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There are a lot of exciting developments to talk about in this week’s newsletter. First, the second of these news letters (the one you are reading right now) has been produced, which is a sign that I may do these regularly. Second, and much more important, is that a whole bunch of interesting climate blogging has been going on. Third, it is time to go back to school! And I’ve got some blog posts for that too. Wheat from Chaff It has become a tradition to post numerous items for teachers, students, parents of students, and school administrators at this time when so many return to school. Here you’ll find the archive of back to school postings, starting with the most recent. There has been a lot of Global Warming related blogging over the last few weeks. This link cloud will get you to the relevant links both here and elsewhere. Please add any links that I may have missed. Also, please spread these posts around. We need more exposure for the good guys. Over at The X Blog we are winding down on Michele Bachmann as her campaign collapses and disintegrates, and winding up with discussions of 9/11, what with the 10th anniversary coming up and all. In the meantime I would like to note that no one has identified the meaning of the name “The X Blog.” I’m rather shocked. One would think it would be easy to find. Perhaps no one cares about history any more… Just you wait and see department You all know Scicurious. Well, when I saw a new Twin Study that looked at female orgasms, I assumed she’d be writing it up. So, while I was working on my post on the paper, I contacted her and it turns out that we are going to jointly post our respective posts on the topic. Several have asked if I’m going to cover the paper is yes, but it will be Friday. Stay tuned. Carnivals and such The circus of the spineless is HERE. Social Networking I blog (etc) here: This is an experiment. To reduce complexity in my own life and enhance the quality of communication between me and you, I’m going to try this “newsletter” thingie. It will probably be weekly, roughly timed for the middle of the week, and will include links to the blog posts I personally wish that you would not miss, information about other stuff happening on the blogosphere, a little section on activism to remind both you and me to do that, and a listing of ways in which you can reach out and touch me. Without actually, you now, touching me. For now, I will probably cross-post this on my various blogs, though I’d love your opinion on that. Wheat from Chaff Technology: Editing PDF’s Blogospherics: My new media page. Evolutionary biology: What happened with Archaeopteryx? Anthropology: Eating Insects (a series of posts) Politics: Child abuse in the name of god (a timely repost) Media: Bug Girl and Greg Laden Speak Skeptically with Desiree Schell Commentary: New and Moved Blogs This is big news. Freethought Blogs now has 16 blogs, over half of which are new. You should check them out. Ed Brayton, one of the founders of FTB.com, has written a post introducing the new bloggers. In addition, here is a sampling of current posts (from new and pre-existing bloggers) on this network: My close personal friend and fellow blogger Stephanie Zvan has moved her blog, Almost Diamonds to Freethought Blogs. Her opening post explains her blogging strategy. Alethian Worldview is written by Deacon Duncan, a former preacher and serious Christian who is now an Alethian. You can check out his inaugural post to find out what an Alethian is. Assassin Actual is a Cavalry Officer in the U.S. Army deployed to Iraq in support of Operation New Dawn. Here is his welcoming post, complete with a scary graphic. Hank Fox, author of Red Neck, Blue Collar, Atheist: Simple Thoughts About Reason, Gods and Faith Butterflies and Wheels blogged by Ophelia Benson has moved to Freethoughtblogs.com as well. Ophelia wrote Does God Hate Women? If all you had was a hammer you’d treat the world like it was a nail. To find out more about this sort of thing, visit Daniel Fincke’s blog, Camels With Hammers, in it’s new home. Comradde PhysioProffe seems to have changed the spelling of his name (a pseudonymous pseudonym?) and moved some time ago to FTB.com. Check out his latest recipe. Greta Christina. Say no more. Click here. I still have a hard time saying the name of Jason Thibeault’s blog, because where I grew up that word was considered to be a fairly strong slur and we were not told to use it. His inaugural post is here. Jason knows a lot about how to make computers work and stuff, so this is good that he is here. You all know PZ is on FTB.com and you all know about Pharyngula. Check out this important item: As an American Atheist, I am disgusted by the 9/11 coloring book. Reasonable Doubts is a famous podcast that bloggs at FTB.com. Here. I wonder how a podcast works the keyboard! There is a Squid in the house. And of course, squids have a strong prurient sense. Ick! You might notice that this list is almost alphabetical. So that would put me right about here. Zingularity has got a very important research related blog post that merely goes to prove something I’ve been saying ALL ALONG!!! Chris Rodda wrote Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right’s Alternate Version of American History In a separate matter, I want to note that Mike the Mad Biologist has left Scienceblogs.com and now blogs here. I wish him the