Prof. Steve Steve: 2005 Archives

Last summer I travel to Fairbanks, Alaska to attend the Evolution 2005 conference at the University of Alaska. During my travels, I visited North Pole and stopped by Santa Claus’s house. Santa was there that day and eager to hear my Christmas list.

I can’t say exactly what all I asked for because otherwise it won’t come true. However, the jolly old man came through for me earlier this week. Yes, Dover, there is a Santa Claus.

On my way out I feed Donner, who was looking a little warm in the surprisingly hot Alaska afternoon.

I have many more pictures from my Alaska trip and will post the rest of them when I catch another break.

Hi all. I’m on a quick trip back to the states, after having recently been in China with Dr. Steve Case visiting my relatives at the Panda Reserve. Today I was invited to a meeting of Kansas Citizens for Science (KCFS) by my friend Jack Krebs, newly elected president of KCFS. Of course things are hopping in Kansas – the state standards which Jack and Steve worked on received an F from the Fordham Foundation because the state school board inserted a bunch of creationist stuff in them, the much awaited Dover decision may have bearing on the potential legal situation in Kansas, elections for the state Board of Education in August may determine whether the creationists stay in power, and so on.

Of course it wouldn’t be my place to comment on any of the day’s deliberations, but I thought I would share with you all a little bit of the flavor and ambience of a KCFS meeting.

Hi everyone. I have a few free minutes from my extensive itinerary (currently in Australia again) to let people know that I will be heading to the UK shortly. Chris Nedin, with whom I am currently staying, will be heading over there next week and I am taking the opportunity to travel with him (although I’ll be travelling much closer to the front of the plane than Nedin, as befits my role as roving ambassador and famous panda). I plan to take Nedin around the British Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London on Saturday Dec 10^th to educate him in matters evolution in general and palaeontology in particular. Should be fun (for me anyway). Any locally-based readers of the Panda’s Thumb are welcome to join us, and I will be happy to pose for photos and sign autographs, and maybe later accept generous quantities of fine alcoholic beverages at a local public house. I plan to be under the big dinosaur in the entrance hall at 11.00 am, and, as I’m pretty confident of being the only panda present, I should be easy to spot. However, on the off chance that other panda’s may be present, I’ll be the one wearing the mortarboard. I you plan to attend, I’d be grateful if you could contact me either through this forum, or directly via [Enable javascript to see this email address.], just so that I know how long to hang around.

Look forward to seeing you in London

Professor Steve Steve

Recently I had the opportunity to visit some of my relatives at the Panda Reserve in Chungdu, China. I was invited to visit the Reserve by my friend Dr. Steve “Number 42” Case. Number 42, besides being one of the original Project Steve Steves, is also co-chairperson of the Kansas Science Standards Writing Committee as well as Director of the Center for Research on Learning at the University of Kansas.

It was certainly moving to see my ancestral home and native habitat. I don’t run into many pandas in the scientific circles I inhabit, nor many real bamboo stands for dinner.

I imagine that Number 42 is enjoying doing research in China right now rather than dealing with the continuing shenanigans of the state Board of Education back in Kansas. He tells me that his next stop is Zhengzhou, the place where KU recently acquired fossil dinosaur eggs from. He is going to see if he can acquire some - maybe I’ll be able to visit him there also.

Welcome to the second edition of Ask Prof. Steve Steve. Today’s question comes from Michael in Newark, Delaware.

Hi, my name is Michael, from Newark, Delaware, and I’ve noticed you’re running a little question and answer session on the Panda’s Thumb, a wonderful little blog I’ve run across and that I read quite faithfully.

That said, I am a junior at high school, and one of my areas of interest is in the environmental sciences. I am self studying in the area (partially for myself, and partially for the yearly envirothon competitions) and I’m wondering if you could suggest a textbook that is a bit more advanced and more detailed then my current text (Environmental Science, Eighth Edition, written by Richard T. Wright and Bernard J Nebel) or the one I’ve used in the past (the ecology chapters of Biology, 6^th edition, by Campbell and Reece)?

Thank you kindly for your time and your help.

I contacted a friend of Dr. Wesley Elsberry, Dr. Jane Packard at Texas A&M University, who recommended the following books for Envirothon:

• EG Bolen and WL Robinson (1998) Wildlife Ecology and Management. Prentice Hall
• JE Rodiek and EG Bolen (1991) Wildlife and habitats in managed landscapes. Island Press
• ML Hunter (2002) Fundamentals of conservation biology. Blackwell Science

If you’ve got a question about science or cultural issues around it, drop me a line at [Enable javascript to see this email address.] or [Enable javascript to see this email address.]. I will not answers questions posed in comments.

