Daily Archives: February 10, 2008

Science Debate Two Thousand Eight in Business Week

i-f082db2951b4daef166220119e8a89d9-sciencedebate2008.jpgScience Debate 2008 got a writeup in Business Week.

When most of the Republican candidates for President proclaimed that they did not believe in evolution during a debate last year, astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss was one of many who were aghast. The Case Western University professor and best-selling author was even more upset when former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee shrugged off concerns, saying that he was running for President, not writing a middle-school curriculum. “How could being scientifically illiterate be perfectly acceptable?” Krauss asks. “No one would accept a candidate who, say, denied the Holocaust.”Instead of just fuming, Krauss seized on an idea then being proposed by screenwriter/director Matthew Chapman to stage a Presidential campaign debate focused on science….

Read the rest here.

Yet Another Crop of Crackers Attacks Education in Florida

What?! Is Florida totally full of morons, or what?The Bay District School Board will vote on Wednesday on a resolution that waters down the proposed state standards for life science education. Please go to the Channel 7 web site where this story is posted and add your comments along side some guy from New York who is the first to chime in (in favor of rational thinking). If you are from one of these states mainly known for slack-jawed yokels who prefer to marry their siblings but will take a cousin in a pinch, and are NOT one of these morons, please, it is especially important that you chime in.Oh, and if you are from Florida and are offended by my attitude … Don’t ask me to change. Change Florida. I’m busy up here working on Minnesota, and we’ve got our hands full….

Darwin and the Voyage: 06 ~ Bugs

When reading the Voyage, it is impossible to miss the observation that much of the time Darwin was engaged in adolescent boy behavior: Pulling the heads off insects, noting how long they would wiggle after cut in half, closely examining the ooze and guts, occupied much of his time. Obviously, careful observation and a strong stomach were not all that was required to think up Natural Selection and his other theories, or the Origin of Species would have been written dozens of times by dozens of grown up kids. Continue reading Darwin and the Voyage: 06 ~ Bugs

Mammals and the KT Event

A very important and truly wonderful paper in Nature described a tour-de-force analysis of the Mammalian Evolutionary Record, and draws the following two important conclusions:

  1. The diversification of the major groups of mammals occurred millions of years prior to the KT boundary event; and
  2. The further diversification of these groups into the modern pattern of mammalian diversity occurred millions of years later than the KT boundary event.

Continue reading Mammals and the KT Event