John Angus Campbell and the North Mason School Board

Several weeks ago I blogged about the fact that Discovery Institute Fellow and intelligent design advocate John Angus Campbell was running for a seat on the school board in North Mason County, Washington. Not just that, but Campbell was running as “John Campbell”, and appeared to be hiding his connection with intelligent design and the Discovery Institute. A new blog, the Belfair Report, has started up to address this issue.

It turns out that there is more to this story. [Read the rest of my post at John Angus Campbell and the North Mason School board Part II]

Visiting Lucy in Houston

We took a trip down to Houston this weekend to visit the Lucy exhibition. There had been controversy over the tour, given the irreplaceable nature of the skeleton and its frailty, I figured that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Regardless of whether I thought it a good idea for her to travel or not, she’s in the neighbourhood. So we took a trip down to see her. Lucy is the name given to the most famous Australopithecus afarensis skeleton in existence, which was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974.

I found the display fascinating. Abbie wasn’t thrilled with the long religious history of Ethiopia that preceded the palae- stuff, but I quite enjoyed it (after all, I’m fascinated with history, and there were some pretty cool artefects in there). But it paled in comparison to the main display.

[Read the rest of my post at Visiting Lucy in Houston]

Updates

From my wordpress blog

• Human impacts on pre-Columbian tropical forests
• Creationists, earmarks and David Vitter
• New Michael Pollan book
• Fruit species blog
• The Nobel Peace Prize and the Caribbean
• Gore and IPCC win Nobel
• “Extraordinary witness”
• IDist drivel
• Indian fruit genebank threatened
• Political realities explained
• Who are these books aimed at? Siegel on “militant atheists”

Updates

Some recent posts from my wordpress blog

• The reds and the greys
  
• “Values voters” paint Republicans into a corner
• “Caught in their criminality”
• Religion and the “Religious Right”
• More on DonorsChoose
• New look
• Keith Olbermann - he must not be named?
• Angels and Intelligent Design
• Intelligent design and archaeology
• DonorsChoose.org Blogger Challenge
• Fighting to save Greene Prairie
• Songs of Insects
• Breaking a child’s wrist over spilled cake?
• Next big battle?
• Religion Clause

Intelligent design and archaeology

One of the arguments repeated over and over by intelligent design advocates is the assertion that archaeology is a search for design. Like intelligent design, they say, archaeologists assume design once they have ruled out other possible causes, so why shouldn’t IDists? I have always found that analogy annoying - after all, it fails to take into account that archaeologists are working with known designers and known mechanisms. But I never really thought the whole point through. Luckily for me, archaeologist Christopher O’Brien has done just that in an excellent blog post (one of many, based on a quick look at his posts).

[Read the rest of my post at Intelligent design and archaeology]

Conservative Heroes

Perfectly phrased.

I already have many copies of pictures of my conservative heroes. They're all blank, white, and hanging from a roll in my bathroom.