Dodos: Free in Iowa City!

Tomorrow (Monday, Sept. 22) in Iowa City I will be co-hosting a free public screening of "A Flock of Dodos" in Biology Building East (BBE) 101 at 7:00pm. This event is part of Scienceblogs 10^6 comment festival, via our two Iowa City-based ScienceBlog-ers, Tara Smith (Aetiology) and Evil Monkey (Neurotopia). It is also associated with the Evolution undergraduate course (Biology, 002:131) that I teach with Bryant McAllister (can you say "extra credit"?)

According to Wikipedia:

"The film attempts to determine who the real "dodos" are in a constantly evolving world: the scientists who are failing to promote evolution as a scientifically accepted fact, the intelligent design advocates, or the American public who get fooled by the "salesmanship" of evolution critics. While Randy Olson ultimately sides with the scientists who accept evolution, he gives equal air time to both sides of the argument..."

Thanks to the filmaker Randy Olson for allowing us to screen this film for the public! I'm looking forward to it, since I have not seen it yet.

Dawkins' Genius of Darwin

I just discovered that there is a new three-part series, The Genius of Charles Darwin, that was broadcast on UK Channel 4. I tried to buy the episodes on iTunes, but they are only available in the UK. Luckily they are all posted on YouTube.

Below is the first part (of five) of the first episode, available on YouTube.

You can read more about the episodes and find more links at RichardDawkins.net.

Iowa City Darwin Day

Reposted with light editing from the Iowa Citizens for Science site:

Darwin Day is fast approaching, and we’ll be celebrating with two and a half days’ worth of festivities here in Iowa in February, put together by Iowa City Darwin Day Inc. along with co-sponsors.

We’ll kick off Thursday night, February 14th at 7:00 pm, with Dr. Massimo Pigliucci reading from his latest book at Live from Prairie Lights, with drinks and snacks following at a location TBA.

Friday February 15th will consist of academic talks by Dr. Pigliucci and Dr. Martha McClintock.

On Saturday February 15th there will be a series of public talks followed by an informal reception in Iowa Hall.

• University of Iowa paleontologist Dr. Christopher Brochu will kick off the afternoon, whose topic will be “The Dead Speak: What we learned from the Tyrannosaurus.” Dr. Brochu was the lead researcher on the analysis of “Sue” the tyrannosaurus at Chicago’s Field Museum.
• Dr. McClintock will follow, discussing “Social Isolation and Breast Cancer: Psychosocial Regulation of Gene Expression”.
• Dr. Pigliucci will be the last of the afternoon’s talks, speaking on “What’s science got to do with it? When scientists misspeak about religion”–a topic sure to bring about some interesting discussion.
  

A panel discussion and Q&A session with all of the speakers will wrap up the afternoon, and the reception will follow.

Please join us! It promises to be an exciting and stimulating few days–and we’re also looking for ideas (and manpower!) for Darwin Day 2009.

Wired: Huckabee Denies Evolution

Wired Science has a good article on Mike Huckabee's denial of evolution. They feature the video that I have also placed here. This is a good opportunity to point folks to a great piece from Leonard Steinhorn and Charles Steinhorn where they consider "belief" in evolution: "Is the Theory of Evolution Really a Matter of Faith?".

Judgment Day

It's been a busy term... So much that I missed the original airing of the NOVA program "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" last week. Luckily for me, the entire episode is now available for viewing online, which I took advantage of tonight. If you haven't seen the show, you should. It's very well done from both scientific and journalistic points of view. It will soon be required viewing for my undergraduate Evolution course.

Biochemistry By Design

An excellent article appeared recently in TRENDS in Biochemical Sciences (subscription required) that is worthy of note here. The paper, entitled "Biochemistry by design" by BC Forrest & PR Gross, is a terrific primer and riposte to the so-called "Biochemical Challenge to Evolution" that Behe has been promoting in the past few years. The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) has already posted an article on their site about this paper. The authors are well-versed in the creationism/ID "wars" having previously written the book, "Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design" which has just been published in paperback (with an updated chapter on the Dover trial). It's too bad that this great article is (apparently) not Open Access.