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With all of the renewed fuss the Discovery Institute is trying to stir up over the Gonzalez tenure thing, this seems like a really good time to talk about the role of money in the tenure process. I'm not going to do this because the money issue is one that the Discovery folks are frantically…

The Discovery Institute is currently making hay (again) over Iowa State's decision to deny tenure to Discovery Institute Fellow Guillermo Gonzalez. They've held a press conference and issued a press release claiming to have proof that Intelligent Design was "the" issue that resulted in Gonzalez…

Apparently, the Virginia Republican Party has been getting nostalgic for the good old days at the end of the Cold War. You remember those days, right? Ronald Reagan was saying things like, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" and "we begin bombing in five minutes" . Ollie North was sitting in…

I haven't always had as much concern about copyright infringement as I do now, but I've always considered it to be a given that copyright infringement involves taking something that doesn't belong to you without paying the owner. Taking something that doesn't belong to you without paying the owner…

One of the joys of procrastination is that sometimes if you wait long enough, someone else really will take care of things. I mention that because Ed Brayton just did a good job dismantling Casey Luskin's latest whine about how big bad Judge Jones was such a nasty judicial activist for daring to…

Verse one of Chapter 11 of the Letter of Paul to the Hebrews reads (in the King James translation of the Bible): "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." I mention this not because it is Sunday, or because I intend to offer a sermon, but because when I…

You wouldn't necessarily know it from looking at most major American news sources, but there's a massive tropical cyclone in the Bay of Bengal right now, and it's heading right for one of the most vulnerable areas on the planet. If the most recent storm track predictions are accurate, the eye of…

Two unions representing professions involved in the entertainment industry are on strike right now - Broadway stagehands in New York, and writers for both big- and little-screen productions nationwide. These strikes - especially the writers' one - have stirred up some discussion about online…

The fine folks at the Discovery Institute aren't happy with tomorrow's PBS documentary on the Dover Intelligent Design case, and they're doing their best to make sure that everyone knows just how unhappy they are. They've been frantically tossing articles up on their Media Complaints Division Blog…

I was just watching the Today Show a couple of minutes ago. They're getting ready to set up the Christmas Tree, and someone from the Center was just talking about their new, environmentally-friendly approach to the tree. Apparently, this year they used a handsaw to trim up the base instead of a…

John Wilkins was browsing through the Convention on Biological Diversity's website, and decided to compile a listing of the countries that are not parties to the treaty. I replicated his experiment and came up with something similar. It's not a very long list: Andorra (Wilkins missed that one)…

In all of the fuss about the imminent confirmation of a man who says he can't judge whether or not strapping someone down and pouring water over them until they think they're drowning is torture, there's an important question that I think we've lost sight of: how on earth did we wind up in this…

It's now the day after the DonorsChoose Challenge, and several things are clear. First, you people rock. This blog is not one of the highest-readership blogs in the Scienceblogs network. Most months, we're not even in the top half. But there's no way that anyone would guess that looking at the…

It's not often that I start a post with an apology (that usually comes later) but I think I have to this time. Dr. Watson, I'm sorry that I've got your name in the same title as Westboro Baptist. As unpleasant as you've been at times, you're not anywhere close to being in the same league as the…

If you are one of the many people who was trying to contribute to the Scienceblogs.com DonorsChoose challenge today, you should know that there's one person you can blame for the trouble you had accessing the site: right-wing spinmeister and wannabe Presidential candidate Steven Colbert. That's…

President Bush announced today that he has (finally) named a nominee to replace Jim Nicholson as head of the Veterans administration. His choice, retired Lt. General James Peake, is probably one of the more qualified people that this President has ever nominated to do anything. That's the good…

We're now in the last two days of the DonorsChoose Bloggers' Challenge. As things currently stand, this blog is now $88 away from my $2,500 fundraising goal. Unfortunately, we've been more or less stalled for the last couple of weeks, so I'm going to add an incentive to see if we can get over the…

Here's a quote for you. It's one of the ones that should make you wonder whether you should laugh or cry: And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between…

Several days ago, Senator (and longshot Presidential candidate) Christopher Dodd (D-CT) made some news by promising to do whatever he could to block any legislation that would retroactively grant immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with President Bush's warrentless wiretapping…

Here are a few numbers from the latest Reuters-Zogby poll. See if you can find the one that's not like the others: Rated President Bush's performance as excellent or good: 25% Rated Congress' performance as excellent or good: 11% Said the U.S. is heading in the right direction: 26% Rated the…

The Skeptical Alchemist tagged me with the Pharyngula Mutating Meme - a series of questions that can change as they get passed from blogger to blogger according to a set of simple rules. The original questions were: 1. The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is... 2. The best romantic movie…

Google news is currently featuring a comment by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on the House of Representatives' failed attempt to override President Bush's veto of the SCHIP expansion. The comment reads in part: "I remain committed to working with my colleagues across the aisle to reauthorize the…

James Watson is many things. He's a noted scientist. He is the co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA. He runs a major research institute. He's a Nobel Laureate. He's also living proof that you can be a genius and a complete schmuck at the same time.

Our Coach Pitch baseball team just played the first game of the season. We had a very good game; the other team had a slightly better game. Everyone had fun, though, which is the key. A few quick thoughts on baseball and the 5-8 year-old group: 1: Before our next game, I'm going to make a…

I am certainly no fan of the Iraq war, but I found it difficult to read the media reports about retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez's recent comments on the war without getting angry. Reading the full text of his remarks took me from anger to outrage. As good as it is to hear an unvarnished…

Since today is Blog Action Day, it seems like a good day for a post I've been meaning to write for a while now - what my family is doing to reduce our impact on the environment, and what else we can (and should) add to the mix. I should probably admit right off the bat that I'm not doing…

Apparently, Matt Nisbet didn't think that one poorly-reasoned critique of Gore's ability to communicate science was enough for the weekend, because he tossed out another a day later. You might recall that in his first critique, Nisbet claimed that Gore contributes to the partisan divide over…

Late last week, the IRS released figures showing that the income gap in the United States is larger now than at any time since they began tracking that data in 1986, and may be worse now than at any time since the 1920s. The figures, which are based on 2005 tax returns, reveal that the richest 1%…

This week's DonorsChoose update is a short one. We're still doing well here - $2278 has been donated, which puts us well on our way to meeting our goal for the third time. I've added new proposals, again mostly from the Bronx, most of which are looking to fill basic classroom needs. (One request…

(He didn't do it on purpose, of course.) According to Bill-O, the world would be a scary, scary, scary place if Edwards is elected president: Remember, no coerced interrogation, civilian lawyers in courts for captured overseas terrorists, no branding the Iranian guards terrorists, and no phone…