In any given week, I come across more stories and things work looking at than I have time (or desire) to write about. I’ve decided to briefly mention stories that I find of interest and provide links. I can’t promise a Weekly Roundup every week, but when I do, it’ll be on Fridays.

Here’s what I found noteworthy this week.

• Seems Utah has a strong itching for a lawsuit. Rep. Chris Buttars has introduced a bill to undermine evolution and teach the controversy. As the Salt Lake Tribune and Dispatches from the Culture Wars note, lengthy discussion on religious motivations will doom this bill to failure if it’s passed.
• L’Osservatore, the official newspaper of the Vatican, had a piece on the debate over intelligent design and evolution. It saw ID for what it is — bad metaphysics — and suggested “if the model proposed by Darwin is not considered sufficient, one should search for another… But it is not correct from a methodological point of view to stray from the field of science while pretending to do science.”
• For all you physics nerds out there, space.com has a story on a black hole putting a dent in space time. (And people complain that biologist’s don’t know what we’re talking about. Bah.)
• Carl Zimmer has a review on the Darwin exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Wish things this cool could even get as close as Dallas or Houston. Then maybe I could go.
• A little terrorist organization we call Hamas just swept Palestinian elections. World leaders are shocked. Israel refuses to negotiate with any government that includes Hamas members. Anyone else kind of terrified at what these democratic elections have produced?
• Rabbi Marc Gellman has an article on how our obsession with winning really has us all losing. It’s an excellent piece, which should bring much to reflect on.
• National Geographic has an article on two Irishmen murdered over 2,000 years ago. One used hair gel. The other had manicured nails. The contents of their stomachs were still present, and police initially didn’t realize how old they were due to how well they were preserved. Their killings were also quite grisly.
• The Ivory-billed Woodpecker has been invoked in a lawsuit over water resources in Arkansas.
• Space around Earth is filling up with junk, and we need to find a way to clean it up, according to a National Geographic story.
• Need proof that sin sells? Sex.com has just sold for $12 million dollars. That’s the highest price ever paid for a domain name.
• A Florida man who was sentenced to 130 years in prison for robbery and rape walked free after serving 24 years, when DNA evidence proved his innocence.
• Seem those crazy physicists have discovered yet another planet out in space. This time though, it’s not a gas giant but a smaller, more earth-like planet.
• Anyone have strong partisan political feelings? A recent study shows that the brains of strong democrats and republicans are wired to ignore contradictions from members of their favored party. Perhaps we need to strive to actually listen and think, before coming to our conclusions?
• A talking Elmo book asks children, “Who wants to die?”

In very broad, non taxonomic terms, can you name this animal?

Read the rest of this entry »

At least that’s my hypothesis. How else can you explain this picture?

I pass by this sign everyday coming and going from school, and from the moment I first saw it, I’ve found it bizarre. Why would a shoe company, as it’s main advertisement, proclaim itself drug free? Are drugs so rampant in San Angelo that its desperate citizens will seek out any business, if it promises to have drug free employees? Perhaps Redwing Shoes has a particularly bad reputation for selling more than just shoes?

Whatever the reason, I’d love to know who thought up this little jewel of advertising prowess.

Wow. William Dembski, gave a talk last night on intelligent design to the Campus Crusade for Christ at Kansas University. DaveScot of Uncommon Descent has thrown down the gauntlet once again, making loud claims about how scared scientists are in discussing intelligent design.

In an unsurprising act of cowardice, not a single Darwimpian defender of the faith scientist had the balls fiber to stand up to our fearless leader in Kansas yesterday.

Well DaveScot, let’s compare and contrast two possible scenarios and see which one’s more logical.

1. All the scientists in the vicinity of Lawrence, KS were hiding in dark corners, trembling uncontrollably at the thought of debating William A. Dembksi, the “Isaac Newton of Information Theory” (Rob Koons described Dembski with this phrase in an endorsement on the back cover of this book; quote is cited towards the bottom of the page.)
2. All the scientists in the vicinity of Lawrence, KS felt that a science debate should take place in a more neutral location than a Campus Crusade for Christ event.

