Why Does the Disco Insist on Lobbing Softballs?

I can only think that they are pretending to be fools, because no middle-functioning adult could really be this irretrievably dim.

In an article on "Evolution News and Views" (in itself an egregiously misleading title), Discovery Institute Spokesmodel C Luskin has this to say about natural selection versus "intelligent design"... in automobiles (I'm loathe to link to them, but you need this link to see the whole point):

"Don’t read into this post too much, but take it as a series of curious observations. We’re often told that Darwinism is like a scientific magic bullet that can solve anything. Darwinists love to quote Theodosius Dobzhansky saying, “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” We’re also told that intelligent design threatens to destroy science. Nonetheless, I can’t help but notice that when engineers design technology to be sold to the public, they prefer to tell them about processes of intelligent design over unguided selection and random mutation. As a silly anecdote, I recently came across this Hyandai [sic]car advertisement, stating: “the i30 name has been chosen to reflect the car’s European styling and its all-round intelligent design.” I decided to see if there were other similar examples, and searches uncovered many examples."

-- Evolution News and Views, retrieved 31 May 2008

For a moment, I thought that there must be a joke somewhere that I was missing. Or that, perhaps Mr Luskin had been reading too much Paley. But no, this is what he says, after citing several more examples of "intelligent design" in the automotive industry:

"These advertisements and reviews don’t say “random-variation-and-unguided-selection-based design.” They say “intelligent design.” And when advertisers mention the “evolution” of a product, you can almost surely bet that it’s intelligently guided “evolution,” not the Darwinian processes of random mutation and unguided natural selection.

"And before you start to nitpick reasons why don't like this post [sic], don't forget my words at the beginning: "Don’t read into this post too much, but take it as a series of curious observations.""

-- Evolution News and Views, retrieved 31 May 2008

A bad editing day at the Disco, apparently, but I have those too. However, I'd like to question this idea of "intelligent design" in automobiles. There have been lots of advances in safety and features, certainly. But that, if you can't immediately tell the difference, is not a function of either evolution, nor of "intelligent design" as the Disco want you to see it. It's a function of science, making discoveries that enable safety, navigation, structural integrity, refined petrol engines, and the whole bit to be translated into engineering and technology which can be put into vehicles. And yes, vehicles have "evolved", if you want to use the colloquial sense of the word - they have changed over time. Clearly, this is through no natural agency, though, and no one in their right mind would suggest otherwise. So, yes, unquestionably "intelligently designed". What of it?

Consider the automotive industry in the light of current fuel prices: apart from hybrids, which are in short supply especially if you want to rent one in the American middle west (I know this to be true also from personal experience, as we looked at hiring a hybrid SUV for our upcoming road trip, and there were none to be had, with most major chains not even stocking them in this area, so we're cramming everything into the Prius). What do you have? The market, despite warnings of an impending fuel crisis that date back to the last fuel crisis (remember the 1970s?), has been driven by these automotive companies to build progressively larger and more asinine monstrosities, which consume ludicrous volumes of fuel. Ironically, all of the people who fell for the SUV trap and now want to trade in are finding it difficult to do, because no one in their right mind wants one. Is that really all that intelligent? And is it a comparison that strengthens, rather than weakens, your case?

As you see, at two points he abjures his faithful readers (and the agog masses who just stumble inadvertently on this stuff) not to "read into this post too much". Which implies, as he says it twice, that he knows that he's talking a load of cobblers. So why even bother posting a "series of curious observations"? I find it curious that you'd make this set of observations at all, Mr Luskin.

I can only guess, having suffered from it myself, that he has come down with that dread curse of the fiction author: writer's block.

A Discussion of Probability: "In Our Time"

Melvin Bragg's fantastically high-brow BBC Radio 4 programme, In Our Time this week features a discussion of probability, one of the key mathematical conceptions which underlies much of our understanding of the universe.

I love listening to IOT (and seriously, if you're going to listen to a podcast, this one should be high on your list), not only for the variety of topics presented, but for their unrelenting intellectual depth and rigour. This is a programme to which any person who wants to consider themselves well-educated and broadly read should listen, and listen again until they thoroughly understand the topic presented.

In the case of the discussion of probability and probability theory, it strikes me that much less nonsense would be thought and believed if people better understood just how likely many seemingly random events are - and how unlikely it is that they are statistically exceptional or extraordinary. Coincidence, for example, was something that my friend Van and I used to dwell on quite unreasonably when we were at school. In retrospect, it is especially true that when one is young and inexperienced in the world, the coincidence can be imbued with much greater significance than probability theory would realistically allow. One good teacher might have saved us years of woolly thinking.

Which thought leads me to wonder... if the IDiotic contrarian position to evolution is something like "er... well... god done it, then, guv", then is the similar corollary to probability theory the suggestion that god does, in fact, play dice? If that's the case, I can only say that the anti-gambling lobby is going to be well narked.

EDIT: Forgot to include the link to the IOT Science Listen Again Archive. Excellent stuff.

Stratigraphy, My Dear Watson

One of my guilty pleasures, with so much other work and so much other reading to do, is an indulgence in detective stories. In my first Internet incarnation, the sites that I ran were devoted to a few of my favourites: Margery Allingham, Edmund Crispin, and Colin Watson.

The ultimate detective, though, must always remain Sherlock Holmes ( society website | wiki | museum ). Knowing my weaknesses, it shouldn't be surprising that this article, Sherlock Holmes, Geologist, caught my eye.

I read all of Conan Doyle's stories of the Great Detective when I was fairly young, and I cite them, in their small way, as having been influential on the way in which I think. The ideas contained in these stories are surprisingly powerful: all problems can be solved, given the right information, observed correctly. Reason and intellect generally triumph over malice and ill-intent. It is, in a way, an exemplar of late Victorian thought about the world, and how to perceive it. They looked at the world as a thing that could be ordered to suit their tastes: it was a place that they owned, quite literally. The sun never set on the possessions of the Queen. That's a powerful incentive to bring order to chaos (or what you perceive as chaos), and to use all of the technology at your disposal to solve the problems which you encounter.

And, perhaps more importantly, the Holmes stories, and countless others in the detective genre that I could name, are still cracking good reads, too. I'm always amazed when I meet people who haven't read at least one (especially as I seem to remember doing a few of the stories in school), and I always urge them, whatever their interests, to give one a try. So please do. Maybe a bit of Holmes' method, rather than his infuriating personality, will rub off on you, as it did on me, all those years ago.

The World Science Festival: Brian Greene Returns to The Colbert Report

I didn't even know about this event, but not being in the northeast, it's perhaps less likely that I would have caught wind of it. I would have thought that my routine searches and alerts would have turned it up, but it has been a busy month, and I've been a bit... er, "scattered" might be a good word for it. So for those like me who missed all reference to it, the World Science Festival takes place in New York City starting on the 28th of May and carrying on through 1 June.

On their blog you'll find last night's appearance by theoretical physicist, author, and World Science Festival co-founder Brian Greene on The Colbert Report, discussing the Festival and blowing Stephen's little mind.

Our travel to other destinations is already booked, but if you're in or near New York for the week-end, this definitely looks like something worth checking out (tip of the ski pole to Pharyngula, another blog that needs no help whatsoever from me).

