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February 18th, 2012 | Category: podcast
The Pseudo Scientists – Episode 40
In this episode of The Pseudo Scientists, the official podcast of the Young Australian Skeptics, Elliot, Belinda, Richard and I discuss the oldest living thing in the world (seaweed), shrill/cute tarsiers and genomics revealing how our ancestors got it on with other human subspecies. Plus, I interview Eugenie Scott, of the National Center for Science Education, about climate change denial and evolution education (recorded at TAM 9 in Las Vegas, in July 2011).
This [...]
» Continue reading “Episode 40 of The Pseudo Scientists: Ancient seaweed, ultrasonic primates, and Eugenie Scott”
October 28th, 2011 | Category: intelligent designWhat do think-tank organisations do when they have no arguments to support their position? Why, they denigrate organisations who have opposing messages, of course! On the level of superficial and immediate PR, it’s the obvious choice. But in the long run, organisations that do nothing but attack their opposition with smear campaigns tend to fall prey to closer scrutiny and are eventually criticised for their underhanded, rhetorical tactics.
Would the Discovery Institute – the world’s premier intelligent design think-tank, the self-proclaimed scientific bastion of proper critical thought in biology, the [...]
» Continue reading “David Klinghoffer’s credibility implodes violently, leaving no survivors”
October 6th, 2011 | Category: podcast
The Pseudo Scientists – Episode 31
In this episode of The Pseudo Scientists, the official podcast of the Young Australian Skeptics, Belinda, Jason and I, as well as new panelist James Cooper, discuss faster-than-light neutrinos, the Blackmores pharmacy deal, and secularism in the Israel/Palestine conflict; there’s an On The Street by Martin Pribble at Think Inc. 2011; and I interview Eugenie Scott, from the National Centre for Science Education (recorded at TAM Australia, back in November 2010).
Also, we have a new [...]
» Continue reading “The Pseudo Scientists, Episode 31 out now!”
January 28th, 2011 | Category: evolution educationA new study in Science has revealed some shocking statistics around the teaching of evolution in US high schools. Michael B. Berkman and Eric Plutzer analysed data from the National Survey of High School Biology and found that only 28% of US high school biology teachers present evolutionary theory properly in the classroom, along the lines of the recommendations of the National Research Council, while 13% [...]
» Continue reading “Evolution educators should fear teacher apathy more than creationist activism”
November 29th, 2010 | Category: skepticismAlternatively: DAYMN Australia or BLAM Australia. SHAM Australia is completely inappropriate.
It’s over! I flew back to Melbourne from Sydney today, and TAM Australia officially finished yesterday afternoon. What a weekend and a bit! Starting midday Friday, it was a whirlwind of wonderful talks, panels and entertaining presentations from well-known skeptics from all over the world. It’d be impossible to wrap it up completely, so I’ll only briefly touch on what were the best bits, in my opinion.
Forgive me if I fail to be eloquent, my brain [...]
» Continue reading “TAM Australia – more like WHAM Australia, am I right?”
September 2nd, 2010 | Category: intelligent designI thought you might be all interested in this fascinating debate between Kenneth Miller (whose book “Only A Theory” I’m currently reading – it’s great, you should definitely buy it) and Robert Pennock, two vocal critics of intelligent design, and William Dembski and Michael Behe, two of the most prominent intelligent design proponents from the Discovery Institute. The debate was held in 2002 at the American Museum of Natural History, and was moderated by Eugenie Scott from the NCSE.
It’s funny how the pro-ID arguments haven’t really changed [...]
» Continue reading “The 2002 Miller, Pennock, Dembski and Behe ID debate”
August 21st, 2010 | Category: evolutionThe NCSE‘s Eugenie Scott is one of my personal scientific heroes: she’s been fighting in all the tough battles over evolution education in high schools in the US in recent years. It’s a bit of an understatement then to say that she’s knows what she’s talking about when it comes to science communication, so any advice from Eugenie in that area should be listened to and implemented as soon as possible.
This video of a talk by Eugenie Scott was recently posted by the NCSE, and it’s a [...]
» Continue reading “Eugenie Scott’s tips for writing about evolutionary biology”
August 18th, 2010 | Category: evolution
Last year there was a conference at the University of Chicago for the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. At this conference, 31 speakers made presentations about evolutionary biology – current developments in the field, opinions on what directions research will go in the future, and what the current challenges are to the science, be they cultural or faux-scientific.
The University of Chicago has just released the videos for all these wonderful talks, and I’ve [...]
» Continue reading “Darwin/Chicago 2009 videos – Evolutionary gold, Jerry, gold!”
June 15th, 2010 | Category: evolutionThe NCSE, that wonderful US organisation that fights to keep evolutionary biology taught properly in American public schools, has, since 2009, been giving away excerpts from various books about evolution on Facebook and their homepage. Robert Luhn, the NCSE’s Director of Communications, recently emailed me (and a whole lot of other people) to let me know that even though the original links to the excerpts are long buried in the site, they can still be downloaded – which is really good news, because it means you (myself included, [...]
» Continue reading “Free evolutionary biology book excerpts via the NCSE”
January 3rd, 2010 | Category: atheismAfter Debunking Christianity set up an online poll for the most vocal atheist of 2009 (which was won by PZ Myers – no surprise there, his followers are used to destroying polls in his favour), Jen over at Blag Hag set up a similar poll, but this time focusing solely on women – entitled “Who was the most influential female atheist of 2009?”
There are a lot of excellent people on that list, including Greta Christina, Annie Laurie Gaylor (of the [...]
» Continue reading “Most influential female atheist of 2009? Eugenie Scott!”
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Homologous Legs is the personal blog of Jack Scanlan, an Australian science communicator and biology student.
Topics of interest here include the intelligent design/evolution "war", biology, philosophy, religion, music, and mostly coherent thoughts from a scattered brain. Contact
homologouslegs(at)gmail(dot)com
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