Looooooooooooooooong reading list (and a personal update)

Okays, I'm taking a super easy load this semester and I'm gonna have a ton of free time for the next few months. In the fall I'm going to be taking math & SCIENCE classes again, but I can't wait till then so...................I'm going to devote the time to the many books that I haven't finshed or even started yet. Specifically the SCIENCE books, and even more specifically, the biology books (Imma geek!). Seriously, I've thrown most of my $ at buying pop science books and old textbooks and I'm going to use the next few months to get a shit load of reading done. 

The list includes:

The Origin of Species

The Selfish Gene

Endless Forms Most Beautiful

Evolution: What the Fossil Record Says and Why it matters

The Extended Phenotype

The Beak of the Finch

Why Darwin Matters

The Dragons of Eden

The Ancestor's Tale

The Blind Watchmaker

Ever Since Darwin

Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Your Inner Fish

What Evolution Is

I've almost finished some of them, haven't even opened others. I'm gonna try and post reviews of the books when I get down with them. (First one will be on Why Darwin Matters, it's the shortest!)

I doubt I'll be able to finish the whole list but the more I get out of the way, the more prepared I'll be for my bio courses in the summer & fall. I feel kinda lazy because I'm just reading popular science books, but I feel these books are good place to start. I can't wait to take real science classes again in the fall. SCIENCE, I miss you so! (I apologize if your geek detector just went haywire) I have soooooooooooo much to learn.....lets start with the basics! If you guys want to suggest any books, feel free to. 

Adaptation>Mutation in Human evolution

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090116073211.htm

CLICK THE LINK AND PREPARE FOR THE AWESOME!

Yeah yeah yeah, I know only evo bio majors and such will get a kick out of this HOWEVER, this article deals with our own evolution. I'm espcially excited because adaptation is what I'm focusing on right now. 

"We are on a crest of a wave showing that adaptation is a lot more prevalent than we thought"

"...no evidence for evolution" *facepalm

Now I wish I could laugh at the breath taking stupidity of some of the people out there but I guess because of my major....................I just have to facepalm*

I was told by a creationist that there was "no evidence for evolution" and to provide evidence for it since I was the one making the claim that evolution was, you know, A FACT.

I posted a rather annoyed response, basically asking him WHICH part of evolution did he need help with? Natural Selection? Genetic Drift? Gene Flow? Mutations? All of these don't count? I mean seriously! Come on! 

Oh well, I have to make this funny somehow................(thinks really hard)........I'll get back to you!

YAY Dan Dennett!

Okays, My friends and I went on a mini road trip down to Stanford to see Daniel Dennett give one of the Presidential Lectures.

 

Short Version: It was AWESOME

 

Slightly Longer Version: First of all he's a huge guy! Like around 6 1/2 feet or something! And I'm a huge dork so when I went up to him to get my copy of Darwin's Dangerous Idea signed, I stuttered and tripped all over myself when he was signing book. However I did say to him that it was people like him and Dawkins who got me into science in the first place. (I was an atheist before I read either of them)I never noticed how poetic science and nature are, well at least until I stumbled across these guys in my local Barnes and Noble. Now I can’t get enough of them, hence the major.

But his lecture blew me away! Titled "The evolution of why as an answer to free will" it was about how free will can co exist with a completely secular outlook.  I hate having to reduce it but think of it like this: The saying “free as a bird” isn’t as meaningful as “free as a human”. We’re the only creatures that are able to apply cognitive reasons to our actions. Birds and dogs etc are ruled by instinct more so than we are.  The power we have to reflect, to question, to invent, to imagine, is freedom, at least according to Dr. Dennett. Did we come about by the mere physical laws of the universe? Yes. Did any intervening higher power (Skyhook? No. Crane? Yes) help us out? No. However, we our no longer as bound by instinct and nature as we used to be strictly because of the evolution that brought us about! I was smiling the whole time….

 

(Wow, I just bastardized a great lecture. BUY HIS BOOK)

 

Anyways, for a better understanding of his ideas on this subject check out his book Freedom Evolves.  For his wonderful book celebrating and discussing the philosophical implications of the theory of evolution; check Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. And for his thoughts on religion check out Breaking the Spell.

 

After the lecture ended, one of my bolder friends rushed up to him to get a group photo. I’ll post as soon as we brighten up the image a bit, it’s kinda dark. NO IT’S NOT PHOTOSHOPPED lol.

 

I was so happy to see him! Read his books! Go! Do it!

DMCA abuse by the Immoral

YAY! Check out my blog about it below!

Words cannot express the awesome

The titans of Youtube's scientific and freethinking establishment have banded together and created an Alliance against censorship and DMCA abuse. These guys have always been my heroes, but this...............is simply beyond words.

Seeing people so passionate about free inquiry and intellectual disscussion is simply wonderful.

Pardon me while I pimp for their accounts:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Thunderf00t
http://www.youtube.com/user/DonExodus2
http://www.youtube.com/user/cdk007
http://www.youtube.com/user/AronRa
http://www.youtube.com/user/potholer54
http://www.youtube.com/user/AndromedasWake
http://www.youtube.com/user/ExtantDodo
http://www.youtube.com/user/ThetaOmega
http://www.youtube.com/user/djarm67
http://www.youtube.com/user/dprjones
http://www.youtube.com/user/DMCAabuse

Hopefully this will send a message to any and all sulking creationist trolls who would rather suppress knowledge and drag not only themselves but others into a intellectual abyss that there's a group who will is more than willing to put up a fight about it. XD!

Majoring in evolutionary biology is a "waste of time". WTF!?!?!?

