news aggregator
Somebody Thinks He Speaks for the Pope
One of the first things a Catholic scholar is supposed to understand is that you have to explain your terms.
Bruce Chapman
http://www.discovery.org/p/7
Categories: Anti-Science News
Women, Wallace, Evolution, and Eugenics
Eugenics has haunted the history of the feminist movement.
Michael Flannery
http://www.discovery.org/p/471
Categories: Anti-Science News
Oklahoma science standards adopted
On June 19, 2014, Oklahoma's governor Mary Fallin approved the state's adoption of a new set of science standards, according to US News & World Report (June 20, 2014), despite the objections of state legislators to their inclusion of climate science.
Categories: Pro-Science News
Good news for evolution in Britain
The British government recently clarified and extended its ban on teaching creationism in academies, according to a June 18, 2014, press release from the British Humanist Association, which congratulated the government "on its robust stand on this issue."
Categories: Pro-Science News
Wyoming churches endorse NGSS
The Wyoming Association of Churches endorsed the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards, according to the Casper Star-Tribune (June 16, 2014).
Categories: Pro-Science News
AGU award for NCSE's Scott
Eugenie C. Scott
Eugenie C. Scott, the former executive director of NCSE and the current chair of its Advisory Council, will receive a Presidential Citation for Science and Society from the American Geophysical Union at a reception in Washington DC on June 17, 2014.
Categories: Pro-Science News
Understanding creationism, III: An insider's guide by a former young-Earth creationist
By David MacMillan. 3. You don’t evolve, your species does. Creationists often conceptualize evolution as something which is purely vertical: successive changes from parent to child to grandchild to great-grandchild accumulating over time. They can hardly be faulted for this misconception, because this view seems to be shared by the general public and even reinforced by the sometimes-imprecise explanations and depictions of evolution by museums and science educators. Evolutionary adaptation, however, does not happen in...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Categories: Pro-Science News
Climate and creationism
The economist Paul Krugman has come to the “somewhat surprising conclusion” that global warming denial is not mainly about vested economic interests but rather asks us to think about global warming from the point of view of someone who grew up taking Ayn Rand seriously, believing that the untrammeled pursuit of self-interest is always good and that government is always the problem, never the solution. Along come some scientists declaring that unrestricted pursuit of self-interest...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Categories: Pro-Science News
Anas cyanoptera
Anas cyanoptera – cinnamon teal, Walden Ponds, Boulder, Colorado....
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Categories: Pro-Science News
Freshwater: Board's Brief in Response filed with SCOTUS
The Mt. Vernon, Ohio, Board of Education has filed its Brief in Opposition to Freshwater’s petition for a writ of certiori with the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS). Recall that Freshwater asked SCOTUS to overturn his firing on the ground that it violated his First Amendment rights, and that prohibiting his teaching the “scientific strengths and weaknesse of biological evolution” also violates the First Amendment. I haven’t found an online version of the Brief...
Richard B. Hoppe
Categories: Pro-Science News
Meyer's Hopeless Monster, Part III
The paperback edition of Stephen Meyer’s book Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design has just been published. It has a new chapter responding to critics of the book – Donald Prothero, Charles Marshall, and yours truly, the blogger the ID guys were dismissing for a year based on the fact that I wrote the review quickly. The largest section of the new chapter responds to me. The...
Nick Matzke
http://www.talkdesign.org
Categories: Pro-Science News
Understanding creationism, II: An insider's guide by a former young-Earth creationist
By David MacMillan 2. Variation and adaptation The majority of modern creation science freely admits the existence of biological variation, adaptation, and speciation. Indeed, the recent-creation model – particularly the belief that all extant life descended from a small group of “kinds” present on Noah’s Ark which diversified into all families on Earth after a global flood – requires enormous adaptive variation and near-constant speciation. Creationists estimate that fewer than 10,000 pairs of land-dwelling, air-breathing...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Categories: Pro-Science News
Photography Contest, VI
Kodak Precision Enlarger, Model 1. Note added June 16 at approximately 1:10 CST: Submission period extended 1 week to June 23. Polish your lenses, oil your tripods, search your archives – the sixth Panda’s Thumb photography contest, begins – now! We will accept entries from 12:00 CST, June 2, through 12:00 CST, June 16 June 23. The theme of the contest is History of Evolution, by which we mean photographs of fruit flies, barnacles,...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Categories: Pro-Science News
Understanding creationism: An insider's guide by a former young-Earth creationist
In this short series, David MacMillan explains how misinformation and misconceptions allow creationists to maintain their beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. A former creationist blogger and writer, Mr. MacMillan earned his BS degree in physics from the University of North Alabama and now works as a technical writer when he isn’t frequenting the PT comment boards. Since leaving creationism, he has written several columns discussing the public dialogue between...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Categories: Pro-Science News
Geum aleppicum
Photograph by Andrew Freeman. Photography contest, Honorable Mention. Geum aleppicum – yellow avens, Pearl Lake, Colorado....
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Categories: Pro-Science News
NCSE Webinar, science denial, Wednesday
The National Center for Science Education will host a webinar, “Debunking and confronting science denial,” Wednesday, May 28, 4 PM EDT/1 PM PDT. Josh Rosenau of NCSE will moderate a panel that includes Shauna Theel from the climate and energy project at Media Matters for America, John Cook of SkepticalScience.com and the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute, and be moderated by NCSE’s Josh Rosenau. Shauna will discuss her work addressing media misstatements and how...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Categories: Pro-Science News
Dinosaur fossil donor affiliated with hate group
Kentucky geologist Daniel Phelps yesterday sent us a press release noting that AIG’s Allosaurus fossil will go on display this weekend; see the AP release by Dylan Lovan here. Mr. Lovan quotes Mr. Phelps to this effect: Daniel Phelps, president of the Kentucky Paleontological Society, said in a release Thursday that the Creation Museum “has decided, without doing research, that the dinosaur fossil is evidence of Noah’s flood.” What Mr. Lovan left out is far...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Categories: Pro-Science News
Can Darwin and Eden coexist?
Apparently not at Bryan College (yes, that Bryan) in Dayton, Tennessee (yes, that Dayton), according to an article in yesterday’s Times. The college, founded in 1930, requires faculty to sign a statement agreeing to certain reactionary views on creation and evolution, including, “The origin of man was by fiat of God,” according to the article by Alan Blinder. Several months ago, the college added a “clarification” to the effect that Adam and Eve “are historical...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Categories: Pro-Science News
Sarracenia purpurea
Photograph by Matthew Opel. Photography contest, Honorable Mention. Sarracenia purpurea ssp. purpurea – purple pitcher plant, growing in a floating sphagnum bog in Tolland County, Connecticut....
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Categories: Pro-Science News
Photography contest, coming up ...
… June 2. That is, we will accept entries from noon, June 2, to noon, June 16, where noon is defined by the Panda’s Thumb server, which thinks it is still in Central Standard Time, or UTC(GMT) – 5 h. The rules will be essentially the same as last year’s. We have not chosen categories yet, but please be assured that they will be all-inclusive. So grease your shutters and be ready! Update, May 31: The theme of...
Matt Young
http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung
Categories: Pro-Science News
