The Give Up Blog has a post outlining a general problem: denialists. The author is putting together a list of common tactics used by denialists of all stripes, whether they’re trying to pretend global warming isn’t happening, Hitler didn’t kill all those Jews, or evolution is a hoax, and they represent a snapshot of the hallmarks of crank anti-science. Most of the examples he’s using are from climate change, but they also fit quite well with the creation-evolution debates.
I confess that I have not read Bérubé’s new book, yet. It’s on my list, but that list is long and dreadfully discouraging…and now, Chris Clarke has undermined the book’s sales by publishing a condensed version of its contents. I also suspect that Bérubé’s book lacks the beautiful illustrations.
All hail the democratizing power of the net! Information must be free!
Of course! They’re lurking everywhere, scheming to get onto school boards and wreak havoc. I recently heard from a few people at the University of Hawaii who were shocked to see some of the responses of school board candidates there to the question, “Should public schools teach intelligent design?”—they gave answers like this:
Henry W. Hoeft, Jr. says Intelligent Design creationism “Should be taught side-by-side with Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and students can decide which view to accept”.
Brian Kessler says “Voters should decide by referendum”.
(via Language Log)
Now we’ve got unconfirmed rumors that Steve Irwin was born again shortly before he died. You may recall that Charles Darwin was also tarred with claims of a deathbed conversion, too.
The message is clear. Don’t convert, or you’ll die.
The only question is whether it’s Jesus that does the execution, or whether wandering evangelicals are actually serial killers. And since I don’t believe in Jesus…
Let’s say you don’t want to actually read James Kakalios’s Physics of Superheroes(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)—it doesn’t have enough pictures, and the text isn’t in word balloons, or maybe the word “physics” causes an acute case of the heebie-jeebies—well, now you’re in luck. Some of his lectures are on the web via the magic of YouTube, so now you can find out about the Death of Gwen Stacy, or what’s up with Electro & Magneto, or what silly bloopers were made by Superman or The Atom.
The Next Hurrah discusses how information (and misinformation) is spread over the web, determined by tracking how a story about PETA and gay sheep circulated. A couple of interesting points are that he emphasizes that the way to persuade is to get out and make comments on other blogs—having a popular blog is not enough, I presume since the readers will typically be of a similar mindset, and you need to break through to people who might not be of like minds—and that MySpace and LiveJournal are important.
This weekend, I read a couple of stories about people teaching about evolution. As you might expect, these generally aren’t articles that fill me with joy.