A lesser known creationist on the Youtube's posted a vid saying that he was going to make a Q&A vid. Wondering what he might say I put, "Is me majoring in evolutionary biology a waste of time?" I wasn't sure what kind of reaction I would get, but I think I got my hope's up.

He read my question near the end and then very nonchalantly "yes I think so" and moved on to the next one

He didn't thump his fist and get all fundie on me. He didn't squirm in his chair say "Well you be careful because your professors might indoctrinate you with Neo Darwinist thinking.... " He just said eh...yeah and casually tossed ALL the research and potential discovery in one of the most prominent fields of biology today in the trash.

Quick Lesson on History: When Darwin first published the Origin of Species, he pointed to the fossil record for evidence. The fossil record was weak but just a year after Darwin published his most famous book, one of the most well known transitional fossils was discovered; Archaeopteryx. However, Darwin was very up front up about the problems with his theory (including about the fossil record which was actually strong enough to convince even the causal naturalist of the power of Darwin's idea) and that our knowledge on how traits were passed down through generation and the laws of variations was very limited. It wouldn't be until the early 20th century that the field of genetics took off and paleontologists were pushed in the background. As Richard Dawkins puts it,

"If every fossil were magicked away, the comparative study of modern organisms, of how their patterns of resemblances, especially of their genetic sequences, are distributed among species, and of how species are distributed among continents and islands, would still demonstrate, beyond all sane doubt, that our history is evolutionary, and that all living creatures are cousins. Fossils are a bonus. A welcome bonus, to be sure, but not an essential one. It is worth remembering this when creationists go on (as they tediously do) about "gaps" in the fossil record. The fossil record could be one big gap, and the evidence for evolution would still be overwhelmingly strong. At the same time, if we had only fossils and no other evidence, the fact of evolution would again be overwhelmingly supported. As things stand, we are blessed with both."- "The Ancestor's Tale"

Anyway, it's an understatement that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming. It's old hat to quote Theodosius Dobzhansky ("Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" ). And it's also a waste of time to try and educate creationists on the knowledge that they've gone out of their way to ignore (seriously I don't know how they can use the SAME arguments over and over AGAIN.) These people couldn't care less about science. If I had asked if majoring in biology a waste of time, he would probably have said that he had no comment or something. If I had said that I'm majoring in cosmology (which completely refutes ANY scientific standing for a literal interpretation of the Bible also), he wouldn't have cared. It's just that I happened to mention evolution.....

One of the reason's why I'm a science major is because I'm tired of this. I'm sick and tired of letting creationists get away with being willfully ignorant of science and pushing that ignorance onto other people. There's no way to say this grace fully: I hate it and I want to educate myself to the point where I should be able to convince anyone no matter how fundamental that evolutionary biology is ANYTHING BUT A WASTE OF TIME.

WOW!

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Family/public_schools_are_evil.htm

All I did was type evolution into Google and then as a joke I typed in "evil" and I get the above website.

OMG, We share the country with these people? These people are actually alive in the 21st century? I'm kinda rattled by this stuff but right now all I can do is at least try to have some fun with it
From the above website:

"The Bible teaches that humanity is sinful, prone to evil and self-destruction. History itself proves this. Look at all the hundreds of millions of people who have been killed over the centuries in bloody war" yeah I wonder how many of those wars have been fought for purely religious reasons...........

"The teaching of evolution is evil, it is a deliberate attempt to shake the faith of young people in a Living and Holy God. Teaching young people that they are animals (mammals) is evil. The Bible teaches that we are not animals, we are human beings (1st Corinthians 15:39). Deliberately educating young people without including God is evil. This is what is so wrong with the public school system...it's what they don't teach." uhhhhhhhhhhhhh so accepting the mere facts of nature is evil? I guess the germ theory of disease is evil too because it's really God punishing us for our sins, either that or it's the Devil and his witches hiding under your bed, waiting to get you sick right?

"Children are robbed of faith in God in public schools. Instead, children are taught that they evolved from "stardust" which somehow formed into a planet, and then life just happened." yeah and the poor kids aren being also taught that gravity is a FACT TOO. THIS HAS NEVER BE PROVEN, IT'S JUST A THEORY! BUT IT HAS BEEN SHOWN THAT GODLESS SCIENTISTS ARE CENSORING THE HOLD THEORY, that merely advocates that life is simply too complex to held down by materialistic gravity alone and wishes to say that an "intelligent holder" is keeping us from floating into space!! (and for the record "evolved from stardust" (complete bastardization of cosmology and biology btw) is closer to what the Bible actually does say, you know the part where man was created directly from dirt......)

"Public schools will show a Harry Potter movie, but never anything about Jesus. How wicked! How evil!" errrr, I actually read the Bible in my public school, we spent alot of time on it............oh yeah BURN HARRY POTTER, HE"S WORKIN FOR THE DEVIL, he may be fictional now, but you just wait, one day when GAWD judges all the heathens, he'll force J.K. Rowling to admit that she wrote Harry Potter to makes kids lose their faith and tolerate each other........and to make kids GAY!

One could go on and on about how incredibly stupid whoever wrote this site is but I think I'll finish up with
"Every child should be taught the Ten Commandments. Every child should be taught faith in God............"
and then a little later...............
"The best education is SELF EDUCATION. Do your own homework and THINK FOR YOURSELF! "

LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Talk orgins is down.........never fear!

Probably one of best resources on the Interwebs for qulaity info about the theory of evolution is having some technically difficulties at the moment.

However, I dug up some websites that are also very helpful

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/

http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/

http://www.biologycorner.com/quests/evolquest/index.html

They aren't much but they should be enough till talk origins comes back!

Dennis vanEngelsdorp: Where have the bees gone?

Finally TED comes through for me! Usually the vids are interesting but a little out there but this one really hit home for me!