Conflict sells. Use it.

Larry Moran listened to Nisbet’s podcast on Point of Inquiry. No surprise—he didn’t like it at all. I finally listened to it last night, too, and I have to crown Larry the King of the Curmudgeons, because I disagreed with fundamental pieces of his story, but I’ll at least grant Nisbet that there aspects of communication theory scientists would benefit from knowing. So why does he ignore those aspects in his own talks?

I want to focus on one thing: conflict. The podcast revealed another unfortunate inconsistency in the framing approach.

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Fraggin’ … frickin’ … frackin’ … oh, that f-word again

I’ve tried a different tack now — I’ve left several comments on Matt Nisbet’s very own blog, in the fading hope that he’ll actually pay attention to what I’m saying, rather than what he imagines I’m saying, or what other people tell him that they imagine I’m saying. Comments there are held up for moderation, so in case you really want fast feedback, I’ve tossed my comments below the fold here where you can savage them instantly … or you can head on over to Framing Science and state your piece there.

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The Crucifixion of St PZ

Many people have noticed the ad for the ghastly Jesus documentary at the top of the pages here. I’m not thrilled, as you might guess—I think this is almost certainly a load of pseudoscientific fluff. Since it is so prominently promenaded across the pages, I’m now feeling obligated to watch the silly thing, so the ad has won them one viewer, at the cost of personal pain to me.

Since I am taking on the sins of our advertiser, however, I will suggest to you readers that you can consider yourselves redeemed and should feel no compulsion to watch it yourselves. If you want to, you may, of course…or you can just wait for my summary on the day after.

Also, since our family TV is in the basement which gets awfully cold this time of year, I’ll probably watch it on Skatje‘s TV, so she’ll probably see it, too. Maybe I’ll have her pass judgement as well. (Maybe the metaphor would be more apt if Skatje is Jesus, and I can be her father who forces her to experience torment to relieve the rest of the world of sin? Ah, it doesn’t matter, the whole story makes no sense anyway.)

As long as we’re confessing…

In response to this crazy attempt to smear Mitt Romney with the sins of his fathers literally, a few people are disqualifying themselves from future runs for the presidency with similar confessions. I have to admit there’s a skeleton in my family tree, too: apparently, one of my ancestors was hanged as a witch in 17th century Massachusetts.

No one will be surprised at that, I suppose. Especially since if your family can trace its roots in this country back almost 400 years, you might well be related to her, too.

Hey, this Joachim Bublath guy is good!

A reader pointed me to this German documentary (with English subtitles) on evolution and creationism—it has a nice 10 minute primer on mechanisms and evidence for evolution (with evo-devo, especially of fruit flies and zebrafish, prominently mentioned, appropriately enough for the country of Christiane Nusslein-Volhard).

There’s also a segment on creationism that is a bit lacking in nuance—they are all lumped together as young earth creationists—which is the kind of opening creationists use to disavow association with those other kooks, while glossing over the foolishness they do believe. Never mind the theological hairsplitting, though, YECs and IDist are fundamentally identical in their rejection of science for dogma.

Aside from that, it’s a simple introduction to evolution that emphasizes the molecular evidence (yay!), has eye-catching graphics and animations, and scathingly dismisses creationism and the general descent into mystical thinking. Do any of my German readers know of this fellow? Was this broadcast on German television?

The Dumbening of America continues

Somebody shoot me now. The Washington Post tallies up congressional votes, and in an astounding display of technological mastery, allows you to sort and display them by the congressperson’s astrological sign. If you’ve ever wondered whether Scorpios were more likely to vote for highway appropriations than are Virgos, now you can find out.

I really want to know what the conversations the editors or publishers had about this decision were like. I’m thinking they were getting worried about how idiotic and cowardly the press has been looking lately, so someone decided to do something bold and exciting and revolutionary…and this is what they came up with.

Would Chuck Terhark like a job writing science abstracts?

One of the subjects I mentioned at the Thursday Flock of Dodos discussion was that an obstacle to getting the public excited about science is the state of science writing. It’s a very formal style in which the passive voice is encouraged, caution and tentative statements are demanded, adverbs are frowned upon and adjectives are treated with suspicion, and all the passion is wrung out in favor of dry recitations of data. Now that actually has a good purpose: it makes it easy to get to the meat of the article for people who are already familiar with the subject and may not need any pizazz to get excited about nematode cell lineages or connectivity diagrams of forebrain nuclei. It makes the work impenetrable to those not already inculcated with the arcana of the discipline, however.

The City Pages illustrates the difference. On Tuesday, the Café Scientifique is going to be given by Cynthia Norton of College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, on the subject of snails. Just for comparison, I’ve put an example of a scientific abstract and the publicity copy for the talk below the fold, and you’ll see what I mean.

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Sound!

Here’s a site full of interesting noises: freesound. You can search for anything, and it will return Creative Commons licensed sound samples; if you want the sound of a phone ringing, or wind chimes, or throatsinging, or thunderstorms, or someone being tortured, or a good laser death ray, there it is. I started looking for more organic things, like whale songs, crickets chirping, frogs croaking, bird songs, etc., and it’s amazing—all kinds of stuff turns up.

One creepy thing, though, if you have squeaky mattress. You’ll also discover that people are recording what their neighbors are doing late at night.

It’s very addictive. Now I have to get back to work on composing that genetics exam…

(via jill/txt)