“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.]

I don't need to dig for a photo of Dr. Campbell because I can just Google for photos of Darwin. He's that good.

Dr. David Campbell of The Darwin Center For Science & Reason brings Darwin to life in Darwin Remembers, a theatrical experience from the voyage of The Beagle to his death with actors recreating the voices from the past. I’ve seen this performance on dvd and Dr. Campbell is absolutely wonderful. I cannot think of a better way to mark the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth than stepping into history with Dr. Campbell’s Darwin live on stage, and I’m delighted to say that we can!

Where: Carnegie Science Center
When: 2pm Saturday January 31st and every Saturday in February!
More info: call (412) 237-3400

If you’d like to meet Dr. Campbell and discuss The Darwin Center for Science & Reason, he will be the special guest speaker at the Center for Inquiry’s February dinner meeting.

When: February 12th, 6pm [edited! I originally posted the 2nd]
Where: 2238 Route 51 Clairton, PA 15025 [Jefferson Hills]
More details: CFI calendar

Jason’s blog is evolution central, a one stop shop for all of your evolution news needs. Much, much better than setting up a Google alert for “evolution” and “teach the controversy” and being flooded with it all; let Jason sift through the deluge and present the choicest nuggets for you in his golden, reasoned style. Look for his upcoming recaps of his inside look at the conference. The first is already up: Report on the Sixth International Conference on Creationism, Part One.

I know Laura’s been in touch with some travelling skeptics who are heading in our direction later this summer and in the fall, and some meet-ups are in the works. If you know of a skeptical visitor coming to the ‘Burgh let us know so we can roll out the welcome mat!

Are you coming to Pittsburgh and looking for the local skeptic scene? We can hook you up with the finest selection of brews (or beans) and excellent company. Hit us up here or on any one of our social networking outlets. Cheers!

Dr. Steven Novella, who you might know as one of the voices of reason on the popular podcast Skeptics Guide to the Universe, has a fascinating blog of his own called NeuroLogica. In Tuesday’s post he asks Is The Universe Logical?

Yes.

But I suppose you want a somewhat longer answer. This question comes up frequently among thoughtful skeptics, and also among critics of science. The critics often use a challenge to logic as a way of promoting relativism and the claim that we cannot really know anything. If all pretense to knowledge is ultimately vain and self-deception, they argue, then science holds no special position with regards to truth about the natural world. Therefore any crank notion is just as good as the mainstream scientific consensus.

In exciting animal news, we have Penn State evolutionary biologist, Blair Hedges, who has discovered the world’s tiniest snake. The snake, Leptotyphlops carlae, lives on the Caribbean island of Barbados, and is small enough to hide under a US quarter (if such a situation presented itself).

According to Hedges, the smallest and largest species of animals tend to be found on islands, where species can evolve over time to fill ecological niches in habitats that are unoccupied by other organisms. Those vacant niches exist because some types of organisms, by chance, never make it to the islands. For example, if a species of centipede is missing from an island, a snake might evolve into a very small species to “fill” the missing centipede’s ecological niche.

And in even bigger news — the Wildlife Conservation Society has just released a census report showing that the population of western lowland gorillas, thought to be fewer than 50,000, have more than doubled to 125,000 after successful conservation efforts in two remote swamp forests in the Republic of Congo.

“These figures show that northern Republic of Congo contains the mother lode of gorillas,” said Dr. Steven E, Sanderson, President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society. “It also shows that conservation in the Republic of Congo is working. This discovery should be a rallying cry for the world that we can protect other vulnerable and endangered species, whether they be gorillas in Africa, tigers in India, or lemurs in Madagascar.”

Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist, posts a hot tip for joining the American Humanist Association for free. If you don’t have Hemant on your blog reading list, you should! Yesterday he also posted the heart-breaking story of a former Jehovah’s Witness who is now a summer legal intern for the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Darren Naish gives the definitive take-down of the “mysterious” Montauk Monster that washed ashore in Long Island, NY this week, at his science-packed blog Tetrapod Zoology. Don’t stop at that post though, because there’s a ton of good stuff to read there if vertebrate palaeontology is on your many social networking interests lists. (And how could it not?)

AND And and! In news-of-the-amazing, The Amazing James Randi announced that the new President of the James Randi Foundation is everyone’s favorite astronomy blogger, Phil Plait! Here’s Phil’s post about this exciting step.

Well, that’s the scoop this week — so far.