I’ll take the latter for $500, Alex.

I find DaveScot’s blistering criticism of scientists so funny, in light of the fact that Dembski only recently backed out of such a debate himself with Ken Miller at Case Western University. (You can watch Miller’s excellent presentation here.) On Dec 16th, Dembski indicated on his blog that he would be happy to debate the issues at Case Western. Yet when the time came, alas, Dembski couldn’t make it.

So we’re seeing the same pattern we’ve always seen. Scientific meetings are way too hostile for ID supporters. Meetings at big universities (such as Case Western) are overly hostile also. Campus Crusade for Christ is just right.

Or is it? Seems that Pat Hayes, from Red State Rabble attended the meeting and he put up his description of the event. Apparently Dembski wasn’t too happy when people started asking hard questions.

Dembski, who may have been led to expect a warmer reception for his ideas — he was in Kansas, after all — seemed to grow testy as questioner after questioner expressed doubt about his assertion that evolution is a failed theory and that patterns in nature are best explained as a result of intelligence.

Dembski, who was both expansive and patient early in the question and answer period — even allowing follow up questions — became more combative, frequently interrupting questioners to ask them to get more quickly to the point, as it became clear that many in the audience, perhaps a majority, remained unconvinced.

One young woman, apparently frustrated by the apparent sophistry of Dembski’s demand that evolution explain every single step in the evolution of bacterial flagella, while refusing to provide a similar step by step explanation of how intelligent design might have acted to create biological structures, repeatedly asked Dembski to cite physical data or observations that support intelligent design.

So even Campus Crusade for Christ meetings can be a little testy. Perhaps an even safer venue is necessary for discussing intelligent design? Dembski and Co. might find this audience more placable.

Back to the news article DaveScot linked to, it does have some nice quotes worth interpreting.

“I hope that tonight shows that there is substance to this science,” said Mark Brown, director of Campus Crusade [for Christ], which invited Dembski to campus. “Real science should pursue the truth. Truth is the friend of science and religion equally.”

My interpretation of this statement? — Real ScienceTM had better follow our lead on interpreting the Bible… If we say the world’s flat and 6,000 years old, it ought to be science that’s wrong, not our understanding of God.

When asked about how biology teachers should teach intelligent design theory, Dembski said teachers should “go as far as you can.”

My interpretation of this statement? — We at the Discovery Institute don’t advocate the teaching of intelligent design in public schools, but we’d love it if someone else jumped in to teach it.

Jonathan Jenkins, a KU sophomore and intelligent design proponent, said he came to learn.

Jenkins said he thinks both evolution and intelligent design are faith-based ways of thinking about science.

My interpretation of this statement? — If you think evolution is a good idea, then obviously your religion is atheism. If you’re a Real ChristianTM, then obviously you should support intelligent design.

Oh these crazy times we live in.

One of the more astonishing things I’ve come across, as I’ve followed this culture war on teaching science in America, was the Ohio board member that read the newspaper all afternoon at a hearing on the state’s science standards.

It’s now come to light through the Columbus Dispatch, that he wasn’t the only board member who felt reading the paper was more appropriate than listening to people who study science talk about science.

At one point, [Michael] Cochran opened a newspaper, joining Baker who had been reading since the board first began debating the issue hours earlier.

The display prompted Brian McEnnis, an Ohio State math professor, to ask, “I would appreciate, sirs, Mr. Cochran and Mr. Baker, if you would refrain from public displays of rude behavior by reading the newspaper when I’m . . .”

Cochran interrupted: “I’m going to do what I want to do when I’m sitting at this table without any type of . . . ”

“Mr. Cochran,” interrupted board President Sue Westendorf , an appointed member from Bowling Green, banging her gavel. ” . . . interruption by you,” Cochran continued. “If you say something appropriate, I’ll listen to it.”

