Lehigh University is becoming quite active in asserting their opposition to ID. Wonder why?
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Lehigh University is becoming quite active in asserting their opposition to ID. Wonder why?
The new Seed science bloggers continue to trickle in, and the latest is Evolving Thoughts. Go on over and say howdy.
Last night, I had to read this book RPM mentioned. It’s not very long—about 100 pages, counting a preface, an epilogue, and an afterward, and it has lots of pictures—but be warned: it’s very inside baseball.
The book is Won for All: How the Drosophila Genome Was Sequenced(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) by Michael Ashburner, and its subject is the rush to sequence the Drosophila genome in 1998-1999. It’s a rather strange twist on what I expected, though. While the subtitle says “How the Drosophila Genome Was Sequenced,” there is almost no science at all in the body of the book; instead, it’s all about the people and the politics, with Ashburner flitting about from place to place, yelling at people and eating sushi. It’s phenomenally entertaining.
Today is 6/6/06, that ominous numerological signifier of the fundies, much beloved by conspiracy theorists, and full of interesting numerical properties (but is there ever such a thing as an uninteresting number?). It’s also the date that Ann Coulter’s new book, Godless, is being released.
Everyone is missing the most portentous aspect of the number, though…
Or rather, don’t. Here’s this week’s “ask a science blogger” question:
Do you think there is a brain drain going on (i.e. foreign scientists not coming to work and study in the U.S. like they used to, because of new immigration rules and the general unpopularity of the U.S.) If so, what are its implications? Is there anything we can do about it?
Just read Mark. His answer is perfect.
The one thing we could do about it is kick a lot of Republicans out of Washington, and a lot of spineless Democrats, too. I don’t see it happening.
(Oh, and do go say hello to Good Math, Bad Math, a member of the new cohort of sciencebloggers here.)
This silly noise about tomorrow being 06/06/06 and therefore tying in to Christian End Times malarkey is all numerological nonsense. There’s not going to be anything particularly memorably evil about tomorrow, I suspect.
Except perhaps one little thing.
I’ll mention it at 06:06:06am on 06/06/06.
Let’s test the proposition.
“The man shouted ‘God will save me, if he exists’, lowered himself by a rope into the enclosure, took his shoes off and went up to the lions,” the official said.
The answer?
No.
Hey, this sounds familiar…so I thought I’d send some favorable referrals back Jinwicked’s way.
I guess it was almost ten years ago that I first saw this astonishing gem of creationist dishonesty on talk.origins: now Good Math, Bad Math has put it on a weblog. Read all about John Woodmorappe’s median/mean mangling in defense of Noah’s Ark.
There were some interesting responses to my post on the god worm. There were some that were just annoying. I’m not impressed with the ones that make excuses for religion by calling me “naive” and lacking an impression of the diversity of religious belief out there; one bothersome strategy that I also saw in Barbara O’Brien’s post was an attempt to defocus religious belief.
