Intelligent Design is a career-killer. There's just no two ways about it. And not because of how peers treat the ID supporter; they throw their own productivity under the bus, to use Casey Luskin's overworked cliche. We saw the same thing with Behe and Dembski. Behe has published ONE peer-reviewed paper in the last decade-ish. And Dembski... well, does anybody even know where he works these days? All hyperbole aside, let's look at Gonzalez's publication track record while we keep in mind that tenure committees consider work that comes in after one joins the university to be of prime…
Phil over at Bad Astronomy has it a bit backwards, but hey it's not his fault. He didn't have to sit through that nightmare of a press conference. I still stick by my own conclusion too, that by trying to say that Gonzalez's religious freedom has been curtailed, they are admitting ID is religion and not science, which they vehemently denied with the Dover case. I think if this comes to court, that'll be a fun issue to grill them about. From the press conference, the DI is clearly trying to distance religion from ID. The subject never really came up until a reporter asked about it. Even a…
Yesterday the Discovery Institute held a press conference at the capitol building in Des Moines, to announce Guillermo Gonzalez's plans to sue Iowa State University over their decision to deny him tenure. Supposedly the lawsuit will be filed pending the rejection of an appeal to the Board of Regents, which is virtually guaranteed simply for the fact that the Regents typically uphold tenure decisions. Joining Casey Luskin, Rob Crowther, Gonzalez's attorneys, and a few other DI folk was state Senator David Hartsuch (R-District 41). The core of the DI's assertion is that there were "secret…
FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEDOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!
Abel over at Terra Sigillata got is writ in a tinger over bad grammar and was concerned that Alzheimer's Disease had been tied to risky sexual behavior. His conclusion was that he got a poorly worded email notice about two separate problems that were linked inappropriately by a semicolon. So everything's fine, all clear, right? He's free to engage in risky sexual behavior without fear of getting Alzheimer's Disease (AD) later in life! That's not entirely true. We've known that inflammation plays a huge role in the Alzheimer's disease process. Unfortunately, inflammation is caused by a…
Here we see the consequences of social promotion; no, not the practice of advancing students who haven't demonstrated competency in their subject matter, but of inappropriately advancing a concept that hasn't attained scientific credibility. When said concept, in this case Intelligent Design, is shown to be scientifically vacuous, we send it back to the drawing board. We don't push it along into textbooks and classrooms. "All of us are smarter than one of us," Hamm said. In the case of a schoolboard filled with creationists, clearly this does not hold.
My simian brethren are taking over: "Wildlife officials are trying to find them. As police we're not experts in dealing with monkeys. We can deal with mad bulls but monkeys are more difficult," he said. Along with an estimated 35,000 sacred cows and buffaloes that roam free in the capital, marauding monkeys have been longstanding pests. They routinely scamper through government offices, courts and even police stations and hospitals as well as terrorise neighbourhoods. They even took down the deputy mayor of Delhi!!! He was on his balcony reading a newspaper when four monkeys appeared. As he…
Great, I'm 33 now. More gray in my beard. Whohoo! I have good news, at least. I'm getting the hell outta Dodge (aka Maryland) and heading west this weekend. Hopefully, I'll have good news on a new job in the next two weeks or so. One that will allow me to blog without feeling like the fury of the federal government is going to come down on my head just because I happen to have an opinion on something...
Those crazy folks over at the Alliance for Science are putting up the notice for their 2nd Annual Evolution Essay contest!!! The first contest, while thrown together at the very last minute, turned out to be a success. Five high school students received cash prizes and a slew of autographed science books, plus a year's subscription to Seed Magazine. The first place winner's science teacher also received a cash prize to spend on classroom supplies, and additional teaching materials. This year, they're getting a jump on things early. The contest doesn't happen until February, but start…
Steve at Omnibrain has been discussing a deep-fried turkey and turducken event in the back channels, and that has led some of us to ponder the ramifications of deep-frying a turducken itself. In the spirit of that discussion, I wrote a really dumb poem. I also apologize that it is rife with inside jokes. Any sciblings I left out, sorry, but there are just too damn many of us. Fried turducken makes me choke Fried turducken is for the blokes I do not like it on a log I do not like it with a sprog I would not eat it with a carrot I do not like it with a parrot You can stuff it wearing socks…
It's not a good millenium to be a monkey. GENEVA (AFP) - Nearly a third of all non-human primates could be wiped out, threatened by illegal wildlife trade, climate change and destruction of their habitat, a new report warned on Friday. Twenty-nine percent of all monkeys, apes and gorilla species are now in danger of going extinct, according to the report by the Swiss-based World Conservation Union (IUCN). A complete shame because we have so many close relatives on our family bush that can teach us about evolution, how our brains work, and generally what it means to be human. It highlighted…
Recently Orac took apart the findings of another acupuncture study. Those who administer acupuncture typically insinuate that a mysterious vital energy known as "chi" travels along meridians in the body, and that normal flow of chi is necessary for good health. Orac pointed out that this recent study effectively disproved the notion of meridians in traditional Chinese medicine. Similar woo also permeates the martial arts. If one's chi is properly aligned, supposedly the practitioner can make their body do amazing things such as selectively exploding an opponent's internal organs when…
Usually when one sets up a parody website, they at least have the courtesy to indicate someplace on the site that it is in fact a parody. Unfortunately I was unable to find such a disclaimer on this one, and since there are actually people sick enough to use the internet for buying and selling underage brides, I am seriously forced to wonder even though my bullshit detector is going crazy. Marry Our Daughter Parody. Please. Be a parody. The tone of the testimonials suggests parody. Please. Cuz if it's not, I seriously hope there's a hell so that these people can burn in it.
