I haven’t been doing much today—I’m afraid I’ve got some bug that had me wrestling with my digestive tract all day yesterday (bad news: it won), sweating and freezing all night, and now today I’m just an exhausted lump. Fortunately, there’s lots of other stuff to read.
Tangled Bank is up at Kete Were. That’ll keep you busy for a while.
Then we’ve got a Teaching Carnival and a Carnival of Education, a Carnival of the Liberals, and a History Carnival. The Skeptics’ Circle is looking for submissions, as is I and the Bird.
I’m going to go huddle in my bed for a while now.
Get well soon, PZ.
Sorry you’re not feeling well, PZ. Here’s something from the funny papers to cheer you up:
http://www.thepaincomics.com/Scientists%20Riot.jpg
I commiserate much with your suffering – I had a rather nasty stomach bug just last weekend and still feel a bit below par even now.
To help along my recovery I treated myself to a copy of “From So Simple A Beginning” and I am now following Darwin’s progress down the east coast of South America. He is currently riding about the plains near Montevideo but he has already dropped some fairly heavy hints about his thinking: for example, talking of the cowbirds Molothrus niger and M. pecoris he says: “This close agreement in structure and habits, in representative species coming from opposite quarters of a great continent, always strikes one as interesting, though of common occurrence.”
The next post – about books – does not open on its own and has no commenting. I wanted to add that apart from Holiday Reading: Science Books, I have also collected some more – related – lists of books:
Reading Recommendations: Books about Clocks and Sleep
Essential Science Fiction
What Is Lab Lit?
….as well as reviewing particular books, including one that is on your list:
Collapse by Jared Diamond
Biased Embryos and Evolution by Wallace Arthur
Tomasello – Part I
Tomasello – Part II
Creationism craters yet again in Ohio:
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Feb. 14 � The Ohio Board of Education voted 11 to 4 Tuesday to toss out a mandate that 10th-grade biology classes include critical analysis of evolution and an accompanying model lesson plan, dealing the intelligent design movement its second serious defeat in two months.
Hey PZ
I just read this article, linked to by SciTech Daily Review. The author is basically saying that Darwin wasn’t a ‘real scientist’, but rather a amateur potterer, and he doesn’t deserve all the adulation that’s being heaped upon him. Just wondered if you had any thoughts?
P.S. I tried to post this on the reading list post, above, but it’s not accepting comments..
Reads like a bunch of ID twadle to me. Note all the droning about “Faith, Hymns and Hossanas” regarding Darwin, in an attempt to frame scientific achievement with religeous belief.
The ideas of deformed offspring like the two-headed calf “disproving” gradualism, or domestication of animals disproing his theories sound straight out of an ID textbook: disprove an element of Darwinism, and the whole stack of cards comes tumbling down! (Much like faith in the Bible if Genesis isn’t literally true, I’d wager)
He also dosen’t explain how animal domestication disproves anything. If anything, it’s a good example of man using natural selection: We provide an environment where docile, tame, and tasty/useful/pretty will result in successful breeding and care of offspring. It shows a closed-minded adherence to “Survival of the fittest” that ignores the fact that “fittest” is always subject to the environmental conditions.
Of course, I’m just a failed bio-sciences technician, so I could be wrong. ;)
Bro. PZ,
Our prayers are with you in this moment of unfitness. Bro. Juniper suggests a bowl of seaweed soup, a surefire remedy and if you have any Korean restaurants nearby, he says they will know exactly what you need.
And now that I have just discovered your wonderful blog that is overflowing with I know not yet, I will be exploring as time permits. And speaking of scientist, Bro. Sedwick proposed a rather interesting theory this day break at break fast, to wit:
“Perhaps scientists are actually all clones, clones that are doing our drudge work for us. While we contemplate our Maker, the clones busy themselves with discovering and categorizing God’s creations, the clones not knowing why they do this, but we, the created, are thankful to them for all the effort they put into the task. And we are forever amazed and dazzled when the discoveries of the clones are handed to us, yet are a bit saddened that the clones think that we are dazzled about them, when in fact we are dazzled by God’s creations.”
I do hope you take no offense to the usage of “clones” but I did not want to edit Bro. Sedwick’s words.
Shalom,
Bro. Bartleby