That would be tough. She's written a diatribe in the NY Times on the Pepsico debacle, and it isn't just that she doesn't like many of the scienceblogs (including yours truly), but that she gets the facts wrong.

This was just bizarre.

I was nonplussed by the high dudgeon of the so-called SciBlings. The bloggers evidently write often enough for ad-free academic journals that they still fume about adjacencies, advertorial and infomercials. Most writers for "legacy" media like newspapers, magazines and TV see brush fires over business-editorial crossings as an occupational hazard. They don't quit anytime there's an ad that looks so much like an article it has to be marked "this is an advertisement."

Errm, many of the early departures in the wake of Pepsico were science journalist/bloggers — and the impression I got was that they were more concerned about the ethics of advertorials than the pure science bloggers. And the problem with the Pepsico blog was that it was an ad that looked much like an article but wasn't marked "this is an advertisement".

There is much in her rant that is clearly outrage that some of us (uh, yours truly again) have no sympathy for religious excuses, or indulge in "religion-baiting" as she calls it, but I'll pass over that — atheist-haters are dime-a-dozen, and it's not even particularly notable. But this final bit is absurd and discredits her completely: she lists some blogs she favors for her version of 'science'.

For science that's accessible but credible, steer clear of polarizing hatefests like atheist or eco-apocalypse blogs. Instead, check out scientificamerican.com, discovermagazine.com and Anthony Watts's blog, Watts Up With That?

The first two are fine, but seriously: the pretentious weatherman who jiggers the evidence and makes up stuff about climate to deny the facts? If only she would have also mentioned a creationist blog or two, it would have made my day.

Skip Heffernan's ignorant noise. David Dobbs has a more judicious reply.

O Happy Day, let us open this edition of the thread insufferably prolonged with some romance!

(Current totals: 10,731 entries with 1,072,626 comments.)

We are currently suffering from a surfeit of cheesiness in the ad blocks being served up — the example to the right is just one of many horrors, including ads for $cientology, various Christian and creationist groups, and even some medical quackery. Although the "build an ideal woman" does appeal to the mad scientist in me, it's really just a tease to get your name and various bits of information into one of those "win an ipad" scams. Don't click on it!

Actually, don't click on any of the despicable ads. You don't need to; the ad space is sold on a per impression, not a per click, basis, so all you have to do is load Scienceblogs and you've earned us a bit of money. So just ignore them altogether.

Also, take some comfort in the fact that the bad ads are hilariously misplaced — this is not the audience for creationist hucksters. So all they are doing is transferring money from kooks and quacks to the pockets of people presenting the science that opposes them.

How can I resist? Eric Hovind does the usual trick of putting two reasonable answers on it to split the rational vote, but I think a good goal would be to simply make both of them crush the stupid creationist answer.

What do you believe about evolution?

It's a religion. 46%
* It's a fact! 43%
* It's a reasonable scientific theory. 11%

Fly, my pretties! Destroy the poll!

Corruption rules: that poll was utterly demolished in yet another way. After many votes were accumulated, Hovind changed the wording of the question to "What do you believe about creation?" without changing the answers or the tally of votes. Eric is following in the dishonest footsteps of his jailbird father, I see.

Spiegel has a wonderful interview with Venter. The more I hear from Venter, the more I like him; he's very much a no-BS sort of fellow. He's the guy who really drove the human genome project to completion, and he's entirely open about explaining that its medical significance was grossly overstated.

SPIEGEL: So the significance of the genome isn't so great after all?

Venter: Not at all. I can tell you from my own experience. I put my own genome on the Internet. People had the notion this was the scariest thing out there. But what happened? Nothing.

There really was a lot of hysteria in the early days about how the insurance companies would abuse the information in the genome, and there was also the GATTACA dystopia. None of it has, and I daresay none of it will, come to pass.

Venter: That's what you say. And what else have I learned from my genome? Very little. We couldn't even be certain from my genome what my eye color was. Isn't that sad? Everyone was looking for miracle 'yes/no' answers in the genome. "Yes, you'll have cancer." Or "No, you won't have cancer." But that's just not the way it is.

SPIEGEL: So the Human Genome Project has had very little medical benefits so far?

Venter: Close to zero to put it precisely.

SPIEGEL: Did it at least provide us with some new knowledge?