[…]

Board members are paid $32.02 an hour plus travel expenses and attend one 2½-day meeting each month.

It was that last statement of the article that got me thinking… Where else can you get a job to ignore people who are talking to you, read the newspaper, and do it all on the taxpayers dime?

Ocellated’s very interested, though if the interested parties wouldn’t mind, I’d like to get paid $32.02 for blogging, as I often find the papers a tad boring.

When you get married, you bank, as my generation says. To an older generation who has no idea what that ridiculous word means in this context, it means you get lots and lots and lots of gifts. And cash. I imagine that the degree to which you bank depends heavily upon the socioeconomic levels of the peers your parents hang with. So yeah, we banked.

At times it was so humbling to see people being so nice. At other times, I felt bad by how much stuff I was getting that I really didn’t need. One of the most special gifts we received though isn’t something you can buy in a store. My eighth grade English teacher, who I hadn’t really kept up with from 9th grade through 5th year of college, happened to belong to the church where I started going, and where my girlfriend/fiancé/wife joined me not long after we met. He’s quite the whittler. When I finished eighth grade, he gave a bunch of people in the class Easter Island type faces, carved out of wood.

At one of our wedding showers, he gave us these Norwegian wedding spoons. It’s a solid piece of wood that he carved with two spoons on either end, and a linked chain in the middle. Each spoon has the first letter of our names on it.

(Click the smaller pictures for a bigger image.)

He included with the spoons the following note.

Spoons seem to be a symbol for love and the home the world over. There are examples of spoons as love tokens from societies throughout Africa, Europe, and Asia. Some are quite plain and others are extremely decorative. These spoons are the Norwegian Wedding Spoons.

Supposedly, when a young man went to court a young lady, he and she would desire some private time together. In the northern latitudes it was much too cold to be wandering about outside in the wintertime, so an unwarmed room was provided for the young people to use in their get acquainted mode. The father of the girl, aware of the possibilities of the situation, would require that the suitor show that he kept his hands busy at some task other than fondling the girl. By requiring a certain amount of work done by theend of each visit, the father was able to somewhat monitor the two young people.

Tradition was that the suitor made the spoons for the young lady, and at the wedding the bride and groom gave each other a bite of the wedding cake using the spoons. The spoons were then hung over the door of their new home. Some say that the wife wore them around her neck when her husband was away from home.

Because of commercialism the tradition died out almost two hundred years ago. I hope these spoons will be for you a symbol of life together and a memory that begins a lifetime of happiness.

What does this have to do with science or faith? Hmmmm. Nothing?

Just thought it was too cool not to share.

Compared to the three-ring circus of Uncommon Descent (complete with clowns as moderators), there is another blog on intelligent design that is much more reasonable to read. It’s called Telic Thoughts (telic meaning purposeful) and the authors largely describe themselves as intelligent design evolutionists. (Apologies if I’ve misrepresented anyone’s positions, as I know people’s positions can be nuanced.) Now, my readers know I’m not big on intelligent design. And while I find Telic Thoughts to be a much more reasonable discussion on the issue, I still have failed to see anything, from them or elsewhere, that would make intelligent design useful to science.

Krauze at Telic Thoughts has written this post aimed directly at me and my objections. (Well, I certainly wasn’t the reason he wrote it. I’m sure he’s never heard of me. But it was aimed at someone like me.) Drawing a parallel from a book by Michael Ruse describing how it took some time for Darwin’s ideas to gain momentum within the scientific community at large, Kauze writes:

In Ruse’s terminology, evolution only gradually arose from pseudoscience, through popular science, before finally becoming a professional science in the 1930’s. You could say that evolution evolved. Similarly, intelligent design has passed from being expressed in creationist pamphlets as a flimsy support for apologetics, to being expressed in popular science books. ID critcs often inquire as to why intelligent design still isn’t doing any research, “10 years after Behe published Darwin’s Black Box“. However, they should remember the lesson taught to us by Darwin’s followers: Big ideas take time.

