Miller/Morris Debate

One of the most popular debates on Evolution vs Creationism was the Miller vs. Morris debate of 1981 held at Brown University. Well now the NCSE has a posting of the transcript as well as the audio of the debate online. The transcript can be found here and the 4 videos that make up the audio portion found below. Also if you want to download an mp3 of the debate it is available in 4 parts on the transcript page of the NCSE's website.

Note: Each video is about 50 mins long so be prepared for a long day if you are to watch them all. If you want to go to the specific pages for all of the videos click the label for each video.

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Also subscribe to the NCSE's YouTube channel.

Expelled

Creationists often accuse scientists of preventing those with dissenting opinions from being able to publish or hold positions in science departments etc. The movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed was exceptionally guilty of this, among several other classic creationist claims. Well it turns out that one of the main people in that film, William Dembski, was almost fired from his job for saying that the earth was 4.5 billion years old and the universe was ~14 billion. Dr. Michael Zimmerman has a good break down of the whole incident over at the HuffPo and his article is worth the read.

I find the whole incident mildly ironic. Accusing scientists of doing something and then doing the same thing yourself come on now. Also let me point out one thing if creationists were to submit papers that presented evidence that supported their claims then they might get published. The fact that they haven't yet is telling after all science is the search for the truth as to how the universe works if you present facts most scientists will tend to accept them, yes I know this is a little simplified.

Taking on Creationist Books

Today's Vintage Dinosaur Art post over at Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs featured images from Duane T. Gish's, the creator (although maybe not the perfecter) of the Gish Gallop, Dinosaurs by Design. As I read through the article I found this:

Update: Check out the comments below to links for the Stupid Dinosaur Lies posts on this title and others. Also added excerpt from the book on Michael Barton's kind suggestion.

I had to check out the site, I will admit I had not read the comments so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. What I found made me excited the author of the articles on the webpage takes time and, in most cases, goes page by page through creationist books and refutes the lies and misinformation that is often found within them. Take this excerpt from Ken Ham's kids book The Dinosaurs of Eden (here):

Ham's Hypocritical Accusation

Ham, on page 52, falsely and hypocritically accuses 'evolutionists' of being "willfully ignorant" of the truth, like what II Peter 3:5 tells us. Creationists have long asserted that the verse in II Peter was warning the reader about evolution and the people who advocate it according to the passage. This is false. Peter is not referring to evolution when he wrote that passage. He never knew what evolution is, let alone what is science back then. The verse when put in full context warns the reader against those living in the End Times who refused to believed that Jesus was coming back to earth soon. They acknowledged that the earth was created by God, but thinks everything have stayed entirely the same since then. Peter, on the other hand, objects to this. Peter wrote that in the beginning, the same water that God cause land to rise from was the same water that brought along the Flood to the world, the known world, not the global world mind you, to punished mankind for his sins.

The bible is not only neutral of evolution (meaning "unfolding"), it's entirely irrelevant to it. Although I admit I get real mad when people at church claims that evolution didn't occurred when God created everything, in a way they're right. Evolution has zero to do with origins. Instead, it has only everything to do with after god created everything. Evolution simply means "to unfold and change." When God made the Heavens and the Earth, He made all things possible for all things to change over time. Just because an animal, plant, or human is fully formed to perfection doesn't mean they can't change and modify over a period of time. All around us we see evidence of evolution at work in the past as well as in the present. The nylon bug is the best example of evolution being witnessed at work.

I fully support this site and will probably be coming back there on multiple occasions.

Creationism on hold, for now

A little over a week ago I wrote a post about Livingston Parish School Board talking about trying to teach creationism in their science classrooms. I ended that post with this:

There is some good that I can see with the school board finally deciding to teach creationism. This will give the ACLU a chance to sue over this bill and to finally get it struck down and prevent other schools from going through the same thing. Lets just hope that is what happens.

Well it turns out that the school board decided not to teach creationism this upcoming year, although they put a group together to study if it is feasible. Why? Well an article published by the Baton Rouge Advocate says this:

A decision to teach creationism could become expensive for the parish school system, said Marjorie Esman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“If they were to do it, they could anticipate that any litigation would result in them not only losing, but having to pay enormous legal fees,” she said. “They would be wasting a huge amount of taxpayer money on a battle they can’t win.”