Venter: It certainly has. Eleven years ago, we didn't even know how many genes humans have. Many estimated that number at 100,000, and some went as high as 300,000. We made a lot of enemies when we claimed that there appeared to be considerably fewer -- probably closer to the neighborhood of 40,000! And then we found out that there are only half as many. I was just in Stockholm for the 200th anniversary of the Karolinska Institute. The first presentation was about the many achievements the decoding of the genome has brought. Then I spoke and said that this century will be remembered for how little, and not how much, happened in this field.

Hmmm…I seem to recall that Venter's company was one that was trying to patent an inflated number of genes, which contradicts what he's claiming here. But otherwise, yes, the HGP isn't yet a source of useful medical information, but it's a trove of scientific information; I'd also add that the technology race put a lot of useful techniques in our hands.

Venter: Exactly. Why did people think there were so many human genes? It's because they thought there was going to be one gene for each human trait. And if you want to cure greed, you change the greed gene, right? Or the envy gene, which is probably far more dangerous. But it turns out that we're pretty complex. If you want to find out why someone gets Alzheimer's or cancer, then it is not enough to look at one gene. To do so, we have to have the whole picture. It's like saying you want to explore Valencia and the only thing you can see is this table. You see a little rust, but that tells you nothing about Valencia other than that the air is maybe salty. That's where we are with the genome. We know nothing.

Exactly! Traits are products of overlapping networks of genes. Venter also explains that a lot of the effects of genes are developmental, so you can't expect to be able to take a pill to correct something that went wrong in the assembly process in the embryo.

Here's my favorite exchange from the interview.

Venter: Yes, and I find them frightening. I can read your genome, you know? Nobody's been able to do that in history before. But that is not about God-like powers, it's about scientific power. The real problem is that the understanding of science in our society is so shallow. In the future, if we want to have enough water, enough food and enough energy without totally destroying our planet, then we will have to be dependent on good science.

SPIEGEL: Some scientist don't rule out a belief in God. Francis Collins, for example ...

Venter: ... That's his issue to reconcile, not mine. For me, it's either faith or science - you can't have both.

SPIEGEL: So you don't consider Collins to be a true scientist?

Venter: Let's just say he's a government administrator.

Oh, snap.

The peculiarities of dietary restrictions by the religious are always entertaining. Catholics have their own weird practices: here's a bit of strange information from a Catholic agony aunt forum.

Do alligators count as fish?
As a Catholic who observes the custom of abstaining from meat on Fridays, I would like to know if alligator would be considered meat or fish. Recently, on a Friday, I was in a local restaurant where I was sharing a dinner of alligator. I thought upon this, and decided, as a reptile, alligator would fall into the fish category. I hope I'm not sounding too scrupulous, but if it is considered meat, I will avoid it on Fridays in the future.

Uh-oh. This woman made a judgment on Catholic theology without consulting a priest. Doesn't she know she could be getting an eternity in hell for her plate full of alligator? Fortunately, it turns out that going meatless still allows one to eat all the reptiles, amphibians, and insects you might want.

An alligator is certainly not a fish, and it certainly does have meat. But the custom of abstaining from meat on Fridays is abstinence from the flesh of mammals and birds. Fish, reptiles, amphibians, insects, etc., are exempt from this. Since an alligator is a reptile, those who abstain from meat on Fridays are free to eat alligator if they wish.

Why?

Does anybody ever just ask why these strange eating habits are a part of the doctrine? Does god like birds and mammals so much that he doesn't want you to eat them on one day? Would he really be that pissed if you had a cheeseburger on Friday?

MPR picked my brains about the impossible plan to eradicate mosquitoes. No, we can't, and no, we shouldn't. That wasn't so hard.

The 10th anniversary of the journal Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines is being celebrated by making all of the articles in a special review issue entirely free for download…for the month of July. It's almost over! Grab those pdfs while you can!

(via Daily Squee)

It's a simple question.

Do you think Livingston Parish public schools should teach creationism?

Yes, evolution is a lie 22%
Yes, so children can hear both sides 35%
No, religion has no place in science class 29%
No, we don't need to waste tax money on lawsuits 13%
Don't know 1%

I think readers here might have a slightly different set of answers than are up currently, though.

