Mike Dunford
tqa
Posts by this author
October 5, 2006
My two recent posts on teaching seem to have stirred up more discussion than I first expected. Opinions are still mixed between those who favor an approach that relies more heavily on actively teaching material and those who favor pushing the students to learn for themselves. I'm still not certain…
October 2, 2006
I needed to buy a few things for the house and yard yesterday, so I packed the kids into the car and headed off to the store. What I saw when I got there didn't make me feel very jolly, and I'm afraid that I said a few things that were naughty, not nice. One of the things that I said seemed to be a…
September 29, 2006
As most of you probably know, there's been a bit of discussion over the question of whether or not the pro-Intelligent Design textbook Of Pandas and People qualifies as a "challenged" or "banned" book as a result of the ruling in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover lawsuit. A few things have happened since my…
September 29, 2006
...but go read what Coturnix has to say about the state of our country. He's feeling like he's seen this before, and I'm becoming more and more afraid that he's right.
While you're at it, go over to Thou Shalt Not Suck and read the Obituary for America.
September 29, 2006
This is a repost of something I wrote on my old blog back in April. With the general election rapidly approaching, it seems like a good one to put back out there.
The election season is starting to heat up. Scandals rock DC on what seems like a daily basis. The public is split, at least according…
September 28, 2006
It's 4:20. Do you know what's happening in your National Parks?
If you listened to Morning Edition yesterday, you know exactly what I'm about to talk about: the environmental damage that pot farms have been causing in our national parks.
The problem is actually pretty simple: cannabis cultivation…
September 28, 2006
Over at Uncommon Descent, DaveScot says something stupid about atheism and science. (In other news, Dog Bites Man, Pope Still Catholic, Bear Arrested for Indecent Exposure in National Forest, and Ocean Wet and Salty.)
At the end of a passage in his new book (The God Delusion) that discusses the…
September 27, 2006
I got a little frustrated while grading quizzes yesterday, and wrote a post about my frustrations. I asked for feedback, and boy did I get some. Some of the comments were more or less supportive of my approach. Others were not.
After reading the comments about my teaching approach and taking some…
September 26, 2006
Monday, I posted an entry here that discussed, in part, a Discovery Institute blog article claiming that the Dover ruling qualifies the cdesign proponentsists textbook Of Pandas and People as a "banned book." As I explained at the time, the claim is complete and total nonsense, so I suppose I…
September 26, 2006
I just learned, via Mike the Mad Biologist, that the Newsweek cover for the United States this week is just a little different than the covers for the international editions. (Click the link, and look at the sidebar.) That's right, folks. Right now, with just over a month to go before a mid-term…
September 26, 2006
This semester, I'm teaching Zoology 101 labs (Intro to Zoology for nonmajors). I'm enjoying my self a lot, and it's a class I've wanted to teach for a while. Right now, though, I'm grading quizzes and not enjoying life too much. Most of the scores absolutely suck, and I'm trying to figure out how…
September 26, 2006
If you haven't already, go over to Pharyngula and watch the Assylum Street Spankers performing their new single, Stick a Yellow Magnet on Your SUV.
September 26, 2006
Yesterday, three retired military officers spoke on the Hill. They weren't talking to an actual Congressional committee of some sort, because Congress wants no part of oversight these days. Instead, they spoke before the "Democratic Policy Committee." The topic of the "hearing" was Rumsfeld's…
September 25, 2006
Last week, both PZ Myers and I posted about some anti-evolution candidates running for the school board out here in Hawaii. The state primary election was Saturday, so I thought an update on this election might be a good idea.
There's good news, not-too-bad news, and bad news.
First, the good…
September 25, 2006
Two recent posts over at the Discovery Institute's Media Complaints Division blog have me ready to break out the world's smallest violin. Their new (well, newish, anyway - it's popped up from time to time before) argument is that they are being discriminated against. In the first of the two…
September 25, 2006
Every time I see a yellow "Support the Troops" ribbon on a car that's sporting Republican bumper stickers, I want to vomit. Republicans love to talk up patriotism, and they love to use "support the troops" as a campaign slogan. But when push comes to shove, when the time arrives to actually…
September 24, 2006
Josh and Bora have already taken a swing at this, but the level of... of... of... I'm honestly at a loss for words. I just can't find any way to use printible words to describe how pissed off I am right now.
Apparently, some North Carolina residents were recently informed by the Fish and Wildlife…
September 22, 2006
Here's an interesting take on why theistic evolution (TE) might be a bad position to hold:So essentially, both Dawkins and Miller see no evidence of design, and their philosophy as to how evolution works is the same, yet Dawkins follows that evidence and declares the world is without a designer and…
September 22, 2006
The policy forum in this weeks issue of Science discusses a potential problem with many of the crops that people are talking about using as biofuels. In what has to be one of the more striking instances of cosmic irony, it is entirely possible that some of the plants being considered as biofuel…
September 21, 2006
After Janet posted the results the other day (I was crushed to learn I'd only placed sixth), I thought the nerdoff was over. For better or worse, it's not. Someone found yet another Nerd Test, and as we already know, SciBlings can't resist nerd tests. I can't either.
Modern, Cool Nerd…
September 21, 2006
A senior science reporter at the journal Nature, Declan Butler, put out an urgent request for bloggers to help draw attention to the plight of the Tripoli Six - five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian physician that are on trial accused of deliberately (as agents of Israel and the United States)…
September 20, 2006
As you may have seen over at Pharyngula, we've got some creationists running for the school board out here. That's not a good thing, but a few different events over the last couple of weeks have given me a lot of hope for this state.
Right now, I'm not very worried about the anti-evolution school…
September 19, 2006
...the South shall rise again. If they get better intelligence, anyway.
Senator Saxby Chambliss (the Vietnam-era "bad knee" 4Fer who sleezed into his seat by attacking Max Cleland's patriotism in 2002) just provided us with a prime example of his own credentials as a patriot. A Confederate patriot…
September 13, 2006
Last night, around 1 in the morning, I was woken up by a lot of strange noises coming from downstairs. I couldn't quite place the noises, but there were definitely animals involved. I scraped myself out of bed and went to take a look. It turns out that my cat had brought home a playmate - a Kolea…
September 11, 2006
It's been five years and a day since the terrible reality of international terrorism came crashing down on our heads. In that time, our nation has changed a great deal, and not all for the better. I say that we have changed, and not that we have been changed for a reason: many of the changes are…
September 7, 2006
For my contribution to the Panda's Thumb's ongoing review of Jonathan Wells' new book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design (PIGDID), I will be reviewing chapters four and five. Chapter Four covers the record of evolution that is contained in the DNA of all living…
September 7, 2006
I'm bowing to peer-pressure and joining the throng of SciBlings who have admitted to taking the nerd test. Orac's been trying real hard to claim dominance in this category, and having met the man I am reluctant to argue with him, but it would seem like quite a few of us are giving him a run for his…
September 7, 2006
In the Doonesbury storyline that began on Monday, Garry Trudeau managed to capture what modern technology has done for deployed families far, far better than anyone I've seen before. With many of the American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan operating from more-or-less permanent bases, communications…
September 6, 2006
Janet has challenged all of us to a nerd-off. I'd love to participate, but before I can I'm going to need to figure out if I'm qualified. It's not easy. Identifying nerds and geeks isn't something that you can do just based on looks, or a superficial knowledge of habits and personality. Determining…
September 6, 2006
Looking through my email today, I see that Reed Cartwright has forwarded yet another news article about someone or another ranting about the dangers caused by the presence of so many "liberals" in higher education. About the only surprise was the source of this round of complaints: Iranian…