Livingston Parish School Board President Keith Martin, who acknowledges that the parish school system faces major financial challenges, said the cost of litigation does have to be taken into consideration.

“A lawsuit is something you always have to factor in because of finances of the board,” Martin said.

While this is not the way I would have preferred to have seen this happen I am glad that at least for the next year they will not be teaching creationism in Livingston Parish.

There is one problem, however. They have not completely taken the idea of teaching creationism off of the table for the 2011-2012 school year. As I said earlier they have formed a committee to look at the possible options. The lawyer for the school board does seem to think that teaching creationism is illegal.

Tom Jones, the School Board’s attorney, said a board member brought the issue up when evolution was mentioned as being part of the state’s 2008 Science Education Act.

Jones said his previous research indicated that under the U.S. Constitution public schools can’t teach religion or the religious theory of creationism.

“Without a doubt it’s a constitutional issue,” and state law does not supersede the U.S. Constitution, he said.

Mr. David Tate the person who first brought up the issue of teaching creationism doesn't seem to get it though:

Tate said teaching evolution as a theory is fine, but there are other ideas.

“Creationism is another thought of how things came into being,” he said. “Give every theory due time” in the classroom.

To the citizens of Livingston Parish Mr. Tate is not helping your cause. He is holding you back do not support him in upcoming elections (I don't know when he will be up for reelection sorry) and listen to the experts, if for no other reason than you risk hurting the financial situation of your schools.

And it begins

So I have covered the controversy about the Louisiana State Board of Education allowing the teaching of creationism in the science classrooms (here, here, and video here). This morning I came across this article. The article discusses the fact that the school board in Livingston Parish, LA is considering teaching creationism in science class.

Having lived in Louisiana I am personally surprised that it took 2 years for some school board to decide to take up teaching creationism. There are also plenty of areas that I figured would have tried to teach it before Livingston Parish. But what really got to me was this:

Board Member David Tate quickly responded: “We let them teach evolution to our children, but I think all of us sitting up here on this School Board believe in creationism. Why can’t we get someone with religious beliefs to teach creationism?”

Fellow board member Clint Mitchell responded, “I agree … you don’t have to be afraid to point out some of the fallacies with the theory of evolution. Teachers should have the freedom to look at creationism and find a way to get it into the classroom.”

No this isn't the way that classroom policy should be determined just because all of you believe that creationism is correct doesn't mean that it is correct. The way that they are handling this is no better than the way Texas handled the social studies curriculum earlier this year (here, here, and here). While I am perfectly fine with teaching the "fallacies" with evolution filling in these gaps with creationism is not the way science works, just because we don't know the answer right now doesn't mean that we won't in the near future.

There is some good that I can see with the school board finally deciding to teach creationism. This will give the ACLU a chance to sue over this bill and to finally get it struck down and prevent other schools from going through the same thing. Lets just hope that is what happens.

Why Dinosaurs are not just big lizards, Part 3

Part 1, Part 2

So last time I talked about the stance of dinosaurs and how that differs from that of lizards. Well I am sure that people were saying how do we know this, or humans just set them up to look this way. That leads to the next point:

Hip

So when we look at mammals, another group of animals that have their legs positioned under their body seen below in a specimen of a florida spectacled bear (Tremarctos floridanus) from the Florida Museum of Natural History (see story about my visit here).

photo by author

So this is a typical ball and socket joint that mammals evolved that allows us to position our legs under our bodies but it also allows some side to side (abduction and adduction) of our legs as well. This trait probably evolved to help us move over less than smooth terrain.

So I kind of implied that mammal hip bones differed from those of the dinosaurs and we will see why here in a minute but first lets look at the hip of a lizard:

Modified from here

So you can see that there is some similarity but the way the femur is formed it prevents the legs of the lizard from being able to sit directly under the body giving it a more sprawling posture (note to self: take more pictures of lizard skeletons).

