From Mn Atheists:

Drs PZ Myers and Greg Laden will be our guests on today’s show. PZ is in the Minneapolis/St Paul metro for a pair of talks this weekend. First he will be presenting “The Evolution of Cooperativity” to the Humanists of Minnesota on February 19th, and on the 20th he will be explaining the broader topic of Evolution to the Minnesota Atheists.

PZ Myers is not shy of controversy, as he seems to invoke and generate it at will through his blog, Pharyngula. He writes about atheism, science, politics from a liberal perspective, zebrafish, critical thinking, pirates, sexism and poorly reasoned e-mails. Greg Laden joins PZ for a question and answer session in our studios. Greg generates his own share of controversy at his own blog.

Sunday’s show is more open ended than our usual format. Greg is culling questions posted in the comment section at this post from Greg Laden’s Blog. I invite callers and e-mailers during the live show as well.

More, links

Did anyone notice the straw poll results from the CPAC convention? CPAC is the Conservative Political Action Conference. With all this talk about Palin and Bachmann and Palin/Bachmann and Bachmann/Palin and so on and so forth, one would be surprised if they didn’t come in at or near the top of the poll. Here were the results:

Ron Raul: 30%,
Mitt Romney: 23%,
Gary Johnson 6%,
Chris Christie 6%,
Newt Gingrich: 5%,
Tim Pawlenty 4%,

Continue reading The Palin/Bachmann Ticket Moves Into Position →

Patricia Kuhl shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another — by listening to the humans around them and “taking statistics” on the sounds they need to know. Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to understand their world.

I’ll be interviewing PZ Myers on Sunday on Atheist Talk Radio in the Twin Cities. I can’t think of a thing to ask him about … what would YOU suggest?

Write your proposed questions or topics in the comments below.

But you won’t stand for it.

Later this week the House will vote on HR 1, a “continuing resolution” (CR) to fund the federal government for the remainder of FY 2011. HR 1 would cut NIH funding by $1.6 billion (5.2%) BELOW the current level – reducing the nation’s medical research budget to $29.4 billion! Everyone in the scientific community – researchers, trainees, lab personnel, etc. – must protest these short-sighted cuts. The cuts will slow the discovery of new treatments, lead to wasteful termination of projects, and ultimately cost some Americans their jobs. In addition, cutting the NIH budget will discourage young people from pursuing careers in science.

Please contact your Representative IMMEDIATELY to urge him/her to oppose the cuts to NIH and vote against HR 1.

Go here for details.

South Dakota would make the killing of abortion providers legal.

A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of “justifiable homicide” to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus–a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state’s GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon.
“The bill in South Dakota is an invitation to murder abortion providers.”

The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Phil Jensen, a committed foe of abortion rights, alters the state’s legal definition of justifiable homicide by adding language stating that a homicide is permissible if committed by a person “while resisting an attempt to harm” that person’s unborn child or the unborn child of that person’s spouse, partner, parent, or child. If the bill passes, it could in theory allow a woman’s father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion–even if she wanted one.

Fucking Christians. Read more. If you are a Christian and you don’t believe that abortion providers should be shot dead legally in South Dakota then say something about it, please. Your silence is exactly the same as your guilt.

House Bill 368 (PDF), introduced in the Tennessee House of Representatives on February 9, 2011, is the sixth antievolution bill introduced in a state legislature in 2011, and the first introduced in Tennessee since 2007. The bill, if enacted, would require state and local educational authorities to “assist teachers to find effective ways to present the science curriculum as it addresses scientific controversies” and permit teachers to “help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.” The only examples provided of “controversial” theories are “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” The sole sponsor of HB 368 is Bill Dunn (R-District 16), who, according to Project Vote Smart, answered yes to the question “Should Tennessee require its public schools to teach evolution as theory rather than scientific fact?” in 1996 — the same year in which the Tennessee legislature considered a bill (SB 3229/HB 2972) that would have provided for the suspension or dismissal of any teacher or administrator who taught evolution as a fact rather than a theory.

Links, the actual bill, etc. here at NCSE

Charles Darwin wrote a book called Geological Observations on South America. Since Fitzroy needed to carry out intensive and extensive coastal mapping in South America, and Darwin was, at heart, a geologist more than anything else (at least during the Beagle’s voyage), this meant that Darwin would become the world’s expert on South American geology. Much of The Voyage is about his expeditions and observations. Part of this, of course, was figuring out the paleontology of the region.

Bahia Blanca is a port at the northern end of Patagonia. Chapter V of The Voyage begins:

Read more!

We’re half way through Darwin Month, and only a tiny ways through the voyage. Need to hurry up! So, let’s skip ahead a bit and hit the Gauchos…. (This is a modified version of a post from my old blog).

Well, you don’t really want to hit at Gaucho … they hit back rather hard….

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OK, maybe the argument is a bit weak, but still…

Eventually, the Beagle headed south to the area of Uruguay and Argentina, still on the Atlantic Coast, where extensive mapping of the coastal waters was required.

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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.

In the following passages, Darwin is still along the Atlantic Coast, in “The Brazils,” in the general vicinity of Rio de Janeiro, ant it early summer 1832. All of these passages illustrate why insects dreaded Darwin:

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