HENRY

The NY Times meets some Young Earth/Creationist Geologists, and discusses the increasing ‘respectability’ of Flood-Geology:

 On a muggy afternoon in July, a group of geologists from around the country put on some bug spray and fanned out along one of Ohio’s richest fossil beds. The rock walls were slippery and steep at points, and some people came in their dress shoes straight from the conference that brought them together. But no one seemed daunted; when let loose on the rocks they behaved like children with a piñata, filling their pockets with local specimens and cooing over their treasure. “Ahh, that’s a beautiful brachiopod!” or “A fine trilobite! Let me see that.”

A brightly painted sign in the state park explained that 450 million years ago these ancient creatures lived at the bottom of a warm, shallow sea during the Ordovician period. But none of these geologists believed it. As young-earth creationists, they think the earth is about 8,000 years old, give or take a few thousand years. That’s about the amount of time conventional geology says it can take to form one inch of limestone.

In short: John Scalzi takes a day trip to the Creationism Museum, and mercilessly mocks the stupidity therein. The photos he took are amazing, and includes what may just possibly be the coolest photo ever:

Image © John Scalzi 2007

Intelligent Design is not science, and shouldn’t be classified in the evolution section. Go and sign the petition to fix that here.

 I noticed that there were a lot of these intelligent design books in the evolution section,” says Shaw, who’s researching the evolution of sloths, anteaters, and armadillos as she works on her Ph.D. “I took one of each, and it was about a three-foot stack. I thought, this is wrong.“

Quote of the day:

Debating with creationists is like playing chess with a pigeon, no
matter how well you set up the rules the creationist will fly in knock
over all the pieces, cluck a great deal, crap all over the board, and
fly off claiming victory.

• Keith Sader over on Pharyngula

I’m currently in New Caledonia, at the 7th International Conference on Oceanic Linguistics, so can be considered away from keyboard (et sur la plage!), but here’s a few bullet-points to tide you over.

The biologists are still managing to poke holes in creationut Behe’s new book, Jerry Coyne goes another round, as well as the lies creationists are spreading about Haldane’s “dilemma”.

..and in, uh, urine related news:

Female mice make new brain cells when they detect a dominant male’s urine, researchers have found. The discovery gives a clue as to how the chemical messages shape their receiver’s taste in mates.

…more at Powerful urine is mind-altering

National Geographic has a shiny website up about the Genographic Project

Fi has a brief rundown on our cultural phylogenetics session at Evolution 2007, whilst those of you in England and near beaches (i.e. the crazy), should watch out for the arrival of the Rubber Ducky floatilla.

Sean Carroll reviews the latest insult to intelligence from Michael Behe, The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism

The continuing futile attacks by evolution’s opponents reminds me of another legendary confrontation, that between Arthur and the Black Knight in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Black Knight, like evolution’s challengers, continues to fight even as each of his limbs is hacked off, one by one. The “no transitional fossils” argument and the “designed genes” model have been cut clean off, the courts have debunked the “ID is science” claim, and the nonsense here about the edge of evolution is quickly sliced to pieces by well-established biochemistry. The knights of ID may profess these blows are “but a scratch” or “just a flesh wound,” but the argument for design has no scientific leg to stand on.

Jerry Coyne in Edge:

Suppose we asked a group of Presidential candidates if they believed in the existence of atoms, and a third of them said “no”? That would be a truly appalling show of scientific illiteracy, would it not? And all the more shocking coming from those who aspire to run a technologically sophisticated nation.

Yet something like this happened a week ago during the Republican presidential debate.  When the moderator asked nine candidates to raise their hands if they “didn’t believe in evolution,” three hands went into the air—those of Senator Sam Brownback, Governor Mike Huckabee, and Representative Tom Tancredo. Although I am a biologist who has found himself battling creationism frequently throughout his professional life, I was still mortified.  Because there is just as much evidence for the fact of evolution as there is for the existence of atoms, anyone raising his hand must have been grossly misinformed.

Continued at Don’t know much about Biology.