So there we have it. Big ideas take time.

Is this a good comparison? Is this all that intelligent design needs? More time?

I think the answer is no, and I think there are notable differences between Darwin’s theory and intelligent design.

First of all, when Darwin’s idea of evolution was proposed, I think people could anticipate it being falsified. Darwin surely could. In order for his theory to have been correct, at least three things would have to be true.

1. Inheritance or heredity — species passing on their characteristics to successive generations.
2. Variety or mutations — new features or characteristics arising.
3. Natural selection — differing rates of reproductive success for organisms better suited for their environment.

So right off the bat, if these things fall apart and we can’t see them happening in nature, evolutionary theory isn’t going to win the minds of scientists. So I ask, what is it about intelligent design, what is it that we can pin our hopes to and look for, to see it happening? To put it another way, these examples that I listed above can be thought of as predictions in a loose sense.

Take the idea of inheritance. Mendel showed that this was certainly happening, and we’ve advanced our knowledge of how this works tremendously today, but in Darwin’s time, this was very much an open question. In fact, after Mendel’s work sat in obscurity for 40 or 50 years before being rediscovered, my understanding is that many scientists thought it disproved evolutionary theory. It wasn’t until we really realized that genetics was the medium through which evolution was happening that we became comfortable with the two theories. As a teacher of mine once said, “your understanding of one is greatly diminished without the other.” So in this context, I think it’s understandable why evolutionary theory took time. One of it’s biggest pieces had yet to be really discovered, understood, and appreciated. And if it took time for that to come about, I can see why it was at least reasonable that some scientists might hold their breath and hope that the day would come.

Same thing with mutations and natural selection. We can watch them happen. Mendel’s wrinkled or round peas are the result of a mutation that effects the branching of starch molecules. My Scottish Fold’s ears are the result of a mutation from the 1960s. Same with sickle-cell anemia, and I could go on. As far as natural selection, there are a ton of studies where we’ve watched it happen. Perhaps my favorite is the Grant’s study of Galapagos finches, in the easily accessible book Beak of the Finch. And as for sickle cell anemia, natural selection beautifully explains why it doesn’t go away.

So, what is it that we’re supposed to wait for with intelligent design? Where are you guys headed and what’s your goal? To put it more bluntly, Darwin proposed a theory. It’s stood up well over 150 years. Despite looking high and low, all I’ve ever seen from intelligent design is some metaphysical naval gazing.

The comments on this Telic Thoughts post have been very interesting too.

MikeGene, one of the blog’s other authors, gets straight to the point:

Ask a critic was they want from a “testable theory of intelligent design,” and the majority will come back with a) demonstrate that evolution is impossible or b) show me the designer. Anything less than this will not count as “a testable theory of intelligent design.”

I don’t like that statement at all, especially the first part of it. If new evidence came to light and scientists realized that evolutionary theory was untenable, in no way does intelligent design then become the golden standard of biology. As for the second part, I put the ball in your court on coming up with ways that science should deal with a designer.

Here’s what I want. Falsifiability and predictive powers. Have a way to rule out a designer and make predictions about the world around you that come from a design perspective. These predictions need to be novel. They need to be something new that science has previously been unable to do or explain. In this way, they would speak volumes for intelligent design and it’s ability to bring something to the table of scientific enterprise.

And then MikeGene really hits the nail on the head with this comment:

The problem is twofold. Many in the ID community are more interested in beginning with some end and finding ways to help school children reach it. And among the “enlightened” critics, running an investigation makes you part of an Evil Plot.

I told you Telic Thoughts was a better blog than Uncommon Descent. Yes, that’s a problem MikeGene. It truly is many in the ID community that are completely disinterested in the scientific process of forming a theory and instead are skipping straight to the conclusion, complete with the pestilence of political and religious grandstanding.

