In view of the Disco ‘Tute’s recent frantic braying against theistic evolution and evolutionary creationism (having joined Ken Ham in that effort), Jeremy Mohn asks Are God and Keplerism Compatible? Some Catholic, Jewish and Protestant Authors Say No. The book’s blurb tells us that

God and Revolution includes chapters by Willard Rembski, author of The Decline of Revolution; Steve Meyerson, author of Signature in the Solar System: Epicycles and the Evidence for Intelligent Design; Denise O’Lambert, co-author of The Spiraling Drain; Davis Hoffenkling, editor of Signature of Controversy: Responses to Critics of Signature in the Solar System; John Wellington, author of Icons of Revolution; and Jonathan East, author of Kepler Day in America. (John Pieret adds Casey Mustuvbeen, co-author of Traipsing Into Revolution.

Enjoy, and remember, it’s all about the science!

via John Pieret,

And it’s not Freshwater or Hamilton holding the rod and reel.

The defense in Freshwater v. Mount Vernon Board of Education, the federal suit John Freshwater brought against the Board of Education, several administrators, and several Board members, recently issued a series of subpoenas to people ranging from Nancy Freshwater’s physicians to a couple of private citizens. While the former is arguably relevant to the case, the latter are not. Part of Freshwater’s claim in his suit is the adverse effect on his wife and loss of consortium, so her medical records are potentially pertinent. However, in at least two cases, the defense is clearly on a fishing expedition that among other things has chilling implications for the First Amendment rights of the recipients.

More below the fold

The Dennis family has made a request of the federal court in preparation for the filing of a motion to compel settlement in Doe v. Mount Vernon Board of Education, et al., in which John Freshwater is the sole remaining defendant. The request is to be permitted to file a motion under seal to compel settlement, the filing to be under seal because of the Court’s gag order concerning settlement negotiations.

Recall that the trial in that suit was slated to begin July 26, 2010, but Federal District Judge Gregory Frost nixed it under the impression that a settlement had been reached. In his order granting sanctions against Freshwater and Hamilton on August 2, 2010, Frost wrote

In their memorandum in opposition, Plaintiffs request judgement to be entered against Freshwater or for evidentiary inferences to be permitted against Freshwater at trial. That request, however, has been rendered moot by the settlement of this matter. (italics added)

Clearly Judge Frost thought a settlement had been reached, and since he has to approve any settlement he should know.

However, we’ve been waiting since then for an announcement of that settlement, and it hasn’t occurred. Now comes the notice of intention to file a motion to compel settlement. IANAL, but my impression is that a motion to compel settlement is filed when one party to an agreed settlement subsequently fails to adhere to the agreement. (See here for that language.) I infer, therefore, that whatever settlement that was agreed in July 2010 hasn’t been stuck to by Freshwater and/or Hamilton, and hence this request and the prospective motion to compel. Since Judge Frost’s gag order is still in effect concerning settlement discussions, all we have is the bare request to file under seal (pdf). The request to file the motion under seal was granted (pdf) by Judge Frost so the motion to compel settlement may be imminent.

Nick Matzke has just directed my attention to this minor trove of sheet music and other documents relating to the Scopes trial. The song, “Don’t Make a Monkey out of Me,” begins with these words:

Now the air is full of language[,] it surely is a sight,

[W]hat is this evolution and is it wrong or right?

They say we sprang from monkeys, why blame it on the monk,

But lots of folks will hope that this is just a lot of bunk[.]

Today, October 13^th, is the very first National Fossil Day!

The National Park Service and the American Geological Institute are partnering to host the first National Fossil Day on October 13, 2010 during Earth Science Week. National Fossil Day is a celebration organized to promote public awareness and stewardship of fossils, as well as to foster a greater appreciation of their scientific and educational value.

This year’s Earth Science Week toolkit includes a “Fossils of the National Parks” poster, featuring a map showing more than 230 parks managed by the National Park Service that contain fossils. The poster also includes a “How to be a Paleontologist” classroom activity.

Fossils discovered on the nation’s public lands preserve ancient life from all major eras of Earth’s history, and from every major group of animal or plant. In the national parks, for example, fossils range from primitive algae found high in the mountains of Glacier National Park, Montana, to the remains of ice-age animals found in caves at Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. Public lands provide visitors with opportunities to interpret a fossil’s ecological context by observing fossils in the same place those animals and plants lived millions of years ago.

