Down House in Kent has been closed for renovations, but it’s been opened to the public again. Take a tour of the place online — it sounds like there were some significant additions to the exhibits. Which means, of course, that I have to go back again soon.
When a blogger named Zeno proudly announces that his blog, Halfway There, is about to reach the landmark of 250,000 hits, doesn’t that imply that he’ll never ever reach 500,000 hits?
It’s getting hot and nasty in the battle over the Texas science standards. Donna Garner, one of the members of the forces of darkness, has distributed a letter in which she claims that the atheists are winning Texas (I wish!), and that those of us who are working to teach evolution must be opposed more fiercely. And, of course, any accusation levied against scientists is perfectly fair. The kicker in her letter is a bit of slander:
Jeffrey Dahmer, one of America’s most infamous serial killers who cannibalized more than 17 boys before being captured, gave an [sic] last interview with Dateline NBC nine months before his death, and he said the following about why he acted as he did: “If a person doesn’t think that there is a God to be accountable to, then what’s the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we died, you know, that was it, there was nothing….” (Dateline NBC, The Final Interview, Nov. 29, 1994).
Well, yes, of course! Why didn’t we think of consulting a convicted and confessed sexual sadist and serial killer on matters of ethics and science? I guess this is one perspective in which the religious have an advantage over us atheists — they’re already accustomed to regarding the clergy as authorities.
As you all know, Calvin & Hobbes was the best comic strip ever.
We have a Vermont alumnus among the ScienceBorg: Kevin Beck at Dr Joan Bushwell’s Chimpanzee Refuge. He’d like to coordinate a letter-writing campaign to protest UVM’s poor choice of a commencement speaker, so maybe you should go over there and leave a comment and email address.
I’m still shaking my head over this. The man’s a notorious creationist and apologist for criminal Republican administrations. Why would anyone want to honor this guy? Is it for his work as a shill for eyedrops?
Richard Dawkins will be speaking in Northrup Auditorium at the University of Minnesota on 4 March, at 7pm. Get your tickets now!
There will also be a post-lecture pub event. I’ll post more information on that as it comes available.
For those of you who are pining for a visit from Richard Dawkins, here is his calendar. It looks like we Minnesotans are among the fortunate few.
An essay by Dennis Overbye makes an important point: if you want a source for good values, look to science.
Science is not a monument of received Truth but something that people do to look for truth.
That endeavor, which has transformed the world in the last few centuries, does indeed teach values. Those values, among others, are honesty, doubt, respect for evidence, openness, accountability and tolerance and indeed hunger for opposing points of view. These are the unabashedly pragmatic working principles that guide the buzzing, testing, poking, probing, argumentative, gossiping, gadgety, joking, dreaming and tendentious cloud of activity — the writer and biologist Lewis Thomas once likened it to an anthill — that is slowly and thoroughly penetrating every nook and cranny of the world.
Nobody appeared in a cloud of smoke and taught scientists these virtues. This behavior simply evolved because it worked.
I’d broaden it a bit and use that fine phrase Jerry Coyne used, “secular reason”, instead of the narrower term of “science”, but this is exactly right. And the antithesis of that virtue is faith and dogma, which teaches deceit and self-delusion, certainty, credulity, mystery, fear and guilt, and intolerance.
We had a little drama in St Paul this morning: an anti-choice kook decided that an effective way to silence a family planning clinic was to smash the entrance to Planned Parenthood with his SUV.
Several employees were in the building at the time, said Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Kathi Di Nicola. She said the SUV hit the front door of the clinic two or three times, damaging the clinic’s front door and surrounding stonework.
When Di Nicola arrived at the clinic, she said the man had gotten out of the SUV and was pacing around it, holding a crucifix and chanting. “He was agitated and he was saying, ‘shut down this Auschwitz,’ ” she said.
Violent, unthinking, incoherent, and flaunting his piety. Typical.
In contrast, the staff at the clinic responded calmly and with discipline.
This is a promo for a wingnut movie that portrays the autonomy of women as a great evil … with an all-female cast. Even this short clip is nauseating.
The lies fly thick and fast. I’m particularly disgusted with the one interviewee who claims that, as a former representative of family planning education, she would go into schools and increase the teen pregnancy rate so that the girls would have 3-5 abortions between the ages of 13 and 18, and that this was the goal of her agency. Right. It is, of course, the antithesis of what family planning organizations actually do.
The rest is also vile, starting with the odious Phyllis Schlafly. And the foundation of their outrageous claims? The rantings of the 16th century proto-Puritan preacher, John Knox. Hasn’t the passage of 500 years been enough to expose him as ridiculous?
Many of you were anxious to find out more about my trip to Columbus, Ohio in a few weeks, and here’s the information you need. This is to be a Darwin Day banquet, open to the public, but there is a charge. It’s on 14 February, so you could always bring a date and say it’s their Valentine’s Day gift, too.
