Now on ScienceBlogs: USAToday: Scientists Misreading the Polls on Climate Change
IOPgate: IOP uses memory hole The Institute of Physics, after calling for transparency, is sneakily altering its statements on the topic.
USAToday: Scientists Misreading the Polls on Climate Change Scientists and advocates, prone to their own perceptual biases, over-estimating the impact of ClimateGate....
Join Bill Gates Book Club and Read Tomorrow's Table anyone who reads this book will be convinced of the authors' sincerity and intelligence - even if, like me, you never try any of the cool-sounding recipes
Reconciliation and History NPR documents that reconciliation has been used for decades to pass various health care reform measures. As usual, the Republicans are lying and claiming something is "unprecedented" when they've done that very thing themselves innumerable times. But health care and...
Buchanan Blathers Ignorantly About Evolution Pat Buchanan has a column at the Worldnutdaily reciting the familiar litany of idiotic anti-evolution arguments. He's reached for two of the oldest and silliest of them, Piltdown Man and Nebraska Man. And he starts by proving his ignorance: With...
Ackerman Rips Romney's Foreign Policy Cred If you want to see a royal book review beatdown, take a look at my colleague Spencer Ackerman's review of Mitt Romney's new book, No Apology: The Case For American Greatness. This is a first class ass whipping from the...
Repost: An Anthropologist in District 9 In light of the Oscars this Sunday I thought those of you who missed it would enjoy my review of District 9 (which is up for four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay). Inexplicably, a UFO appears...
What Ten C-17 Cargo Planes the Military Doesn't Want Would Buy Us It's a lot of jobs.
Video of My Rachel Maddow Appearance Here's the video of my appearance on Rachel Maddow last night. A friend of mine asked me last night how I did that without looking at all nervous. The answer is probably obvious to anyone who knows me. This is...
My Rachel Maddow Adventure So I had an interesting Thursday. I got to the radio studio around 3 pm and started prepping for the show. Believe it or not, Rachel Maddow was not the first TV show to invite me on yesterday. The first...
Biology-based Bathrooms Those of us who follow the tactics of the anti-gay right have noticed a trend over the last couple years. Any time an ordinance or law comes up that would forbid discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender...
Worldnutdaily: Obama Will Steal Next Election! The Worldnutdaily has its typically hysterical -- as in fomenting hysteria, not as in funny -- "exclusive" story about how Obama is planning to steal the next election. Unsurprisingly, it's just a stewpot full of paranoia, unsubstantiated rumors and fanciful...
Dumbass Quote of the Day From Rush Limbaugh: Mullah Nancy bin Pelosi. She's no different than these mullahs and these imams who convince all these people to put bombs on their kids and send them out there to blow up. And then he launches into...
Naomi Oreskes on Merchants of Doubt Via Resilience Science, a talk by Naomi Oreskes on her new book, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming...
Katrina victims seek to sue greenhouse-gas emitters This is interesting. I have mixed feelings about it but it is probably a necessary step in forcing the reality of this issue into the correct legal and political context. Actions have consequences and actors have responsibilities. The only question...
DC Briefing on Climate Perceptions, Science, & Policy A symposium at the Hart Senate Office Building on Friday, March 12
Should Panelists Dismissive of Climate Change Be Included at Campus Forums? Thoughts on brokering constructive dialogue on college campuses...
Freshwater Story Update It's been a while since I linked to some updates on the Freshwater saga in Ohio. Richard Hoppe is still doing yeoman's duty following all the events, which have taken a turn to the bizarre to say the least. The...
Texas SBOE Wingnuts Lose Primary Battles Here's some good news out of Texas: Three out of five of the wingnuts running for the State Board of Education lost those elections -- including former board chairman Don McLeroy, who lost his seat to Thomas Ratliff. And a...
AFA: Kill Sea World Employees The American Family Association's vile Bryan Fischer writes about the trainer killed by a whale at Sea World and says it's all because we just don't listen to the Bible and do what it says: You are aware by now...
Reality rejection syndrome This is old news. The NY Times has an article on the expanding agenda of creationists to include denial of lots of other phenomena that make them uncomfortable. We've known this for years! It isn't just creationism; those beliefs have...
What Adam Samwick Doesn't Get About the Palinist Right Resentment, not policy, is the driving force.
Patriot Act Reauthorized -- Surreptitiously My friends at DownsizeDC point out something I've not seen reported anywhere else, that the sudden and unexpected passage of a bill extending several provisions of the Patriot Act for another year was accomplished through nefarious means. Last week, Congress...
Teacher Wins Religious Banners Case Poway Unified School District has seen more than its fair share of controversial lawsuits lately. It's the school district that censored the anti-gay t-shirt that led to Harper v Poway, which made it all the way to the Supreme Court,...
Astrology, Global Warming and Creationism Steven Salzberg takes the South Dakota state legislature to task for borrowing tactics from the creationists and demanding that teachers "teach the controversy" over global warming. And they clearly have some difficulties with the English language along the way. The...
“Twenty-odd years ago I was in an elevator with Jesse Helms and asked him about his reputation as a master of the Senate's arcane rules. He smiled and said, "I didn't make the rules, I just use what I've got." His other idea was that Senators in a filibuster or other delaying action should be forced to wear ridiculous hats while speaking.” kehrsam on How to Fix the Filibuster Problem
PZ Myers 03.04.2010
PZ Myers 03.05.2010
Ed Brayton 03.05.2010
Ed Brayton 03.05.2010
Ed Brayton 03.04.2010
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Some engineers use cranes and steel to make their designs reality, but synthetic biologists engineer using tools on a different scale: DNA and the other molecular components of living cells. Synthetic biology uses cellular systems and structures to produce artificial models based on natural order. Read these posts from the ScienceBlogs archives for more:
Pharyngula May 30, 2007
The Loom January 31, 2008
Discovering Biology in a Digital World July 2, 2006