So finally what did the dinosaur hips look like:

Modified from Holtz and Brett-Surman (1997)

So what is the first thing you probably notice about the dinosaur hips, hint there is a red arrow pointing to it? That's right there is a hole in the center of each one, called the acetabulum and in dinosaurs we say it is perforated. This takes a femur that has been modified from that of the earlier reptiles and actually puts the head of it inside of the hip itself. This characteristic allows them to position the legs directly under the body but unlike the way that mammals developed a more upright posture dinosaurs had less flexibility when it comes to the ability of them to move their legs side to side over uneven terrain.

Again but those aren't fossils alright lets look at some actual fossils:




And just to point out something not entirely unrelated check out the hip structure on this bird skeleton he clearly shares something with dinosaurs:


Part 1, Part 2

Source

Holtz, T.R., Jr., and M.K. Brett-Surman. 1997. The osteology of the dinosaurs. In J.O. Farlow and M.K. Brett-Surman (eds.), The Complete Dinosaur, pp. 78-106. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Book Review #4

I have been working on this book for probably about 6 months now and finally decided that if I was ever going to finish another book I wanted to read it was going to have to be by reading a chapter or so a night right before I go to bed. The book that I read for this review was Why Darwin Matters by Dr. Michael Shermer.

This book is very much a dismantling of the intelligent design community saying that what they practice is science, the fact that the subtitle is "The case against Intelligent Design" should have been a dead give away for that. While many people have written books about it (see Only a Theory here). Dr Shermer takes on ID by not just showing what they believe is a religion and how all of their main claims are wrong, but he also shows how evolution is the correct theory. The back cover reads:

In Why Darwin Matters, Michael Shermer, the bestselling author of Why People Believe Weird Things and the publisher of Skeptic magazine, decodes the facts of evolution and shows how natural selection achieves the elegant design of life. Shermer, once an evangelical Christian and a creationist, argues that Intelligent Design proponents invoke a combination of bad, science, political antipathy, and flawed theology in their new brand of creationism. He refutes their pseudoscientific arguments and then demonstrates why conservatives and people of faith can and should embrace evolution. Why Darwin Matters is an incisive examination of what is at stake in the debate over evolution.

I really did enjoy this book it was an easy read and when I set myself too it I got through it very quickly. The data he presents is well supported and he handles the situation including the victory in Dover very humbly. He also shows why those who present themselves as Christians and Conservatives should really accept evolution. The book tends to strive away from the technical and lays out the case in a way everyone should be able to understand it.

Dr. Shermer is a very strong Atheist but it did not come off in this book. In fact if you were just a casual reader you might even be inclined to think that he is a Christian, although this might come from his devout Christian up bringing. I would recommend this book to anyone who might be questioning evolution, I only limit because those devoutly religious who already outright deny evolution probably won't read this at all. Read it see why science is important, the real questions in evolutionary theory currently (and how they are being solved), and how science and religion tackle very separate questions.

Book Citation
Shermer, Michael. Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design. 2006. Holt: New York

Book review page

Why Dinosaurs are not just big lizards, Part 2

Part 1, Part 3

So last time we talked about the obvious differences between dinosaurs and lizards in this one we will talk a little more in depth about these differences.

Stance

So we have all probably seen alligators and lizards walking if you haven't check out the videos below:



You will probably notice that they way that they are walking has their feet in a position that is not directly under their body. Now look at the way you or your dog/cat/other mammal walks you will notice that the feet of the mammals are placed directly under the body. This allows these organisms to better support their own body weight with less muscle work while at the same time extending the stride length of the animal so you increase the speed without lengthening the legs. So what does this have to do with dinosaurs? Well lets look at dinosaur's closest living relatives, the birds:



Look at where those legs are located, they are right under the body of the bird. If you want to do more just do a google image search for bird legs. Some of you might be saying, "Wait birds are very derived," or, "You are assuming evolution to be correct." The answer to both statements is yes, you will notice that all that we see of the bird leg is actually from the knee down, and yes, so lets just look at dinosaur stance itself.



So what do we notice in those two images? The first thing, and the one most important to this post is the location of the legs they are directly under the body of the dinosaurs. This is a drastic change from that of the lizards and represent a huge improvement in the way that these organisms moved and may have been one of the reasons they were able to conquer the world during the Mesozoic. You be asking why their legs are under them or how do we know this? We will talk about that next time. I can also hear the complaints now, well those are drawing/recreations they aren't proof! True so here try this:







There better?

