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Today's quote comes from Alfred Russell Wallace's first paper on evolution - his 1855 paper On the Law Which Has Regulated the Introduction of Species. In addition to paving the way toward his later work on natural selection, this paper laid the foundation for an entire subdiscipline of biology:…

I woke up early today, went downstairs, turned on the news, and very quickly discovered that I'd made it all of 5 minutes into my morning before making a bad decision. The lead-off story on MSNBC's top of the hour coverage: NBC News' decision to start calling what's happening in Iraq a "civil war…

This is why we need to get more people to spend more time thinking about science: "If an issue is not on the tips of their constituents' tongues, they'll say, 'Well, we'll deal with that tomorrow,'" - Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth.

Bill Dembski seems to have decided that the sour grapes strategy is a winner - or at least less of a loser than anything else he's come up with lately. He's following up Denyse O'Leary's spectacularly bad series of peer review posts with a link to an article by Ross McKitrick on the evils of…

Another round of unholy wars seems to have broken out over the last few days. This particular round (again) focuses on the relationship between atheists and theistic evolutionists. The involved parties have broken into two groups, and I think both are being at least somewhat silly. On one side, we…

Nothing too profound today - just something taken from a comic strip that's taped to the lab door. "That's the problem with nature. Something's always stinging you or oozing mucus on you. Let's go watch TV." Bob Watterson Calvin and Hobbes

This Thanksgiving, there's a lot that I am thankful for. There's also a fair amount that I'm not all that thankful for. I'm thankful that as of the email I got from her last night, my wife is still in good health. I'm not all that thankful that she is in good health on a base in Iraq. I'm also not…

"On Thanksgiving Day all over America, families sit down to dinner at the same moment - halftime." --Anonymous Back to science quotes tomorrow. Enjoy the holiday.

There's an article in Friday's Washington Post about the ongoing strike by Houston, Texas janitors. (The same folks who were getting trampled by police horses the other day.) Part of the article tells the story of Ercilia Sandoval, a Salvadorian immigrant who is one of the striking workers. If we…

In part to counteract the limited amount of time that I have available to write posts, I've decided to start a "quote of the day" series. Most of the quotes will be related to science or academics (or any of the other central issues I talk about here). Some may be chosen because they seem to be…

As many of the other Sciencebloggers have already mentioned, Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute is up to his usual stupidity. In this particular instance, he's attempting, in a typically inept fashion, to fisk Carl Zimmer's recent article in National Geographic. So far, I haven't chimed in,…

Over at the ARN blog, Denyse O'Leary has a four-part article up attacking the peer-review system. Rob Crowther, of the Discovery Institute's Media Complaints Division, has chimed in with his own post on the topic. There's a great deal of humor in watching anti-evolutionists try to dismiss peer…

Via Bitch, PhD and Pharyngula, we find this video of a Tuesday night "incident" in the UCLA library. According to the campus paper, the incident is "under investigation." After watching the video, which shows a student repeatedly being tasered for failing to obey officers orders to "get up" (after…

As some of you have already seen at Pharyngula, Dispatches, and the Lippard Blog, a New Jersey public high school teacher was caught on tape teaching religion instead of history. One of the audio recordings is available online. The quality is poor, but a with a little bit of equalizer work it is…

The fieldwork I did earlier this month left me behind at work, so I haven't been able to post much over the last week or so. I'll be able to get back to regular posts soon. In the meantime, here's a picture I took during a little break from my fieldwork. For those who might be interested in such…

When someone you love is deployed, you do your best to put your fears out of your mind. You take things as they come, you do what needs to be done, and you very quickly get good at not thinking too much about other things. Most of the time you can keep most of your mind away from things like IEDs,…

If you're looking for an update to this blog, you'll have to wait until Monday. I'm off to the Big Island for a few days of fieldwork. I'll be observing flies in their natural habitat over in Volcanoes National Park.

Staffers for Virginia Senator George Allen attacked a blogger today at a campaign event, and are now trying to lie their way out of it. Here's their version of the events: As the Senator was trying to exit the room with a campaign staffer, the Democrat activist, identified as Mike Stark, pushed the…

Here are a few articles that I would have loved to have blogged about today - if I only had the time. In no particular order: Via Afarensis, we learn that the American Museum of Natural History in New York now has the authority to grant PhDs. If nothing else, that would probably look pretty cool on…

It's no secret that the current administration is not a big fan of the Endangered Species Act. Since Bush took office, only 56 species have been added to the list (for comparison, during both the Clinton and G.H.W. Bush administrations, an average of about 60 species were added every year). If…

It's Friday. Time to throw iTunes into random play, and see what comes up. This week, there isn't much of a theme going. Artist Song 1. REM Losing My Religion 2. Jimmy Buffett The Weather is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful 3. Josh Joplin Group Camera One 4. Black 47 Like a Rolling Stone…

The Cheerful Oncologist just tossed up a post on one of the Laws of Medicine. Sitting here, on my third beer of the night, I can't help but wonder if he knows how lucky he is to be working in an area of medicine that is stable enough to have laws. Back in my younger days, a decade or so ago, I put…

This weekend, an issue that came up in a post by Kevin Beck over at Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge really got me thinking. Kevin was amusing himself by shredding one of the denizens at Stop the ACLU, who was complaining about a Florida court decision that permitted a minor to bypass the…

Rick Santorum's political base has been shrinking rapidly. His approval numbers are in the sewer, and he's down by double-digits in the polls. Santorum's campaign skills, however, are well respected. He knows how to motivate his base, and how to get people to the polls. Just the other day, he…

If you watched the news at all yesterday, you probably know that we had a little bit of a shake-up out here yesterday morning. I live on the island of Oahu, which is a fair distance from the epicenter of the quake, so the shaking wasn't too bad. It was strong enough to rattle the windows, knock…

My post on the Lancet article has attracted a fair amount of comment, both in the comments here and on other blogs. On the whole, those who have addressed my criticisms have disagreed with them. I've read the criticisms and re-read both the new and the 2004 Iraqi death toll studies a couple of more…

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you're probably familiar with the ongoing series of posts I've been using to get readers and commenters to help me improve my teaching skills. If you're new here, welcome, and if you scroll back over the last month or so you'll see most of those posts.…

Update: 14 October. I just posted another entry on the topic, responding to some of the comments on this post. My conclusions have changed a bit as the result of some of those comments. As many of you probably know, a study published today in the journal Lancet estimates that just over 650,000…

Over at Discovering Biology in a Digital World, Sandy thanks me for, "unintentionally starting a public teaching journal." That was a very nice way to describe what's been going on here in the comment threads for the posts where I've talked about what I'm inflicting upon the hapless undergrads I've…

It's been a few weeks since I've done a Friday Random Ten, but I got up early and felt like listening to a little music today. As per the rules of the game, I selected my entire iTunes library and went to the Party Shuffle to see what the randomizer wants me to listen to. Today, it's a heavy dose…