Please include your name, school, town, and science course, as appropriate.

Yesterday, I was in Athens, GA meeting Dr. Steve “Number 22” Henikoff, who was visiting the Department of Genetics at the University of Georgia. Steve Henikoff is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and works at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA.

On Wednesday morning we talked science over breakfast before I dropped him off at the department to talk to various professors and students through out the day. At the end of his day in Athens, he gave a packed talk to the department about his research on histone variants, nucleosome inheritance, and epigenetic inheritance.

On an interesting note, Steve Henikoff and PT author Reed Cartwright (with Luca Comai) have back to back papers coming out in November’s Plant Cell on HOTHEAD reversion, which Reed will expand on in a week or so.

Welcome to the first edition of Ask Prof. Steve Steve. Our first question comes from Jeremy Porath of Purdue.

Professor Steve Steve,

I read an article a while back about a group of Australian scientists who were attempting to bring back an extinct animal, the Tasmanian Tiger (or Thylacine) with cloning.

However, about two years ago, I read a book (What Do Martians Look Like?) that contained a rant against Jurassic Park that lead me to believe this sort of endeavor would be impossible. The relevant portions of the book and article are quoted on my LiveJournal.

I was hoping that you, or one of your colleagues, could perhaps shed some light on this and tell me which group is “correct”–or both, or neither, as the case may be.

Many thanks, Jeremy Porath, Junior, Purdue University

Jeremy, the Tasmanian Tiger cloning experiment is possible because the species only went extinct in the last 100 years. Unlike, dinosaurs Tasmanian Tiger DNA is still young enough to be potentially usable.

During a break in the Dover Trial, I traveled to historic Cambridge, MA to attend the Fifteenth 1^st annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. Visiting Cambridge allowed me to visit several friends at Harvard University, where the Ig Nobels were held. Over the years, Harvard has attracted many famous evolutionary biologists, but also many creationists. Not counting its pilgrim founders, who had no knowledge of the modern scientific method (“methodological naturalism,” as my creationist friends call it nowadays) developed in the 17^th century after the puritans fled England, Harvard has been home to a few influential creationists, from Louis Agassiz in the 19^th century to modern day Intelligent Design creationists. I had a chance to visit them both on this trip, and you’re welcome to join me on my travels.

I am at Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board supporting the plaintiffs with my unique expertise. As the holder of the B. Amboo Chair in Creatoinformatics at the University of Ediacara, I was invited to attend an “evolution is stupid” seminar at Dover Fire Station 6. The seminar was mainly an infomercial for Mr. Kent Hovind’s DVDs.

The lone bright spot was that I was able to meet Matthew Chapman, the great-great-great-great-grandson of my idol, Josiah Wedgewood. (Oh, yeah–I almost forgot–he is also related to Charles Darwin.)

I ended up chatting with Chapman, my good buddy Burt Humburg, and some reporters, but they didn’t allow me to say much.

Update: USA Today managed to identify my colleague, Dr. Patricia Princehouse, but they seem to have forgotten my name, referring to me only as “a panda puppet.” What is journalism coming to these days?

During my recent visit to New Mexico, one of my hosts, Dave Thomas (standing to the side of the sign in the picture - I’m the one on top of the sign), got me very interested in some curious fossils that he said “blew creationist flood geology right out of the water.” When I encouraged him to publish these finds, Dave asked me if I wanted to blog about it here. And so, I spent part of my tour of New Mexico going with Dave and some of his family and friends to the Bisti Badlands near Farmington. And there, in the rugged beauty of the De-Na-Zin Wilderness, deep in Navajo country, I helped find definitive proof that creationists are really confused about geology! Join us, then, for the story of my exciting adventure to the past, and our search for the mysterious Fossil-Fossils of De-Na-Zin!

I Arrive in New Mexico

I arrived in New Mexico last week, having been called on by concerned citizens of that state to look into “Intelligent Design” encroachment into public school science classes. I was immediately greeted by one of the local residents. Fortunately, I am well versed in many things, including Great Dane Standard Greeting Protocol (GDSGP) in which one always sniffs the right sides of noses. To sniff the left sides can cause one to have a very bad day.

As part of the Australian Science Festival, I went to one of the ABC's Science in the Pub programs on The Science of Siblings, in the congenial surrounds of King O'Malley's Irish Pub in Canberra. Paul Willis (another ex-palaeontologist! - not surprising as he can't spell it either) and Bernie Hobbs (pictured) led a stimulating discussion about siblings and twins.