Jonathan Miller Interviewed

Today in the Wall Street Journal, I came across what is billed as a Cultural Conversation with Dr Jonathan Miller, the acclaimed director, writer, comedian, doctor, film maker, and member of the Beyond the Fringe team - he and reknowned playwright Alan Bennett are the two surviving members of that 1960s comedy quartet, which also featured Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Most recently, Dr Miller served as writer and presenter of the three-part series "Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief" (interestingly not mentioned in the WSJ article), which finally made it to some American PBS stations, sometimes over protests, last year. I watched it several times (through the magic of Tivo), and found it absolutely engrossing. It has not yet been released on DVD, but it will be high on my list when it does appear. Yes, the series is three hours long (more, if you track down the complete versions of the accompanying interviews), but entirely worth your time.

Bearing this in mind, here are links to the three episodes of the series:

Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief, Part 1: Shadows of Doubt




Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief, Part 2: Noughts and Crosses




A Rough History of Disbeleif, Part 3: The Final Hour




And here is an interview with Dr Miller, conducted by Kirsty Wark for the BBC, after the British screening of his most recent series:

Dr Miller is another of those people who have the capacity to make me feel rather dim and slow when I compare my achievements and intellectual depth and breadth to his. That's not entirely a negative: it inspires me to work harder, in the hopes of achieving a small proportion of what greater men and women are capable of doing.

Curst Be He...

My morning routine can be somewhat pleasant on those days when I get to do things in the order that I like:

1. Rise and perform morning ablutions.


2. Make cup of tea and check mail, then check news.


3. See story on the BBC News site about conservators having to work around a curse placed on Shakespeare's tomb, in words possibly penned by Shakespeare himself.


4. Beat head repeatedly on desk.

So perhaps that wasn't the best example of a pleasant morning. But I have to ask, what is wrong with people? It's 2008, for Zeus' sake!

The Bard, or "Bardy", as I affectionately call him, was born four hundred forty-four years ago, and is buried at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-on-Avon, the same church in which he was baptised. Among many, many writers who have dissected what we know about Shakespeare's life and times from those few historical sources remaining to us, Bill Bryson's recent biography, Shakespeare: The World as Stage, discusses Shakespeare's death and the subsequent burial, makes reference to the bizarre anachronistic sequence of the graves of his family, and recounts the "curse" laid upon the grave:

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare,
To digg the dust enclosed heare.
Bleste be the man that spares thes stones
And curst be he that moves my bones.

All fine and well and prosaic and fitting - an enigmatic verse to celebrate the life of perhaps the greatest poet ever to write in the English tongue. But here is the question: why are we still paying attention to four hundred year old curses?

It's sometimes hard to tell if something is being said in a tongue-in-cheek fashion solely from the written text. And perhaps this is the subtext that I am missing here. But I don't see that archaeologists, or conservators, or anyone else working to either stop the past from crumbling around us or to ensure that we have learned as much as we can from relics of centuries long gone should be worried by a "curse", even if it was penned by William Shakespeare. We need to recognise that some things are inherently valuable, without having to appeal to the superstition and ignorance out of which we should have by now grown, merely to do something so important as to preserve our heritage.

Astronomical News and Notes

A couple of key events in the past few days to mention in brief:

• The Phoenix probe has landed safely on Mars, and is returning its first pictures from the northern reaches of the Red Planet. Spectacularly, its descent was captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter - the weblog at the Planetary Society has the image, and you will just have to see it to believe it (a swish of the improbable skis, of course, to the Bad Astronomer, who certainly doesn't need any tips from me). The probe has already begun returning data, after taking the traditional image of its own foot to ensure that the landing site was stable.


• I'm adding this one late to the list, but it just seemed to interesting to allow to slip past. Today a report of a star in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud (one of the small companion galaxies to our own Milky Way), has been published. It describes WOH G64, a supergiant red dwarf with a diameter so large that, were it to replace our sun, the star itself would extend out to the orbit of Saturn. It is also gifted with an enormous torus of gas and dust which, according to research published this week, is a light-year across. Amazing stuff, and well worth a read.


• This from last week, which I've been meaning to mention in passing: a supernova has been seen in the very earliest moments of its final, catastrophic demise. The BBC news item has links to all of the major sites reporting this piece. This event, which astronomers have been seeking for more than fifty years, sheds new light on the process which marks the death of a massive star.


• Just for fun, because his death was supposed to have been foretold in the stars or some such rot, the earliest known bust of Julius Caesar has been found at the bottom of the Rhône River in southern France, near the town of Arles. Archaeologists are suggesting that the bust, which dates from 46 BCE, was thrown in the river two years later when Caesar was famously assassinated on the Ides of March. The death of Caesar, as you will remember from your histories, marked the death of the last tyranny of the Roman Republic, and the beginning of the Civil War which ultimately led to Octavian seizing power and crowning himself Augustus, thus founding the Roman Empire.

More news and thoughts, as ever, as events warrant.

Reflections, Memorials

Like many people in the United States, I generally take part in some sort of festivity held to celebrate Memorial Day. When I was a child, it meant picnics and playing out, usually in the small town where I spent some of the happier times of my childhood. When I was at school and university, it meant a break before the last-minute push at years' end, or recovery after the duress of final examinations. When I worked full-time for other people, it was always a welcome break, a way to bridge the long stretch between the moveable feast of Easter and the Independence Day holidays.

This year, due to mutually but unrelatedly feeling unwell, GHR and I did very little, which has its own charm and attraction. It was an unusually rainy three days in our part of the world, putting paid to many ambitious plans, largely surrounding work in the garden.

However, some small amount of shopping was required, and this I set about without much relish. While I was in the local Bull's-Eye mart, trying to evaluate the relative merits of small fans, I chanced to overhear an aged gentleman and his wife, who were engaged in attempting to purchase a canopied glider. The man wore a cap which proclaimed him to be a veteran of the Second World War, although he was certainly spry and alert for a man of that generation. As I was shopping, I heard him make several calls with his mobile. In each case, he was inviting people to come to a remembrance ceremony at a local cemetery, at which he, in uniform, would be part of the commemoration. There was to be a picnic afterwards, and he invited them along to that as well. It was to be, I suspected, a moving and tender occasion, followed, in that uniquely American way, with lots of food and chatter.

I hope that this unknown veteran, who I did not wish to intrude upon, found many takers to participate in the solemn occasion to which he invited them. I hope that he told them the truth: that war should be, must be, a last resort. War is not a glorious game. War is not a foreign policy tool of first resort. And war is not a tool for ensuring domestic political complicity.

As a student of history, and particularly the Great War, I have my own insights into the things which drag nations into conflict. Under the old model, the paradigm of nation casting arrows at nation, it was, in a way, easier to understand.

Most Americans have never travelled abroad - many do not even travel all that far distant from the states and regions of their birth. Most have never seen the stark beauty of Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC, nor meditated on the sober reality that it represents. Fewer have stood on a hill overlooking the Marne River valley in central France, near a village called Château-Thierry, and stared up at the American Memorial on the hill, dedicated to soldiers who fought in the Second Battle of the Marne, during June and July of 1918, in the closing days of the Great War. It was up through this valley that American forces, among them a young Captain Harry Truman, drove their way towards Germany. Nor have they stared out over the rows of English, French, and American dead just over the road - rows upon rows of crosses, signifying not the torture devised by the Romans and so crudely carried by followers of one particular cruxifex, but the bones, the mortal remains, of an individual who also had a mother, a father, siblings and relatives and friends and people whose lives were left emptier and more desolate without them.