best, of course, but I wish he was still at Scienceblogs. On the other hand, the internet is a small place… One Stop Shopping The latest addition to my store is a “testosterone killed my brain” tee-shirt (at the Cafe Press shirt, same place as the Darwin I Think hats and stuff). This is in response to JC Pennys shirt “I’m too pretty to do my homework” which also implies incest if you go with the usual homework-for-sex idea. Which no one seems to have noticed (or is that just me?) Carnivals and such The Evolution Carnival is here, at Henry Gee’s. Activism 4 U We are working on the first draft of the Women Thinking Free Foundation’s “More Than Men” videos. I’ve actually put them up on my YouTube stream, but there will be revisions and I don’t want to openly promote them until WTF has seen them … who knows, since I didn’t follow instruction they may get rejected! Look in this space in the next newsletter for the links, or get the preview by visiting my YouTube stream. Social Networking
I blog (etc) here:
Get your sex-determining genetics and endocrinology tee-shirt here. Hitting your children is abuse. Regular hitting of your children perpetuates this abuse into the next generation. Our modern civilized society shuns this behavior, though it is still practiced by an alarming number of individuals. PZ Myers writes about Joey Salvati, who has started a business whereby he sells paddles, and provides instructions on how to use them, to facilitate this form of abuse. The instructions also support this abusive behavior in two other ways: First, it systematizes it in the context of “love” … making it seem like the right thing to do … and second it is claimed that the specifics … the design details of the paddle as well as the mode and method of use … were conveyed to him … to Joey Salvati … by god. In the shower. This is appalling in so many ways. Continue reading Child abuse in the name of god
The truly amazing thing about those posters is that the people in them more often than not seem to have an ethnic identity that I, as a trained Biological Anthropologist (and thus keeper of this sort of knowledge) can easily see contraindicates milk consumption. Most of these individuals would likely be unable to break down the lactose in the milk because they have the “wild type” or “normal” allele that facilitates the shutdown of lactase production some time in early life. Now let’s be clear about this. We humans are mammals, and as mammals, we drink mother’s milk while young. This is facilitated by the production of lactase, an enzyme that breaks down the main energy bearing molecule in milk, the sugar lactose. But your basic well adapted mammals should not bother producing the enzyme lactase after weaning normally occurs … maybe a few years after in a long-lived mammal like humans … because it is inefficient and potentially risky to produce enzymes you don’t need. Why is it inefficient? Well, there are thousands and thousands of enzymes and if we just produced all of them all the time in all our cells, that would be really costly of raw materials and energy, both of which are required to produce them. So, evolution has shaped, via the brilliant designer of Natural Selection, our multicellular bodies to produce enzymes only in the cells they are needed in (from which they may be exuded on occasion, as is the case with lactase, a digestive enzyme). This is much more efficient. By extension, the system should be (and usually is) selected to produce specific enzymes when they are needed instead of all the time from birth to death. By doing this we save a lot of raw materials and energy.
The global warming debate has been running continuously since the now very obscure publication of Moment in the Sun: 1968” by Dr. Robert Rienow and Leorna Train Rienow. Most people think of the literary beginning of the environmental movement has having been “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson, and maybe so, but for me, it was Rienow. This is partly because “Moment…” was the first book I read on the topic, one of the first “adult” books I read at all, and on those early mornings before school I was able to watch Dr. Rienow on that crazy new fangled box … the black and white TV my parents had just acquired … on a thing called “Sunrise Semester” produced by SUNY-Albany. Rienow would lecture, and he and his wife and (I assume) the occasional student would put on skits lampooning industrialists and other polluters. I remember one day, years after having last seen Sunrise Semester, having just acquired a car and a license (at a ripe old age of 18 or so) exploring the territory south of town, along the Hudson River. I encountered an old narrow road running down into the wooded valley from a minor highway, and took the turn thinking it would lead somewhere interesting. Soon enough there was another turn onto a narrow gravel way called “Holly Hock Hollow” … that name sounded familiar, but I could not place it. So I made that turn as well. A mile and a half or so later, the road leveled off to join the floodplain of a small creek, and I started to see little wooden signs in the forest, extolling in a few words here and there the virtues of nature, and imploring the reader to “leave no trace of your visit” and “respect the trees and animals” and such. Eventually I spied, along side the road where a stone wall opened to a gate, a sign: “Holly Hock Hollow Farm ~ Robert and Leorna Rienow.”
