War on science

President Obama is much, much, much better than Bush for science, but that doesn’t mean we can be complacent. It seems that Texas is on the edge of allowing arguments against evolution into biology classes. Here’s the chairman of the State Board of Education:
The chairman of the board, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist, pushed in [...]

Evolution Evidence

The Boston Globe has two articles in today’s Health/Science section that hurt Creationism/Intelligent Design.
The first looks at the Tiktaalik:
this remarkable fish-with-limbs specimen, which made worldwide headlines when unveiled in 2006, reveals with stunning clarity how life crawled from water onto land. Its neck and forelimbs became features of four-legged animals, or tetrapods. The intricate bone [...]

Mars and Life

NASA’s Phoenix has now landed on Mars and has sent back its first pictures. Here are a couple (credit for both is: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona):

This first is a picture of Mar’s northern polar region, the cracks are believed to have occurred because of the freezing and thawing of surface water.

This second picture has a view of [...]

Kluge and Evolution

A while ago Kevin Drum went to see the movie Expelled and noted that Stein said that the theory of evolution lead to Nazis, eugenics, … Now he links to this interview with Stein:

Stein:   When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I [...]

Expelled

Way back in August of last year I had a quick note about the movie Expelled which talks about Intelligent Design. I thought that would be the last I would hear about it, but it turns out it has made for one of the best blog posts ever. Here’s the quick summary:

PZ Meyers (who had been [...]

Evolutionary Morality

Hmm, I think some religions are going to have a problem with this new part of psychology:
Today, a new field is using illusions to unmask a sixth sense, the moral sense. Moral intuitions are being drawn out of people in the lab, on Web sites and in brain scanners, and are being explained with tools [...]

Crazy Conservatives

Here are a few posts via Sadly, No! As usual, they do a better job but I have a bit to add:

Grant Swank (via here) believes that evolution is a religion and is all about faith. He latches onto the word ‘theory’ (showing how little he knows about science):

But when it comes to evolution, the adherents [...]

Well, It Is Texas

A Texas higher education panel has recommended that a outfit called the ‘Institute for Creation Research’ be allowed to offer online master’s degrees in science. Here’s what they say:
Henry Morris III, the chief executive of the Institute for Creation Research, said Tuesday that the proposed curriculum, taught in California, used faculty and textbooks “from all [...]

Human Evolution

Wait aren’t humans the summit of evolution? So why are we evolving faster now than ever before:
Our Stone Age ancestors were more genetically similar to Neanderthals than they are to us, as our species has evolved 100 times faster in the past 5,000 years than at any other time in human evolution, a new study [...]

Evolution and Biology

I’m not completely positive exactly where I stand on this:
Nathaniel Abraham filed a lawsuit earlier this week in US District Court in Boston saying that the Cape Cod research center dismissed him in 2004 because of his Christian belief that the Bible presents a true account of human creation.
Abraham, who is seeking $500,000 in compensation [...]

Bird Brains and Sleep

There are several stories in the NY Times about sleep. This one looks at birds:
Other mammals experience REM sleep and slow-wave sleep, as well, indicating that humanlike sleep patterns existed early in the history of mammals. But beyond mammals, scientists have had a hard time finding humanlike sleep patterns. So far, they have been seen [...]