Part 1, Part 3

Why Dinosaurs are not just big lizards, Part 1

Part 2, Part 3

So with the semester winding down I figured I would take the time to explain the why the common young earth creationists (hence forth known as YEC) use to explain the lack of dinosaurs on the planet now but exist in the fossil record:



Kent is the main person who proliferates this fallacy, although I am sure that Ken Ham does as well, but now that he is behind bars it hasn't been getting quite as much press. He does get one thing right and that is reptiles continue to grow their entire life but he is wrong that dinosaurs are just big lizards and over the next few day/weeks we will discuss why. I will link all of these together so you can pick up from any part of the series and get to any other part. This first one should be pretty obvious to all parties concerned:

Physical Apperance

So while there may be some dinosaurs that happen to look like lizards the majority of them look nothing like lizards. Tell me if you have ever seen a lizard that looks like any of these:



Ok so maybe some people have seen the last one:



Lizards or snakes or crocdiles would have to do some major changes during growth in order for this to happen and since the lizards are able to reproduce without these changes it should be pretty obvious that these are not in fact just big lizards.

But even if you exclude dinosaurs and talk about other prehistoric reptiles you might have somethings that are similar to modern lizards and crocs, not counting ancient lizards and crocs,(see here among others) the more famous prehistoric reptiles look nothing like what we have today. So what looks like these YECs:



Although this one some people might say still exists:



Part 2, Part 3

Private Fossil Collections

Vertebrate fossils are rare for most of the world, while there are of course some places where you can't seem to take a step without tripping over one. So what should be done when a fossil is found. Well if it is on your private land you are free to do what you want with it. This differs from the archaeological system in many states where you are obligated to report archaeological finds. If it is on public land it is by definition owned by the entire public. This is why in order to collect on public land you have to get a permit, which is hard to do if you don't have ties to someone who already has one, in order to collect. These are typically given the museums and individuals who are typically associated with research institutions, typically universities. This doesn't just apply to fossils but everything from animals to just the rocks themselves. For national forests and grasslands you also have to get a permit to log or graze cattle on them, their original purpose.

So what made me blog about this? I am sure that most people are familiar with the creationist museum just outside of Cincinnati, actually on the Kentucky side of the Ohio (see here). Well what many people don't realize is that there are in fact many creationist museums scattered around the country (see here). Once of these is called the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum located in Crosbyton, TX (see here, their official website is here). For those of you who aren't from/don't live in west Texas Crosbyton is only about 30-45 minutes from Lubbock, TX so I am clearly familiar with this museum. Well I didn't realize that they had a blog (here) so I figured I would read some of their posts when I came across it today. While many of his posts are political, very anti-Obama shocker there, some are about what they have found.

Part of one (here):

Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2009, we were collecting in southern Montana, when my digging buddie, Jordan Hall, found the largest hadrosaur footbone I have ever seen. For years we have offered a cast of a hind leg that was reported to be the largest known. It came from South Dakota. This new one looks to be 15% to 20% larger. Also, this Thursday, a long-time digging friend, Linda, sent a huge metatarsal from South Dakota that is the largest I had even seen. It was found this summer. We'll do some measurements and report on them.

Second one (here):

In July, I joined some digging buddies to help Otis Kline of the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum in Glendive, Montana finish the excavation of a large Triceratops. The vertebrae are 20 to 30 % larger than average. But the skull is odd. Based on the left squamosal, the nose horn and one brow horn and part of what appers to be a section of frill down the center of the skull, I am willing to say that it may be a new species. For such a large animal, one would expect the brow horn, the ones over the eyes, to be as much as 48 inches. This one is only 12 inches. But the nose horn is almost 12 inches which would be the right length for this size of skull. We will publish a sketch I did of it to get an idea of what it may turn out to look like.

These posts trouble me and show the problem with private collecting in general. If he is right in any way about these this data will not enter the scientific knowledge because it will not go through peer review, even if he did actually publish on it in some other source. This data and information will possibly be lost forever.