I have been there. I have felt the tug of family connections to those places. My grandfather (born 1897) served in the Great War - albeit not in the central arena of combat. My wife's grandfather served in the Second World War, and returned a broken man, haunted by what he saw in the shattered remains of Germany.

A friend of mine served in the elder Bush's first misadventure in the land of Mesopotamia. In a way, he was the more fortunate of veterans, as, for the most part, the diagnosis and treatment-resistant panoply of symptoms known as Gulf War Syndrome does not affect him too greatly. Nor did he return wounded, permanently incapacitated, or boxed. His comrades then and now have not been so lucky.

In the cases of some of these earlier wars, we were always told as school children that they were fought so they need never be fought again. Now we are constantly told here in the west that this is "a time of war". But not just any war: a new and different kind of war. We are told that we are in the fight of our lives, and that in order to preserve our liberty, we must yield our liberty. The torturous, tautological, hyperbolic and ephemeral rationales for this conflict, traceable not only to a single horrific day but to the cupidity, avarice, and rank incompetence of a pretender to an elected throne and his controllers and minions; these rationales are a constant drumbeat in our ears. The drums are being beaten once again... slowly, inexorably. "Trust us," say the voices, the chattering classes. "Trust us, and we will protect you." And it is, as ever, by all appearances, a lie. Those who beat this drum, those who have lied and cajoled and cheated and employed the tactics of thugs and barbarians have brought America, the West, possibly the whole of the world, to a juncture at which it would be only too easy, too facile, for civilisation to slip noisily into the abyss.

We now see the results of handing the keys over to the irresponsible fraternity brother. A shambles of an economy. A government ridden by scandals and incompetence. The central tenants of law and justice shredded in favour of "security". The list is too depressing to continue.

This is what happens when the carefully balanced system, devised by the Framers as "the best they could do at the time", is subjected to pernicious strain. This is what happens when the Fourth Estate of American politics, the press, fails. This is what happens when reason and rationality, which are all that keep us from the darkness, fail. This is what happens when we surrender our logic and replace it with superstition, with myths and fables, with desires for a paternalistic guiding force which harken back to the infancy of humanity.

On this Memorial Day, then, I deny it. I deny that war is the only answer, that it is a necessity to sacrifice thousands of lives and to permanently break tens of thousands more merely on a pretext. I deny, until evidence is presented by unimpeachable sources, without spin or censorship, that it is incumbent upon westerners to surrender their cherished and hard-won liberties in the name of security. And I deny that it is the right of the currently uninspiring crop of lame-duck leaders to make such demands. The appeal to fear is a powerful one. It is not one in which I believe any longer.

And that, on a day which memorialises courage, among other things, seems a fitting reflection.

Too Lovely for Words

This photo is of the Royal Observatory Greenwich, London, and it makes me want to hop aboard a ship and sail across the Atlantic (I really, really don't like flying), land in Portsmouth or Torquay or Land's End or wherever it is that ships put in on the south coast of England these days, wait for ages to get a train, find out that there isn't one running, eventually catch one to London, wend my way through the trackless wastes now overseen by Boris Johnson (can't blame it all on Red Ken now, can you, Londoners? although, to be fair, a lot of it you still can), and eventually get to Greenwich just to see this bit of loveliness in person. It just looks gorgeous.

According to the BBC News Website, Greenwich "is celebrating the first anniversary of its £16m Time & Space redevelopment project. The centre-piece of the venue, which has attracted more than 1.1m visitors, is the 120-seat planetarium, housed beneath a 45-tonne tilted bronze cone."

I especially want to get there before the aforementioned Boris, in a bit of the absentminded bumblingness for which he is known, does something terrible to the whole area, or, worse still, to the whole of London, which renders all travel there, except by smug cyclists, impossible.

As Jeremy Hardy said recently on the News Quiz (in reaction to the news of Boris' continual rise to mediocrity): "We wouldn't have Boris if it weren't for Have I Got News for You. If Angus [Deayton] could have just kept it in his pants, none of this would ever have happened."

Seriously, though, London... what the hell were you thinking? "Ooo... errr... vote for that one off the telly. That's got to be good for a laugh"?

In Which I Reveal the Depths of My Geekdom

Phil Plait doesn't want you to see it (or at least, he doesn't want to see it for himself), but here, in lieu of a new episode this week (bloody Eurovision), is the trailer for the remainder of Doctor Who Series 4. Yes, Virginia, there are spoilers.

Pay no attention to the thing that looks like a Dalek in the shadows. None at all... I'm sure that it's not important in the least.

(The various DW discussion fora are alive with speculation on this point, so I won't add mine. At this juncture, I prefer to sit back and be surprised.)

I can tell you one thing, though - better to download (or otherwise obtain from a friendly source in the UK) than to watch the edited versions on Sci-Fi in the US... the few that I've tried to watch have been cut in seemingly random places, just as BBC America's broadcast of Series 3 was. Infuriating. And yes, before you ask, I buy the bloody things on DVD when the full series comes out, too (or, if I'm cunning, I arrange to receive them as holiday gifts).

Colorado, Ho! (part 2)

A couple of interesting stories relating to Colorado. Our upcoming camping holiday is a couple of weeks away, and we're not going to be there all that long, but that doesn't make the thought of going and maybe stumbling across something any less exciting.

First, there is a story from the Edmonton Sun about a planned expedition to eastern Colorado, intended to look for a lost site described by 19th century explorer Edward Drinker Cope in the 1878. There Cope recovered and described fossil vertebrae from what is calculated to have been possibly the largest sauropod dinosaur ever known, amphicoelias fragillimus. The site was supposed to have been located to the east of Colorado Springs, where we will be staying. It's not that I'm expecting to just stumble across it, but if the chance to explore presents itself, that seems like a good place.

As an aside, for those interested in learning more about early paleontologists like Cope, Othniel Charles Marsh, Roy Chapman Andrews and others, the book that I'm reading at the moment in preparation for my Andrews presentation, The Great Dinosaur Hunters and Their Discoveries, is a good place to start.

Secondly, via Dinochick comes a story published in the Grand Junction Sentinel of the first ankylosaur track ever discovered, found nearby in Cactus Park by a science teacher from a Denver high school. Yes, this is on the other side of the Rockies from where we're intending to go, but who's to say we can't go for a drive one day?

It's an Amphibian... It's a Frog... It's Frogamander!

Another recent and exciting announcement in paleontology is reported by National Geographic News and the Telegraph, among other sources: a 290 million year old fossil, discovered in Texas in the 1990s but not described until this year, of what appears very much to be a transitional form from the frog and salamander evolutionary tree has been described.

The fossil, named gerobatrachus hottoni, has features of both frogs and salamanders, and leads scientists to suggest that frogs and salamanders separated later than the era to which the gerobatrachus dates, moving the split up to a date between 275 and 240 million years ago. The earliest known true frog, Vieraella herbsti, dates to the early Jurassic, 218-188 million years ago.

