Science & Society
This morning I woke up to read this in the Daily Telegraph:
Can we please forget about Charles Darwin?
As we celebrate Charles Darwin's anniversary, a leading geneticist argues that our understanding of evolution would be much improved if we removed Darwin's life - and pointless references to religion - from the equation.What do you all think? I'm in the middle of a working day, so I can't put my own thoughts down right now.
A study by UC Davis researchers published in Archives of Pediatric&Adolescent Medicine has found that most of the healthy children and teenagers in the United States who are taking daily vitamin and mineral supplements probably don't need them. The study also found that the children who most need to take vitamins aren't getting them.
The study findings seem to bear out the hypothesis that cost is a barrier to children getting vitamins. Among households considered below the poverty level, 22 percent of children used vitamins. The number jumped to 43 percent among those not…
Hank |
In 2004 a University of Chicago researcher discovered something every evolutionary biologist knew had to exist - a missing link between land animals and fishes.
Transitional forms are sometimes touchy subjects to biologists because the notion is used in a bad way by detractors; opponents of evolution will speculate why there is no half-formed lung because they are using the term 'transitional' in a non-scientific way; they don't really understand the concept of gradualism in evolution and because there are arguments in the scientific community about phyletic gradualism or punctuated…
http://www.2h.com/articles/iq-tests/iq-test-scores-how-reliable-are-they...
http://www.audiblox2000.com/dyslexia_dyslexic/dyslexia014.htm
http://ezinearticles.com/?How-Accurate-Are-Standard-IQ-Tests?&id=1109935
I had high hopes for "Gender Madness in American Psychiatry: Essays from the Struggle for Dignity", Kelley Winters. ( ISBN-10: 1-4392-2388-2, ISBN-13: 9781439223888 ) I write for Wikipedia on the issues related to Blanchard's theory. I was looking for something that would meet wikipedia's criteria for a reliable source, written by a transsexual, on this topic. I thought maybe this book would meet that standard.
It does not. Far from clearing the air Dr. Winters book is a prosaic primal scream of narcissistic rage embedded in a brilliant exposition of the barbarities…
Creationism, the rejection of the scientific basis of evolutionary theory, is experiencing a resurgence among Europeans. The Department of Biology and Didactics of Biology at the TU Dortmund has organized an international conference addressing the issue, titled “Attitude and Knowledge concerning Evolution and Science in Europe (AKESE)”, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education.
On February 20th, researchers from different scientific backgrounds and seven European countries will meet at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology in Dortmund to discuss the…
Tycho Brahe was a sixteenth-century Danish, astronomer, astrologer and alchemist, most famous as the mentor of Johannes Kepler. In 1566 after a rousing night of drinking, Tycho lost a good part of his nose in a duel. Tycho was also the patron of whom he believed to be a clairvoyant dwarf and kept a tame moose, which died after consuming an enormous quantity of beer and falling down the stairs. Popular wisdom holds that Tycho Brahe died from an infection caused by a severely strained bladder, gained while trying to avoid leaving the table in the middle of a formal banquet.…
It's Friday and time for a coffee break.
Looking for more Darwin reading? (If you're already sick of the Darwin Bicentennial, you're in for a loooong year.) Michael Shermer takes on common misunderstandings of evolution in Scientific American, and Matt Ridley explores Darwin's Legacy in National Geographic. Richard Dawkins has derived a formula to determine the power of a scientific theory (well, maybe not derived, just invented), and evolution fares well.
Evolution is not a theory in crisis, but Cracked has 6 insane discoveries that science can't explain, along with 5 scientific experiments…
Hank |
Morale has plummeted at the National Science Foundation, it seems, due to governmental oversight and interference from above. The Senate Finance Committee didn't like a report they got from the NSF and are going to do something about it.
What, that sum'bitch Bush came back to haunt scientists and personally rewrite reports and ask why employees aren't doing their jobs instead of doing talk show appearances about how much he stinks?
Not this time. Sure, it's a Republican and, yes, he's suppressing freedom of expression as all Republicans must do, but that's because Chuck…
Are you seeking to serve humanity as a scientist but in a new way? This might well be your cup of tea: AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition. AAAS, whose mission is "to advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all people," has launched in January 2009 the Foundational Documents for this new activity consistent with its own broad goals:[1]
Goals of the AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition include but are not limited to:[2]
1) Increasing collaborative communication, networking, and partnerships between science and human…