Helen Thomas vacated her front row seat in the White Press (under ignominious circumstances, unfortunately), and now it's up for grabs. The White House Correspondence Association is going to decide whether to give it to NPR, Bloomberg, or, appallingly, Fox News. Sign the petition. Slap down the right-wing propaganda organ and insist that a legitimate news organization like NPR get the seat.

They just keep popping up out of nowhere, all shrill and assertive and extreme. Take a look at this new guy getting all in-your-face about religion. And he's a Scot, too; even worse.

Disreputable rascals, every one.

Earlier this summer, I mentioned the Oregon Octocam, which featured an octopus named Deriq.

Deriq has died. It's a sad fact that most cephalopods are very short lived.

"The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very, very brightly, Deriq."

They're Christian, so you can trust them to have your best interests at heart. The Modesty Survey is a bizarre instrument created by asking young Christian women to put together heartfelt questions about their clothing ("Are bikinis immodest?" "Are jeans immodest?"), and then teenaged Christian boys are surveyed to get their opinions. Because, of course, the girls need boys' advice.

Reading through the questions is weird: they're phrased in different ways, but one of the most common motifs is the "stumbling block". The boys are asked to judge whether an item of clothing is something that might cause them to think wicked thoughts…so once again, the women are to blame for inciting men's behavior by wearing tight jeans or a strapless dress.

They're also explicit about it:

We're not telling you what to wear — we're just telling you what we, as guys, have to guard against. It is God's Word, your own heart and conscience, and your parents and godly friends who should help you decide what to do about it.

What they have to guard against? They should be plainer. "We're not telling you what to wear — we're just listing the stuff that will justify raping you."

I get a Taliban tingle just reading it. It's a far more generous document than anything Islam dictates — young Christian men do not want young Christian women to wear burkas — but in principle, it's the same thing. It's men declaring ownership of women's bodies and telling them what to wear, with the the threat of justifiable sexual assault if they do not obey.

It is a little disturbing, though, to see that their logo has a picture of a woman with a veil over her face.

One of the more contemptible anti-gay activists is Reverend Scott Lively, a true liar for Jesus who considers it his sacred mission to rid the world of homosexuals. He was proud to have inspired the Ugandan death penalty for homosexuality law (although in the face of the outrage that generated, he backed off, claiming they should give them the choice of prison or gay conversion "therapy").

His other claim to fame is that he is a holocaust revisionist. He has written a book, The Pink Swastika, in which he claims that Hitler and his entire inner circle was gay, that the atrocities the Nazis committed were driven by the immoral impulses of the gay Nazi elite, and that the well-known anti-gay laws and mass murders of homosexuals in the Third Reich were just a cover, a distraction to conceal the fact that Nazis were all gay. Oh, and also that the reason they were murdered is that gays are intrinsically violent, anyway.

Lively is an evil little liar, so it was delightful to see him exposed on the Daily Show. This is one of the clearest illuminations of the insanity of these gay-hating evangelicals I've seen.

The best moment was after Lively expounded on his ferocious gay Nazi theory and how the Nazi's public denunciation of gays was evidence that they were all secretly gay, the interviewer asks him, "That which you hate the most you secretly are?" Reverend Scott Lively sits there stunned for a moment before he can say, "I'm not gay."

I don't see how we can conclude that he's not, though, given the Christian logic he has so impeccably applied to the problem.

Mark your calendars! The end of the world is nigh, and we've got a specific date: the Rapture will occur on 21 May, 2011, and the world ends on 21 October 2011. How do we know this? As near as I can tell, it's pure numerology, diddling dates to create a pretense of pattern that are then used to draw conclusions.

I wouldn't worry about it. But now you've got an excuse to plan a party for next spring.

Zeno catches something amusing: a right-wing radio host ranting about professors.

Sussman:I get a kick out of— You go to UC Berkeley, you go to Stanford, you go to these various campuses and these students are out there protesting, "We need more money for our schools!" And standing next to them are the professors. "We need more money for our schools!" Hey, have you ever asked that professor how much money they're making every year? These professors are all millionaires. They're millionaires with big, big salaries and big, big retirement packages. And yet they dress like little schmoes, you know, with their crummy jackets [Officer Vic: Patches on the elbow.] that are twenty years old, yeah, and patches on the elbow. And their ties are askew and their hair's kinda crappy and they drive crummy little cars and they're millionaires. They're all millionaires! And they actually have the gall to stand next to the kids who are protesting because their fees are too high. "We need more money for our schools!" So you can pay these millionaires!