The discovery is leading paleontologists to re-write their understanding of the history of amphibian evolution. Previously, it had been expected that a fossil would be found linking frogs, salamanders, and caecilians, worm-like amphibians. It now appears that while the caecilians descended from the archaic lepospondyls, the frogs and salamanders descended from the archaic temnospondyls.

What this once again exemplifies is the lengthy and time-consuming nature of the sciences, and paleontology in particular. It also indicates that, far from being inflexible and rigid, science and theoretical constructs in science change according to what is found in the natural world, rather than in the minds of individual paleontologists.

The research is published in Nature this week.

Saturday Skepticism

Courtesy of several posters on YouTube, I have a dose of skeptical thinking and silliness for you, from the inimitable Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, proudly presenting "Spoon-Bending with Mr Nude" from the first episode of Series 1 of their inimitable sketch show, (makes air quotes with fingers) "A Bit of Fry and Laurie":

File Under: Things I Never Thought I'd Be Doing

One of the tasks that I've been given at the Beagle is to work at identifying the contents of a large and entirely unlabeled collection of minerals. The collection, which was purchased for the store by a man who used to work there (I hesitate to call him my "predecessor"), has languished in their storage area downstairs for some time now, and I'm just getting into trying to figure out just what they might have there. It was purchased, it seems from "a couple of old stoners" (I assume that this is not a geological reference). Perhaps this is the excuse for the complete and utter lack of any kind of notes or provenance to the things, never mind their lamentably filthy and battered condition.

I played with minerals a lot as a child and teenager. It wasn't exactly my idea, basically it began as a project for the Scouts that got out of hand. It ended with... well, it still hasn't really ended, for reasons which will become clear. I soon went from egg boxes to perky boxes and was, in short order, immersed in the sometimes very odd world of collectors, aging miners, and dealers.

I was a mineral geek, in a way. I read The Mineralogical Record, and books on minerals. My first Audubon Field Guide was the Rocks and Minerals volume (I still have it, and still remember the curious smell of the coated colour photo plates sandwiched in the middle of the book). I bought minerals through the post. I went to rock and mineral shows, where I spent the money from my small neighbourhood lawn care business. I went digging for minerals, rocks, and fossils - I must have been one of the few twelve year-olds with his own geologist's hammer (I still have it, too). I made elaborate notes, bad sketches, and tried to understand chemistry that was way beyond me. In retrospect, it was a very odd part of my life, because I didn't really tell anyone about it. It was just something that I did.

And now, I'm doing it again. Looking at all of this random detritus, and trying to figure out what it is, where it might have come from, and, perhaps most importantly, what someone might pay for it. Essentially, I pick up about twenty things at a time which, in the half-light of the storage area, look fairly promising. Then I take them, clean them up as best possible, and start to try to figure out, with reference books, including a copy of the Dana System of Mineralogy that they happen to have in the store, acids, and a few other tests, what they might be, and where they might be from.

Yesterday, in rooting through one of the old cardboard boxes, I saw something familiar and picked it out. White, botryoidal, and what is politely referred to in the reference books as "mammilary" in shape. It was heavy and smooth when I picked it up, and triggered a surprisingly potent sense memory. Smithsonite, I thought.

I showed it round and was met with some immediate counter-assessments: chalcedony. Agate. I wondered if I should doubt my memory and my intuition, so I took it round to the "local expert" last night. "Smithsonite. Probably from Mexico," was the reply. So now not only am I doing identifications, but I'm getting them right. Considering how vehemently I disliked the whole field by the time I tried to escape it, it's now interesting to find myself having returned.

Dinosaurs in Yemen

The BBC reported yesterday on this discovery - tracks of sauropods and a lone bipedal dinosaur have been discovered in Yemen. The full peer-reviewed paper is published at the Public Library of Science and is freely available to all.

First discovered by a local journalist, Mohammed al-Daheri, the tracks at the village of Madar, north of the Yemeni capital Sana'a, were reported in 2006 to co-author Mohammed al-Wosabi, who was then affiliated with the Yemen Geological Survey. The site was duly closed off to prevent damage to the trackways, and a team, including the al-Wosabi, Dutch paleontologist Anne S. Schulp, and American paleonotologist Nancy J. Stevens, excavated and examined the ichnosite (from the Greek ichnos, "tracks"). They discovered a group of eleven sauropod dinosaurs of varying ages had made their way through the ancient mudflat in which their tracks are preserved. Nearby was a lone tridactylic (three-toed) ornithopod track (made by a bipedal herbivorous dinosaur, in this case). In view of the previous paucity of information about the paleofauna of Arabia, which had been limited to a very few fragmentary and otherwise unconnected bones, this is in important and interesting discovery. The article on PLoS One provides a thorough and readable account of the findings.

Rare discoveries such as this one give a fascinating insight into the history of the Arabian peninsula some 150 million years ago - a history which previously has been little known, and remains largely obscured.

News: Ice Cream Maker Shills for Buzzing Insects

I've written elsewhere, on a strictly interested amateur's level, about the disappearance of honey bees, known more formally as Colony Collapse Disorder. To say that this is an "important" issue doesn't do the matter justice. It's crucial. The estimate usually given is that roughly one-third of crops depend upon honey bees for pollination. That's no small number. If honey bee populations are in decline (which doesn't seem to be in doubt), and the trend cannot be reversed, then that could be catastrophic news for food supplies right round the world.

So I was intrigued to see that ice cream makers Häagen-Dazs have created a new flavour, Vanilla Honey Bee, in an effort to raise awareness of the honey bee problem. They've also built a website, Help the Honey Bees, which highlights the problem (and frankly, I think that the site is gorgeous - normally flash and graphics-heavy sites bother me, but not this time) and lets you know not only what you can do to help, but also describes the ice cream maker's efforts:

"And remember, to make helping the bees even sweeter, we'll donate funds to honey bee research when you enjoy one of our "BEE-DEPENDENT FLAVORS.""

As mentioned the site also has suggestions for how to help, and it is gratifying to me that this includes not merely the usual exhortation to "buy our stuff", but real suggestions on what to do. The "Plant A Seed" section gives a list of bee-preferred plants that you can grow, in an effort to attract them (the list includes lavender, jasmine, rosemary, violets, thyme, wisteria, bluebells, sunflowers, and cone flowers, some of which we already have in our garden). Under "Donate", you can give money directly to either the University of California at Davis, or to Pennsylvania State University (I've reproduced the same links from the site here), where research is underway. And the "Support Beekeepers" link provides additional suggestions, like buying locally-produced honey and hive-related products (beeswax candles, for example). You can also make and send your own animated honey bee, just for fun (i've included mine, just for reference). And, finally, there's a "Bee Store, with the profits going to fund bee research.

On the face of it, then, here is an example of a company doing something responsible. I really don't see a flaw in this sort of effort (although I'll check back to see how much money went to research at the end of the day). Some of the ways that you can help involve buying their products, of course, but there are a number of suggestions that in no way benefit the company, while still getting the message out to a broader audience. Well done, Häagen-Dazs. Responsible corporate citizens should be recognised and rewarded for their efforts. Hence the following, if unnecessary plug:

Vanilla Honey Bee is quite delicious, in case you were wondering (although not, obviously, if you're allergic to honey).

