In 1958, an earthquake in Lituya Bay, Alaska, caused a landslide into the ocean that created a tsunami 1,720 feet high, a wave that could have swept over the Empire State Building. Fortunately it headed into a wilderness area and did not travel across the ocean to Hawaii or Japan.

When Nature's Wrath Is History's Reminder

The New York Times mocks you, Cobb County.

This book offers Intelligent Design as an explanation for life on earth. Although this book has a really cute animal on its cover, the author is a lunatic with a faith-based approach to logic. Please consider the book with an open mind, and then quickly move your children to a different school district.

This textbook discusses the atomic theory. Because it is not a fact or a scientific law, readers should use valuable class time to explore other theories on the composition of matter, even if they are ridiculously unlikely.

This textbook describes the theory of combustion. This theory relies on an imposing number of complicated assumptions and equations, and thus this book might not ignite in your microwave.

The Descent of Dissent

Americans do not believe that humans evolved, and the vast majority says that even if they evolved, God guided the process. Just 13 percent say that God was not involved. But most would not substitute the teaching of creationism for the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Here is the most interesting divide that emerges from this poll:

Humans evolved, God did not guide process:
Kerry voters, 21%
Bush voters, 6%

There's a certain quality of reflexive incredulity to this story. It's as though the evolutionists (via the media) are saying to the creationists, "I can't believe you still don't believe!" And they're doing it in such a way that depicts the creationists as Slow.

This poll is more entertainment than serious inquiry. I think it is unnecessarily issue-oriented, on the basis of writing a news story using the "findings." It would work better as a study instead of a poll. You don't really need to use the terms "evolution" and "creationism." First, ask them if they believe in God. Next, ask them to define the scientific method. Then ask or not they "accept" the scientific method. Finally, ask them how they react to conflicts between the scientific and the religious. You might get more dialogue going if you open it up a bit, allowing people to talk about cosmology. It would also reveal, perhaps to the surprise of some, just how many people still believe in astrology.

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In Britain, some people have taken to mocking Richard Dawkins, saying that he's had just "one idea" in his career, and he can't stop talking about it. His one idea is the "Selfish Gene."

I suppose the same type of thing was said about Darwin in his day.

Creationism Trumps Evolution

Blink will do for our knowledge of communication, both personal and corporate, what The Tipping Point has done for our understanding of trends.

Malcolm Gladwell on Human Nature | IT Conversations from Pop!Tech 2004

Malcolm Gladwell has a new book coming out in January 2005. Excerpts are available now.

"Blink" is a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions. Well, "Blink" is a book about those two seconds, because I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good.

Lots of people are committed to the idea that more information is always better. But I describe lots of cases in "Blink" where that simply isn't true.

"Blink" is concerned with the smallest components of our everyday lives -- with the content and origin of those instantaneous impressions and conclusions that bubble up whenever we meet a new person, or confront a complex situation, or have to make a decision under conditions of stress.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

This program offers over an hour of video content and eighty slides from the presentation.

Evolutionary Dynamics

Daniel Dennett has a new book coming out in April.

Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness

Many people will assume any book sold in a Grand Canyon bookstore has the imprimatur of the Park Service.

Creationism and Science Clash at Grand Canyon Bookstores

Books. It's what's for reading.

A brilliant book celebrating improbability as the engine that drives life, by the acclaimed author of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker. The human eye is so complex and works so precisely that surely, one might believe, its current shape and function must be the product of design.

How could such an intricate object have come about by chance?

Tackling this subject -- in writing that the New York Times called "a masterpiece" -- Richard Dawkins builds a carefully reasoned and lovingly illustrated argument for evolutionary adaptation as the mechanism for life on earth.

The metaphor of Mount Improbable represents the combination of perfection and improbability that is epitomized in the seemingly "designed" complexity of living things.

Dawkins skillfully guides the reader on a breathtaking journey through the mountain's passes and up its many peaks to demonstrate that following the improbable path to perfection takes time.

Evocative illustrations accompany Dawkins's eloquent descriptions of extraordinary adaptations such as the teeming populations of figs, the intricate silken world of spiders, and the evolution of wings on the bodies of flightless animals.

And through it all runs the thread of DNA, the molecule of life, responsible for its own destiny on an unending pilgrimage through time. Climbing Mount Improbable is a book of great impact and skill, written by the most prominent Darwinian of our age.

<sarcasm> More than seven years after its publication, the probability that a scientifically literate person, X, has not encountered this book, Y, is vanishingly close to zero. </sarcasm>

Used paperbacks are available for $5. Can you spare $5?

This message brought to you by the Book People.

Climbing Mount Improbable

"As a friend of mine said, it takes half a second for a baby to throw up all over your sweater. It takes hours to get it clean."

Wired 12.10: The Crusade Against Evolution