The other face is the biological one, the scientific description of “race” itself, and the scientific explanation for racial differences. Each of these aspects of modern racism can act independently and to some extent have different histories, but by and large they are two parts of the same trend. Prior to Eugenics, the biological side of this monster was not scientific, and was in fact typically religious. When European Christians needed to explain the people of the New World (how the heck did they get there, and who were they, really?) or the “savages” of Africa, they turned to the bible … and there found the basis for Continue reading Racism, Creationism, Darwinism
The 15 or so exhibits demonstrated a wide range of levels, from what must have been pre-school to at least one clearly done by the parents (that one, present yesterday during an earlier trip to the mall, but missing today) compared the affective behavior of childcare-kids vs. home school kids.) Most of the exhibits had a quote from “the scriptures” related in some way to the exhibit. For instance, my favorite: a very young child’s exhibit (I’m guessing) on bunnies. The Scripture: “God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be” (I Corinthians Anyway, the “Bunny” science fair entry was my favorite not because of the misquotation of scripture, but because of the hypothesis being tests:
We all had to laugh when, on the way home, Amanda slammed on the breaks to avoid flattening a bunny tearing across the street. “Well, praise the lord, all the parts seem to be working…” Many, really the majority, of the exhibits were just regular (mostly half baked) science fair exhibits that had some scripture slapped onto them. In other words, despite the occasional exhibit clearly motived by pure creationist philosophy, most of the kids ended up doing some kind of science or another. Funny, I don’t remember ANY of the 200 exhibits or so at the Brimhall Fair (see this on Julia’s entry) held earlier in the year just down the street at a Real School addressing creationist ideas. But when the kids enter into a creationist fair, they can’t seem to help themselves from doing some actual science. Nonetheless, the overall quality was unimpressive, as one would expect from the home school environment. After my first visit to the fair, I swooped into Barnes and Noble and bought myself a copy of Dawkins “The God Delusion.” … I just needed to do something. After this trip, I think I’ll just take a shower.
Randy Olson left the world of science to pursue a career in Hollywood, and after about 10 years of not paying a lot of attention to his former career, learned that a new theory had emerged to explain the diversity of life: Intelligent Design. This film chronicles his quest to find out what Intelligent Design had to offer, and to explore the political and social conflict associated with the rise of this new idea. It is an absolutely fair film in that both “sides” are given ample opportunity to demonstrate merit. As such, of course, the Intelligent Design side of the discussion appears significantly weaker and sometimes downright foolish, and occasionally nefarious. This film has been well received. Many reviewers note a comparison with Michael Moore … I have to say, I’m a Michael Moore fan (not a nut over him, I just think he has talent and a sufficiently demented sense of humor to enjoy). Olson is NOT a Moore clone, despite the similarities. While Olson’s voice is clear in Flock, it is not “in your face” but rather a voice that is always there drawing out, sometimes cajoling, others to be heard. Olson’s experience as an evolutionary biologist turned filmmaker placed him in a unique position. The evolutionary biologists he interviews are either people he knows or people who know people he knows .. in other words, members of his extended professional community. This allows him license to poke fun at them. It also allows him to treat their position in the film with a respectful rather than snide humor. On the other side of it, it turns out that Olson is a native Kansan, and his mom (spiritualist “Muffy Moose”), one of the stars of the film, lives around the corner from one of the principle players in the Kansas ID movement. Olson’s family and community ties, and his being a Prairie Homeboy himself, gives him the ability to treat the ID representatives with simultaneous respect and humor. While the Intelligent Design “movement/theory” (both in quotes, you will note) is trumped by the science in this film, the weakness of the scientists as a group … especially when it comes to making their case to the public … is clearly underscored. Olson replicates the famous “Harvard Poker Game” (which used to be played at my good friend Irv’s house back in the day) at which several scientists sit around talking about Intelligent Design. Each time one of the scientists comes up with a multisyllabic