Never Volunteer?

The thing that my father always said that he learned from his time in the military amounted to just those two words: "never volunteer". I'm not sure that this was the most constructive of messages to send to a shy child. There are times, however, when I wonder about the validity of such a sentiment in the context of the adult(-ish) version of me.

I had this idea, you see, and it just seemed too good not to follow through to its logical conclusion. Here are the specifics: HMS Beagle hosts a monthly Science Club for school-aged children, on most Saturdays. The goal, of course, is to get children and parents into the store, and interested in various aspects of science.

Enter me and my brilliant idea: I've been reading recently about Roy Chapman Andrews, the archaeologist, paleontologist, and popular writer whose heyday in the early to mid-twentieth century was marked by adventures, discoveries, and "really wild things". One of the things that I had read was that Andrews was seen as one of the possible inspirations for the character of Indiana Jones - he certainly fits the type and the image, down to the pistol and the hat. Add to that his popularity and acclaim during the 1930s, when the adventure serial films said to have influenced George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg in creating their character were also in their prime, and you have what could pass for a compelling argument. So the other part of my thought: marketing. The Beagle can get the new Indiana Jones Lego into stock (yes, they're a science store, and as such they deal with some of the higher-end Lego, and the Vex robots and the like, as well as the garden variety, sometimes-only-thinly-scientific Lego ranges), display it with models of the dinosaurs which Andrews and his team were responsible for finding, and Robert's-your-proverbial-maternal-or-paternal-brother.

Mind you, it was just an idea. Now that I've said that I'll put the presentation together, and then present it (as the resident expert on... er... Lego? no, no...), I find myself remembering those fateful words. That frisson of self-doubt, that little voice saying "you're probably not good enough to do this", which is not what I need to hear right now.

Shake it off and go on, then. Going back and starting to do the reading and first steps of writing a presentation reminds me again of how much I like to do research, and how interesting I'm hoping to make this story. Andrews was a fascinating man who did amazing things for his time. Mounting an expedition into the Gobi Desert is not a picnic even by today's standards, never mind in the 1920s. This is a story that should be told and enjoyed, and I'm hoping to do it justice.

Additionally, given the fact that I've only left myself about two weeks in which to put together something convincing, I'm reminded of another old adage of my own: procrastination only hurts the procrastinator - it just pisses off everyone else involved as an added bonus. Still, there's no fun in not working to a deadline... especially for the "whooshing" noise that it makes as it goes past (apologies to DNA).

More Housekeeping, Less Time

This is one of those days where I'm reduced to going back through my Google alerts and just marking everything more than two days old as "read", otherwise, I'm going to go completely mad trying to catch up.

In one of his older routines, Eddie Izzard talks about only doing passive research, letting the research come to him. I do something similar with topics for writing, setting up alerts on topics of special interest (astronomy, geology, evolution, paleontology, the history of science, et cetera) and then seeing what comes back. It can be interesting, but it can also convince me in a matter of moments that there's a lot of absolute nonsense out there on the 'Tubes.

Before my projects for the day really begin, I'm trying to get through some of my old alerts, and I realise that I haven't looked at some of the email folders for more than a week, and that I don't have the intellectual energy or acuity to read through all five hundred of them.

In situations like this, there's only one thing to do: put on Wilco's A.M. and compile a list:

• Orac has a great smack-down of anti-vaccinationist nonsense which must be read to be believed. Orac's one of those writers who makes me feel quite dim, and I enjoy the challenge of trying to keep up with him.


• Here's a list of books that I'm not even going to try to complete - a thousand and one books? I might have read that number of books in total in my life, if I were being really generous with what I classify as a "book" (Target novelisations read in my early teens don't really count). I certainly haven't read everything listed, although there are multiple instances of books listed where I have read other titles by the same author.


• ERV has a request: Help Get Rid of Sally Kern. Seems like a sound idea to me.


• The latest lander on its way to Mars, Phoenix, is due to land on 25 May: the BBC news site has the story.
  
• Tonight, if you happen to be in the greater Kansas City area, there's a meeting of the Beagle Society at HMS Beagle over in Parkville. The discussion will be a free-ranging talk on evolution, based around articles from the freely available online journal from Springer Publications, Evolution: Education and Outreach. Give it a read, and drop in if you're in the neighbourhood - the talk starts at 7pm.


• The only topical radio panel game always guaranteed to make me laugh out loud at least once per week, The News Quiz, is back for a new series - catch the podcast or the Listen Again repeats if you can't hear it live.

Speaking of Eddie Izzard - we're going to see him on 31 May! I'm so excited that I've temporarily mislaid the tickets. Got two weeks to find them, though. What surprises me is that the tour is coming to Kansas City - last time he toured the US, five years ago, I drove to Chicago to catch him at the Schubert Theatre (and it was a fantastic show). A local appearance will certainly be less costly in travel terms, and I'm certainly looking forward to it.

Another Lightweight Writing Day

I had hoped to have time to pull a post together, but have been up since 6am sorting out some yard waste that the disposal people are coming for (lots, and lots, and lots of dead trees, going to a "yard waste only" fill, so at least it should be ecologically sound). As a result... er... back on schedule tomorrow. Or possibly tonight. So much to write about, so little time.

For last night, of course, I have an excuse: the Dear Wife (GHR) and I drove to Lawrence (the one in Kansas) to see Wilco play. This is the second time in about six months that we've been to see them, and both shows were fantastic, although Jeff Tweedy was in a much better mood last night than he was for the previous Kansas City show (I know that I would hate riding around on a bus without end, so it's understandable - he warmed up about halfway through that show and actually took a swipe or two at Elton John, who was playing at the same time in the newly-innaugurated Sprint Centre in downtown Kansas City). The night was perfect (outdoor concert), the crowd was enthusiastic and well-behaved, and the band was in great form, and played almost all of my favourites. They are the DW's favourite band, and are rapidly becoming one of mine - I first heard them on the Mermaid Avenue albums that they did with Billy Bragg (about which more in the documentary Man in the Sand: The Making of "Mermaid Avenue"... Wilco goes on to three sold-out dates in St. Louis, according to the website.

At any rate, in lieu of content, here's a snippet from the Intertubes, a song with a good message for this blog, "Theologians", from the album A Ghost Is Born. Get it while you can:

If you like the clip, try to catch them live or on album - very much worth your time, in this writer's opinion.

Tiktaalik in Crisis?

Among other things, at the moment I'm reading Neil Shubin's book, Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body, and it's a great read so far, discussing the discovery and announcement of the Tiktaalik fossils several years ago.

Tiktaalik, for those who missed it, was one of those "finds of a lifetime". Using the predictive mechanism of evolutionary paleontology, Shubin and his team searched for a site with the appropriate late Devonian sedimentary layers, where it would be likely to find a transitional creature: part of the way between fish like Panderichthys and early tetrapods, in this case Acanthostega and Ichthyostega. Finding tiktaalik in the predicted place with the predicted transitional features therefore represents another branch path in the evolutionary tree, one which led, through tetrapods, ultimately to many later life forms on the planet, including humans.

Since that reading is uppermost in my mind at the moment, it probably explains why I find this particular installment of Cectic so funny. Especially the talking trilobite. Everyone should have one of those.

