“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.]

Let’s keep an eye on their site as the schedule and sessions develop, and maybe we can arrange a caravan?

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

The “decreased control” part of this equation is what interests me most. Interesting types of apophenia (e.g., pareidolia) are well-established psychological phenomena, but I thought they were simply part of humanity’s evolutionary pattern-seeking penchant. This study seems to indicate that the less control you have over your life (or the more insecure your environment is), the more likely you will be to seek control by inventing patterns to organize your life experiences (e.g., stepping over cracks on the sidewalk).

Illusory Pattern Perception can give you the sensation that you’re doing something to improve your predicament when you would otherwise feel helpless. For example, you might happen to hit all green lights on the way to work when you’re wearing a certain blue shirt. If you also happen to be wearing the blue shirt the next time you miss the red lights, you might recognize the pattern and start wearing the shirt more regularly to promote fast travels. (In case it isn’t obvious, this kind of thing happens all the time in the world of sports.) Once the superstition is formed, every coincidence will play into the existing confirmation bias–and you’re hooked.

What this study shows is that these superstitions develop more easily and readily in environments where people lead less predictable lives with less daily security. Perhaps this is a contributing factor to the higher levels of superstition and religion in areas with lower standards of living? I also found it interesting that when the students who participated in the study were trained to think in self-affirming ways and actively do things to improve their condition, the instances of Illusory Pattern Perception decreased markedly and they stopped seeing patterns that did not exist (e.g., stock patterns or images in television static).

“Selling Science to Unwilling Buyers: From Star Trek to Eternity”: An Evening with Lawrence Krauss
Oct. 3, 7 pm, Carnegie Science Center, North Shore

Pick up the latest in hot science topics to start conversations and impress your friends, from Star Trek and time travel to aliens and even sex. Lawrence M. Krauss is the author of seven popular books, including the international bestseller The Physics of Star Trek. A reception with Lawrence Krauss and other conference faculty will begin at 5 pm.

Also present at the talk will be contemporary science writers Virginia Morell with Science and National Geographic and Corey Powell with Discover. There are several options for attendance but since I’m finding out about this last minute, it seems to lock in the cheaper prices you need to register by TODAY – SEPTEMBER 18th!

To attend both the reception and the panel discussion with Krauss, Powell and Morell the cost is $40.  The reception is supposed to be lovely and I’ve been told that if its a nice night there will be a telescope available for moon-gazing! To choose this option click here (choose the option just BELOW “Package E”)

I’ve also been told you can attend just the panel discussion through the Carnegie Science Center, but I’m still waiting for this to be confirmed by their event coordinator.  As soon as I get more info, I’ll let you know.

Finally, you are a writer and and are also interested in their additional workshops, readings and panels you can find out more information about the events and various package options they have here.  They are very accommodating – you can also email me if you have questions at laurawithoutlabels@gmail.com

Finally, here is a video clip I got from Brandon where Krauss speaks about why anti-science politics is bad for America.

There website has not been updated with this new information so unless you are on their mailing list (like me!) this is the most recent info from the email I got in my inbox this morning.  Many thanks to Tim Palucka and Angela Stabryla for organizing such a great event. Hope to see you there!

Topic: Twentieth Century Physics Decade By Decade
Speaker: Dr. Fred Bortz, formerly of Carnegie Mellon, author of many science books for children and adults
When: Monday, September 8, 2008, at 7:00 PM at the Penn Brewery

Dr. Fred Bortz, author of Physics: Decade by Decade, will talk to us about a few of the many surprises that twentieth century physics had in store for physicists who thought that most of the important questions had been answered. They fully expected to spend their careers refining theories and making more precise and accurate measurements of universal constants, but thankfully they were wrong. As Dr. Bortz writes: “Instead of tying up a few loose ends, physicists pulled on a few snags and watched the entire theoretical fabric of physics unravel. It would take most of the new century to reweave it.”

Please join us for a rousing look at revolutions past, which may just shed some light on revolutions future! We’ll be giving away a few of the speaker’s books, and will have others for sale. As always, there will be fine food and beer to accompany the talk, and a lot of friendly, interesting people to talk to.

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.