Y'all know what time it is! Today is the 199th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, and hundreds of organizations will celebrate the date "in honor of the discoveries and life of the man who famously described biological evolution via natural selection." I'm so excited, I totally forgot all about that other guy's birthday yesterday — what's his name? Ah, it's not important; I gotta get me a fake beard for my theme party.
The Albany, N.Y.-based Institute for Humanist Studies helped sponsor hundreds of events in cities across the world to mark the occasion, so you'll be able to party down with fellow Darwinistas from Dhaka to Berkeley. To be fair, the events feature more picnics and guest lectures than out-and-out boozefests, but any celebration that can free us from the tyranny of this guy is OK by me.
McDonalds wanted to sell ice cream in its Indonesian franchises--except lactose-intolerant Indonesians can't eat the stuff without getting nastily ill. Solution: gum up some kind of non-dairy ice cream for that market sector? Nah. Just give the usual stuff away for free, and let nature take its course.
The presidential campaigns are heating up, and we're still hearing very little about science. Will we? Three weeks ago, Science featured a special section devoted to candidates’ opinions and views on science. Unfortunately, some of those articles are available only to subscribers.
Not so at Physics Today, which is published by the American Institute of Physics. At the web site, you can read about the major candidates and their official positions on topics related to science. Physics Today posed six questions to the major contenders; the topics for the questions included science education, teaching evolution, nuclear weapons, science investment, energy policy and climate change. The answers to the questions are pulled from the candidates’ web sites.
Goddammit, squirrels. One more show of suddengeneticsuperiority, and I'm going to have to lobby to have you put on the Terrorist Group Watch List.
To protect their winter stores of nuts, gray squirrels have learned how to stage fake burials so that thieves will get stumped when looking to heist their precious cargo of various nutmeats. Dr. Michael Steele of Wilkes University in Pennsylvania found that about a fifth of all nut burials are fake. The incidence goes up when the squirrels believe their stores are under particular threat.
It's rare that you see evolution in action — the only time I've seen it happen is when I evolved larger muscles to fend off all the ladies who find me immensely attractive. What, are you calling me a liar? Fair enough.
Typically, the largest tusks belong on the largest elephants, who use those gigantor tusks to intimidate other males and become successful with females. But with the largest animals getting killed for their tusks, the little guy gets a better chance with the ladies, and thusly his offspring have smaller and smaller tusks.
Well, not you, specifically, but if you're a gullible Christian student, get on the money train and see Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, to earn sweet cash for your Christian school. The producers of this Intelligent Design doc are offering cash donations to Christian schools in return for ticket stubs proving attendance (or at least purchased tickets). Breaks down like this (from the website):
* 0-99 ticket stubs submitted = $5 per ticket stub
* 100-299 ticket stubs submitted = $1,000 donated to your school
* 300-499 ticket stubs submitted = $2,500 donated to your school
* 500 ticket stubs submitted = $5,000 donated to your school
"Each school across the nation will be competing for the top honor of submitting the most ticket stubs with that school having their $5,000 donation matched for a total donation of $10,000!"
So is this movie, hosted by Ben Stein and featuring appearances from Richard Dawkins (man just can't resist a pissing match) and science hacks Jon Wells and Michael Eignor, worth being paid to see? Check the trailer after the jump.
Do we really want a president who once said he "didn't believe in the theory" when asked about evolution?
Candidates for the US presidency seem to spend more time telling me what they think of each other than telling me what they think about science. We hear the occasional sound bite about climate change, but what about those other issues that will have to be reckoned with, like the future of stem cells or alternative energy sources? (Or more responses to this administration’s reprehensible practice of altering data to fit desired conclusions?)
I’m grateful to the journal Science for including “Science and the next US President” in today’s issue. It’s a quick guide to what the leading candidates have said about big issues in science, and it makes no bones about the fact that science is not on the forefront of any campaign.
From the introduction:
"It's pretty hard to find a candidate from either party who is gung ho for science," laments Representative Vernon Ehlers (R-MI), one of two Ph.D. physicists in Congress and an indefatigable promoter of science and technology.
Here are some excerpts from the article about last night’s big winners in the Iowa caucuses:
We already knew everyone's favorite rodent-in-the-park had the ability to organize into tightly regimented, bloodthirsty combat units capable of eliminating threats with extreme prejudice, but it turns out squirrels have added stealth to their rapidly expanding repertoire of wartime skills.