Queen's Dr Brian May - Congratulations!

I was a fan of Queen back in the day - in the early to mid-1980s, when the world seemed full of promise, despite the Reagan / Thatcher axis. Queen's music was often infectiously enjoyable, in a camp, over-the-top fashion. Without knowing anything about the members of the band beyond their music, I always suspected that at least one of them knew something more about either science or science fiction than one might expect of the typical "rock star" (David Bowie's spiders from Mars notwithstanding). My suspicion was based largely on the song "'39" from the album A Night at the Opera, which reminded me of both Ben Bova's Exiles novels, which took place on a multigenerational starship, and a little of Tunnel in the Sky by Robert Heinlein. It seemed as though the song was describing near-relativistic space travel, and it was one of my favourites from that album, which was already packed with good songs (the near omni-present "Bohemian Rhapsody" first appeared on vinyl there).

As with most things, my musical taste has moved on. So it goes, when you get out of your teens (EDIT - by the bye, that was a long time ago that I left the teen years behind...).

However, when I learned the Brian May, Queen's immediately recognisable and legendary guitarist, had recently completed the degree in astrophysics which he had begun thirty-five years previously, my musings about their background immediately made sense (this courtesy of the almost-equally legendary Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy). Now we find that Dr May has teamed up with equally legendary astronomer, host of 'The Sky at Night' and honorary fourth Goodie, Sir Patrick Moore, on a new book, Bang!: The Complete History of the Universe. I haven't seen the book yet (nor found it on the shelves of any of our lamentable local chain bookshops), but when I do, I'll report back. It sounds like good fun.

Nothing Like the Sun

So I'm reading around and trying to catch up on things that I might have missed during the day, when I decide to check in on the latest antics of the Digital Cuttlefish. Scrolling down the list of recent posts, I find not only the video that I've been meaning to watch anyway, but one of the cleverest things that I've seen written in ages.

Enjoy Apology No. 130 to William Shakespeare, then watch the video, or catch it over at Expelled Exposed. You'll be glad that you did.

"The eyes I love arose through evolution." Too bloody right. Enough said.

What's the Harm?

I'm only doing a light bit of work here today, owing to having spent the day on home improvement projects (the project of making our back garden not look like a combination of a wilderness preserve and a compost heap).

However, I couldn't help but notice a site with which I was previously unfamiliar, What's the Harm?, which details amusing (and not-so-amusing) instances of the harmful, dangerous, expensive, and sometimes deadly results of things that people typically leave others to do in peace. I'm sure that some of these examples are gratuitous, exaggerated, or at the very least apocryphal, but I have to ask: if all of these things are really good and pure and wonderful additions to the human condition, then why are there stories like this? Spite?

No, I'm sure that there's nothing in it. It's just those irritating few of us who demand demonstrable, reproducible evidence of the successes, and failures, of beliefs in some of these areas, causing the problem. If we just wouldn't doubt and be skeptical, everything would be fine.

Skills Everyone Should Know

An interesting list that I've stumbled across today comes from Popular Mechanics, a magazine which I will confess to never really having read. Now in the latter part of my thirties, I find myself reflecting that I've missed a lot of basics over the years, and that I'd probably get some use out of a magazine like PM. I have an interesting store of things that I can do, but they're almost entirely situational and subjective. I tend to only learn when I've had something go wrong, or had to mend something myself, for whatever reason.

The list is called 25 Skills Every Man Should Know, and I was surprised to learn how many of these things were fairly familiar to me. It's a good assortment, mixing some modern tasks such as backing up a hard drive with classics like changing the oil in a car and paddling a canoe. It also has some of the usual rejoinders, like the one used for fixing a flat tyre on a bicycle, "Apply a patch from the kit you always bring along when biking." Good advice, which I should probably follow. Typically, I think of myself as scoring pretty low on the "stuff blokes should know how to do" test, but after reading this list, I'm not so sure. I may be better off than I thought.

My only real quibble is that it shouldn't just be a list for men. Frankly, as they grow to be old enough, I'd want both of the twins to know how to do these things, boy or girl notwithstanding. Oh, yes, and men should know how to sew and cook, as well. No one's saying that you should be a genius at everything, but knowing how things work and how to do a lot of different things never hurt anyone.

With the possible exception of Giuseppi, the Swimming Electrician, who met with an unpleasant end.

EDIT: I also saw this list of The 75 Skills Every Man Should Master on Esquire, which is a magazine and a site that I never read - people who know me will hardly find this surprising. The list isn't entirely without fluff, but there are some good suggestions there, too. Sometimes, people with an ardent interest in, for example, the sciences are accused of having no grasp on the practicalities of day to day life. Hopefully, learning some of the things on these lists will help. Another good place to start? One of my current favourites is The Dangerous Book for Boys, which my son really enjoys just flipping through over and again, and my daughter adores her copy of The Daring Book for Girls... so, for that matter, does my wife.

Dr Kenneth Miller's Take on a Certain Film

Fortunately, although the film is still out roaming around unfettered and probably infecting a few already susceptible minds (very few, as it was in the showing that I attended), I'm hoping to write less about this topic in the near future. At least, until the DVD release, at which point all bets are off.

As Dr Miller says in his article in today's Boston Globe, it was because he and other scientists like him - that is to say, scientists who also have a theistic bent in their thinking - that they were Expelled from participation in the "No Intelligence Allowed" festival. They would, in the words of the film's Associate Producer, Mark Mathis, have "confused the issue".

And so they would have. Because if you're trying to fabricate a story about how "big science" locks real truth-seekers out of the process, and makes "martyrs" out of them, then having to draw a subtle distinction between theistic scientists and overt theists wrapped in a thin cloak of "almost science" is just too complex for a core audience that doesn't, judging from the content of the film, appear to deal well with subtlety.

Miller's assessment at the end of the piece is one that I hadn't considered, but I don't see now why it wouldn't be true:

""Expelled" is a shoddy piece of propaganda that props up the failures of Intelligent Design by playing the victim card. It deceives its audiences, slanders the scientific community, and contributes mightily to a climate of hostility to science itself. Stein is doing nothing less than helping turn a generation of American youth away from science. If we actually come to believe that science leads to murder, then we deserve to lose world leadership in science. In that sense, the word "expelled" may have a different and more tragic connotation for our country than Stein intended."

It's a very interesting article, from the author of Finding Darwin's God and the forthcoming Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul. Go along and check it out, when you have a moment, it's well worth your time.

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Science Versus Creationism

With thanks (many, many thanks) to reader elbogz, who sent me the link to this video a couple of days ago. It is a fascinating presentation by Hayden Planetarium director and host of Nova Science Now, Neil deGrasse Tyson, on the subject of science versus creationism. Give it a few minutes for him to get over his time zone wooziness in the lecture, because this is a brilliant and amusing presentation, and well worth the one hour and fifteen minutes running time.

Enjoy.

Sometimes, it's good to know who is on your side, and who is not, and I'm very glad that Neil deGrasse Tyson is.

A Carl Sagan Commemorative Stamp?

