[Student Post] What i lerned in skool today part deux.

WARNING. What follows is a a bit of a rant. Worse, it’s an undergraduate rant. If awkward phrases, fallacious arguments and poor grammar offends you, I would suggest skipping this post.

It could be that I’m seeing the world through cobalt-colored glasses– it is winter in MN and very cold and dark– and it is highly probable that the onslaught of medical school rejection letters biases me, but I think today was the most depressing day of school I’ve had in recent history.

It started with neurobiology (Ok…this one’s a bit of a stretch) when we learned about the development of nervous tissue and how progenitor cells literally compete via lateral inhibition with each other to see who will become what. Neuroectoderm cells that “lose” become dispensable support cells while the ones that “win” are lavished with ‘cytoplasmic gifts’ (PZ’s words) and differentiate into a neuroblasts. I couldn’t help but think, “Wow, our very cells viciously jockey to establish hierarchies!?” I mean… who wants to be the little peon cell? They lied to us in kindergarden…

Next came ecology. This was a killer. The professor even had a disclaimer before lecture warning us that what would ensue would be upleasant. Yep. It was the global warming lecture. I had seen the “hockey stick” graphs before and the receding glacier pictures and yes, they’re all very disturbing, but what really got me was a picture of the arctic circle in the summer. There appeared to be about half of the ice cover that usually persisted pre-industrial revolution.

Things got worse in ecology lab. We had to calculate our carbon footprint. Apparently I use about 24 acres to support my lifestyle. It would take 4 earths for everyone to live like me (and I didn’t even count this l’il methane producer):
i-b85428f459789e03342dab62f21dcbe9-s13909083_17655930_5438.jpg
…or these guys…
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The final blow was a film screening for my class on human aggression. The movie? Natural Born Killers. It was a double whammy. Even if the self-destructing, unsavory, hopeless nature of the characters doesn’t get to you than the indictment of society’s commodification of violence certainly does.

Man. Days like today almost make me yearn for the good ol’ days when I had my class on” critical pedagogy” with excerpts from Paulo Freire on the necrophilic and dehumanizing nature of oppression.

I… think I need to go hold one of the bunnies…

Colorado killer identified

We can all breathe a sigh of relief. The gunman who killed four people at evangelical churces in Colorado was not a buddhist atheist Jew evilutionist. He was a deranged disgruntled former member.

The gunman believed to have killed four people at a megachurch and a missionary training school had been thrown out of the school about three years ago and had been sending hate mail to the program, police said in court papers Monday.

The gunman was identified as Matthew Murray, 24, who was home-schooled by his family and raised in what a friend said was a deeply religious Christian household. Murray’s father is a neurologist and a prominent multiple-sclerosis researcher.

I suppose they could blame it all on the fact his father was a scientist, still.

A Golden Compass boycott?

My daughter works at our small town movie theater, and she’s got the inside scoop: apparently the locals are boycotting The Golden Compass. Attendance is down, almost the only people going are university students, the owner has had calls from people in the community complaining about the movie. Darn. I guess the theater should have booked Mel Gibson’s Passion again — that thing hung around forever here, and had loads of people showing up every night.

Ah, rural America.

Irons on Abraham

The inimitable Peter Irons has been hot on the trail of the Nathaniel Abraham case, the ditzy creationist who is upset because he got fired from an evolutionary biology lab. There are some interesting tidbits below, specifically the fact that Abraham claims the job ad did not make reference to acceptance of the theory of evolution as fact, yet when Irons dug up the job posting, it does say that this is work on evolutionary relationships.

It’s a bad sign when you’ve got to misrepresent the facts in your court complaint.

[Read more…]

Bizarro astronomy

OK, astronomers and physicists, get to work. This movie is supposed to be a refutation of modern science, but it’s full of bogus claims like, ‘Since 98% of the sun is hydrogen and helium, the earth ought to be 98% hydrogen and helium.’ There is a lot of similar trivially idiotic nonsense, all marshaled to support the false contention that if science can’t explain it, then god must have done it, but here’s the thing: almost none of it is in the Index to Creationist Claims. We need an update!

Let’s have a presidential science debate!

As Sheril hinted earlier, there is now a formal call for a science debate by the presidential candidates.

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A CALL FOR A PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we, the undersigned, call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Medicine and Health, and Science and Technology Policy.

I’ve expressed my opinion of such an effort before — I think it’s an excellent idea, but suspect that most of the candidates would refuse to submit to it. Not only is there the science test factor, in which we’re asking them to get evaluated on something most know nothing about, but the Republican slate in particular is full of astonishing idiots who hold beliefs contradicted by science. I just can’t believe they’ll step up on the podium for this one, unless they perhaps see an opportunity to hijack the discussion to promote their personal piety.

I still want it to happen: this is an opportunity to apply pressure to our candidates to have some minimal, basic science literacy. As I previously mentioned, though, those airheads with nice hairdos that populate the television media are even more dim than the candidates themselves, and must not be allowed anywhere near the event — I want wildlife biologists armed with tranquilizer guns at the doors, with orders to shoot Russert and Blitzer and anyone from Fox News on sight. How about if we put Natalie Angier, Carl Zimmer, John Horgan, Ira Flatow, John Tierney, and Cornelia Dean on a panel asking questions? How about if we ask Science and Nature to send representatives with questions? I would dearly love to see a debate on any subject where the candidates had to deal with issues of some substance.

So let’s all make a noise about this one, OK? Rattle the cages, and tell the candidates we want to hear opinions on topics that matter for the leader of a technological, 21st century society, rather than the usual tripe.

Books for the Spring 2008 semester

The Fall semester is winding down — this is the last week of classes — so it’s time to start thinking about the Spring term.

Ugh. I don’t want to. This term has been driving me sufficiently insane as it is.

But anyway, if you’re a student thinking about all the money you’ll have to be spending on textbooks, here’s a list of what you’ll need to get if you’re taking my courses. Feel free to order them from some other source than the university bookstore. I don’t get a penny from the U bookstore, but I have to confess, the links below do tie into affiliate programs that give me a few pennies in gift certificates to the various online sources.

  • Freshman biology majors will be taking Biology 1111, Fundamentals of Genetics, Evolution, and Development (FunGenEvoDevo, for short), either in the fall or the spring term. This course is primarily a qualitative introduction to the basic concepts of the scientific method which will also give you an overview of the fields described in the title. It has three textbooks, but two of them are optional.

    • Science as a Way of Knowing: The Foundations of Modern Biology(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by John A. Moore. This is the primary required text for the course; you may be surprised when you read it, since it doesn’t fit the usual expectations of an introductory biology textbook. We did tell you this was a liberal arts university when you enrolled, though, didn’t we?

    • Life: The Science of Biology(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by David Sadava, H. Craig Heller , Gordon H. Orians, William K. Purves, David M. Hillis. This book is optional, but highly recommended, and will be used as a reference text throughout the course. You can get by using the copies in the reference section of the library, but since this book will also be used in our required biodiversity and cell biology courses, you might as well bite the expensive bullet and get a copy now. The links above are to the 8th and latest edition; it’s fine to use the 7th edition.

    • The Counter-Creationism Handbook(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Isaak. This book is an entirely optional resource; if you’re going to be a biologist, though, you’re going to have to argue with creationists sometime, and this text is invaluable. We will, however, only be using it for about a week, so if it breaks your budget, feel free to share another student’s copy.

  • I’ll also be teaching Genetics, Biology 4312.

    • Concepts of Genetics(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by William S. Klug, Michael R. Cummings, and Charlotte A Spencer. It’s a solid textbook of transmission genetics.

It all sounds so fun, doesn’t it?