CollegeDegrees360 from Flickr Most people are surprised when I tell them that I was a terrible student. Bored, restless, and rarely taking notes in class, I was the one scribbling caricatures of the teacher as a sheep, snail, or space alien. I’d spend the hours staring at the clock, checking off…
I interviewed for my post at NCSE in the wake of the Bill Nye/Ken Ham hullabaloo (which Josh Rosenau reviewed here), so watching the whole 2.5-hour-plus affair was part of my preparation. Looking back at my notes still makes me laugh, since there are all kinds of “what!?!?!”s and “this makes no…
This past week on Fossil Friday, I gave you a final fossil to kiss Fossil Friday goodbye. There were many guesses, but the answer was a huge hypostome (the plate that covered the mouth) from a trilobite. Yikes—that fellow from the Ordovician Kope Formation in Northern Kentucky would…
Hey, Fossil Friday Friends! Welcome to 2015! Well, I have some good news and some bad news for all your fossil addicts out there. First the bad news: Fossil Friday is going to come to a close. After a year and half of fossil-friendly blogging, I’ve run low on my fossils—…
As I realized in responding to a comment from John Harshman, my discussion of the appeal in the Scopes case (“Flubbing the Appeal in Scopes” part 1 and part 2) neglected to describe the legal arguments of Scopes’s brief. Harshman asked, “Wasn’t it foolish of the appellants to present any…
Snips and snails? Sugar and spice? What drives some people to creationism, and others to accept evolution? Jonathan Hill’s survey of American attitudes on evolution and creationism (on behalf of the pro-evolution evangelical group Biologos) offers a lot of insight for anyone who has pondered that…
My older daughter’s birthday is right before Christmas, and my younger daughter’s birthday just after. Last year, there was such a glut of gifts that we never even got around to getting some out of their boxes (which was actually quite handy since I was able to re-gift some back to the…
This past week on Fossil Friday, I gave you a present from our Fossil Friend, Dan Coleman. As you recall, Dan had this to say about the Fossil... "It is from the early Mississippian Buford limestone found in south-central Indiana. It was collected in a creek bed where tons of specimens…
This week on Fossil Friday, I bring you a gift(!) from our Fossil Friend, Dan Coleman! According to Dan: “It is from the early Mississippian Buford limestone found in south-central Indiana. It was collected in a creek bed where tons of specimens wash out of the rock layers. This was/is in…