thinkevolution.net

The Evolution Directory posted this announcement today:

NCSE and The Panda’s Thumb are recruiting scientists named Steve, or Stephanie, or Stephen, or Esteban, et al. to join Project Steve, a tongue-in-cheek response to creationists. All members of Project Steve agree with the following statement:

Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to “intelligent design,” to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation’s public schools.

But you can only sign it if you have a doctorate and are named “Steve” or some variation thereof. At last count they had 895 members and are pushing to cross 900 so they can make new t-shirts that say “more than 900 Steves support evolution”. So please pass this message to any scientists or academics that you know named “Steve” (et al.) and urge them to join up.

For more information, go here!

Tiktaalik visiting the Leidy Biology building at UPenn during the filming of The Tiktaalik Song music video.

The University of Pennsylvania conducts something called the Penn Reading Project each fall for incoming first-year undergrads. Each student reads (or is supposed to read) an assigned book, and faculty from all different departments in the university host small-group discussions.

This year the book is Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body, by (former Penn professor!) Neil Shubin. Shubin co-discovered Tiktaalik, a 375 million year old amphibious fish.

Spicing up this year’s reading project is… a music video about Tiktaalik! The Ohio band The Indoorfins was commissioned to write a song about this transitional fossil, its discovery by Shubin, its participation in the Penn Reading Project… The whole thing is pretty wild. Check out the video here. Warning: the refrain is really catchy.

Governor Tim Pawlenty defends intelligent design on this morning’s Meet the Press

This morning on Meet The Press, Tom Brokaw interviewed Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty to discuss the McCain campaign. And, to my surprise, they talked about evolution.

McCain running mate Sarah Palin’s support of creationism has been picked up by the national media and I’m totally enthused by the idea that the Republican campaign may be forced to address this issue head-on and produce a coherent stance on evolution and creationism in public schools. Of course, there was absolutely no coherence in Governor Pawlenty’s response to Brokaw’s question about whether Palin was right to promote teaching creationism:

I saw her comments on it yesterday, and I thought they were appropriate, which is, you know, let’s–if there are competing theories, and they are credible, her view of it was, according to comments in the newspaper, allow them all to be presented, or allow them both to be presented so students could be exposed to both, and–or more, and have a chance to be exposed to the, to the various theories and make up their own minds.

As tipster commenter Andrew pointed out, Pawlenty begins by calling it “creationism” but then drifts into calling it “intelligent design.” (Just more proof that the Dover prosecutors got it right: intelligent design is just religious creationism dressed in an ugly labcoat.) He dodges the real issue of what should be enforced in school curricula by arguing for local power at each school district, but he happily outs himself as an anti-evolutionist:

Intelligent design is something that in my view is a plausible and credible and something that I personally believe in.

So there’s another one for the list. You can read the transcript or watch the Netcast of today’s Meet the Press here.

Cogito.org is a online resource for kids interested in science. It’s run by the Johns Hopkins CTY people, and provides current information about science and technology—like global warming, robotics and evolution—but it also features stories about kids making science news and links to summer camps and academic competitions. One of the neatest things about Cogito is that it also hosts online forums where students can chat with each other and with limited-engagement guest experts. Well, guess who was a recent guest expert!

I spent a week answering questions and promoting discussion about evolution in the Cogito forums (members only). The students had some great questions, including something about an economics theory that required a quick detour through Wikipedia. The interview has now been published on the main Cogito site and can be read here.

I just stumbled across a post on Interrogating Nature that deserves some internet attention. The post summarizes a ten-point plan by David M. Hillis, published in Evolution, for making evolution relevant and interesting to biology students. I was pleased to find my pet issue given top billing at point #2: “Clarify that evolution is not a synonym for natural selection.” Other fine suggestions for improving evolution education, an exercise I consider analogous to greasing the axis our world goes round, include updating textbook examples and describing experimental research. For a topic that I thought seemed a bit boring (aren’t we ALL trying to make evolution relevant and interesting?), this paper surprised me. The ten points so obviously make evolution funner and more scientifically sound… let’s rewrite the textbooks now!

Today The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article about astronomy professor and intelligent design advocate Guillermo Gonzalez’s tenure rejection at Iowa State University. Opening line of the article:

At first glance, it seems like a clear-cut case of discrimination.

I’m surprised by this position and the word “discrimination” is inflammatory. Legally, of course, discrimination is unlawful. Candidates for tenure can’t be denied based on race or gender, for example, under federal law. Iowa State’s own faculty handbook makes it clear that it doesn’t discriminate based on race, color, age, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, sex, marital status, disability, or status as a U.S. Vietnam Era Veteran. But can someone be denied tenure based on advocacy for intelligent design? Is that discrimination against religion, or discrimination against ideas that fall outside the merits under review?

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The National Association of State Boards of Education is a not-for-profit, Washington DC-based organization which supports the nation’s State Boards of Education by organizing study groups, publishing a quarterly journal and generally making available to policymakers information on education research and analysis. Kenneth Willard, a member of the Kansas School Board who worked to mandate the teaching of intelligent design in Kansas schools, is running unopposed in the July election for president-elect.

According to a New York Times article published today, Willard’s opponent backed out of the election for personal reasons and the period for nominations has closed. Proponents of science education in schools hope that someone like Sam Schloemer, a member of the Ohio State Board of Education who has offered to serve as president-elect, may win the seat nonetheless through write-ins.

Each state gets one vote in the upcoming election. Click here to see a list of the chairs of the State Boards of Education, and write to your representative!