The new issue of Skeptic Magazine (Vol. 14, No. 1)
has fallen into my hands, and I haven't had a chance to read it all yet, but it looks brilliant. Apart from a thorough series of articles on global climate change, and an historical reconstruction of Harry Houdini's exposé of seances, there is a discussion of what is wrong with American broadcast "journalism" (don't get me started). It's also topped off by reviews of Donald Prothero's Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters, as well as a review of What's So Great About Christianity? (my answer? it keeps people out of the cafés for a few hours on a Sunday morning), by the doyen of going progressively weirder, Dinesh d'Souza. So lots of good skeptical reading fun to be enjoyed there. And once I get done with that, there's the new Seed to read, too...

However, the one thing in particular caught my eye, which was a sidebar on page 9 which said: "Would you like to see a stamp honoring Carl Sagan?" The design is apparently the one depicted, and I like the "candle in the dark" representation, even if I'm not entirely enthralled with the artwork (a small quibble, though). The advert continues: you can visit the Sagan Appreciation Society to sign the internet petition (I've checked the site, and as of today - 7 May 2008 - it isn't up yet), or you can follow the better route and write a short letter of support for the release of a Carl Sagan stamp, explaining what Dr Sagan meant and means to you, and to public science education. Here's the address:

Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee
c/o Stamp Development
US Postal Service
1735 North Lynn Street, Suite 5013
Arlington, VA 22209-6432

And here is my letter:

To Whom It May Concern:

It has come to my attention that there is a movement afoot to make available a postage stamp commemorating the life and work of Dr Carl Sagan. I thought that I would take a moment to add my voice to those advocating the adoption of such a stamp.

Dr Sagan's career and vision were tremendously influential on my generation, not only through his landmark television series, Cosmos (which as a child of ten I eagerly devoured for thirteen weeks), but by means of his work as a scientist on numerous NASA missions, an eager debater for science and a debunker of nonsense, and as a writer of popular books about science. Recently, I have been reading the last book published during his life, The Demon-Haunted World, and find that it is as relevant and important to current world events and scientific thinking as it was when it first appeared more than a decade ago. For me, Dr Sagan's writing speaks to what is best, not only in Americans, but in human beings as a whole.

Dr Sagan's devotion to the furtherance and betterment of science education in the United States and around the world influenced many people, and that influence can still be felt. As an author, television presenter, and advocate for scientific literacy, his voice was unique and instantly recognisable, and lives on to this day. If the number of affectionate parodies alone may be counted in evidence of this, his influence continues largely unabated by his tragically early death. His voice of reason and humanity is much missed.

I would therefore urge you to move forward with the commemorative stamp, which will certainly take pride of place in my collection upon its eventual release.

In so saying, I remain,
Sincerely yours,

William Nedblake

So that's going out in the post today. Can't hurt. Feel free to do the same, if you're so inclined. Let's work to get a skeptical, scientific stamp created. Perhaps a whole series of great scientists?

Return of the Flatulent Procyon Lotor?

Recently, I've been reading Carl Zimmer's excellent book, At the Water's Edge : Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea, despite the fact that I missed the chance to discuss it at the Linda Hall Library's irregular book group meeting for April. I enjoy Mr Zimmer's writing a good deal, and also find his blog on Science Blogs to be a regular source of interesting writing. And, for a science writer, he coincidentally has the ideal first name if you are thinking in terms of an homage (sorry, I've been reading The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, and it strikes me once again how much I miss Carl Sagan). But I digress. Again.

In reading today's entry (and the companion piece on the evolution of intelligence), it came to my attention that somehow I'd missed the fact that he'd tangled with the Coultergeist before... Obviously, Ms Coulter has issues of her own that can't be solved easily. But a long stretch in therapy might do the trick. Or possibly an altercation involving her head, a doorway, and an earthquake. If you believe in the mechanisms of Providence, you'd best be prepared for that sort of thing. What I was unaware of, however, is that she'd gone from simply being the target of satire to actually writing something closely akin to satire. This, I suspect, is due to the fact that I would be only marginally less likely to gouge out my own eyes than to read one of her books. I'll do opposition research, but I have my limits (and a quaint appreciation for logic, rationality, and sense which rears up in righteous rage when I try to read drivel akin to some of the things that she has said).

If you haven't seen it, it's worth catching Jeremy Paxman's interview with the Coultergeist, which is here for your viewing pleasure (if you don't know anything about Paxman's interviewing technique, you may be in for a surprise):

A side note to follow that piece: Mr Zimmer also hosts - purely from scientific interest, I am sure - what is, as far as I am aware, the only collection of science tattoos on the web (not that I've looked extensively, tattoos not really being my "bag"). But this fact speaks to the existence of many facets to this man, and I'd urge any casual reader to give his books a look.

Today's Notes on the Universe

The further out into the universe that humanity has been able to look, the more the old conceptions of the fixity of the heavens are undermined. When, based on the observations of the Hellenic schools of philosophy and their Hellenistic descendants, the Ptolemaic and Aristotelian view of the terra-centric universe was adopted by the early Christian church, that was thought to be an end to the matter. And without telescopes, the western world laboured under the mistaken belief that the Earth sat in an exalted position, at the centre of a universe of immutable, harmonic spheres on which the planets and stars travelled. The immutability must have been a problem during meteor showers, during the supernovae of 1006 or 1054, or when the moon was possibly struck by an asteroid in 1178, but on the whole, the church used to wriggle its way out of conundra like that with relative ease. It helps when you have an illiterate peasantry, I guess.

However, observers kept looking at the skies, and with the advent of more sophisticated mathematics, better observations, and telescopes, it became apparent to men like Kepler, Copernicus, and Galileo that the whole of the story was not being told. Sometimes, these discoveries incurred the annoyance of a church unaccustomed to having its neat conception of the universe question. Books were placed on lists of "titles banned for heretical thought", but, as authorities have discovered over the centuries, banning a book just makes more people want to read it. Eventually, word gets out. Every new finding chipped away at the ancient view, until eventually the crystal spheres of the ancients shattered like so much window glass.

Since the Renaissance, discoveries in astronomy have piled on like rugby players in a scrum: Neptune, Pluto, Eris, Sedna, moons around the outer planets, extra-solar planets, novae and supernovae, pulsars, quasars, black holes, the structure of galaxies, the distribution of matter in the universe, the cosmic microwave background - that's the quick, "off the top of my head" list. So much for immutability, perfection, and design.

Those who would, perversely, still fight on the side of ignorance over knowledge largely leave astronomy alone. They might occasionally scoff at the "age of the universe" (roughly 13.7 billion years, based on the cosmic microwave background), or the age of the earth (roughly 4.6 billion years, based on the combined measured radioactive decay rates for several key elements), but it seems that, unlike evolutionary biology, for example, astronomy and related sciences are largely left alone (well, with one exception that I can think of, from that dreadful film). But they don't make the discoveries that matter. In fact, as far as we can tell, they don't really make any contribution to knowledge at all. In the meantime, science moves forward.

And as a result, the dramatic headline "Black Hole Rips Apart Screaming Star" may lead you to the conclusion that there are still remarkable goings on in for astronomers to see. And you would be right.

Not only does this rare event, the spectacular destruction of a star by a black hole, illuminate the centre of a distant galaxy for astronomical study, but it still further drives home the point that if you want to get your science from the collected musings of ancient shepherds and nomads, who might have spent an enormous amount of time looking at the sky, but with only a little comprehension, that's your privilege. Just don't expect to be taken seriously, and don't expect your view of the nature and origin of the universe to be of any use to anyone who has ever put an eye to a telescope and taken their first step into a larger world.

