh, PA). It's an interesting mix, with more than any one person can handle. If my experience last year is any guide, it'll be a struggle just to keep up, and there will be lots of times when I'll have two or…
June 16, 2009
A week or so ago, John West pimped a new Disco. Inst. website on faith and religion in the Washington Post's On Faith blog. His claims were as mendacious as you would expect from looking at the site, most bizarrely inventing a movement of "new theistic evolutionists," when the folks he names are…
June 15, 2009
Why Aren't Scientists Allowed to Believe In God?
It's a shame that some people try to stop scientists from believing in God.
Is Darwinian Evolution Compatible with Religion?
Scientists who accept evolution are wrong to believe in God.
Sounds like they need to work on message discipline.
June 11, 2009
Afarensis and PZ note that the Discovery Institute is trying to hide Youtube videos criticizing their pet dachshund, Casey Luskin.
Luskin Someone at Disco. has apparently been hitting his their own product, a danger in the Disco. scene. He or she thinks that they have a copyright claim on video…
June 11, 2009
I just bought Cordarounds and am liking them very much, thank you. Their collection of gingham shorts fails to fully engage my enthusiasm, though they've got a seersucker short that tempts.
These cords should go nicely with my Tweed Ride outfit, first deployed last Thursday for an East Bay jaunt.…
June 10, 2009
Martin Cothran, the hateful bigot who touted the words of an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier on Holocaust Remembrance Day, is confused. He cannot fathom why I called him a moral monster.
The reason is simple. On June 4, less than a week after George Tiller was shot and killed in his church,…
June 9, 2009
While perusing Ed Whelan's apology to publius and his further explanation of that apology (context), I learned that David Brooks thinks Sonia Sotomayor has bad timing:
Sonia Sotomayor had bad timing. If she’d entered college in the late-1950s or early-1960s, she would have been surrounded by an…
June 8, 2009
Apologies for the profanity in the cartoon above, but it is as nothing compared to the eldritch horror quoted below. I offer Penny Arcade's theory as a possible explanation of where this comes from.
Martin Cothran, who blogs for the Disco. Inst., who purports to teach logic (though he's has odd…
June 3, 2009
Hilzoy and Megan McArdle have had an exchange over abortion, which includes, as these discussions always do, a ton of talking-past-each-other. This tends to happen, because anti-choicers tend to ignore the pregnant woman, and put all their attention on the well-being of the embryo (and my friend…
June 1, 2009
Medgar Evers was a civil rights activist in Mississippi. Growing up black in a state where dark skin was a crime, he had the courage to stand up for his rights and the rights of his friends and family. He organized boycotts, sued for admission to a segregated law school, and became field…
May 31, 2009
Department of Homeland Security report on Rightwing Extremism, issued April 7, 2009:
Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and…
May 31, 2009
The Wichita Eagle reports that George Tiller was shot and killed:
George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death this morning as he walked into church services.
Tiller is one of the few doctors in the country who offered third…
May 29, 2009
The AP reports:
Cool and collected, Kavya Shivashankar wrote out every word on her palm and always ended with a smile. The 13-year-old Kansas girl saved the biggest smile for last, when she rattled off the letters to "Laodicean" to become the nation's spelling champion.
The budding neurosurgeon…
May 28, 2009
Justice Learned Hand was not Native American.