California ground squirrels and rock squirrels from New Mexico have both shown the ability to chew up sloughed-off rattlesnake skin and smear it on their fur, thus masking their scent from one of their biggest predator threats. UC-Davis researcher Barbara Clucas noticed this behavior back in 2002, and has been studying it since then. She published her results in the journal Animal Behavior back in November.
We can't embed it here because it uses this badass split-screen effect to pit The Big Two origin stories against each other: That of "The Book of Darwin" and "the records of the General Organization and Development [GOD] labs".
The mind-flip concept is refreshingly cheeky (archaic biblespeak for the evolutionists, sleek technojargon for the creationists). But the visuals are just awesome.
[I personally don't think this video is advancing any kind of "teach the controversy" b.s... it's clearly an ironic send-up of the fact that there IS any controversy. But that's just me. Agree or disagree? Comments are open as always! Theirs, too.]
Since when was using an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence to prove your point worth being killed for? An English backpacker was sentenced to five years for manslaughter by an Australian court after stabbing a Scottish man and fellow backpacker last January. The Englishman befriended the Scottish couple, who were both biomedical scientists, but an evening argument over creation vs. evolution erupted, with the Scottish couple on the side of evolution vs. the Englishman on the side of the Bible and sharp objects.
Both camps seemed to agree to disagree, until the discussion reignited later, this time with drunkenness to fuel the fight. The Englishman lost it during dinner and went Michael Myers on the Scotsman, though he claims he used the knife in self-defense against the evolutionist.
Genetic change has been coming 100 times faster in the past 5000 years than at any point in previous history say Robert K. Moyzis of the University of California, Irvine, and Henry C. Harpending of the University of Utah. I imagine they then immediately shouted, NBA Jam-style, "He's heating up!" while fantasizing about the inevitability of women who sprout wings and men who shoot lasers out of their nostrils.
While the more prevalent notion has been that evolution has slowed or halted, favoring cultural rather than biological change, 7% of all human genes showed evidence of recent natural selection.
Oh, those creationists — you gotta give 'em credit for putting up a fight. These brief excerpts from the documentary "A Question of Origins" seek to tackle both astronomy and genetics with a cable-access budget and dime-store logic. A lot of the arguments within the astronomy doc amount to "because it exists, God did it," but I'm particularly fond of the "scientists have no answer as to why four planets have rings, or why each planet is so unique." Ha!
Check out the genetics clip after the jump, and let the laughter continue.
Everyone from Pat Robertson to Richard Dawkins has to weigh in on evolution. But I think we all know that only one man's opinion matters: Chuck Norris.
As always, the brains behind this operation are writer/director/producer John Pavlus (more posts by him at 60 Second Science here) and cameraman Steven Boling.
Special thanks to PZ Myers, who screened a first draft of the script and made me feel like this just might work...
Writer John Scalzi visited and wrote about his trip to the Creation Museum, so you don't have to. You'll only really appreciate what a service this is if you've ever been there: Last time I visited, I got thrown out on my ass -- not because I disagreed with them, but because no one there would acknowledge me as the Creator and give me free funnel cakes. Ingrates.
Y'all know what time it is! Today is the 199th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, and hundreds of organizations will celebrate the date "in honor of the discoveries and life of the man who famously described biological evolution via natural selection." I'm so excited, I totally forgot all about that other guy's birthday yesterday — what's his name? Ah, it's not important; I gotta get me a fake beard for my theme party.
Goddammit, squirrels. One more show of 
Well, not you, specifically, but if you're a gullible Christian student, get on the money train and see Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, to earn sweet cash for your Christian school. The producers of this Intelligent Design doc 
We already knew everyone's favorite rodent-in-the-park had the ability to organize into tightly regimented, bloodthirsty combat units 
Since when was using an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence to prove your point worth being killed for? An English backpacker was sentenced to five years for manslaughter by an Australian court after stabbing a Scottish man and fellow backpacker last January. The Englishman befriended the Scottish couple, who were both biomedical scientists, but an evening argument over creation vs. evolution erupted, with the Scottish couple on the side of evolution vs. the Englishman on the side of the Bible and sharp objects.
