If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Blog
Most people today see the Scopes Trial as a simple confrontation between superstitious hillbillies who rallied around a great buffoon, William Jennings Bryan, and a great and open-minded science teacher. Bryan was certainly wrong about evolution. But he was not a buffoon.
HHMI committed $50 million to 47 small colleges and universities in the U.S. Those schools will receive grants to enable them to create more engaging science classes, bring real-world research experiences to students, and increase the diversity of students who study science.
We call for nothing short of a major reformation of the scientific enterprise.
Have you ever been stuck in the middle of a puzzle, jigsaw or not, wondering if the next piece -- thought or action -- will be the one that helps complete the picture?
After dealing with a buildup of static electricity and a few other minor problems, an announcement suddenly flashed across the main TV screen -- an unknown object had been detected, on a collision course with the Spacecraft!
While most population biology is highly theoretical and conjectural, the Grants have been following what has actually been going on in the wild. Theirs is an exciting scientific and human story, including raising and educating their daughters in a tent while making field observations.
There is nothing we must change in others, nothing to fix, nothing to touch. The mere reflection of our truest state of compassion and love moves mountains.
A good way to see how natural genetic engineering facilitates the evolutionary process is to review what we have learned about protein evolution.
Following Darwinian logic, we end up in some unexpected places. Of course, to get there we must accept the premise that the human mind might be capable of existing independently of the neuronal activity on which it usually depends.
"Alberta ... is one of the richest places in the world," says paleontologist Francois Therrien.
Like the Titanic, our present-day industrial civilization is a marvel of human ingenuity, and yet, a reckoning looms on the horizon.
Somehow, the social good charities that have an amazing ability to transform America's hurting people need help in creating brands that attract the eye of America's donors. We need the Robert Irvine of charities to help create a make-over in this changing new world.
How could natural selection operate so that "the good ones spread in the population" if there were no positive variants in the first place? That is why I am confounded by Jerry Coyne's comment that he can explain natural genetic engineering by "garden variety natural selection."
When man tampered with nature and uncoupled the sweetness sensory signal from caloric load, a pairing that we adjusted to for thousands of generations, our capacity to know when we had enough was eradicated.
In a very complimentary blog entitled "Seeing Past Darwin II: James A. Shapiro," James Barham poses the following question and then chides me gently for not answering it: "But if natural selection cannot explain natural genetic engineering, what can?"
The Nation's Report Card on Science 2011, released last week by the federal government, showed modest improvement but raised even more concern about America's ability to grow the science-literate workforce needed in the 21st century.
