What’s on your desktop?

Female Science Professor is polling her readers on what’s on their computer desktop. It’s not a weird question pulled out of thin air: she noted that male professors may be more comfortable showing pictures of their families than females, who have to be more sensitive to the stereotypes.

It’s not a scientific poll in any sense of the word, but just out of curiousity, let’s see what emerges.

My answer was “Other.” My desktop image right now is of a hypothetical cephalopod-like alien swimming in a methane sea beneath an orange-red sky. What would fit her hypothesis, though, is that my desk has a keyboard drawer that I don’t use (my office computer is my laptop), and that’s filled to overflowing with…pictures of my family.

Mixed feelings

A revised curriculum at Harvard may include a required course in religion, as Jim Downey has brought to my attention. There isn’t enough information in the article to decide how to regard this decision, though; I don’t object automatically to requiring college kids to learn to think critically about religion, and I would hope that a course at Harvard wouldn’t be anything like a tutorial in Jebus-praising at Pensacola Christian College, but who knows? The summary is impossibly vague.

“I think 30 years ago,” when the school’s curriculum was last overhauled, “people would have said that religion is not something that everyone needs to know,” said Louis Menand, a Harvard professor and co-chairman of the committee that drafted the report. “But today, few would disagree that religion is supremely important to modern life.”

In the same way that knowledge of cholera and dysentery would be supremely important to a 19th century city dweller? It sounds like any of a number of courses would fit the requirement of discussing “the interplay between reason and faith“, so it doesn’t sound like much of a change to me…except, of course, that it would be treated as a PR coup by the religious.

What our kids need to know

Since John Wilkins has already commented on Paul Hanle’s article on the declining competitiveness of Americans in science, I’ll focus my opinion on a narrower point. I think Hanle is precisely correct when he points out that ID and creationism are shackles that handicap science education in our country.

By teaching intelligent design or other variants of creationism in science classes at public schools — or by undercutting the credibility of evolution — we are greatly diminishing our chances for future scientific breakthroughs and technological innovations, and are endangering our health, safety and economic well-being as individuals and as a nation.

[Read more…]

Job opportunity!

Look, everyone! The Lehigh University biology department is hiring! I wonder if they’re searching for a “design theorist” to complement their eminent Professor Behe…

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

Evolutionary Biology

The Department of Biological Sciences seeks candidates with outstanding research that employs modern analytical methods in the study of fundamental aspects of the evolutionary process. Areas of specialization may include field and/or laboratory studies on molecular aspects of population genetics, molecular mechanisms of phenotypic expression, cell division, asexual or sexual development, neural/endocrine processes, genome conservation, or phylogeny. The successful candidate for this TENURE-TRACK position will have the potential or demonstrated ability to generate extramural funding and have a commitment to instructional excellence at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The College of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh is especially interested in qualified candidates who can contribute, through their research, teaching, and/or service, to the diversity and excellence of the academic community. Applications should be directed to: Professor M. Itzkowitz, Chair, Evolutionary Biology Search Committee. E-mail: inbios@lehigh.edu Send curriculum vitae, representative publications, description of research and teaching interests, and four letters of reference to the Search Committee Chair electronically or to: Department of Biological Sciences, 111 Research Drive, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015 Deadline for submission is December 1, 2006.

Lehigh University is an Equal Opportunity Affirmative Action Employer and is committed to recruiting and retaining women and minorities.

…Nope, guess not. They’re a sensible university, not insane. It is a rather wide-open call for applicants, though—it’s like they’re saying all they want is someone with solid standing in almost any aspect of evolutionary biology.

Carnivalia, and an open thread

Perusable blogaliciousness for your Friday morning:

The Tangled Bank

The Hairy Museum of Natural History has put out a call for submissions to the Tangled Bank, with an early deadline. If you want a shot at maybe seeing your link with a custom illustration, send it in by Sunday evening. He’ll try to accept stuff up through Tuesday, but make life easy on the guy, OK?

Maybe it’s an Australian custom

I’ve been asked if this is a common occurrence at scientific conferences: at an Australian conference on climate change, the entertainment at a social dinner was a burlesque show. And the answer is…no. Every meeting dinner I’ve attended has had some white-maned elder statesperson of the discipline do the ‘entertainment’, which is usually thin on the bare flesh and the humor, thick with jargon and historical detail. It can be fun—I recall one talk by JZ Young that was full of squid and voltages that I really enjoyed—but I don’t think it would have been improved if he’d been up on the podium wearing nothing but balloons.

It’s an odd story. The cabaret was cut short after 10 minutes, so I think it’s clear that a significant number of attendees must have expressed their disapproval immediately, and that this was a bit beyond the pale, even for wild ol’ Australia. Some organizer somewhere made a very, very bad decision, I think.