Reality doesn't matter to these guys, does it? We wear the crummy jackets and drive the crummy little cars because that's what we can afford: professors are proud members of the middle class, not even the upper middle class. It isn't pretense.

I'm also not really getting a pay raise. In Minnesota, we're getting a pay cut this year.

JL Vernon is lobbying to have Huffpo dedicate a section of their undeservedly popular, cheesy website to science. He makes a superficially reasonable argument: to work within the belly of the beast to promote good science, in opposition to the tripe they usually publish. I'm sympathetic, really I am, but I see the Huffpo as a dead cause.

I also think Vernon fails to grasp the problem here. For instance, he complains about the refusal of anti-creationists to debate the opposition.

The most resounding message emerging from the opposition is the idea that having "real science" share a platform with "bad science" will ultimately tarnish the reputation of the legitimate scientists and science communicators who choose to participate. This is essentially the same argument Richard Dawkins, PZ Meyers and others take when refusing to debate evolutionists. The concept here being that by sharing the stage with creationists, scientists lend credibility to the creationist arguments. In some ways, I think this is a cowardly response. If you have a sound argument, the opposition should not win the debate.

That's wrong on multiple levels. First, a debate is not won by sound argument; it's by persuasive rhetoric. Many creationists have that skill (I have to repeat a mantra I've got: creationists are not stupid, just ignorant and misled by ignorant arguments), so it is a serious tactical error to think that because all the facts and science are on your side, you're going to win debates. That's a recipe for consistent failure.

The other problem here is that I've "won" most of my debates…because the other side is just nuts. Jerry Bergman and Geoff Simmons, to name two, were raving loonies who made me embarrassed to be sharing a spotlight with them. There was no gain for me, and plenty for them. You get two possibilities: you'll face an eloquent rhetorician who will run rings around you despite your command of the facts, or you'll get a nutcase who makes you feel like you're sharing the podium with a brain-damaged hobo. Neither are great options.

The final big problem is that creationist debaters willingly lie and distract to win their arguments. The Gish Gallop is just one of the tools they use; they sputter out dozens of claims that are false and falsifiable, if you had an hour to address each one. And then, of course, if you do "win", they'll cheerfully lie to their little closeted evangelical audiences that they not only defeated you, but that you were a big abusive meanie who was rude and accused the creationists of making stuff up.

I have little hope for Vernon's endeavor if he doesn't grasp these basic realities of dealing with kooks.

As for Huffpo, he has a couple of hurdles. He has openly announced his intent to expose the "bad science" on HuffPo — while I like that idea, does he really think Ariana Huffington is going to look kindly on that proposal?

Also, we know that Huffpo editors censor articles. There isn't going to be any criticism of the site's major goals, the promulgation of Newage garbage, getting through unbutchered.

But let's assume Vernon succeeds, and gets a good science section with reputable contributors writing about good solid science and criticizing the pseudoscience and quackery otherwise rife on Huffpo. If it acquires even a scrap of prestige and respect, I can predict exactly what will happen: Deepak Chopra and Robert Lanza will ask Huffington to include their raving madness in that section. They write about "science" and "medicine", after all. And a credible science section on Huffpo will be quickly subverted to promote quackery.

Convergent Revolution agrees that Huffpo Science would be a bad idea. Huffpo is tainted fruit — stay away from it altogether.

Some things just make you want to cringe under a table somewhere, they're so awful and embarrassing. And sometimes they're so bad I don't want to cringe down there alone, so I'm going to creep you all out, too. Behold, Andrew Cohen. His ex-girlfriend, who turned down his proposal of marriage for what rapidly become obvious reasons, was getting married to someone else — so he wrote her a 'wedding gift', a publicly published, soppy opinion piece on how wonderful she is and how much she's hurting him by spurning his deep, stalkerish obsession with her. For her wedding, he tries to hand her a long guilt trip; I'm hoping that if she saw it at all, she's just had the rightness of her refusal amply confirmed.

It's an amazing example of inappropriate obliviousness, so painful that I thought Cohen had to be uniquely blind and self-centered…but no, the comments contain several people praising him for his fantasies about marrying and impregnating her. Gah. I need a shower now.

If you can't stomach the whole mess, read this distillation of the worst of Andrew Cohen.

(via Amanda.)