Academic Freedom: An Open Letter to the Missouri House of Representatives

Dear Elected Representatives of the State of Missouri,

Hello. You probably don't remember me. I'm one of the faceless thousands who foots the bill for your activities. It's been a while since we've talked, and that's my fault - sorry! There are so many things to do, filling up the day, aren't there? However, at this time, there are a few small concerns that I would like to bring up regarding a little piece of legislation called Missouri House Bill 2554, which was first read on 1st April 2008.

It seems as though one of your number, a Dr Robert Wayne Cooper (Republican, Camdenton), has elected to submit a bill before your august body, calling for the ammendment of a "new section [into chapter 170, RSMo] relating to teacher academic freedom to teach scientific evidence regarding evolution". While Dr Cooper of course has every privilege to do so, I would like to ask you to consider the language and intent of this bill for just a moment.

First, it appears that some of your number may still labour under the misapprehension that "academic freedom" can be ensured by the passage of a bill which rigidly and archly defines just exactly what teachers are free to do, specifically, "to teach scientific evidence regarding evolution". This is not the way that "academic freedom", as you call it, works. Allow me to explain.

The concept of "academic freedom" is, to paraphrase, a Trojan horse. As you will no doubt remember, at the end of ten years' fighting in an attempt to gain access to the city of Troy, Homer's Mycenaean armies, having failed to breech the walls of Troy, construct the statue of a horse made in wood, which they leave at the gates of the city. Priam and company, deciding that it is a gift given in honour of their prowess in battle, pull the horse into the city, whereupon the Greeks concealed within the horse make their way out, open the gates of the city, and allow their fellow Greeks into the city, at which point Troy is razed to the ground and all of her denizens are put to the sword or enslaved. The ancient world was a rough place, no one denies that, but what has this larking about with wooden horses to do with "academic freedom"? I shall explain.

The importance of the Trojan horse concept is that it implies that, by trickery, a previously sound concept or method is to be undermined. In this case, the rigid definition of the areas affected (Section A 1., lines 10-12), very specifically address this point: "...teachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of theories of biological and chemical evolution." This tells us which area of the vast realm of "academic freedom" it is that the author of the bill is interested in undermining... er, freeing. Unsurprisingly, it is the area of "...the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of theories of biological and chemical evolution".

"But surely," you ask, "there are areas of weakness in theories of biological and chemical evolution, aren't there? Because scientists don't always agree with each other, do they? And there are competing theories in science - right?" And you would be correct, to an extent, if by "biological and chemical evolution" you are referring to some very specific problems in the science of archaeo-biology, cosmology, genetics, paleontology and evolutionary biology, in general.

So it sounds reasonable, on the face of it. How could anyone object to such a notion: teachers shall "help students understand". Isn't that what they're meant to be doing? Isn't that why a teacher is put into the classroom in the first instance? Of course it is. But there are a few snags with this simplistic view.

First, to suggest that there are "weaknesses", without understanding the body of information on which our knowledge of those fields is based is at best disingenuous. To suggest to students that scientists do not always agree with each other, and that science, that knowledge itself periodically undergoes revolutions and evolutions is entirely accurate. But these revolutions, these evolutionary changes occur within a context - and that context is one of the scientific method. Any scientist, or, for that matter, any amateur who is gifted enough and talented enough, can propose a change or an alteration to any part of any theoretical underpinning of any science, at any time. Even in our modern age, with its specialisation and definite delineations between various disciplines, in some sciences, amateurs still play a crucial part - in astronomy, geology, and paleontology, to name but three. But to propose that you know something about the natural world that is not yet otherwise known - to do that, you must have evidence, you must be able to reproduce your results (if that is applicable), and you must let other people who are expert in your field review your data. Why does science work that way? Because for the last two hundred years, indeed, roughly since the foundation of the United States, the technological and scientific advanced in which we all, every one of us, revel in some way or another have been built on that framework. Observe. Collect. Predict. Test. Repeat.

Secondly, there is the problem of the disingenuous claim. When the reporting of the passage in the house committee of HB2554 amounts to victorious crowing on the part of the Discovery Institute (sorry, but it seemed best to link directly to them in this case), then you know, like seeing ellipses in a creationist's quote of anyone, that you had better examine your sources more closely. And you will find, upon examination, that the "academic freedom" claim has been trumpeted before, by social conservatives, seeking to drive a "wedge" into the heart of scientific naturalism. It was first exposed in the now-famous "Wedge document". This is the point at which you must ask yourself, which is worth more? The science and technological progress of the past two centuries, or the aspirations of a group of self-appointed denialists? Because that, in essence, is the question.

Thirdly, there is the vexed problem of the teachers themselves. I have some experience of teachers, both first-hand and anecdotal, and I have recently been researching schools in the Kansas City metropolitan area, and I regret to report that I have some news for you. Frequently, particularly in smaller schools, the science teacher is not teaching science out of a deeply-founded love for the field, or because they considered it their calling to be a science teacher. They are teaching science because, to all intents and purposes, they lost a bet. In the last four years, teachers have routinely turned up at the science store run by my wife's parents, and said: "I've just found out that I'm teaching science." Certainly, in larger metropolitan schools that is less often the case, and there some excellent science teachers out there. A number of them taught me (or tried to teach me, in the case of my chemistry professor), twenty years ago. But bizarrely, when so much of our world requires science and technology to understand what we do on a daily basis, science seems to be the discipline which can be handed over to the safe and calloused hands... of the school football coach. Don't get me wrong, that football coach may also be an excellent teacher. He or she may, as was the extraordinary case at my school, also have a deeply founded love of ancient history and the Latin language. But then again, he or she may not. Is that really the sort of thing that we want to leave to chance?

Students are in school to be taught, to the best of the ability of the best teachers that a given school can afford to employ. They are there to be taught the subjects that will give them the best possible chance of achieving the most that they possibly can in their lives - that is the beauty of the public school system. It can also be the downfall of the system, when children are taught incompletely, irresponsibly, or inaccurately.

Yes, I'm a voter. I vote in the state of Missouri. And I would suggest that a vote for this piece of legislation will undermine any confidence that I might have in you. I don't care if you give homes to the deserving poor, enable small farmers to earn decent livings so that they don't have to hold down truck-driving jobs to keep their farms viable, finally enact progressive taxation, adopt state-wide mandatory green energy and recycling programmes, and put kittens in the hands of deserving children - I will vote you out, as will every other right-thinking, moral, intelligent, and up-standing citizen of this state. Because once we have voted you out, we can elect our own candidates to give out the free kittens (and do all of those other things that I mentioned, too). That is how the system works.

The choice, for the moment, is yours. But, in the longer term, it is ours, and I hope that you will remember that as you consider this issue with the due care and attention that it deserves.

Thanking you very much for your time, I remain,
Very sincerely yours,

William Nedblake
A Voter

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EDIT: (26 May 2008) I'm a bit late on coming back to this, but on 19 May 2008 the National Center for Science Education reported that the Missouri anti-evolution bill was dead. So that's some good news. But, to paraphrase: "the price of good science education is constant vigilance".