The Smug Baldy Speaks

Last July, I wrote in favor of bringing back the Congressional Office of Techchnology Assessment, or OTA. This was the non-partisan, scientific advisory body that was eliminated in 1995 by Newt Gingrich and other newly empowered republicans. As we now know, during the subsequent years, including the entire tenure of the Bush administration, the Republican-controlled [...]

In my ongoing series about how local non-scientists are attempting to make scientific appeals to include intelligent design in public science classrooms in Alabama, I bring you this tidbit that appeared in yesterday’s Mobile Press Register. In letter titled, “Science not beyond error” a minister from a local Church of Christ argued: Herein lies the [...]

Here’s some more for our Republican War on Science file. Or should that be – Idiocy in high places file? Either way, LA Govenor Bobby Jindal demonstrated yesterday that he has no grasp whatsoever of the issues surrounding the establishment of religious dogma under the heading of “Intelligent Design” in our science classes. Here are [...]

In a recent opinion piece in our local paper, the author announced support for something he oxymoronically called “non-religious” intelligent design (or ID), and went further to claim that this version of ID was more scientific than its predecessor since it made no claim as to the identity of the mysterious universal designer. The author, [...]

There are fewer controversies in science that get people more worked up than the battle between creationists and scientists over the Theory of Evolution. On the whole, this tug of war typically pits faith against scientific rigor and observable data. Recently, in my home state of Alabama, there have been calls to inject something oxymoronically [...]