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• Aetiology

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  Animalcules 1.4... ...is up over at Science and Politics. Check out the best microbe-related posts in the past 2 weeks....

• Cognitive Daily

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  Unknown White Male What's it like to have all your memories erased? Well, not all your memories, because if that happened, you'd simply be like a newborn infant, and you'd have to relearn everything. The more interesting scenario is to lose only certain...

• Dispatches from the Culture Wars

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  National Debate Tournament As a follow up to all the Liberty University nonsense, I thought I'd mention that this weekend is the NDT championships. They're being held at Northwestern. Tonight is the opening ceremonies, where they give away the Copeland Award to the...

• Adventures in Ethics and Science

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  Being Socratic is nothing without the hemlock? Do people routinely assert that the tools and activites of your field are utterly worthless in real life? Do they go so far as to say that what you're doing is worse than nothing, because it distracts from the real...

• FrinkTank

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  Sponges and tongues are frequently misspelled. Is it because both are thirsty? IT IS NOT MISSPELLED.I DONOT THINK SO SIR (via a 'nobel prize winner')...

• The Daily Transcript

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  Clash of Secularism and Religion Very interesting video (actually snipets from Al-Jazzera)....

• Respectful Insolence

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  A well-deserved accolade This just in: Doctor Who has been nominated for three prestigious Hugo Awards this year, according to an announcement made yesterday by the award's administrators and the 64th World Science Fiction Convention, L.A. Con IV. Taking three of seven slots...

• Stranger Fruit

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  On Wittgenstein I recently finished a biography of Ludwig WIttgenstein and came away thinking that, while the man was probably brilliant, he was not by any means a person who was easy to know. That aside, I started to read his...

• Stoat

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  Science I am a minor coauthor on a paper to appear in Science. Sadly thats all I can tell you, since the embargo on this paper has been set for 2:00 pm U.S. Eastern Time on Thursday, 30 March 2006. Well,...

• No Se Nada

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  100^th anniversary of the 1906 quake quickly approaching So for all my Bay Area peeps, I'll be returning in high style for this conference. The highlight of the trip is undoubtedly going to be the 5:12 AM commemoration at Lotta's Fountain on 3rd and Market. The tradition has...

• Uncertain Principles

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  True Lab Stories: The Plastic Lens The true origin story of a mediocre plastic lens.

• Pharyngula

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  Weekly carnival listing and open thread Here you go, a few entries in the carnival genre, and your opportunity to say whatever you want. Carnival of the Animalcules Carnival of Education The Tangled Bank is coming up next Wednesday—send links to me or James Hrynyshyn....

• Stranger Fruit

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  How did water evolve? The South Carolina schools system is in a worse state than I ever expected. Carol Crooks, of Greer SC, opines: The theory of evolution does not and cannot explain so much about the universe that we know. For instance, when...

• Dispatches from the Culture Wars

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  Farah's Latest Lunacy Joseph Farah, grand poobah of the Worldnutdaily, is once again peddling the "evolution leads to Hitler" nonsense. I know this has all been said before, but let's say it all again just to make sure no one misses it. Farah...

• Uncertain Principles

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  Blog Pimping(*) I feel a little guilty for catering to the whims of Internet perverts in the previous entry, so here are a couple of new science-y blogs worth taking a look at: First, via Derek Lowe, is the blog of chemistry...

• Dispatches from the Culture Wars

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  Gay Marriage Gaining Support The Pew Research Center has released the results of a national survey with some very good news for advocates of gay marriage. The good thing is that it's a tracking survey that has been done since 2003, so you can...

• Dispatches from the Culture Wars

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  Slavery and the Bible In a thread down lower, totally unrelated to this subject, slavery and the Bible came up and David Heddle made a comment that I want to reply to in full here. I want to move this up because I think...

• Pharyngula

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  Get that heathen some popcorn I know that Steve Allen was a lifelong skeptic and freethinker, but was he also a squid worshipper? How else to explain this sign? Through the Center for Inquiry in LA, which hosts that Steve Allen Theater, there's also...

• Respectful Insolence

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  Medicine and evolution, part I: Introduction Longtime readers of this blog may have noticed that, since my move to ScienceBlogs six weeks ago, I haven't written nearly as much about evolution or intelligent design as I used to on the old blog.. There are probably at...

• Pharyngula

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  Drywall Jesus I'm staring at that thing, and all I see is some cracks in a flood-damaged wall. The church was flooded by Hurricane Katrina; causing some drywall in the building to buckle into an image that church members believe is...

• Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

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  Animalcules, Issue 4 is now available! The carnival of microbes is ready to inject some terrifying reality into your most impressive nightmares.

• The Daily Transcript

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  Origin of Life Review I was notified of this review in PLoS-Biology by Richard Robinson. It gives a nice outline of the current thought in the field and delineates the genes first vs. metabolism first views (although in my not-to-much-of-an-expert opinion, I don't think...

• The Intersection

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  Who Says Global Warming Books Don't Sell, Part II Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers is at # 18 overall on Amazon.com this morning, presumably boosted dramatically by an appearance on "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross yesterday. He now has a shot at making the New York Times bestseller list....

• Uncertain Principles

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  Give the People What They Want One of the nice things about the move to ScienceBlogs is that I gained access to a much better stats package than we had for Steelypips. In particular, I can now look at the keywords that bring people to my...

• Gene Expression

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  Dan Dennett on Radio Open Source Dan Dennett will be on Radio Open Source today to talk about his book Breaking the Spell. I've been getting into it on the comment boards. Update: Re: Dennett's book, I read it. It is a good review of the...