Richard Nelson, executive director of the Commonwealth Policy Center based in Cadiz, Ky., wrote a letter to the editor in last week’s The Murray State News that included a number of Creationist claims including the following: “Evolution has yet to explain where matter and energy come from and how living things spring from non-living matter.” Read More
We are outgrowing religion: it’s a beautiful thing. What if someone living in Germany, France or England in the mid 1600s roughly 400 years ago, at the height of the witch trials, the plague and the great fire of London (both assumed to be due to God’s wrath due to an individual’s heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft Read More
Monday night at the CFSB Center wasn’t a love fest but it was close. I’d been hearing all day from my students, “You going to Bill Nye?” “I love Bill Nye” “My sixth grade science teacher played his episodes every week,” “You NEVER saw Bill Nye?” I confess I hadn’t. Wrong generation: I’m just a Read More
Eyjafjallaj?kull. Say that fast 10 times. OK just once. I’m clueless how to pronounce it and I’m quite sure my English-ized attempt at pronunciation is probably wrong. But the geology, the volcanology behind this Icelandic volcano that erupted in April 2010 isn’t wrong. Some of you may remember that the ash cloud from this month-long Read More
Many of you know I have a blog of the same name as this column at wearedone.org. I started it 90 days ago, on Oct. 20, 2013. Since then I’ve written 73 posts averaging 700 words each; a new post every day except Sundays and holidays, more than 52,000 words, a quarter of a million Read More
In my last column, I described walking off the solar system down the sidewalk from Main near Sparks to Lizo using a bowling ball for the sun, peppercorns for Earth and Venus, poppy seeds for Mars, Mercury and Pluto, an acorn for Saturn, a walnut for Jupiter and coffee beans for Neptune and Uranus. The Read More
Get a bowling ball. If you’re hardcore, paint it yellow. A soccer ball will do in a pinch. It’s a hair too big but close enough for our purposes. Head to the Murray State gateposts that stand at the end of 15th Street and Main across from Sparks Hall and set your bowling ball down Read More
“Dogs Likely Originated in Europe More than 18,000 Years Ago” reads the headline of a “Science Daily” news report summarizing genetic research published last week on the front cover of Science. The 31 investigators who published their groundbreaking work analyzed the mitochondrial DNA of dogs and wolves from 1,000 – 30,000 years ago, comparing them Read More