Supreme Court declines creationist appeal

We can add one more case to creationism’s long record of legal failures. Yes, a creationist biology class is not adequate preparation for college coursework. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in a case involving applicants to the University of California system who were deemed to have inadequate college preparation in biology. From the NCSE:

On October 12, 2010, the Supreme Court declined (PDF, p. 12) to review Association of Christian Schools International et al. v. Roman Stearns et al., thus bringing the case to a definitive end. The case, originally filed in federal court in Los Angeles on August 25, 2005, centered on the University of California system’s policies and statements relevant to evaluating the qualifications of applicants for admission. Continue reading “Supreme Court declines creationist appeal”

REPOST: Imagine if Sex Were Only for IQs Over 120

At the request of my co-blogger Mike, I’m reposting this article which originally appeared at Science 2.0 on 30 December 2008 where some authors of the paper in question respond in the comments during the run-up to the publication of their book The 10,000 Year Explosion.

Unfortunately for all of us still breathing braniacs, the title only applies to those of us who are also medieval Ashkenazi Jews, according to the authors of the 2006 paper “Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence”.

Discussing “race” and intelligence is always a touchy subject and definitely not politically correct; but science should not be fettered by the chains of political correctness like a mangy circus lion.  It must run free across the intellectual savanna, striking down the juvenile wildebeest of ignorance. Following articles on the biology and significance of race by Michael White, Massimo Pigliucci, and moi, my attention was directed to “Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence”.  Thanks to press attention from biological research bell-weathers like The Economist and the New York Times, as well as discussion on National Public Radio, this paper has gained Goodyear AquatredTM-esque traction on the internet. Continue reading “REPOST: Imagine if Sex Were Only for IQs Over 120”

Apocalypse 1953: Homicidal Alien Blobs

Arthur Clarke’s Childhood’s End was my main pick for 1953 in our survey of post-apocalyptic sci-fi, but John Wyndham’s Kraken Wakes is another great apocalypse novel from the same year. (It was published as Out of the Deeps in the US. Apparently Americans weren’t expected to know what Kraken means, until the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, because now China Mieville can publish a novel just called Kraken and people purchase it.)

Kraken Wakes is much like The Day of the Triffids in style and development. It’s an apocalypse that develops slowly at first, and then suddenly there’s a tipping point and civilization as we know it could end. Continue reading “Apocalypse 1953: Homicidal Alien Blobs”

The novel as the scientific method of literature

There are some interesting parallels here between the development of scientific thinking and the development of literature:

The novel broke from those narrative predecessors that used timeless stories to mirror unchanging moral truths. It was a product of an intellectual milieu shaped by the great seventeenth-century philosophers, Descartes and Locke, who insisted upon the importance of individual experience. They believed that reality could be discovered by the individual through the senses. Thus, the novel emphasized specific, observed details. It individualized its characters by locating them precisely in time and space.

(From Lila Menani’s site at CUNY.)

Global Warming and Me

The NOAA reports that “we are currently tied with 1998 as the warmest January–September period on record.”

Having now experienced a near-record-breakingly warm summer and fall, I can now report what the effect of global warming will be in St. Louis, Missouri: the normally irritating plague of backyard mosquitos will become an insatiable horde that renders our backyard thoroughly uninhabitable well into October and possibly November.