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Archive for the ‘Biology’ Category

Beautiful Bird

From the book entitled: “Beautiful Birds: Their Natural History — Including an account of their Structure, Habits,  Nidification, etc., etc.   Vol. II”

Published in 1855, from the manuscript of the late John Cotton,  author of:

• Flowers from Foreign Lands
• Flowers from the Holy Land
• Flowers and Heraldry
• Favorite Field Flowers

Etc., etc.

With twelve coloured plates, drawn and coloured by James Andrews.

Inside the front cover appears this adverstisement for the book:

The first volume of this work comprised an outline history of the Raptorial Birds, together with that of the Dentirostral tribe of the Insessorial Order. In the present we lay before our readers the remainder of the Insessorial Order, comprising the several Tribes, Fissirostres, Scansores, Tenuirostres, and Conirostres. The whole work will be completed by the publication of the third volume, which will comprehend the Orders Rasores, Grallatores, and Natatores: orders in which are placed several domestic and wild families well known and valued in this country. We, therefore, confidently expect that it will possess, for the majority of our readers, greater interest than the portions already published.

Autumn on Flickr – Follow GR58’s photostream.

In several recent articles, we talked about the impact of the new documentary film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. (See also: Can I Ask You a Question?) The movie was released about 2 weeks ago. The article I wrote last Saturday, Questions That Aren’t Properly Answered … received a number of interesting comments. It’s obviously too early to tell what the long term impact of the movie will be, and like many movies, it makes a big splash for about 2 weeks, and then disappears off the radar… only showing up in DVD rentals and video sales many months later.

When you look at the chart above (thanks to Google Trends), you can see where interest (“search volume”) in the Expelled movie (green line) and Ben Stein (red line) peaked around April 18th, 2008. It’s a 30 day view of the data. The bottom part of the chart above (labeled “News reference volume”) indicates a ripple effect in news articles with reference to “Intelligent Design” (blue line) slightly after the movie release.

The chart below takes a longer view of the data (showing 2004 – 2008), and indicates that most of the debate, public interest in Intelligent Design, and news articles about Intelligent Design took place in 2005. I was surprised by this — and had forgotten about the 2005 broohaahaa over ID.

The blue line indicates interest in Intelligent Design, both in search volume, and news articles. The red line shows a peak in queries about Ben Stein occurring at the time of his movie release. On the original Google Trend chart that I reviewed, item C (above) indicates a news item: “Schools Should Teach ‘Intelligent Design,’ Bush Says”. Item D was a news item: “Intelligent Design Debate to Take Center Stage”. Item E was most interesting – a news item: “Pennsylvania voters oust school board that backed intelligent design”. So there was a whole PA school board that was expelled. Finally, the big blue spike flagged as item F was tagged with news item “Judge rules in intelligent design lawsuit”.

It’s been a week since Expelled was released into the theaters. That’s enough time for dozens of movie reviews; blogs about it; and blogs about other bloggers views, even from people who didn’t see the movie. So it’s safe to say that the movie has been successful — in getting people to talk — and ask questions.

I had been itching to see Expelled, since my friend John (from Michigan) told me about it, and Wednesday night I saw it. This morning my facebook friend John (from California) told me about Dinesh D’Souza’s (Hoover Institute – Stanford) AOL News article where DD says:

Stein brilliantly responds that he had no idea Richard Dawkins believes in intelligent design! And indeed Dawkins does seem to be saying that alien intelligence is responsible for life arriving on earth. What are we to make of this? Basically Dawkins is surrendering on the claim that evolution can account for the origins of life. It can’t. The issue now is simply whether a natural intelligence (ET) or a supernatural intelligence (God) created life. Dawkins can’t bear the supernatural explanation and so he opts for ET.

ToTheSource is running a side by side comparison of viewpoints.

Terry W. Frizell says: Stein deals with the huge question, “Where did life come from?” and therefore the movie is a “must-see”.

Seldom Wrong still had not gone to the movie, but asked – Is it reasonable to think that life arose by chance?

… as noted by D’Souza, Expelled exposes Richard Dawkins’s belief that life on earth was seeded by extraterrestrials. That is genuinely as good a demonstration as one can imagine that it’s not reasonable to think that life arose by chance…

We assert further that evolutionary biology and ID are really only different in very narrow areas that have to do with these very questions: is it reasonable to think that life arose by chance, and is it reasonable to think that an intelligence designed the universe?

Mary Alice has already seen the movie twice, and gets to the heart of the matter.

Kevin Porter said the movie was “quite excellent” and Richard Dawkins reminded him of a dog chasing his tail.

Brock Gill says: A new front has been opened in the culture wars.

Universalist Steve questions the honesty, ethics and marketing techniques of the films producers.

Monado from Toronto asserts in her Science Notes that: “An invincible ignorance of science seems to be the real pre-requisite for Intelligent Design believers” — and appears comfortably ignorant of her own presuppositions.

Chris Mooney at Science Progress says the movie is a deeply dishonest piece of propaganda.

Images of Hitler and the Berlin wall frighten people. Movies are supposed to have images — moving images. That’s what movies do. Movies sell ideas with imagery to make a point. Vodka advertisements use imagery to sell products, and the pundits just don’t like a movie that mixes imagery with science, religion, ethics, epistemology, and philosophy.

But, there is more at risk than selling vodka. Absolutely, says Kevin Clark at the Charcoal Fire: “This is the most thought-provoking thing to come out of Hollywood in a long time” … Expelled Exposes Irresponsible and Irrational Scientists :

“Darwinism indeed was the philosophy that Nazi scientists held. Darwinism’s theory of natural selection was the foundation of policies and propaganda that helped build the menace of the Nazi regime. And Darwinism is today building the menace of academic totalitarianism and the abortion machine. And yes, this is the problem: Scientists have squelched philosophy as a pseudoscience, and in doing so have themselves become the philosophers.”

Daniel Wigington says in his hopefully-not-boring blog:

Stein prods the Darwinists enough that some of them — including Richard Dawkins — make some unexpected statements about the possibility of intelligence in biological design and the philosophical implications of Darwinian theory.