Congratulations to Gregory Simonian!

The Alliance for Science sponsored an essay contest—students were asked to submit an essay on the theme, “Why would I want my doctor to have studied evolution?”

The winners have been announced, and first prize has gone to Gregory Simonian. Read the whole collection, including the entries from Merve Fejzula, Shobha Topgi, and Linda Zhou — it seems a few high school students are far smarter than the entire gang of evolution deniers at the Discovery Institute.

The ID Tenure Plan

Now that they’re quite irate about Guillermo Gonzalez failing to get tenure, the gang at the Discovery Institute seems to have forgotten Bill Dembski’s radical plan for dealing with biologists.

If I ever became the president of a university (per impossibile), I would dissolve the biology department and divide the faculty with tenure that I couldn’t get rid of into two new departments: those who know engineering and how it applies to biological systems would be assigned to the new “Department of Biological Engineering”; the rest, and that includes the evolutionists, would be consigned to the new “Department of Nature Appreciation” (didn’t Darwin think of himself as a naturalist?).

So he’d just get rid of the non-tenured faculty, and banish the rest to a new department with a mocking name. I don’t think these guys can legitimately complain about Gonzalez’s treatment — he was handled far more respectfully than the creationists would deal with us.

Dembski would never become president of any credible university since his plan would destroy the representation of a major discipline on the campus, with concomitant loss of student enrollment, and would utterly demolish the university’s status in graduate and medical schools. It was an insane, stupid thing to suggest then, but it’s an awfully handy counterpoise to the current DI position now.

Where did you go wrong, old chum?

Among the multitudes who have now seen Flock of Dodos was a woman who recognized one of the faces on the screen, and she wrote Randy Olson with a little anecdote that you might find amusing, and a little bit sweet and charming.

Just watched the film, congratulations to Randy Olson for a well documented
documentary of a topic that deserves greater coverage.

Dr. Mike Behe was the first guy I ever dated, at the tender age of 13. We were
bright kids, and Mike tutored me in math. My dad took us on our ‘dates.’ I ended up
in technology, and he took the bio-science route. When my mom called me last year to
let me know that he was at the forefront of Intelligent Design, I was relatively
dumbfounded. Yes, we went to Catholic school, and yes, we were both science geeks,
but his philosophy and purported science and evidence is completely contradictory to
what we mutually pursued as adolescent theory. I am touching a book on my bookshelf
on Paleoanthropology that I know we both digested, and can’t for the life of me
figure out how he got to where he is now. Must be Lehigh College; California helps
you have a broader non-provincial perspective. Tell Mike he needs to get out of the
sticks.

Yes, she gave permission to post this publicly, as long as we didn’t reveal her name; if Dr Behe wants to get in touch with his old sweetie, he should talk to Randy Olson, not me. Personally, I wouldn’t blame Lehigh, which really isn’t that bad of a place—pin the problem on religion, not geography.

If any of my old Sunday School pals want to write in and rebuke me for leaving the church, I’ll post that in fair return. If you want anecdotes from my old girlfriends, though, you’re out of luck—I married the only one who mattered, and she’s not going to have any surprising stories about how I changed, and there will definitely be no accounts about how we tutored each other in biology.

Straight talking

Ralph Reed is a sleazy con artist who hides his predatory nature behind a mask of piety; Hannity is a slow-witted thug with a simple-minded view of the world that he takes straight from the religious. It was therefore rather delightful to see Christopher Hitchens plainly reject their ridiculous demand for a hypocritical expression of sorrow at the death of a rich old shaman.

I was particularly appalled at Hannity’s list of Falwell’s virtues that included founding Liberty University. If founding a compound where ignorance is encouraged to fester is one of his accomplishments, I will admit that he was much much more successful at it than Jim Jones, David Koresh, or Elizabeth Clare Prophet…but I refuse to regard it as positive on Falwell’s ledger sheet.

It was good to see how to handle the right-wing blowhards well, too: charge ahead, don’t allow them to force you into their frame, and talk right over their diatribes.

Any Ann Arborites want to meet up?

I’ve got a better idea of what my schedule is like, and even have a recommendation for a hangout tonight — would anyone care to join me at the Arbor Brewing Company tonight (Thursday) around 7 or 8pm? I’m going whether anyone shows up or not, and if nobody joins me, I’ll be drinking alone…and how pathetic would that be?

Look for the bearded fellow with a copy of that book with a bright yellow cover titled “God is Not Great” — I’ll be working on my Hitchens impersonation.