Last chance at escapism before the school year starts: Skatje, her friend Nathan, and I are heading off to the Minnesota Renaissance festival today. I don’t know about this; hanging out with a gang of people pretending it’s the 13th century is a bit too much like meeting up with creationists.
On the advice of counsel, I’m not going to say a word, yet.
However, I’ve been getting lots of email and seeing lots of articles on the web; I’ve been getting offers of pro bono lawyering and to set up donations for a defense fund. Thanks to everyone! I haven’t been replying to most of those offers because, on the advice of counsel, yadda yadda, but I appreciate them all. If the need develops I may take advantage of them, but until then, I just crouch, gnawing on the muzzle, mad eyes rolling, doing my best to be a good little doggie.
But really, thanks, thanks, thanks — and now we just sit back and wait. Let the pros do their job.
It’s nice to see these casual references to PZ Myers, as if anyone would have heard of me:
The lab is at 101 Theory Drive, a developer’s idea of a scientific street name that Lynch found presumptuous.
It is a mark of the difficulty of life sciences — biology and its many descendants — that to call something a theory is to honor, not slight it. Theory, evolutionary biologist P.Z. Myers has written, is what scientists aspire to. Lynch, for all of his bombast, was respectful of the intellectual protocols of his science.
“I would have called it Hypothesis Drive,” he said.
The article is part of an interesting series on research into learning and memory, that is also unfortunately marred by some casual sexism on the part of its subject. See, Zuska, you just had to ruin it for me!
P.S. I think of myself as more of a developmental biologist than evolutionary biologist, but OK, I am very interested in evolutionary issues.
If not, Minnesota Stories has a short interview with PZ Myers, taped last year. It’s too bad the camera didn’t pan to my left a little bit, because my Trophy Wife™ was sitting right next to me the whole time, and she would have been much more restful on the eyes.
So … this weekend, we had an odd and informal secret meeting of the SciBlings in New York City. This was nothing official, it’s like a whole bunch of the bloggers here decided they ought to get together some time, and a plan slowly crystallized and the precipitate settled out on NYC. It was decided to keep it informal and in-house, or I would have advertised our presence further ahead of time — but with about 3 dozen of us present it would have been too much to invite in a lot of others, even though there were lots of other NY bloggers and readers I would have liked to have met.
So, there’s about 30 or so of the ScienceBlogs clan gathered in New York City this weekend. We’ve been busy, ummm, bonding or something, and also having some serious discussions, but now we’re more or less free. We’re kind of dispersed in a chaotic fashion, but some of us, including at least me and Bora, and probably several others, are planning to meet at the BBar and Grill, at 40 East 4th St., from about 7:00 on. All are welcome, come on down and join us!
Well, I was trying to get home from my talk in Stillwater (more about that later), but the weather did not cooperate. We’re having one of those spectacular midwestern summer storms — a watery deluge, non-stop lightning so close and so bright it blinded me, a threat of tornados, etc. Since I couldn’t go faster than 10mph on the freeway, visibility was nonexistent, and word was that the storm was traveling in exactly the same direction I was, I decided maybe I should bag this travel stuff and found a no-name motel somewhere. If you hear that Clearwater, MN was demolished by tornados overnight … that’s me.
The weather is much more fun when you aren’t driving in it.
It’s a busy weekend coming up. On Sunday, 12 August, I’ll be speaking at the St. Paul Critical Thinking Club, at The Kelly Inn (off I-94 at the Marion St exit) from 10:00 AM to noon. Well, it’s scheduled for two hours, but I promise not to babble on for that length of time. There is a $10 fee to cover the buffet breakfast, and you need to rsvp to Lee Salisbury if you want to attend.
Progress and Opportunities in Evolution
Scientists are a pragmatic bunch who typically don’t worry too much about the deeper philosophical meanings of their vocation: the important property of a good theory is that it allows them to formulate experimentally testable hypotheses and leads them on to intellectually fruitful pursuits. I’ll summarize some of the reasons good scientists have found and are still finding evolutionary theory eminently useful, to the point that many of them take evolutionary conclusions for granted. There is almost no argument about the major ideas of evolution within biology because of its utility — the argument is entirely between a few representative members of the scientific community and scientifically ignorant and religiously motivated leaders of backwards ideology.
And then I talk to the Stillwater Critical Thinking Club on Monday, 13 August, from 7:00-9:00 pm at The Family Means Building on 1875 Northwestern Ave.
Complexity and Order in Evolution
One of the most common arguments for Intelligent Design creationism is that organisms are “too complex” to have evolved. This is fallacious: complexity is a natural consequence of evolutionary processes. It reflects a fundamental confusion in creationist thinking — they use complexity where they mean order, and order when they mean intent. I’ll be discussing these three different words, complexity, order, and intent, and their relevance to evolutionary biology.
And then I get to come home for a few days before my next out-of-state trip.
Another busy day ahead of me: yesterday I met Alex and Bora, shared a dinner table with James Randi, and saw swarms of other people I have to meet today … so off I go to another series of random encounters.
Mainly because you don’t know what foo camp is all about. Yes, I have arrived in lovely Sunnyvale, safe and sound, ready for my alter ego, Tyler Nerden, to face the google geeks.
While I was hurtling through the sky at hundreds of miles an hour, what did I miss? I just caught Behe on the Colbert Report, and yowza, what a clown. Einstein’s theories were all about putting limits on Newton? And Behe is the guy who’s putting limits on Darwin? Can we just say he’s an idiot and be done with it now?
And speaking of dismissive one-liners, what the heck is going on here in my own little fever-swamp? There are 357 comments on this trivial article! I could tell just from the numbers that a troll has been at work, and what do you know, there’s David snarking away (68 of those comments are just him prattling away), and all you people are feeding the little infestation. Stop it. He’s not worth it. Poof, now he’s gone.
I will be checking in a little more regularly now, so behave yourselves.