Now with that said do I think that people who find fossils on their private land should be forced to turn over their fossils? No, of course not what you find/do on your private land is up to you. Insisting otherwise is a very slippery slope one I do not feel we need to engage in. Which is why I find it interesting when Mr. Taylor says this (here):

The liberal democrat-socialists have tried many times to make it a criminal offense with jail time and huge fines for anyone other than a state approved person to collect even sea shells from public land. If they could stop you from collecting on private land they would. Then no one but state approved evolutionists would have fossils. The liberals will not stop till they tell everyone what to do in every area of our lives. WE VOTED THEM IN. NOW LET'S THROW THEM OUT!

No, sir, it is not just the "liberal democrat-socialists" that don't want people to collect on public lands. Remember Theodore Roosevelt, Republican president (here), he started the process of forming National Parks (here). The land was set aside to help preserve the nature and that is why we don't want everyone and their brother out digging for fossils, this would in fact destroy the land. So if someone is caught collecting fossils on public land then they need to be punished for it, unfortunately it is far to easy to get away with.

As Roosevelt said in an Address to the Deep Waterway Convention, Memphis, Tennessee, October 4, 1907:

...The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others.

(source)

Really Mr. Long, Really?

So I have been sitting at 99 posts for a long time but I feel so proud I have somehow managed to put together 100 posts, counting this one. Yay! go me.

Ok now on to the real reason for this post. So one of the opinion writers, Roy Long, for the Texas Tech University paper, the Daily Toreador, has published some things before that I have disagreed with majorly (see here and trust me there are more that I didn't blog about), well he did it again. While the majority of the article (found here) I have no problem with it is about being able to change our views as new evidence comes forth, heck this is what science is all about. In fact early on he says this:

If I could travel in time and re-write those articles, I would change a few of them.

I would be more careful about wording because certain phrases I have used in columns have offended others and caused them to not pay attention to the message of the column.

Yes this is very true many times does the point of his article get lost in amongst some small piece of evidence he uses to "support" his view that is outright wrong. I will openly admit that I have had to relook over some of his articles because of this. But in the end doesn't this come down to the writer of the article?

Well this doesn't seem bad so far I was actually enjoying the article and he was making a valid point then he says this:

However, our society does not act this way. One glaring example is “Climategate.” The scientific community has been afraid to even accept data that might possibly argue the so-called climate change theory is wrong. They intentionally changed data so there would be no opposition to their theories. This is the ultimate appeal to dishonest consistency.

I literally put the paper on my desk at this point. I thought alright well climate change is still a developing science so maybe he was just confused or maybe he just hasn't read the full e-mails (see here, here, and here for starters). So I picked the paper back up and read this:

The response to the “intelligent design” theory has also been very similar. Instead of addressing the issues that have arose from Behe’s ideas, the scientific community at large has simply dismissed him because he dares question the god of evolution. Science, which was once progressive because it dared to contradict the wrong but established theories of men, has fallen to dogmatism.

I know rushed through the rest of his article and went out in the hall looking for someone to talk to, seeing no one I relaxed and read the rest of his article again. Why did this paragraph draw such a reaction out of me? Because Behe is wrong and intelligent design is not science and therefore should be dismissed by the scientific community (see Kitzmiller vs. Dover). I could cite the hundreds of people who have refuted ID as an invalid theory but in science it only takes one so may I recommend Only a Theory by Dr. Kenneth Miller (see my post here).

So why are these your two examples in the entire paper when both of them are the exact opposite of what you are trying to prove? Both ID and global climate change denialists (doesn't have the same ring as global warming denialists) are doing what you are claiming you are against. They are trying the keep the status quo the same they are not admitting they are wrong and moving on. With global climate change the e-mails were quote mined to get just a couple of quotes that sound like global climate change isn't happening or at least isn't man made. At least IDers see that there is some evidence for evolution but they still want God in there. Guess what that is still a very unprogressive statement.

So somewhere along the lines I really lost what Mr. Long was trying to argue so congrats Mr. Long you have successfully written another article that does the complete opposite of what you were trying to achieve.

Why argue against people who believe the earth is 6000 years old?

So people might be wondering why do I care about informing people what the science actually says. Well today I was clicking through xkcd and came across this:



Yeah the fact that anyone can become a member of our representative democracy and/or they vote is pretty much the main reason.