This “Evil Plot” that MikeGene speaks of is a result of scientists being infuriated by the disingenuous tactics used by so many in the intelligent design community. If people think there’s something to intelligent design as a scientific theory (and I certainly don’t), then the work necessary to make that happen needs to be done. Until it’s done, ID should be some basement project that most lay people have never heard of. But instead, it’s become a political and religious war. As Dembski recently said of the issue, “The culture war demands it!” I (humble grad student that I am) and other scientists wouldn’t have a problem ignoring ID until such time that you guys win our hearts and minds with the usefulness of your theory, provided that we didn’t keep reading about this theory in the local papers as politicians and school boards decided to “teach the controversy” with the encouragement of vile groups like the Discovery Institute.

What I and so many others have wondered though is if there’s really a theory of design at all? What’s to test? What are the predictions? Why is design helpful?

I’ll leave it at this. When I want to have telic thoughts myself and am in search of purpose — the who and the why questions — I’ll go to church. When I want to learn more about the natural world around me — the how and the when questions — I’ll turn to science. Until such time that someone can give me a convincing argument on how design improves my understanding of the natural world around me, I fail to recognize it’s contribution to science.

I noticed something very bizarre this morning. I’ve gotten a little more traffic to the site than usual, and I quickly discovered why. Google was sending traffic to my site for the search phrase “aochan gohan“. I blogged about this two days ago. You know what’s interesting? As of right now, my website comes up as the number one result for that phrase, ahead of MSNBC, which was my source for the story!

Yet when I Google the phrase “Ocellated“, as I do from time to time, I consistently come up number two, behind that wretched bird (Ocellated Turkey) that a certain federation promotes conservation of.

Go figure.

Here’s a good laugh that appeared in The Onion last October. Just a little something to brighten up your Friday morning. The cover is just perfect satire on the way some in our culture are acting towards science. I still keep laughing at the picture, even months after seeing it for the first time.

Also, be sure to note the tiny print at the bottom of the cover by Donald Trump. Funny indeed.

On January 3rd, Brown University biologist Ken Miller gave a presentation at Case Western University titled The Collapse of Intelligent Design
… Will the next monkey trial be in Ohio? On January 18th, Ocellated finally found time to watch it.

Readers of this blog know that I’m a fan of Dr. Miller’s for a couple of reasons. He’s a prominent and well-credentialed scientist who has frequently criticized efforts to undermine science education, and he’s co-authored the biology textbook used by about half the students in the U.S. He’s also a Christian (Roman Catholic) and author of the book, Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution.

His discussion at Case Western is something everybody, with even a small interest in this issue should watch. Dr. Miller is very funny and personable, but more importantly, he’s very clear with the science he discusses and convincing in his arguments. If you’ve read anything I’ve written here at Ocellated about the larger debate on intelligent design and what we teach our kids in school, do yourself a favor and watch this video. I must admit it’s better than anything I’ve written on the subject.

As good or better than his actual presentation are the audience questions afterwards. They’re interesting because you can watch people with differing takes (both politically and religiously) on this issue ask questions and hear Dr. Miller’s feedback. I think these questions really made for an interesting reflection on the discussion.

There a couple of places you can go to watch this video. The first is the official page from Case Western. The disadvantage of this link is that the video is in streaming format. People have complained about the video pausing and doing all the other bad things videos do when streamed.

Like good nerds do when presented with a technology problem, someone took the time to capture the stream and turned the talk into a downloadable file that can be saved to your computer. You can get the file in 3 different formats. I recommend downloading the highest quality video (if you’ve got a reasonably fast connection). I wouldn’t listen to just the audio since he uses visual aids in the presentation.

The video’s a little long. It’s just at 2 hours after adding in the questions at the end, but if you’re a reader of this blog, you’ve probably wasted more time than that already. If you’re still wondering what intelligent design is all about, and if any of it’s arguments really hold up, have an open mind and watch this discussion. If you already understand these issues well, watch the video anyway. I bet you’ll learn some new stuff about science that you’ll find really cool.

It’s great stuff.