Yesterday, I posted a diary, Wherein I win the first ever Conservapedia challenge!, sharing my accomplishment for winning such a prestigious award, at least so I thought.

Anonymously, someone pointed this out on Conservapedia, "The Trustworthy Encyclopedia," so I was certain that they would reward my brilliance and expedience for completing their challenge:

At least one blogger has already claimed to have won the challenge: No Latitude. He cites and links to the following data: [snip, lots of cute PDF urls]

Of these, the last is particularly data-rich.

He couldn't wait more than a day to insult them. Just a day. A mere 24 hours. There was evening and there was morning, a Thurs day.

Who did McCain insult? Why, the faithful. The party faithful. The faith-full of the party. On the Wednes day, the news was revealed that a number of Christian Conservatives came out for McCain. Er, uh, I mean, they expressed their support for McCain's candidacy. They wavered, they weighed the choice, they prayed for guidance, and then they rose up with one accord to support John McCain.

How does McCain respond to their support? He makes changes to his campaign staff, and then he has the gall to speak of it as part of "a natural evolution." Evolution!

Oh, the insult of it all.  Why could he not speak of his plans as something he intelligently designed? Why? Why?

I used to blog as "No Latitude" to point out absurdities with religious nuts and neo-conservatives (and likely members of media who propagate their idiocy). I quit when I went back to school since I didn't have much time.

Lately, there has been an uproar, and I decided to find some more time. My posting about a new act of complete idiocy involves Conservapedia.

The link to the blog is: Conservapedia: Stubborn idiocy in action

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who know about the subject of Today in History and those who do not.

In teaching the history of calculus, including this man is integral, especially if you don't want to believe the old lie, published and pushed by Isaac Newton, that he and he alone is the father of the study.

If you want to study the history of evolutionary thought, you start not with Darwin but with 17th century thinkers like this man.

If you want to get to the core of the Earth's composition, read what this man proposed about it.

If you fancy the idea of a universal language based not on artificial, invented symbols but how people naturally conceive of things, such that language barriers are no longer formidable, check out his characteristica universalis.

I could go on much longer, but there is not time to fully catalog the plenitude of scholarly contributions made by Gottfried Leibniz, who was born on July 1, 1646.

Now this is just funny.

Everyone remembers Conservapedia, right? The "Conservative answer to liberal bias on Wikipedia", or something like that. A strong proof of the theorem that it is impossible to distinguish between genuine wingnuts and parodies of same.

Well, the folks at Conservapedia have really stepped in it this time. A few weeks ago, a scientific paper was published showing strong evidence of evolution in bacteria. That being against the declared Conservative worldview, Conservapedia wrote to the author of the paper and demanded all the raw data so that they could show that the experiment was invalid.

He responded...

I hesitate to wade into these waters, but I'll do it anyway. I'm a person of faith, I think God is here and interacts with us, and the world around us. If we're perceptive enough (maybe "receptive" would be better) we can feel the interaction. Which is why I didn't even try to post on the front page diary entitled,

"What a Coincidence!
by DarkSyde
Fri Jun 27, 2008 at 06:50:33 PM PDT"

which deals with the discovery of a fossil of a four-legged fish, in the appropriate geologic time frame, which supports the concept of evolution. No problem. I also believe that the science of evolution is correct.

As some of you know I am an Experimental Psychologist so I get updates as to research that just came out. Although it is not political I try to share it on here for discussion.

If you're interested the actual article is in

Aaker et al. Recalling Mixed Emotions. Journal of Consumer Research, 2008;

More after the breakhere

Today's 5-4 ruling that rejects the death penalty for child rapists shows the clear divide not just on the Supreme Court, but in American society in large.  If we needed any further example of how polarized we are in this country, decisions such as these are more than eager to point it out.  If we needed a means to gauge how we have evolved over the centuries, this easily provides it.  

This decision also makes a strong case for the need to elect Barack Obama in November.  A McCain Presidency would swing the balance of the court ever more resolutely towards the right and undermine reform measures passed by what will likely still be a Democratic-controlled Congress.  The majority of American society still favors the procedure, but our appointed and elected gatekeepers have asserted they know better than the rest of us and made the decisions for ourselves.  This authoritarian impulse one either embraces as a necessary means of control or rails against as running contrary to the popular will.    

This is one of the few studies (bottom of list, 2008, PNAS, Blount et al.pdf) that actually has the potential for opening a window as large as the one Galileo's telescope opened for astronomy.    Most writers pivot the definition of evolution on a dime.  This is not an original observation.  The word "evolution" has been modified in an attempt to reduce some of the ambiguity and reduce dizziness from spinning on that dime.  When the word refers to  heritable genetic change it is often written "micro-evolution."  When the word refers to a possible explanation of the origin and diversity of life, it is often written "macro-evolution."  Depending on the results, the current theory of evolution may have to be significantly modified so that the meaning of evolution is confined to genetic change.  The implications of this study could give rise to a new theory so different from the present one that it would require a history lesson  to reconnect it to Darwin.  

