“Grill the ID Scientist”

Tuesday, June 9
7 PM, University of Pittsburgh Campus (room TBA)

A network of scientists known as the Intelligent Design (ID) community continues to question basic tenets of Darwinism and origin-of-life scenarios. Not only are their views controversial in scientific circles — many in the evangelical world, who might be expected to embrace ID, are also not sold on the value of the ID program.

This event brings together a panel of scientists associated with the ID movement. After a short presentation, the bulk of the evening will be given to questions from the audience. This event is aimed primarily at researchers, graduate students and advanced undergrad students in the sciences. It is open to anyone, but participants must register in advance by sending email to snoke @pitt.edu. In the event of limited seating, preference will be given to grad students and researchers in the life sciences.

Panel:

– Doug Axe, Biologic Institute (formerly of Cambridge University)
– Michael Behe, Lehigh University
– Ann Gauger, Biologic Institute
– David Keller, University of New Mexico
– John Sanford, Cornell University

+ others TBA

moderated by David Snoke, University of Pittsburgh

This is tomorrow night, and is sadly not an actual BBQ. If you want to go, it seems like you’ll need to contact Dr. Snoke.

I’d love to hear some reports from those who attend!

[Hat-tip to DF for the info.]

• 1000 Plaintiffs for Newdow v. Roberts — Friends of Mike Newdow, a group of PA Nonbelievers, has set up a website to assist Constitutional activist Mike Newdow “demonstrate that there is a lot of support for ending the offensive, exclusionary references to God” at future inaugurations, by finding 1,000 people to sign up as plaintiffs. You can go to their site for more information. (Thank you, Bill K.)
• Arab headgear causes stir in Gateway — The Post-Gazette is reports that two students at Gateway High in Monroeville were told to leave school yesterday if they would not remove their kaffiyehs. News video from last night’s WPXI coverage of the story can be found here. (Hat tip, Mel.)
• Dead of Winter — Pittsburgh City Paper reported on the spread of  white-nose syndrome, a deadly epidemic affecting bats, to Pennsylvania. Don’t care if we lose our bat population? Think giant swells of insects (and also, get a clue). Yeah. I said it. (Via my Google alert for bat news. Why are you making that face?)
• Darwin 2009: A Pittsburgh Partnership — An educational partnership promoting citywide events led by Duquesne University. Why should a prominent Catholic University do this? They explain with their own bullet list.
• Skeptical of Pittsburgh’s ability to evolve and to retain it’s youth population? I feel you. The Port Authority is taking a step in the direction of modernity with their RouteShout beta. Now at popular college stops you can text for the next bus arrival.

And I gotta take this oppurtunity to remind you about Drinking Skeptically this Friday night.

The recent high winds snapped a pole along Route 51 near Francesco’s Restaurant. This not only killed power to the restaurant, but created a hazard that forced the blockage and a detour of Rte. 51. Ten tough old birds managed to challenge the blockade or wait out the detour, but in the intervening hour delay, many prospective attendees turned back, including our speaker for the evening, Darwin impersonator David Campbell.

You can still catch Dr. Campbell’s wonderful show for the next three Saturdays at 2pm, at the Carnegie Science Center. Some might scoff at the notion of this as a Valentine’s date, but really what is more romantic than natural selection? (Just ask the Skepchicks!)

And without further ado, let me show you the awesome birthday cake, CFI’s Victor Bernard made that we missed:

NPR’s Morning Edition broadcast this story this morning: Defending Vaccines: Actress Dispels Link To Autism which gives a decent overview of this made up controversy that is actually harming children by increasing risk of potentially fatal preventable epidemics of childhood diseases that were on their way to the history books before the anti-vaxer nonsense started. How ridiculous is it that we need celebrities to advise us against seeking expert advice from celebrities? Want more information? You can start your Internet research at the Stop Jenny McCarthy site, and then you follow up by asking your own medical professional.

If all that wasn’t depressing enough, Science Daily posted an article this morning saying “Approximately 38 percent of adults in the United States aged 18 years and over and nearly 12 percent of U.S. children aged 17 years and under use some form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), according to a new nationwide government survey.” Read all about it.

Phil Plait's Death from the Skies: These Are the Ways the World Will End . . .

What could be more perfect October reading than a book about all of the ways that the universe could destroy life as we know it?

Out this week is the much anticipated second book by Dr. Phil Plait (the Bad Astronomer) Death from the Skies: These Are the Ways the World Will End. I’ve added it to the Steel City Skeptics recommended reading list, and if you read it we welcome your review here or at our reading group on GoodReads.com¹.

Are tales of Ultimate Doom, a little too much to take during this already astronomically sized plague of political and economic dramas raining down upon us? Don’t worry, this is no “The! End! Is! Near!” sandwich-board screed from a subway stop nutter. Fans of Phil² can attest to his thoughtful, reassuring, upbeat style that will, no doubt leave you with a renewed sense of awe at how very fortunate we are not just to be here, but to still be here.

And, hey, as Phil points out in detail — things could be worse!

¹ SCS is everywhere!
² Pretend with me that following someone on Twitter puts us on a first name basis.

It wants to distance itself from fundamentalist Christians, who believe in the Biblical account of the creation of the world in seven days.

Wow, the Church of England must be the only rational church in the world.

Dr Brown argues that there is nothing incompatible between the scientific theories adopted by Darwin and Christian teaching.

Nope. Sorry, I hadn’t finished reading the article.

I hope he’s wrong, but either way I’m sure this experiment is going to result in a really kick-ass episode of The Universe.

Just in case all the scientists are wrong and universe does explode, I’m going to eat some trans-fats tomorrow (maybe Arby’s).

Incase you have know idea what I’m talking about, below is a great explanation of the experiment from Brian Greene’s TED presentation.

Skip ahead to about the 16 minute mark if you’re not interested in string theory.

–UPDATE–

After watching the MSNBC people downgrade the LHC story to the “News You Can’t Use,” segment of their morning show, I was happy to see Google’s logo this morning.

I’m normally a defender of the mainstream American media (it’s the capitalist in me), but seriously the BBC News devoted 10 minutes to this and even went live to scientists answering questions. While, everything  I’ve seen from the U.S. media has basically just called it a 10-billion-dollar black-hole maker.