Paleontologists at work

I’m going to break another webcam, aren’t I? While you can, you can actually watch a dinosaur dig in progress in Svalbard, Norway. (Strictly speaking, though, it looks like they’re excavating pliosaurs and ichthyosaurs, not dinosaurs.)

I’m amused that it looks exactly like the the big construction project on the county courthouse in Morris, Minnesota: a lot of people standing around watching one person with an itty-bitty trowel pushing dirt around. Except that these guys are all wearing coats in August.

But seriously, it looks like they’re having a good time — bring the kids around so they can see what the minutia of real science looks like.

There are four cameras — don’t forget to check them all, some are aimed at inactive areas right now.

I guess I must be consistent, at least

So I played this Battleground God game, which is supposed to ferret out philosophical contradictions in your views about religion. I didn’t implode into a mass of inconsistent pudding at the end, which is good, right?

Where are my fabulous prizes?

Apparently, you can also get a perfect score by playing from the theistic perspective, since the goal is just to avoid self-contradiction. I’d try, but I can’t. All I did was give the answers that weren’t stupid. It’s not as if I were thinking to play.

Grabbing eyeballs with a blog

Nick Denton is one of those interesting fellows in online media: my first impression was that he runs gossipy sites and therefore must be shallow, but then you discover that he’s actually got very finely tuned antennae to what people want to read…and if it’s gossip, then so be it. But at the same time there are some real insights into what draws and keeps the attention of those fickle creatures called human beings. This routine memo from Denton summarizing the popular stories of the month is wonderfully revealing, and a good lesson for anyone writing on the web.

Kevin Purdy’s highly informative story about the effects of caffeine on the brain in Lifehacker was the breakout story of July. And the reader interest in the piece highlights — do we really need a reminder? — the draw of the explanation. There’s too much news on the web; and way too little explanation. Fully a quarter of the top stories are straight how-tos or otherwise helpful or informative.

Do we really need any reminders of the other patterns either? The stories to which people respond are the stories to which they’ve always responded, since way before the internet. Readers enjoy strong opinion, such as Charlie Jane’s attack on Night Shyamalan. They like mysteries, especially photoshop mysteries, as Gizmodo demonstrated with its coverage of BP’s photoshopped PR pic.

Apply those ideas to some of the arguments going on in the skeptical/atheist communities right now. Good, controversial, interesting articles combine strong opinion (“Joe Blow is an idiot!”) with explanation (“And here’s why!”). One thing I would agree on with some of the recent bleeding hearts of skepticism is that strong opinion doesn’t work when it stands alone, but explanation and analysis can work persuasively enough by itself — if you can get people to read it. The combo, though…that’s the big win.

(via Carl Zimmer)

Hitchens is Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens is very sick with esophageal cancer, but he still writes like a fiery angel in describing his situation.

These are my first raw reactions to being stricken. I am quietly resolved to resist bodily as best I can, even if only passively, and to seek the most advanced advice. My heart and blood pressure and many other registers are now strong again: indeed, it occurs to me that if I didn’t have such a stout constitution I might have led a much healthier life thus far. Against me is the blind, emotionless alien, cheered on by some who have long wished me ill. But on the side of my continued life is a group of brilliant and selfless physicians plus an astonishing number of prayer groups. On both of these I hope to write next time if–as my father invariably said–I am spared.

I’m reminded of Stephen J. Gould, who was also afflicted with cancer, who wrote one of his best essays ever, The Median Isn’t the Message, on the subject. How do atheists face death? As we see from the examples of Hitchens and Gould, with courage and reason.

Gould, by the way, outlived his diagnosis by 20 years.

Also, if you’d like to see some examples of the people wishing Hitchens ill, simply browse this cache of conservative comments at Politico. The contrast is astonishing: there’s Hitchens, the wounded lion, writing beautifully and strongly, and there are the nattering mice, blathering about ‘atheists in foxholes’ and praying for a conversion in their thuggish and clumsy cliches and blind dogmas.

I look at the two sides and I know which one I want to be on when I grow up.

FOXNews and an already corrupted poll

By popular demand (50 email requests in the last few hours), here’s an absurd Prop8 poll on FoxNews. Go ahead and take a stab at it, but from my perspective, it’s already been trashed — with numbers like this, it’s already clearly down to battling bots duking it out.

Did Judge Make Right Call In Gay Marriage Case?

Yes — Prop. 8 violates the Constitution. 47% (46,786 votes)
No — Marriage is an institution between a man and a woman. I don’t care what the judge thinks about the Constitution. 46% (46,277 votes)
I’m not sure but shouldn’t the voters views count for something? 6% (6,321 votes)
Other (leave a comment). 1% (840 votes)

That meddling 14th Amendment foils Republican plans…again!

How dare radicals insert their civil rights provisions into the sacred Constitution — a federal judge has just declared that California’s Proposition 8 is in violation of the 14th Amendment. Now it’s probably going to the Supreme Court, and who knows what will happen in wacky Roberts-Scalia land, packed with Catholics.

I guess the only surefire strategy for the conservatives is to go back to whining about that awful 14th amendment. Meanwhile, California should plan on having a gay old time.

We’ve angered another crackpot

Uh-oh. Seed Media has received some demands from Robert Lanza, MD, Scientist, Theoretician, Genius, Renegade Thinker. He wants us to take down a few posts by Orac and myself. I guess he doesn’t like being compared to Grandpa Simpson, or seeing disagreement with his ideas about the afterlife, or being exposed as a quantum woo-meister.

Gosh, what will I do?

Seed has a very clearcut policy on our posts, and there is going to be no attempt to censor any of them. Gee. So I’m not going to edit them.

I’d hate to think that anyone might link to this post, or to these presumably objectional posts #1, #2, or #3. That might increase the likelihood that Google will return those links in searches for Robert Lanza. Whatever you do, don’t link to any of these posts about Robert Lanza on Scienceblogs!