I had fun today.  I gave a talk at the Math Science Innovation Center in Mechanicsville Virginia.    It was part of a conference on

Fractals: A New Lens on the Natural World
A Conference for 6-12 Science Teachers

 My talk was not on fractals but was entitled: TEACHING  SCIENCE THAT MATTERS: REFRAMING THE QUESTION IN SCIENCE, and can be viewed from my webpage.
 I was dealing with  issues that may reflect back on the way science is being taught.  The three examples I was using for them were

Global warming and climate change
Evolution vs. creation ("Intelligent" Design)
Determining when something is "alive"

 I thought some of you might be interested in what Complexity Science has to say about these issues and their relationship to "standard" science.  Look below the break if this is of interest to you.  I'll suggest that there is relevance to this election in what I had to say

The LA legislature has passed an anti-evolution law that is poised to be signed into law by Gov. Jindal. Please read the email posted below the fold for what you can do to try to stop it.  It's a small chance, to be sure, but this law is a definite wedge that will resonate nationally (or at least in places that would have us return to an 18th century understanding of the world).

Updated:  More info and links to bill text here http://www.ncseweb.org/...

Every time someone lops off Creationism's head, it sprouts two more.  This time it's couched in terms of "critical thinking" and supported by that dark horse in the Republican VEEPstakes, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (details below the fold).

Hercules defeated the Hydra by cauterizing the necks each time he lopped off a head.  I wonder what the present-day analogue is that applies in this situation:  never letting another state legislature have a Republican majority again?

As I was reading the headlines over coffee, I ran across an article by Meredith F. Small, an anthropologist at Cornell University, suggesting that the ability to process sarcasm is an evolutionary survival skill.

The diary is quick, but I just have to share the article with the folks that might otherwise miss it.

(This is my first dailykos diary, please be gentle)

So, I've been hearing about this a lot over the past year or so and today I readthis article in slate.com .This is so disturbing to me, both for obvious, personal reasons, but also not so obvious reasons.

The problem with most demonstrations of evolution in action is that, upon closer examination, the demonstration  turns on fuzzy definitions.  For example, the definition of "speciation" changes from one study to another so that almost any difference can be called speciation.  My son's college biology text says that speciation has not been defined.  It  seems to be like porn or art---can't define it but know it when we see it.  Science doesn't usually like to make confident conclusions based on such sketchy premises, except in the case of evolution.  And in fact, the actual researchers usually refrain from making such conclusions in their own studies;  the extrapolation usually comes from the popular press or the general public.

One of the most striking things I've noticed about conservatism/Republicanism over these past eight years (and, in many senses, the past thirty) is the consistent idea that the entire world is in black and white. Good and evil. There is no room for ambiguity, for debate, for the very idea that something may not be able to be debated in absolutes.

Even something like the Ten Commandments, for instance, something that religious Christian people of all stripes do their very best to adhere to, well, we are supposed to follow those strictures as absolutes. That is what God commanded in the Old Testament, no? And yet today many people who wear their faiths on their sleeves, such as our President, claim to follow such tenets, all while violating them.

"Thou shalt not kill"--except in self-defense, the death penalty, war, and so on. "Thou shalt not bear false witness"--except when deemed necessary by the liars themselves. Just a couple of examples of what you'd call moral relativism, except these are examples that don't apply to the party frequently accused of being the moral relativists: liberals. Instead, they apply to conservatives, who commit such acts with impunity, all while pointing fingers at us liberals, accusing us of being moral relativists.

Jump....

Disclaimer: I believe in the evolution of species. Darwinian evolutionary theory makes no attempt to explain the Origin of Life, only it's development from simple to complex.

I propose a meme for the pro/anti evolution discussion that may resolve some issues for our educational system.

UPDATE: I understand the difference between the scientific meaning of theory and the common English term. Please, don't explain it to me again, save us all some time. A theory (scientific and common) has predictive value, THAT is the point.

Darwin Defeated in the Bayou: Louisiana Encourages 'Critical Thinking' About Evolution

The Louisiana House voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill on Wednesday that would promote "critical thinking" by students on topics such as evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning. The Louisiana Senate already passed a similar bill.

Similar bills have been introduced in several states over the past year and have been supported by opponents of evolution. The Discovery Institute, which promotes a brand of creationism known as intelligent design, hailed the 94-to-3 vote on the bill.

Also, in case you haven't yet read it, read this New York Times piece from 6/4 on the strategy the creationists are using these days, using the language "discussing the strengths and weaknesses of evolution theory" to slip their religious opinions into the science curriculums (curriculi?) curricula across the nation.