But it's cold...

So I have blogged about greenman3610 before (see here, and here) and I know I seem to really push every video he does, it couldn't be because he addresses concerns that anger me in a very eloquent way could it. In his latest video he addresses the common misconception that just because it is really cold outside right now that must mean that global climate change is wrong:



So while we are on the subject PZ Myers blogged about this a couple of days ago (and of course I can't seem to find his post exactly to link here) and I thought it was very interesting. PZ pointed out that the person writing this article is in fact a restaurant critic, so enjoy this article as well.

EDIT: So this is why I couldn't find the article on PZ's blog I actually found it on Rationalwiki's what's going on in the blogosphere section, by bad!

What to do?

So we all know that this time of year, aka the holidays, bring families together. It has been nice being home and getting to see my family. Over the last few days I have my parent's have had one of my aunts and her son over to visit. And it is nice to see them since I haven't seen them in at least 2 years. My aunt is for the most part conservative but then again so is most of my family but at the same time we are far from religious, although apparently my grandfather is very liberal which made for an interesting situation yesterday when we went to go visit him but that is another story all together. I love my aunt I think she is funny but tonight she said something that disappointed me.

We were watching the TV show The Big Bang Theory, Monday's at 9:30 on CBS, and the intro song mentions human evolution. My aunt said, "I don't believe in human evolution." There was the silence where no one knew what to say or do. One thing is for certain as much as my parent's might not completely understand science they have at least tried and they tend to accept most of the theories, sometimes a little too much against my advising but it has never hurt them. That maybe why both my sister and I have always been interested in science. Anyway this silence lasted for what seems like a couple of minutes but was probably only a few seconds until the next cheesy commercial came on. I will admit I didn't say anything and I probably should have but I tried to make my annoyance known.

So now my question is this: If you were put in the same situation what would you have done? Would you have sat their quietly like my whole family did or would you have said something challenged her or heck maybe you have some sort of middle ground. I just didn't know what to do at the time and just let it slide, since for most things we have very similar thought processes and I don't get to see her very often. I don't know how many people follow this blog but I figured I would ask that question to see if anyone who does read has any suggestions for next time.

Book Review #3

I finally have had some time to read. And while this is a good thing it turns out that I did not bring near enough books home to read. It is kind of sad that a book that I started months ago I read in 3 days, although I only actually read 2 of those days, and the main reason I got done so fast was that I had to wait for 3 and 1/2 hours for my car to get inspected.

But enough about me lets get to talking about the book. This book is a book I promised would be in my second book review when I wrote my first one (1st one here, 2nd one here) and that I failed miserably at. Yes I finally finished Your Inner Fish by Dr. Neil Shubin. In this book Dr. Shubin uses his discovery of Tiktaalik to describe in very simple terms the evolution of humans from simple single celled organisms to what we are now. In the process he talks about the major skull systems like sight, hearing, and smell and describes how they evolved from our more simple relatives to now. The description on the book reads:

WHY DO WE LOOK THE WAY WE DO? Neil Shubin, the paleontologist and professor of anatomy who co-discovered Tiktaalik, the "fish with hands," tells the story of our bodies as you've never heard it before. By examining fossils and DNA, he shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our heads are organized like long-extinct jawless fish, and the major parts of our genome look, and function, like those of worms and bacteria. Your Inner Fish makes us look at ourselves and our world in an illuminating new light. This is science writing at its finest--enlightening, accessible, and told with irresistible enthusiasm.

I really did love this book. It is a very simple read, at least for someone who just took a class in vertebrate paleontology in which a lot of the same topics where discussed, so it doesn't like some one is lecturing too you but at the same time it is not so simple that you feel that someone should be cleaning drool off of your chin. It is clearly written for someone with at least some education that somewhere along the line included some basic biology. He also includes within a couple of quick one-liners that actually had me laughing as I read them. I like the way he treats the subject as well he takes you through his life at the start of each chapter and you can feel him "evolving" as a human and each of his stories in someway tie into the topic of that chapter.

