Way back in the prehistory of this blog I posted an entry about fear and human-animal hybrids. Yesterday I got the latest edition of this type of fear in my Breaking Christian News e-mail. In it was a story headlined Prayer Alert: Ethical Outrage as Scientists Create “Human-Sheep”. Now I’m always mildly skeptical when I…
I’m a fan of Carl Zimmer’s writing, either in print or on his blog, and I wanted to call attention to today’s post on the human genome and on how science works. I think it’s well worth reading.
Here’s an interesting freedom of speech issue again brought to my attention by Breaking Christian News and this time referring me to this LifeSite article. It appears that at a minimum there is confusion about the facts of the case, including the professor’s intentions and when the paper was graded, as comparison of the LifeSite…
There’s an excellent piece on human evolution in Newsweek, written for those of us who are not scientists. I think there are a couple of unclear points, but for the most part it’s a good update on the state of science. I did notice that things that have been around for some years seem to…
I love it when these kinds of news stories hit the popular media. A new species of dinosaur was discovered by Michael Ryan in Alberta while he was a graduate student, and the find has now been published in the Journal of Paleontology, according to MSNBC. The dinosaur species is named Albertaceratops nesmoi, and it…
Jason Rosenhouse has an excellent discussion or even better dissection of some recent writing by Philip Johnson. I’ve had this partial entry on Johnson sitting amongst my drafts for ages, but since Johnson is now bringing forth many of the same arguments, and Rosenhouse has quite thoroughly demolished them, I will simply refer you to…
MSNBC has an excellent interview with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. It comes in five sections on the web site, but let me just quote one little thing to whet your appetite: Q: It’s always more newsworthy if a scientist is puzzled by something. A: But we’re always puzzled by something. And that fact is never…
It is very important not to assume what a bill will actually accomplished based on its title. Titles are generally designed to put a positive spin on the contents of the bill in the hopes that people will not read further or seriously consider the consequences of what is actually proposed. A new bill in…
Joe Meert, vice-president of Florida Citizens for Science has an excellent post on the current controversy about a creationist book sold in the Grand Canyon National Park bookstore and allegations that have been made that park rangers are not permitted to give an honest, scientific answer to questions about the age of the canyon. He…
Evolution Sunday is coming up February 11, 2007. Some folks may be a bit concerned, or even seriously annoyed with the idea of an “evolution” Sunday. Is the theory of evolution going to become a point of Christian doctrine? Shall we celebrate evolution for a day? Well, I can think of several subjects right off…