erudite utterance (a fancy word), the film stops and goes to a black screen on which a definition of the word is typed out. In this and other ways, the scientists are duly mocked. But I must say the opportunities Olson was able to exploit for mocking the Intelligent Design proponents were myriad and wonderful. So while the IDers in general were trumped, the BIG loser, losing poignantly, painfully, even Michael-Mooresquely, was ID Central itself, the Discovery Institute. They are shown to be deeply, darkly, impressively evil. I won’t give you the details …. and it is nothing like the main point of the film … just go see it. It is worth noting that while the Discovery Institute would not give Olson the time of day at the time he made the movie, they have since reacted strongly and very negatively to it (creating an entire web site about it “Hoax of Dodos”). I would give you the link to it but, well, they can go screw themselves. The post viewing discussion was as expected: Informative and lively. Unlike the recent situation in Seattle, the filming was not infiltrated by the Discovery Institute, as far as I know. Excellent questions were asked, and points were made. The two creationists who spoke out were low key and were treated respectfully. The film is currently available from DER, at institutional-use price and license. If you are with an institution, go buy it now on the company’s dime!!! It will be on Showtime a bit later, and around summer, available from all the usual sources as a home-use DVD. I’d like to express a particular thanks for Steve Miller for coming to the Twin Cities in sub-zero weather to view the film with us (but I hastily add, I think Steve is a Minneapolitian, but since he currently lives in the Deep South, this could not have been easy).
Panelists Scott Lanyon, director of the Bell Museum and ornithologist, Mark Borrello, Historian of Science, and PZ Myers, Fire Breathing EvoDevo Biologist, each gave 5 minute summaries (none of which lasted more than 10 or 11 minutes) of various aspects of the current social debate over evolution, then fielded questions from an audience that seemed much of the time all too compliant. Many thoughts came to my mind during the discussion (which I stayed tactfully away from) the first of which is that these three guys did a great job at driving home a variety of points. I won’t summarize their perspectives, but rather, I’d like to give a few gut reactions. I think starting right now we have to substitute the term “Evolutionary Biology” for the often used “Evolutionary Theory” instead of constantly whining about how “people” misunderstand the use of the word “Theory.” It is the Theory of Relativity, but the physicists say just “Relativity.” The Periodic Table of the Elements is a theory, but the word “theory” is never used there either. We are just asking for trouble and should not be so surprised when we get trouble. It was interesting to see the range of perspectives, running from left to right (on how the panelists were arranged on the couch) but from centrist to left with Lanyon advocating a truce between religion and science on one end and Myers saying of religion “It’s wrong all the way down” (a subtle reference, no doubt, to turtles). The speakers represented a fairly typical range of biological fields and thinking, even in the way that the behavioral aspects of biology were not especially considered. For instance, Borrello extolled the virtues of The Origin together with The Selfish Gene as representing a kind of range of explanatory power in biology. This is OK, and not wrong, but biologists who study mainly genes or inverts or cells often forget that starting with Hamilton in 1964, and running through a pantheon of other fieldworkers, theorists, and experimental biologists, there is a lot of strong theory that relates almost entirely to organisms with brains (the field of behavioral biology). This missing area was also felt (by me anyway) when Borrello (or Lanyon, can’t remember) noted that there have been three major revolutions in biological science: Darwin (Natural Selection), Mendel (genetics) and EvoDevo. Clearly, Behavioral Biology and Behavioral Theory is one of the revolutions (a.k.a. sociobiology). Nonetheless, the speakers did a fine job fielding the one behavioral question they got, on homosexuality. The point was made that we live in a science and technology based society, yet Americans disrespect science to a large degree. This is an interesting point. We are actually a Christian Nation, according to some, and this conflict is at the heart of the discord. I was left with the very strong feeling that science is in need of strong cultural leadership. Instead of our society requiring that office seekers be good christians, we need credible politicians … and movie stars and recording artists and other cultural icons … sticking their noses up at creationism