There has been a call for submissions for the next Tangled Bank, to be held at Ouroboros next Wednesday. Send those links to Chris Patil, me, or host@tangledbank.net.
While you’re waiting for the best carnival of them all, may I suggest that you browse these fine alternatives that are already available?
This is an open thread, too — chat away!
Sara at Orcinus has an excellent article on the UC/Calvary Chapel Christian School lawsuit, in which a Christian private school is suing the University of California system to require them to accept their dreck for credit. She’s right that the universities need to stand up for standards, but I do have some problems with her opening statement: it ignores some complexities.
I’m going to be interviewed tonight by Karl Mogel for his Mindcast podcast. I’m not sure how this is going to work; I think it’ll just be made available at some later date. Maybe he’ll pop in and explain how you can listen to it. I do know you can find past episodes in the iTunes store.
He promised me he’d ask some hard questions, and also some hard questions of his other guest, the illustrious Ken Miller. We won’t be on the same segment, sorry…there could be some vigorous argument if we were, and poor Karl might not be able to get in a word edgewise. It is an interesting combination, though: the extremely helpful and well-regarded speaker and biologist who is also an apologist for religion, and the pirate evilutionist with a knife between his teeth who brooks no compromise in his war against religion. We’ll have to see what Karl does with the possibilities.
Chris Clarke has a new banner on Creek Running North, so of course he has to give us a grand tour of the Pleistocene. It’s a Carl Buell original, you know — it’s becoming quite the coup to get some Buell art on your blog.
People are always asking me this question:
I swear, though, that I never, ever give them this answer…
Yesterday, I pointed out that Jonathan Wells was grossly ignorant of basic ideas in evo-devo. This isn’t too surprising; he’s a creationist, he has an agenda to destroy evolutionary biology, and he’s going to rail against evolution…same ol’, same ol’. That’s nothing, though. Wells and his fellows at the Discovery Institute have an even more radical goal of fighting natural, material explanations of many other phenomena, and his latest screed at the DI house organ is against natural explanations of development. Not evolution, not evo-devo, just plain basic developmental biology—apparently, he wants to imply that the development of the embryo requires the intervention of a Designer, or as he refers to that busy being in this essay, a postmaster.
It’s embarrassing enough that all the Minnesota blogs are snorting in disgust at Michele Bachmann’s kiss, but now those foreign, non-Minnesotan sites are making a big foofaraw, too.
Yes, we confess: Minnesota’s sixth district elected a dumb-as-rocks, simpering, fundagelical Bush sycophant to congress, one who would enthusiastically slobber all over the president on national television.
However, in our favor, we did not re-elect Mark Kennedy to the senate. He was such an outrageous bootlicking Bush toady, we might have witnessed some hot and explicit flunky-on-prez action instead…consider yourself lucky.
Grrr. This story pisses me off beyond all reason. It’s a trumped up contretemps generated by one of our local Minnesota Republican hacks, griping about a UM faculty member using her campus email.
Oooh, cool movie of a recently captured frilled shark, Chlamydoselachus anguineus. These are weird-looking deep water predators with awkward-seeming bodies and extremely sharp teeth that they use to catch fish and squid.
(hat tip to the Count)