G’Day mate! Struth! Crack open a tinnie and chuck another bamboo shoot on the barbie, she’ll be right! As you can see, I’ve mastered the local dialect, or ‘Strine’, pretty quickly thanks to my strong linguistics background. Parted company with that Wilkins fellow in Canberra. He can philosophise at the drop of a hat, but can’t read a bus time table to save his life! After 3/4 of an hour actualizing the concept of the non-bus, I left him contemplating the concept of the taxi. I hear he made it hope, but goodness knows how. My primary reason for being in Canberra was to visit with a couple of t.oers from the “good old days” of talk.origins (when t.oers were really geeks, Ted was really Ted, and communication was via pigeon), Chris Nedin and Jim Foley. I left the Wilkins at the taxi rank and went to visit with Chris Nedin (pictured below), where a welcome, and generous, glass of fine Irish whiskey was waiting to fight off the winter chill (panda fur only goes so far you know).

I have just had a truly amazing adventure. From July 29 - August 6, I accompanied Alan Gishlick and Eugenie Scott (and members) on NCSE’s “Creationism and Evolution” raft trip down Grand Canyon. Here are “Gish” and Genie, my hosts.

Hello everybody. I thought I should bring you all up to date on my travels. I have just visited Hawai’i, where I did some lecturing, research and field work. Naturally, everything I encountered supported evolution and modern biology. I’m still looking for evidence of creation, but to no avail. The reason I went to Hawai’i is that Carolus Linnaeus, the founder of modern taxonomy, believed that Eden was on a large island in the middle of an ocean, and considered it might be the Pacific. Since there is no bigger island than Hawai’i in the Pacific, if you exclude all those inconvenient islands in south east Asia and the southern Pacific (Australia, where annoying philosophers come from, and New Zealand, which has - or had before feral cats arrived and possums from Australia were let loose - some of the most extraordinary fauna anywhere). I didn’t find any evidence of Linnaeus’ Eden, though. Anything that is like the fauna of the rest of the world has been introduced in the past 1500 years by humans, who aren’t too bright.

For example, they introduced mongooses (mongeese?) to the islands to eradicate the rats that were introduced, probably by the Polynesian ancestors of native Hawai’ians, as well as European sailing ships. Only problem is that the mongoose is a diurnal (daytime) hunter, and rats are active at night (nocturnal). They sure eradicated a lot of native ground nesting birds, though… which left more habitat for the rats. So it all worked out.

I met a visiting fugitive from the failed democracy of Australia, an erstwhile philosopher by the name of Willikins or Wilks or something (I didn’t catch the name, being attacked by predators as I was at the time). He has a description of the event at his blog.

Hi all. I recently accompanied Dr. Tara Smith to the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) meeting down in Atlanta, GA. What a blast that was, though I was unable to make it over to Cobb County, where I hear they have some kind of famous sticker store! Anyway, Atlanta was fun too, though I have to say their bamboo still doesn’t compare to Manhattan.

With any tavern, one can expect that certain things that get said are out-of-place. But there is one place where almost any saying or scribble can find a home: the bathroom wall. This is where random thoughts and oddments that don’t follow the other entries at the Panda’s Thumb wind up. As with most bathroom walls, expect to sort through a lot of oyster guts before you locate any pearls of wisdom.

Just because this is the bathroom wall does not mean that you should put your #$%& on it.

The previous wall got a little cluttered, so we’ve splashed a coat of paint on it.

This is a report of my trip to Grand Canyon on May 4, where I assisted NCSE‘s Eugenie Scott in her investigation of sightings of a creationist book in Grand Canyon bookstores. First, though, I gave Dr. Scott advice on her powerpoint talk to interpreters. She had been invited to address them during their annual training session before the Grand Canyon National Park gears up for the summer season.

This thread is for John A. Davison to hold forth, and those permitted to post on PT who wish to interact with him may do so here. Already banned persons should go elsewhere.

Update

We have removed the last of John A. Davison’s comment privileges for hyperbolic, offensive rhetoric.

Davison Wrote:

This post is destined for oblivion in the Welsberry gas chamber as just another example of his Nazi tactics. in comment 23402

With any tavern, one can expect that certain things that get said are out-of-place. But there is one place where almost any saying or scribble can find a home: the bathroom wall. This is where random thoughts and oddments that don’t follow the other entries at the Panda’s Thumb wind up. As with most bathroom walls, expect to sort through a lot of oyster guts before you locate any pearls of wisdom.

Just because this is the bathroom wall does not mean that you should put your #$%& on it.

