A couple of weeks ago, an interesting article appeared in Scientific American, titled “Evolution Of The Eye.” The subheading of the article makes the bold claim, “Scientists now have a clear vision of how our notoriously complex eye came to be.” Read More>>>
Recently, New Scientist defended cryptobiologists, people who search for creatures presumed to never exist or no longer exist: Read More ›
An earlier post yesterday underscored Michele Bachmann’s support of ID. That she supports ID is fine and well. Back in 2005 George W. Bush supported ID in the same terms as Bachmann. But Bush also had as his science adviser “company man” John Marburger (the “company” being Darwinian naturalists).
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Mathgrrl. Mathgrrl is a New Yorker named _______ ___. He has a chemical engineering degree from M.I.T. Here is an excerpt from his Web page: “As a father, I want my children to get the best education possible and to grow up in a world of opportunity. These goals are being threatened by right-wing fundamentalist creationists, including supporters of Intelligent Design, and by the typically left-wing ‘woo masters’ with their crystals, chakras, and gross abuse of the concepts of quantum mechanics. Both are anti-science and both pose a significant threat to the quality of education in the U.S. Some of the material I provide here is intended to help in some small way to counter these Read More ›
I thought I would pull together all of the links pertinent to my exchange with PZ Myers into one article for ease of navigation: Round 1 I post a series of questions for PZ Myers. PZ Myers responds. Round 2 PZ Myers and I collide in Glasgow (part 1; part 2). PZ Myers (and a guest writer) blogs about our collision (first post; second post). Round 3 I review PZ Myers’ lecture and respond to its scientific content. PZ Myers responds. Round 4 David Klinghoffer weighs in. I respond to PZ Myers’ rebuttal to my review of his lecture.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) got a big boost from obscure nerddom by the movie Contact starring Jodie Foster. Based on real life, the world’s biggest radio telescope in Puerto Rico would permit a few hours every month for listening for aliens, but it really wasn’t very much time, and after a few decades of not hearing anything, despite the absolutely brilliant innovation of having screensavers around the world processing the SETI data with SETI@Home, Arecibo was giving even less time. So the movie wasn’t just a hit with the box-office, it also was a hit for SETI funding, with multi-billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen, chipping in a cool $13M to build forty-two 20-foot radio dishes to listen Read More ›
At Discover Magazine’s blog, “Cosmic Variance,” “Sean” asks “Are Many Worlds and the Multiverse the Same Idea?” (2011/05/26) ,
When physicists are asked about “parallel worlds” or ideas along those lines, they have to be careful to distinguish among different interpretations of that idea. There is the “multiverse” of inflationary cosmology, the “many worlds” or “branches of the wave function” of quantum mechanics, and “parallel branes” of string theory. Increasingly, however, people are wondering whether the first two concepts might actually represent the same underlying idea. (I think the branes are still a truly distinct notion.) Read More ›
At MSNBC’s “Cosmic Log,” Alan Boyle invites the audience to join a citizen science project to help identify future targets for a NASA interplanetary flyby — in this case, for the New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond. – “Join the search for icy worlds,” (June 21, 2011) Right now, the New Horizons team’s top job is getting ready for the 2015 flyby past Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. But the Southwest Research Institute’s Alan Stern, principal investigator for the $700 million mission, said he and his colleagues are already looking for follow-up targets in the Kuiper Belt, the wide disk of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. Those targets will have to be selected before the Pluto Read More ›
Here. What if an alien intelligence is calling us from a distant planet and we have the phone off the hook?What if one (or more!) of the Kepler worlds recently discovered are emitting signals RIGHT NOW and we aren’t listening? That would be one heck of a message left on the answering machine. What would it say? From the newsletter: The ATA is a powerful field of 42 linked radio telescopes in Northern California that enable countless avenues of astronomical study, chief among them the search for evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations and insight into the nature of our cosmic origins. In the wake of a recent funding shortfall, however, this invaluable tool lies dormant and our vision of the universe Read More ›
The American Journal of Physics article by Daniel Styer which was offered as a “concise refutation” to my Applied Mathematics Letters article by the blogger whose letter apparently triggered the withdrawal of my AML article is possibly the dumbest work ever published by a major physics journal. To demonstrate how absurd the logic in this article is, I wrote a little satire ( here ) which extends Styer’s attempts to quantitatively demonstrate that the decrease in entropy of the universe due to biological evolution is easily “compensated” by the increase in the “cosmic microwave background”, to the game of poker.
I submitted this satire to the American Journal of Physics this morning, just to see what reason they would give for not wanting to correct the errors in the Styer piece. As cynical as I have become, I still was not prepared for this answer, which I received a few hours later:
Sometimes, it is necessary to draw a line in the sand and stand, regardless of cost.
DM, in his haste to play at clever ad hominem circumstantial, and in his ill-instructed hatred of Christendom and its blessings in our civilisation, has tried to cross such a line. (CY, thank you.)
This is just to serve notice to all on the character of what we are facing, and what is liable to happen if we are silent or unwilling to stand, cost what it may, when such a line is crossed.
And, again, let us see just what he and ilk are ever so desperate to distract our attention from.
Why would anyone need “a growing body of evidence that humans are remarkably altruistic primates”? In a peaceful and prosperous society, one sees instances of altruism as well as its opposite every day. And, given most humans’ preference for peace and prosperity, we should just assume that we are acting most naturally when we can live that way. Anyway,
A growing body of evidence shows that humans are remarkably altruistic primates. Food sharing and division of labor play an important role in all human societies, and cooperation extends beyond the bounds of close kinship and networks of reciprocating partners. In humans, altruism is motivated at least in part by empathy and concern for the welfare of others. Although altruistic behavior is well-documented in other primates, the range Read More ›
The “grandmother” thesis is that the reason our ancestors didn’t kill granny was that she helped out. (And then somehow religion got involved, and …) An actual study showed that “The hazard of death for Dogon children was twofold higher if the resident paternal grandmother was alive rather than dead. This finding may reflect the frailty of elderly grandmothers who become net consumers rather than net producers in this resource-poor society.”
Oh, and so did the comparison between a human group and co-operatively breeding animals: Read More ›
At Scientific American, Douglas Fox reports on “The Limits of Intelligence,” where we learn that “The laws of physics may well prevent the human brain from evolving into an ever more powerful thinking machine” (June 14, 2011):
Summary
Human intelligence may be close to its evolutionary limit. Various lines of research suggest that most of the tweaks that could make us smarter would hit limits set by the laws of physics. Read More ›
Naomi Schaefer Riley discusses “The Economic Upside to Ending Tenure” ( Chronicle of Higher Education, June 19, 2011): In her new book, The Faculty Lounges: and Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get the College Education You Paid For (Ivan R. Dee), Naomi Schaefer Riley argues that faculty tenure is among the factors contributing to the decline of higher education in the United States. Here is an excerpt from the book. If colleges were to eliminate tenure tomorrow, they’d have to pay faculty higher salaries. That’s what most economists—and common sense—will tell you. Lifetime job security is a perk, like health insurance or a company car. If you take it away, you’ll have to compensate in another way to get the Read More ›