Uh, they did care; response was pretty good. Post here (June 7, 2011).

But, one “Larry Tanner” who self-describes as follows,

“Larry Tanner” is my nom de blog. I am married, a father of three beautiful children, and enjoying life in New England. I work with robotic technologies, teach classes in English literature, and ghostwrite non-fiction books for a rabbi – and I self-identify as an atheist. I’m currently working on a Ph.D. on matters of literature, textuality, and probabilistic reasoning.

was complaining (June 8, 2011):

However, I am surprised that that Carroll’s post has not generated more discussion at UD than it has: only about 23 responses in 24 hours.

Hi, Larry, I’m Denyse O’Leary, and that’s a nom de reality, okay? It’s an easily demonstrated fact that there is no particular relationship between readership and comments. We track both.

Stats? Yeah. Got stats. Read More ›

Books trying to explain evil scientifically, that is. In “I’m O.K., You’re a Psychopath,” he makes a good point: People with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, Baron-Cohen argues, are also empathy-deficient, though he calls them “Zero-Positive.” They differ from psychopaths and the like because they possess a special gift for systemizing; they can “set aside the temporal dimension in order to see — in stark relief — the eternal repeating patterns in nature.” This capacity, he says, can lead to special abilities in domains like music, science and art. More controversially, he suggests, this systemizing impulse provides an alternative route for the development of a moral code — a strong desire to follow the rules and ensure they are applied fairly. Read More ›

(Part 1 here) The Widow’s Mite Fallacy In his debunking of fine-tuning, Stenger has fallen for the “Widow’s Mite Fallacy”. (I know, we all like to name things so we can use a stigma to beat a dogma.) It is explained in Mk 12:42, where Jesus is standing with his disciples near the entrance to the temple and the collection box. It’s one of those trumpet-shaped devices they have in the grocery store that makes the coins fall for a long time, so a good handful of shekels makes a marvellous racket. The donors are being ostentatious with their shekels, when in comes a poor widow–no husband, black outfit, worn sandals–and drops in two copper coins that barely make a Read More ›

In “Evolution to the Rescue: Species May Adapt Quickly to Rapid Environmental Change, Yeast Study Shows” (ScienceDaily, June 23, 2011), we learn:

… according to McGill biology professor, Andrew Gonzalez, the question arises, “Can evolution happen quickly enough to help a species survive?” The answer, according to his most recent study, published in Science, is a resounding yes.
By using a long-armed robot working 24/7 over a period of several of months, McGill Professors Graham Bell and Gonzalez were able to track the fate of over 2000 populations of baker’s yeast for many generations. Yeast was chosen for the experiment because a lot is known about the genetic makeup of this model organism and because it can reproduce in a matter of hours.

[ … ]

What they observed was that the likelihood of evolutionary rescue depended on the severity and rate of change of the environment and the degree of prior exposure of populations to the environmental stressor (salt). The degree of isolation from neighboring populations also affected the capacity of the yeast populations to adapt through the accumulation of beneficial mutations.
Gonzalez and his team were in effect watching evolution at work. And what they discovered is that it can happen surprisingly fast, within 50 to 100 generations.

Then the wheels fell off. Read More ›

They want people to send donations in order to buy the rights to the film from the public auction. The reason given is so they can then release unpublished material, but equally they could prevent future sales of the film. No indicated price is available. http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2011/06/help-talkorigin.html

In “Does Islam Stand Against Science?” (June 19, 2011), Steve Paulson tells us that

We may think the charged relationship between science and religion is mainly a problem for Christian fundamentalists, but modern science is also under fire in the Muslim world. Islamic creationist movements are gaining momentum, and growing numbers of Muslims now look to the Quran itself for revelations about science.

Interesting how doubting Darwin in the Muslim world if evidence of lack of advance in science, just as it is in the scientifically backward United States. (Scientists who doubt Darwin, for whatever reason, are just ignoramuses, of course.)