The previous wall got a little cluttered, so we’ve splashed a coat of paint on it.

As many of you know, I am here in Lawrence, Kansas to cover the Kansas State Board of Education’s hearings kangaroo court on whether Intelligent Design Science should be included in the state science standards.

Since many of you might not have known that there was such a thing as “Intelligent Design Science” (as contrasted with “Intelligent Design Creationism”, which label seems to throw the Intelligent Design Creationists into a tizzy fit), I’ve persuaded one of my arch nemeses, the esteemed legal flak “Dr.” Courtney Kangaroo, to explain it all to us.

Steve Steve: Good morning, “Dr.” Courtney.

Courtney K.: Hi Steve. I heard those quotation marks. I am a real doctor, you know. I have a Ph.D. in Quantum Apologetics from a little place you might have heard of called MIT.

S²: Really? I didn’t know that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology gave out apologetics degrees!

CK: Oh. No. I meant the Marsupial Institute of Theology. It’s in Australia.

Hi, folks, the last few days I’ve been in Lawrence, Kansas visiting Jack Krebs, the vice president of Kansas Citizens for Science and member of the crew here at the Panda’s Thumb. Of course, there is a big event coming up in a few weeks (starting May 5), affectionately known around here as the kangaroo court hearings. At this event three anti-evolutionary members of the Kansas State Board of Education are going to supposedly judge whether Intelligent Design stuff should be included in the Kansas science standards.

But as a warm-up, I attended an afternoon conference Thursday entitled “A Public Meeting on Evolution and Kansas Bioscience,” at the Plymouth Congregational Church in Lawrence. See this news story from Friday’s news paper.

Jack gave a speech on the theological nature of ID and more generally on why people in Kansas should be concerned about the current situation. (I’m sure he’ll report on this when he has time.) Of course I volunteered to help in any way I could. Here’s a picture of me offering some suggestions for one of Jack’s slides.

With any tavern, one can expect that certain things that get said are out-of-place. But there is one place where almost any saying or scribble can find a home: the bathroom wall. This is where random thoughts and oddments that don’t follow the other entries at the Panda’s Thumb wind up. As with most bathroom walls, expect to sort through a lot of oyster guts before you locate any pearls of wisdom.

Just because this is the bathroom wall does not mean that you should put your #$%& on it.

The previous wall got a little cluttered, so we’ve splashed a coat of paint on it.

Greetings to all Panda’s Thumbers!

Recently I had an opportunity to visit the town of Princeton, in lovely central New Jersey[1]. Princeton is called by some the “Berkeley of the East Coast,” and for good reason! There’s a university there, for one thing. And, like Berkeley, Princeton is at one end of the Axis-of-Intelligent-Design. I knew that this was one place that I definitely wanted to see!!! And along the way, I took pictures, so that you could see it too.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy the sights of Princeton: ID capital of the upper Eastern seaboard[2].

My first stop was 112 Mercer St., home of the somewhat well-known physicist Albert Einstein, who worked nearby at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Einstein’s house had a fence so beautiful that I had to get a picture with it.

I am excited to be posting my adventures to the Panda’s Thumb. I would like to thank Reed for introducing me. Last week I got to visit him at the Wyatt W. Anderson Lab at the University of Georgia.

With any tavern, one can expect that certain things that get said are out-of-place. But there is one place where almost any saying or scribble can find a home: the bathroom wall. This is where random thoughts and oddments that don’t follow the other entries at the Panda’s Thumb wind up. As with most bathroom walls, expect to sort through a lot of oyster guts before you locate any pearls of wisdom.

Just because this is the bathroom wall does not mean that you should put your #$%& on it.

The previous wall got a little cluttered, so we’ve splashed a coat of paint on it.

With any tavern, one can expect that certain things that get said are out-of-place. But there is one place where almost any saying or scribble can find a home: the bathroom wall. This is where random thoughts and oddments that don’t follow the other entries at the Panda’s Thumb wind up. As with most bathroom walls, expect to sort through a lot of oyster guts before you locate any pearls of wisdom.

The previous wall got a little cluttered, so we’ve splashed a coat of paint on it.

With any tavern, one can expect that certain things that get said are out-of-place. But there is one place where almost any saying or scribble can find a home: the bathroom wall. This is where random thoughts and oddments that don’t follow the other entries at the Panda’s Thumb wind up. As with most bathroom walls, expect to sort through a lot of oyster guts before you locate any pearls of wisdom.

The previous wall got a little cluttered, so we’ve splashed a coat of paint on it.