National Fossil Day activities will also highlight fossil fuels to correlate with this year’s Earth Science Week theme, “Exploring Energy” (http://www.earthsciweek.org/).

National Fossil Day is being promoted through partnerships with professional organizations, government agencies, and other groups. Representatives from National Earth Science Teachers Association and Paleontological Research Institution are assisting with planning for National Fossil Day.

On October 13, paleontologists and park rangers will share fossil discoveries at special events nationwide and explain the importance of preserving fossils where they are found, so that everyone can share a sense of discovery!

Join in the celebration of National Fossil Day today!

Photograph by Richard Duhrkopf.

Photography contest, Honorable Mention.

Pelecanus occidentalis – brown pelican, Galveston Bay, Texas.

The Discovery Institute has long had an interest in promoting itself at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. An early meeting held there featured several of the future DI CRSC Fellows a few years before the 1996 establishment of the CRSC. More recently, the DI tried to browbeat SMU faculty into validating a dog-and-pony show that would put an official imprimatur on DI Fellows appearing there. And in current events, the DI put on an event on September 23^rd sponsored by Victory Campus Ministries at the SMU campus, but have been outraged, yes, outraged, by the critical reception they received from various of the SMU faculty.

Lecturer John G. Wise has put up perhaps the most extensive critiques of the DI’s presentation and co-authored a letter to the SMU campus paper, eliciting DI responses from Casey Luskin (1, 2) and a joint response from several of the DI CSC Fellows.

Wise pointed out problems like the claim that stuff published in ‘Bio-complexity’ meets the standard of peer-reviewed literature. Ouch.

Associate Professor Mark Chancey published a letter in the SMU campus paper discussing some of the reasons that the DI doesn’t get a unanimous vote of approval from the SMU faculty despite the religious background of the university. Chancey reviews some of the history of the DI and its enthusiasm for SMU.

Unfortunately, the Discovery Institute has a track record of using SMU’s prestige and academic reputation to bolster its own claims to legitimacy. Consider this quote from Phillip E. Johnson, a chief ID architect: “The movement we now call the Wedge made its public debut at a conference of scientists and philosophers held at Southern Methodist University in March 1992.”

Johnson goes on to characterize that conference as “a respectable academic gathering.” This language implies that SMU sponsored an academic conference in which ID proponents participated as full-fledged scholars. In fact, the 1992 event, too, was sponsored not by any academic unit of the university but by a campus ministry-a detail conspicuously absent from Johnson’s description.

Yes, annoying details like that often go missing in the DI propaganda. Not getting the official recognition they want from SMU and getting unwelcome critical attention of SMU faculty just doesn’t sit well with the DI.

Photograph by Tom Faller.

Photography contest, Honorable Mention.

Cervus canadensis nelsoni – American elk, or wapiti, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina. This subspecies has been introduced into the Appalachian Mountains, tagged, and monitored. It replaces an extinct subspecies.

I’ve posted here before about Kevin and Larry, the creationist duo that treks every Saturday from the hinterlands of Wisconsin to downtown Madison and the farmers market around the square. They set up their Young Earth Creationism display and attempt to convert the heathens with claims of medieval knights defeating tyrannosaurus and Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a triceratops.

I have not seen the new movie, “Waiting for Superman,” but I have read a handful of articles about it, most notably those I detail in the Appendix, and I strongly suspect that it is a puff piece that blames the teachers for the supposed failure of the American education system and recommends charter schools as a panacea. Speaking of puff pieces and charter schools reminded me that one of our faithful readers directed me to this very amateurish article in the Fort Collins Coloradoan. The article reads like advertising copy for the Liberty Common School, a charter school in Fort Collins, Colorado. As nearly as I can tell, most charter schools are in effect private schools operated with public funds; the Liberty Common School is a private religious school operated with public funds.

I do not want to discuss charter schools in general, but I will discuss Liberty Common’s science policy, which reads like a Compendium of Creationist Canards. Under the heading, Principles for Teaching Science, they write,

OSU-Marion’s first Science Cafe of the season is Tuesday, October 5, at 7:00 pm in the historic Harding Hotel at 267 West Center Street in downtown Marion. I’ve reproduced the University press release below the fold. The session features Mike Elzinga, a regular Thumb commenter, presenting on “Order, Disorder, and Entropy: Misconceptions and Misuses of Thermodynamics.” I’ll be there early to have dinner at the Harding before Mike’s presentation: come early too, if you can.

This is a news website article about a scientific paper

It’s amazing, clear, and sums up the industry. A must read.