and promoting the premise that of course, we do live in a science and technology based society so we should give more respect to the scientists and the theoretical and empirical knowledge they work with. This was a real Minnesota Experience for me, coming from “out east.” At one point an anti-religion/pro-atheistic remark was made (by an audience member) and it drew applause. That, I get. And had this event happened in Cambridge Mass, that would have happened. But then, just at the end, what was supposed to be the “last question” turned into a rant against PZ Myers by someone who claimed to be “non religious” and who’s hero was none other than Darwin Himself, but who believed that anti-religious sentiment underlying at least part of the above mentioned spectrum was even more arrogant than Myers had claimed creationists to be. THAT also received applause. THAT would not have happened in Cambridge. The moderators, feeling that this was a bad “last question” handed the mike to another person. Big mistake. She took the discussion down several notches, explaining (to her credit) that she as a christian still supported science and believed in evolution, but then she did not stop talking, and went on for a while about how she loved Jesus and how this discussion did nothing more than to make her closer to Jesus and so on and so on. More applause. I don’t think anyone was converted, but thirsts were slaked. The audience wanted more, and more, I think, they shall have at upcoming Cafe Scientifques here and elsewhere. I ended the evening with a discussion with Gordon Murdock that included the idea of doing a Cafe Scientifique sort of format for High School and Grade school kids (same format, minus the beer). And I hope all three of these panelists will be available for that.
Doc: Why are you depressed, Alvy? |
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, is blogging at 
, and her site at FTB.com is 
and blogs at “This Week in Christian Nationalism” on FTB.com. 
As you probably know, everyone should drink milk. Lots and lots and lots of milk. All your life. Or so says the American Dairy Industry, often using those sexy posters of famous people with milk smeared on their faces. 
The IPCC report is out, “An Inconvenient Truth” has been honored by the academy, a sea change is happening in the way that climate change news is being reported, and you can bet the Right Wing and the Ree-pubs are as we speak working up new Talking Points and Spins to deflate the urgency of the issue. It is an axiom that in reporting science, there are two (not one, not three or four, just two) sides to every issue, and one side is the plank nailed to the Democratic Party Platform, and the other side is the plank nailed to the Ree-pub Party Platform. This is a truth as stable and reliable as the fact that Home Depot will always sell 2” X 4” studs and plywood in 4′ X 8′ foot pieces. We are already seeing the dubious dichotomies forming up. For instance, yes, the Antarctic Ice Sheet is sloughing off the continent, but it is opening new and wonderful opportunities for both shrimp and scientists. Yes, global warming is real and is anthropogenic, but the Average American thinks, according to Polls, that it is only the third or fourth most important issue. And so on.
Racism and it’s various manifestations such as eugenics is a Janus Faced monster of human society. One side speaks to people’s fear and hate, and is social and political. It speaks a sermon to the angry and downtrodden who love to hear that their “race” is superior, or to the social managers and engineers who benefit from a handy excuse to explain the results of repression and economic inequality as the natural outcome of history and circumstance beyond our control and thus not the fault of those self same social managers and engineers. 
Well, Amanda, Julia and I stopped by the 2007 Home Schooling Creationist Science Fair over at the unique Har Mar Mall in Roseville, Minnesota. Very few of the shoppers passing through the mall seemed to take much of an interest. There were a couple of moms showing each exhibit to their children, reading off the relevant parts … “Evolutionists think fossils take millions of years to form, but creationists have shown that this is not true…” and so on.
Science is probably one of the hardest subjects to teach. Many students just don’t see the connection between abstract science in textbooks and how it works and affects them in real life. That’s where a variety of science lesson plans can help teach science to your students more effectively.
The new feature-length documentary by filmmaker and evolutionary biologist Randy Olson, “
Amanda and I just returned from the Bell Museum sponsored by Cafe Scientifique at the Varsity Theater in Dinkytown, Minneapolis, and it was a very interesting evening.
Dialog from Annie Hall:
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