If there was one thing he could have done better is to disguise the book. What do I mean by that? Well the full title of the book is Your Inner Fish, A Journey into the 3.5 Billion-year History of the Human Body. Right away any creationist is not going to pick this book up to read it. And the sad thing is that those are the people who need to read this book the most. He is very clear in how evolution works and would clear up a lot of misconceptions that creationists have about the science involved. So what should he have done? I don't really know the answer to that maybe come up with a name like "How Tiktaalik disproves evolution" and then have "not" written somewhere really small on the cover.

So what do I suggest? I recommend that you read this book it is a very good intro to evolution and if you are a high school or college student interested in evolution at all you should definitely read it. But after you read it you should make sure that your creationist friends read it, I would say go make them buy another copy but then I doubt they would do that since well I have a hard time buying creationist books, they are the ones after all who really do need it.

The author has a website (here) which has a lot of supplementary material for the book, and in fact as I found out from Dr. PZ Myers' blog (Pharyngula found here) today Dr. Shubin and company put out all of the images from the book on PowerPoint slides for teachers to use during their lectures (here). Dr. Shubin they have been downloaded and will be greatly appreciated during my lab teaching in the spring semester but will obviously be referenced to you I thank you.

Book citation
Neil Shubin . Your Inner Fish, a Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body. 2008. Pantheon Books. New York.

Book review page

Why we must tread carefully with climate refrom

So I just finished up my work for the semester and made it home yesterday so I might have some free time over the next few weeks to put some posts together, assuming I can come up with some topics.

This week wrapped up the Copenhagen climate conference in which only very little was accomplished. But I don't really want to discuss what happened there to be honest you will never get most of the developing countries to support something like that until you make it cheaper than just dumping the trash in the ocean, so to speak, and for this reason I think the US needs to take the lead in this attempt to clean up our actions. We have done this before when polluting of water was a major problem and now most countries realize it is wrong it just isn't something they can easily change. We need to set the example!

But, you might be saying that is not what you have as your title to this post. You would be correct and that is because of the economic problems we will face with a sudden drastic change in the way we produce power/drive/etc. The US transport and power industry is currently based on oil/gas and coal if we all of a sudden said no you can't use those any more because it is destroying the world well we will destroy our economy in the process it is currently too expensive to buy the alternative energy sources. I often think that many scientist forget about this cost and that is really too bad but I think most humans tend not to care as much about those who aren't us, so I don't think it is just a scientist thing but I know we do it and think that it should be easy to change things.

So what do I suggest we do, since it is one thing to say something is wrong but we should always be able to provide solutions to the problems we point out? Well we should start by funding alternative energy solutions. The current government subsidies go almost exclusively to oil/gas and coal. Why not scale back a little on that funding, thereby increasing cost and making it less desirable to the average person, and send that change towards alternative options. The strides that have been made in solar and tidal etc have been slowed by lack of money but yet they have occurred.

But the government shouldn't be the only one we as consumer's should demand cleaner resources etc. Vote with your wallet, drive less and walk more, turn off lights when you leave a room, (in honor of the massive snow storm on the east coast) shovel your own snow you don't need a snow blower, all of those things that we have been preached at to do we should. Yes it won't always be easy but it can be done but I do realize that you can never please everyone:

Comfort you are in trouble now

So I know that Michael Shermer tweeted this but I figured I would throw together a quick post on it. The story can be found here. But to summarize it real quickly it seems the evidence is pointing toward Ray Comfort stole a summary of Darwin's life from a professor at the University of Tennessee who is now thinking about legal action for obvious reasons. My favorite part of the article is this:

“I would like to engage him in intellectual combat, but it wouldn’t be fair,” Guffey says. “If he were to play by the rules of reason and logic, I would whoop his ass, but he’s not constrained by those rules, so it wouldn’t be fair to me.”

Yes, he is right that most creationists don't play by the same rules as us scientists but the part I am talking about is the "I would whoop his ass" part. I can see a lot of my professors saying things like that but not to a newspaper article for publication but to each his own.

Anyway this is an interesting development we will have to keep tabs on it to see what happens.

Facts vs Politics

So some times I have to look for something to go off about and sometimes you just pick it up on the way to your office. Today it was the later when I came across this article in today's Daily Toreador, the school paper for Texas Tech.

