Pro-Science News
Taking Questions from Students
William Demsbki includes credit in his course for students for participating in online exchanges. Someone claiming to be a student of his has shown up at AtBC and asked some questions. I felt moved to provide some answers.
BJRay:
Quote
Dembski has in fact mentioned “respectful treatment” in so [...]
Categories: Pro-Science News
Conophytum bachelorum
Photograph by Matt Opel. Photography contest, Honorable Mention. Conophytum bachelorum – a desert plant from South Africa, in cultivation. The plant body is a pair of fused, succulent leaves....
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Categories: Pro-Science News
Pity the poor inverts
How did all those “kinds” of animals survive aboard the Ark during Noah’s Flood? Ken Ham has a novel answer. See below the fold....
Richard B. Hoppe
Categories: Pro-Science News
Pennock on postmodernism in ID creationism
Rob Pennock has a new article out in Science and Education. It analyzes how Phillip Johnson brought postmodernist elements to the ID movement, tracing these elements back to Johnson’s midlife crisis, his gradual turn to evangelicalism, and his move into “Critical Legal Studies” in legal studies, wherein he made up the entire “right wing” of that field. Pennock compares Johnson’s 1984 article on critical legal studies to his later arguments against evolution and for a...
Nick Matzke
http://www.talkdesign.org
Categories: Pro-Science News
Smithsonian's Human Origins Initiative
The Smithsonian Institution has launched a new web site focused on human origins. It includes a good deal of material on the evidence (behavior, fossils, genetics, and dating) and Smithsonian’s research projects, along with what looks like a very useful set of education resources including lesson plans for teachers, a teachers forum, and student resources including an interactive mystery skull interactive exercise (I had trouble with that in Chrome but not in Firefox; apparently there’s...
Richard B. Hoppe
Categories: Pro-Science News
A glimpse of Evidence of Evolution
NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview (PDF) of Evidence of Evolution (Abrams, 2009), featuring the photography of Susan Middleton and the text of Mary Ellen Hannibal.
Categories: Pro-Science News
Zimmerman on Rick Santorum
Rick Santorum is a man with his eye on making a run for the presidency. He’s also known for his Catholocism and for his promotion of “intelligent design” creationism. Michael Zimmerman, the organizer behind the Clergy Letter Project, has a post up at the Huffington Post noting the hypocrisy of Santorum criticizing someone for ignoring [...]
Categories: Pro-Science News
Science blogs: ur doin it wrong.
An open access paper just out looks at science blogging. According to the abstract, the paper … focuses on one of the ICTs [Information and Communication Technologies] that have already been adopted in science communication, on science blogging. The findings from the analysis of eleven blogs are presented in an attempt to understand current practices of science blogging and to provide insight into the role of blogging in the promotion of more interactive forms of...
Richard B. Hoppe
Categories: Pro-Science News
Rimstone Formation
Photograph by James Rice. Photography contest, Honorable Mention. 8-meter Rimstone Formation, from the first science and mapping expedition to Haunted Forest Cave in Belize....
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Categories: Pro-Science News
State of Zen for Sage Grouse
The Los Angeles Times reports on how the US Interior Department made a decision about sage grouse:
The Interior Department declared Friday that an iconic Western bird deserves federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, but declined to offer that protection immediately — a split decision that will allow oil and gas drilling to continue across [...]
Categories: Pro-Science News
Some Big News Items
Some big stories came out this week. Science Daily reported on March 3rd that A fossil that was celebrated last year as a possible “missing link” between humans and early primates is actually a forebearer of modern-day lemurs and lorises, according to two papers by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin, Duke University and the University of Chicago. In an article now available online in the Journal of Human Evolution, four scientists present...
Dave Thomas
http://www.nmsr.org
Categories: Pro-Science News
Catching up with RNCSE
Selected content from volume 29, number 5, of Reports of the National Center for Science Education is now available on NCSE's website.
Categories: Pro-Science News
Controversy over evolution over in Israel?
In a letter released by Israel's ministry of education on March 3, 2010, Gavriel Avital promised to follow the ministry's policy on evolution and the environment, Haaretz (March 4, 2010) reported.
Categories: Pro-Science News
Reagan, Grant, Roosevelt, and Currency
Republican legislators are looking for another memorial for former President Ronald Reagan: put his face on US currency. They’ve encountered resistance for two denominations that have been suggested so far: the dime (displacing Franklin D. Roosevelt) and the $50 bill (displacing Ulysses S. Grant).
I can see Reagan’s visage on a piece of US currency, [...]
Categories: Pro-Science News
Evolution and global warming redux
"Critics of the teaching of evolution in the nation's classrooms are gaining ground in some states by linking the issue to global warming, arguing that dissenting views on both scientific subjects should be taught in public schools," reported The New York Times (March 3, 2010).
Categories: Pro-Science News
Announcing the first annual UpChucky award
Not content only to honor those who have valiantly defended the teaching of evolution in the public schools with its annual Friend of Darwin award, NCSE is introducing a new award: the UpChucky, bestowed on the most noisome creationist of the year.
Categories: Pro-Science News
McLeroy booted in Texas
In the March 2, 2010, primary election, avowed young-earth creationist Don McLeroy narrowly lost his bid to be the Republican candidate for the District 9 seat on the Texas state board of education.
Categories: Pro-Science News
McLeroy Loses Texas Board of Education Election
The Austin American-Statesman reports that Thomas Ratliff has narrowly defeated Don McLeroy in the Republican primary race for Texas State Board of Education. McLeroy is the right-wing extremist who wants to doctor the state science standards so they reflect his own disbelief in the theory of evolution. Since there is no Democratic candidate, Ratliff will automatically assume McLeroy’s seat. The Dallas Morning News reports that Ratliff had received the support of “mainstream public education groups”...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Categories: Pro-Science News
Texas: Don McLeroy is Out
Don McLeroy, former chairman of the Texas State Board of Education and pusher of “intelligent design” creationism, has lost the Republican primary election for the District 9 seat on the SBOE to Thomas Ratliff.
Hat tip to “carlsonjok” at AtBC. (But a point off for spelling McLeroy’s name wrong, and one off for me not catching [...]
Categories: Pro-Science News
Agelaius phoeniceus
Photograph by Peter Psyhos Burns. Photography contest, Honorable Mention. Agelaius phoeniceus – red-winged blackbird, Falmouth, Massachusetts....
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Categories: Pro-Science News