“If evolution gets associated with atheism, Read More ›

Here: The conspiracy theorists were busy last month when the Cleveland Cavaliers — spurned by Lebron, desperate for some good fortune, represented by a endearing teenager afflicted with a rare disease — landed the top pick in the NBA Draft. It seemed too perfect for some (not least, Minnesota Timberwolves executive David Kahn) but the odds of that happening were 2.8 percent, almost a lock compared to the odds of Isner-Mahut II. Question: How come it’s legitimate to reason this way in tennis but not in biology? Oh wait, if we start asking those kinds of questions, we’ll be right back in the Middle Ages when they were so ignorant that …

Every loudmouth on Airhead TV knows that for a certainty without any background whatever. For the record,

… the actual record of scientific methodological practice in the Middle Ages shows this to be false. Ptolemy (c.90–168) was extensively involved in astronomical observation and optical experimentation.The Alexandrian Christian platonist philosopher John Philoponus (c.490–570) performed imprecise experiments to ascertain the truth of the Aristotelian contention that the speed of descent was proportional to the weight of a dropped body, discovering—contrary to Aristotle—that there was very little difference.

During the historical period when medieval Islam was scientifically productive, Read More ›

In “Breeding with Neanderthals helped humans go global,” ( New Scientist, 16 June 2011), Michael Marshall tells us, When the first modern humans left Africa they were ill-equipped to cope with unfamiliar diseases. But by interbreeding with the local hominins, it seems they picked up genes that protected them and helped them eventually spread across the planet. The publication of the Neanderthal genome last year offered proof that Homo sapiens bred with Neanderthals after leaving Africa. There is also evidence that suggests they enjoyed intimate relations with other hominins including the Denisovans, a species identified last year from a Siberian fossil. The authors say that half of European HLA-A alleles come from other hominins, as do 72 per cent for Read More ›

Victor Stenger, a retired physics prof from the University of Hawaii, has given us two books that explain both atheism and “multiverses”, and behold, they are one. Few other proponents of multiverses are quite as forthcoming with their logic, but clearly something besides data must motivate the science of multiverses, because by definition multiverses are not observable. Stenger makes the connection explicit, whereas Hawking or Susskind is a little more coy with their metaphysics. Multiverse-theory is designed for one purpose, and one purpose only, and that is to defend atheism. It makes no predictions, it gives no insight, it provides no control, it produces no technology, it advances no mathematics, it is a science in name only, because it is Read More ›

We are told by Australia’s TV science broadcaster that hard times make for meek men.

Start with this (the article doesn’t): “Lee says the cross-cultural studies were limited in their findings as they failed to show the mechanisms underpinning the effect.”

In today’s edition of the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, University of Queensland researchers Anthony Lee and Dr Brendan Zietsch show environmental factors can influence a woman’s choice of a mate.They find that when faced with the threat of increased prevalence of disease, women choose more masculine males. But during times of resource scarcity, “feminine” males, who are more committed to long-term relationships and caring for resulting offspring, come to the fore.

– Dani Cooper, “Meek men the perfect mate in austere times” (ABC 22 June 2011)

The researchers claim that more masculine males show low commitment. Who knew?

Most of the story is just that increasingly irritating tepid Darwinsludge: Read More ›

Ice man’s last meal: Deer, apparently: Less than 2 hours before he hiked his last steps in the Tyrolean Alps 5000 years ago, Ötzi the Iceman fueled up on a last meal of ibex meat. – Heather Pringle, “The Iceman’s Last Meal”( ScienceNOW, 20 June 2011)  What if it had been wild goat instead? That’s the frustrating problem with studies of human evolution. Before the literate period, it’s hard to find out what you really want to know. Dying words that give us some sense of the people who spoke them. Hat tip: Pos-Darwinista

In “Cutting Edge Training Developed the Human Brain 80,000 Years Ago” (ScienceDaily, June 22, 2011), we are told,

Advanced crafting of stone spearheads contributed to the development of new ways of human thinking and behaving, according to new findings by archaeologists from Lund University. The technology took a long time to acquire, required step by step planning and increased social interaction across the generations. This led to the human brain developing new abilities.Some 200,000 years ago, small groups of people wandered across Africa, looking anatomically much like present-day humans, but not thinking the way we do today. Read More ›

It is best to acknowledge one’s mistakes as promptly as possible, when one makes them. In a recent post, I exposed the identity of one of our more intelligent critics, who was writing under the pseudonym of Mathgrrl. (Update: The next two sentences have been removed, as they mistakenly identified Mathgrrl with another anonymous contributor to Uncommon Descent, on the basis of a remark by the latter contributor which was intended as a joke. Evidently the joke went over my head. My apology to Mathgrrl can be found here.) Some readers were pleased with my outing the individual who was writing under the pseudonym of Mathgrrl. A few others, though, made remarks that forced me to reconsider the wisdom of Read More ›