So most of the article is not what I want to deal with it is kind of blah and not really something I care to make an statement on and there were somethings I actually agreed with while reading this. That was until I came to these next few statements:

The fact these individuals believe [...] or that we did not evolve from lower forms of life [...] does not make them evil people.

and then further on

However, if we turn off our minds to their reasoning([...] they do not bow to the supposed all-powerful altar of scientific theory, etc.) we only damage ourselves.

This pretty much pissed me off but what did I expect I am in West Texas. A scientific theory is not a matter of personal belief it is based on evidence, far too much to list right now. You are truing off your reasoning by accepting what has been told to you by church leaders for hundreds of years. Examine the evidence, all of it, with open eyes not with the idea that it is already wrong. The fact that they mix in evolution with Political ideals such as socialism etc is exactly what makes me mad it is not a political issue it is not an idea to be put up for debate by the common person the ideas are being refined and debated amongst scientist and trust me if someone disproves evolution it will very quickly be published in the popular media.

So some of you might be wondering why I don't write a reply in the student paper. I am not because 1) my writing is pretty obviously crappy because I know what I think just not how to write it down and 2) That is not the main topic that they are talking about in their piece, although with the way these topics are included he kind of goes against the main point in his article. Anyway feel free to leave any comments if you think I am over reacting or under reacting here as well as state your opinion on the page for the article itself.

The Dose Makes the Poison

So I have been subscribed to C0nc0rdance for some time now and while I appreciate his videos I normally don't feel the need to post them here. Then I saw this series today entitled The Dose Makes the Poison and in light of the current outrage over the new flu vaccine, and just vaccines in general, I figured I would pass it along. I want to say from the outset that his statements are based on real science and evidence unlike many of those who are against vaccination...anyway enjoy.

The Dose Makes the Poison Part 1


The Dose Makes the Poison Part 2


I recommend watching his other videos and subscribing to him, his channel can be found here.

Thank Goodness!

So this story caught my attention today.

In general the parents of a young girl whose daughter died because instead of seeking medical attention let her suffer through complications of diabetes were sentenced today to 6 months in jail and 10 years probation. I am happy for this decision because being a diabetic myself I know two things 1) the complications of diabetes while not painful are very draining I have never been so tired in my life and 2) in the 21st century when we have the drugs to make life very comfortable and live a long time with diabetes you should be forced to treat it. It will also make parents seek medical treatment for a sick child instead of just praying for them.

The judge had this to say:

'God probably works through other people,' Howard told the parents, 'some of them doctors.'

That is fine even if you believe in God there is no reason to seek medical treatment for a disease because without it life expectancy would be much shorter sort of like it was in the middle ages.

The parents had this to say:

'I do not regret trusting truly in the Lord for my daughter's health,' she said. 'Did we know she had a fatal illness? No. Did we act to the best of our knowledge? Yes.'

Dale Neumann, 47, read from the Bible and told the judge that he loved his daughter.

'I am guilty of trusting my Lord's wisdom completely. ... Guilty of asking for heavenly intervention. Guilty of following Jesus Christ when the whole world does not understand. Guilty of obeying my God,' he said.

First to the mother:

You didn't know your daughter had a fatal illness? Let me describe what happens before people typically get diagnosed:
1) They become thirsty to the point that they are unbelievably thirsty (I would drink multiple hydrating drinks and still thirsty).
2) The need to use the bathroom is almost as bad (I was using the bathroom every hour)
3) Hunger is slowly getting replaced by the wanting to drink (I never was hungry I would only want to drink the only reason I ate was because I knew I had to)
4) People lose weight very quickly (over the course of a few months I lost 40 pounds [I put 15 pounds on the first night I was in the hospital])
All of this was noticeable in to other people which is why I finally went to the hospital but she was even worse than I was she apparently was unable to speak, eat, or drink.

To the father:

You are not guilty of following Jesus' word in fact I had many a christian say to me that Jesus tells us to seek out those who can help us in this world.

Assistant District Attorney LaMont Jacobson said justice was served by the sentences, but he was disappointed the parents never said they were sorry for what happened.

Your kid died the least you can do it feel bad about it.

I don't know if their is a God or not but if there is, to those who think we shouldn't use medicine, and he made us he gave us a big brain that has gotten us to where we are, why can't we use it?