According to an article, “Basic religion test stumps many Americans,” in yesterday’s New York Times, atheists and agnostics scored better than “protheists” on a basic religion test administered by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The Pew Forum telephoned 3400 people and asked them 32 questions concerning the Bible, world religions, well-known religious figures, and “the constitutional principles governing religion in public life.” According to the Times article, atheists and agnostics, Jews, and Mormons, with an average of 20-21 correct answers out of 32, scored significantly better than the rest of the population, even after the results were corrected for demographic factors. The majority of people answered barely half the questions correctly, and many could not even answer questions about their own religion.

by Joe Felsenstein,
http://evolution.gs.washington.edu/felsenstein.html

Over at Uncommon Descent (in this thread) “niwrad” presents a calculation, lengthily explained, showing that the assertion that human and chimp genomes differ by 1% in their base sequence is wrong.

What “niwrad” does is extraordinary. Choosing random places in one genome (doing this separately for each chromosome) “niward” takes 30-base chunks, and then looks over into the other genome to see whether or not there is a perfect match of all 30 bases. This turns out to occur between 41.60% of the time and 69.06% of the time in autosomes (it varies from chromosome to chromosome). The median is about 65%.

So the difference is really 35%, not 1%, right? Not so fast. If two sequences differ by 1.23% (the actual figure from the chimp genome paper), a one-base chunk will match 98.77% of the time. A two-base chunk will perfectly match (0.9877 x 0.9877) of the time. And so on. A 30-base chunk will match a fraction of the time which is the 30^th power of 0.9877. That’s 0.6898 of the time.

So the 65% figure is pretty close to what is expected from a difference of 1.23% at the single-base level. However the penny hasn’t dropped yet over there (as of this writing, anyway). One commenter (“CharlesJ”) has asked whether there isn’t about a 1 in 4 chance of a 30-base mismatch if the difference is really 1%. That’s correct, and “niwrad” has (somewhat incorrectly) replied that it’s actually 1 in 3. This is a bit wrong but one way or the other the whole article goes up in smoke. “niwrad” has not figured that out yet.

Of course what creationists never do when they get upset about the 1% figure and claim it is Much Higher Than That is to compare that figure with the percentage difference with the orang genome or the rhesus macacque genome (gorilla isn’t available yet). Those are of course higher yet, no matter how you calculate the figure, leaving the chimp as our closest relative.

Photograph by Roger Lambert.

Photography contest, Honorable Mention.

Entropy – scene from an eroding shoreline on Lake Champlain, Vermont, demonstrating a naturally ordered stone deposition being disarrayed by the natural disorder of the tree roots above it.

According to a short article in the Orlando Sentinel, a textbook publisher has agreed to remove 2 pages that include creationist material from editions of a high school textbook sold in Florida. Apparently, the textbook contains a box, or sidebar, that makes a number of errors and also states some incorrect creationist claims (please excuse me if that phrase is redundant). I do not know the history, but it looks as though Joe Wolf, the president of Florida Citizens for Science, alerted the Florida Department of Education, which in turn took action. The National Center for Science Education reports,

UPDATE It turns out that the documents were not officially released. I have therefore asked NCSE to take them down and they’ve done so. I was misled by a posting on Accountability in the Media which said Hamilton’s brief “was released Thursday” (Sep 17). I inferred that it had been released by R. Lee Shepherd, the referee and that all the documents were publishable. It now turns out that’s not the case; Shepherd has not yet released the documents.

========================

The five final documents submitted to the referee of the administrative hearing on John Freshwater’s termination are up on NCSE’s site. They are the Board of Education’s summary brief, Freshwater’s summary brief, the Board’s reply to Freshwater’s summary, Freshwater’s reply to the Board’s summary, and an amicus brief submitted by the Dennises.

Happy reading!

Photograph by Paul Funk.

Photography contest, Honorable Mention.

Cytisus scoparius – Scotch broom, invading a power-line cut on Vancouver Island. Scotch broom is an escaped ornamental that colonizes disturbed areas and competes with conifer seedlings and forage plants.

I haven’t re-read R. Kelly Hamilton’s summary brief in order to write a comprehensive post yet (and I may gouge my eyes out in order to avoid doing so), but one of the more interesting (and paranoid) parts of the brief is his invocation of conspiracies to account for the jam Freshwater is in. I’ll sketch one of them below the fold to give the flavor of the reasoning (I use that term loosely) Hamilton engages in.