Interesting preview at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) of a book by Daniel Radosh titled Rapture Ready! Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture.
The excerpt recounts an interesting visit to the Answers in Genesis infamous Creation Museum in northern Kentucky. Young-Earth Creationists truly live in a bizzaro world.
Read it here...
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Martin Gardner (1914-2010)
Martin Gardner (1914-2010) passed away on Saturday, May 22 at the age of 95. He wrote Mathematical Games for Scientific American magazine for 25 years and dozens of books and articles on recreational math and pseudoscience.
I grew up reading Gardner along with Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, and Stephen Jay Gould. They all made science and math interesting for the intelligent reader.
All dead and gone now.
I'm feeling old.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Richard Dawkins clip
I viewed this on Pharyngula recently. Amusing clip on the difference between religion and science by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Long time between posts
Busy with end of semester stuff. Here's a grab bag of stuff I found interesting.
Dot Physics has an good short post titled It's Good to Be Wrong. Reminds me of students in my geology labs complaining the labs are hard because they don't know any of the answers. Of course not, you have to work to get the answers. If you knew all the answers and could just fill it out and go home it's busy work, not a learning experience. It's much better to try and end up with an incorrect answer than to not try at all.
New research has shown genetic overlap between modern humans (in Eurasia) and Neanderthals - evidence of interbreeding. The standard view has been we're separate species - Home sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis. It seems we're really subspecies - Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. Given my occipital bun, along with a Finn and German ancestry, probably means there are a few Neanderthal genes floating in my gene pool!
Fun website where you can make your own movies at www.xtranormal.com. My wife and I have been making crazy ones and posting them on Facebook.
Dot Physics has an good short post titled It's Good to Be Wrong. Reminds me of students in my geology labs complaining the labs are hard because they don't know any of the answers. Of course not, you have to work to get the answers. If you knew all the answers and could just fill it out and go home it's busy work, not a learning experience. It's much better to try and end up with an incorrect answer than to not try at all.
New research has shown genetic overlap between modern humans (in Eurasia) and Neanderthals - evidence of interbreeding. The standard view has been we're separate species - Home sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis. It seems we're really subspecies - Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. Given my occipital bun, along with a Finn and German ancestry, probably means there are a few Neanderthal genes floating in my gene pool!
Fun website where you can make your own movies at www.xtranormal.com. My wife and I have been making crazy ones and posting them on Facebook.
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