...but for those who suffer from it, "in your head" can be more debilitating than other chronic, painful illnesses. A massive WHO survey study of 60 countries reported that 3.2% of people had depression over the course of a year. Interestingly, though... This was a bit lower than for asthma (3.3 percent), arthritis (4.1 percent), and angina (4.5 percent), and higher than for diabetes (2.0 percent.) But the results of a quality-of-life index called the "global mean health score" showed that depression was, by a significant margin, the most difficult to bear. The most difficult to bear, and…
Ha ha, fooled you! The Discovery Institute has just issued this on their blog, the inaccurately named Evolution News and Views: According to CSC senior fellow and leading ID theorist William Dembski, what follows is: "[A] big story, perhaps the biggest story yet of academic suppression relating to ID. Robert Marks is a world-class expert in the field of evolutionary computing, and yet the Baylor administration, without any consideration of the actual content of Marks's work at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, decided to shut it down simply because there were anonymous complaints linking…
A few weekends ago I attended my second kalis Ilustrisimo seminar, sponsored by Guro John Jacobo of SWACOM. Master "Topher" Ricketts and his son Bruce led the seminar and it was one hell of a good time, despite being in a sweaty gym in Baltimore on a 95 degree day. (That kinda added to the atmosphere, though.) I had not had the pleasure of meeting Bruce before, but let me say that kid is already amazing and is going to be one incredible fighter someday. Actually he is already. Kalis Ilustrisimo is a bladed art of the Philippines that was last handed down from the Ilustrisimo family by the…
Finally we get some data on changes in AD pathology with statin use! Statins are taken for lowering cholesterol, but they have other beneficial effects such as modulating inflammatory responses. Thus, they could prove beneficial in the treatment of AD given the disease has a significant inflammatory component. According to the press release The two changes in the brain that are considered the most definitive hallmarks of Alzheimer's are brain "plaques" and "tangles." After controlling for variables including age at death, gender, and strokes in the brain, the researchers found…
Anger abound in the blogosphere at the PRISM organization, or Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine. As one could guess from reading the braintrust of a guy who worked with ENRON jailbird Jeff Skilling, SPECTRE PRISM is long on rhetoric and completely lacking in data. When I say lacking, I mean zero. Zip. Zilch. Maybe I missed something, but a perusal of the website failed to yield a single survey or statistic to support PRISM's grandiose claims that... Policies are being proposed that threaten to introduce undue government intervention in science and scholarly…
I'm on a environmental tox kick lately. The latest foray into endocrine disruption in the news is polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs. PBDEs are used as flame retardant compounds, and like my earlier ruminations on bisphenol A, they're in everything. Unfortunately, there's evidence that they don't just sit there, but rather, as the LA Times reports, they like to impersonate thyroid hormone and may lead to hyperthyroidism. An epidemic of thyroid disease among pet cats could be caused by toxic flame retardants that are widely found in household dust and some pet food, government…
The LA Times has an interesting story about a statement regarding the use of bisphenol A, a compound that has many uses in the plastics industry and also happens to have estrogenic effects. The scientists -- including four from federal health agencies -- reviewed about 700 studies before concluding that people are exposed to levels of the chemical exceeding those that harm lab animals. Infants and fetuses are most vulnerable, they said. This is an important point. Organisms in utero can be exquisitely sensitive to growth factors and hormones, sometimes hundreds or even thousands of times…