May 07 2013
It’s going to be a good season, I can tell already. It’s finals week, so I’ll still have an abrupt pile of grading to do on Thursday, but otherwise, my teaching obligations are done for the semester. Now I’m trapped, trapped I tell you, in Morris for almost (I do have two quick trips to …
Apr 27 2013
Casey Luskin is such a great gift to the scientific community. The public spokesman for the Discovery Institute has a law degree and a Masters degree (in Science! Earth Science, that is) and thinks he is qualified to analyze papers in genetics and molecular biology, fields in which he hasn’t the slightest smattering of background, …
Apr 23 2013
I’m giving you a heads-up in advance: the last Cafe Scientifique in Morris for the school year is next Tuesday, the 30th, and you-know-who is giving it. I expect to see you all there. If you’re not, don’t come around asking me for a Christmas present later.
Apr 22 2013
For some random reason, this post from the Scienceblogs era Pharyngula, “There are no marching morons“, is getting some sudden attention, so I thought I’d bring it here. Most people have probably never heard of Kornbluth, or read The Marching Morons, but now you can! It’s on scribd, or you can just read the summary …
Mar 29 2013
Last night at #nwc36 we were talking about evodevo, and one of the topics that came up was the importance of Drosophila reasearch in providing the foundation for comparative genetic analysis…which led to Sarah Palin. Remember Palin’s ignorant mockery of fruit fly research? This is what we get from the Republican party. Now Michelle Malkin’s …
Mar 23 2013
There’s another paper out debunking the ENCODE consortium’s absurd interpretation of their data. ENCODE, you may recall, published a rather controversial paper in which they claimed to have found that 80% of the human genome was ‘functional’ — for an extraordinarily loose definition of function — and further revealed that several of the project leaders …
Mar 19 2013
Earlier this month, there was a flurry of headlines in the pop-sci press that exasperated me. “Have scientists discovered reversible evolution?” was one; “Evidence of Reverse Evolution Seen in Dust Mites” was another. They failed because they always tried to express a subtle idea in a fluffy way that screwed up a more fundamental concept …
Mar 17 2013
After that debate between Tzortzis and Lawrence Krauss that was overshadowed by the disgraceful anti-egalitarian exhibition of Muslim misogyny, iERA is now trying a new tactic: they’re releasing tiny snippets of the debate that they believe they can spin into anti-Krauss sentiment. Here’s a perfect example, Krauss’s reply to a question about the morality of …
Mar 10 2013
Bringing extinct animals back to life is big news this week. Not because there’ve been any particular recent breakthroughs, but because the upcoming issue of National Geographic features the topic as a cover story, and is hosting a related TEDx meeting this Friday in Washington D.C. that’s also sponsored by Stewart Brand’s Long Now Foundation. …
Feb 06 2013
It’s a harsh world for us men. Oh, sure, we’ve got all the political and economic power, and we’ve got most of the guns, but step into a senior citizens’ center and you’ll notice the preponderance of elderly women. Men die younger, on average. I’m also acutely aware of the growing disparity as we get …
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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
Chris Clarke is a science and natural history writer, editor, and
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