Due to a recent scuffle over sacred sugar free cookies, science blogger PZ Myers has received a ton of hate mail and calls for his job. Of course, no one surrenders the freedom of speech when they become an employee of the government. You just don’t get to claim that the government institution that you work for supports your statements. Nevertheless, there’s been a lot of intolerance coming in the name of tolerance.

In addition to all this, several emails PZ has received contained death threats, and he has just posted two of those emails to his blog, including full IP addresses, headers, email addresses, and everything. Apparently, one of them sent this email through their work email, so now we know that they work for 1800flowers.com! Doesn’t look like they will be working there much longer. Read More…

Over at the Ethicurean, Bonnie posted an interview with Claire Hope Cummings, that I think bears examination. Cummings is the author of the book Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds, and goes on to make several ghastly claims. Not only factual errors, but really fallacious reasoning as well. I left a lengthy comment over there, but I will reproduce it here with some of the text of the interview. Read More…

John McDonald, the Director of Student Ministries at Westminster Presbyterian Church, has stopped by my blog to drop a few comments. He has been seen previously at the Florida Citizens for Science blog prodding them with taunts and ill-informed criticisms of evolutionary science.

One of the interesting claims that he has been making repeatedly is that David Hume destroyed Empiricism, and that Immanuel Kant saved science from the pickle Hume put it in. This seemed rather odd, considering that Hume was himself an empiricist - he believed that knowledge derived through observation, rather than pure reason (Descartes et al.) was the way to go. Here are John’s comments on this topic on the KCS blog: Read More…

I just got an email from Jeff Shaw, my friend back in Davis who I got to know because he is the station manager for KDRT LP-FM, a low-power community radio station where I got my start on the air.

There’s been trouble brewing for quite a while about the status of low-power fm stations, which are currently considered second-class citizens next to full-power stations. A full-power commercial station can just up and sit on an LPFM station and take its spot on the radio dial if it feels like it. KDRT was at risk for being run out of town by a station called KMJE that was going to move close enough to Davis to interfere with KDRT’s signal - they are both 101.5 fm. It didn’t matter that KMJE was the one moving, KDRT would have had to shut down or be legally an “encroacher.” Fortunately, there has been such an upwelling of support for Davis’s community station that KMJE realized that they were about to piss off the new market they were trying to reach, and has backed off with intent to negotiate KDRTs continued existence. But not every LPFM station will be that fortunate.

Fortunately, the FCC is cluing into the inequities involved, and the value that small local stations have for their communities, and is looking to change the rules to give LPFM stations more security. Many media reform groups such as Prometheus Radio and The Future of Music endorse this plan, but they have one big obstacle, one enemy, that will stop at nothing to prevent LPFM stations from having a means to prevent being overrun by bigger stations that just feel like doing it. Who, might you ask? Is it the conglomeromegacommercial stations? An FCC dissenter? Rush Limbaugh?

No, it’s NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO.

Oh, they don’t just think that the FCC shouldn’t decide in favor of the low-power community stations, they claim that they have the laws of physics on their side. What? Oh get ready for some Monday Madness! Read More…

Previously, I addressed the give and take of food prices. Pam Ronald at Tomorrow’s Table also adds to the discussion:

In an editorial this week in the NYT, Paul Krugman places part of the blame for rising food prices on biofuels: “We need to pushback against biofuels that turns out to have been a terrible mistake.” But this conclusion is premature and overly simplistic.

Whether biofuels offer carbon savings depends on how they are produced. If we destroy rainforests and grasslands to plant food crop–based biofuels, then Krugman is right. This would be a terrible mistake. (…) Read More…

A lot of interesting things are coming out of the recent upsurge in corn grain being used for ethanol production. There have been papers doubting the environmental benefits of biofuels, and all sorts of other interesting bits of news resulting from the higher price of field corn. Kirsten at The Bird’s Brain notes that popcorn has gotten a little more expensive, and Jeremy at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog links to an article hailing the food-system benefits of more expensive food. It’s a mixed bag, but there are a few things we can expect out of all this: Read More…

Episode 76 of the Mindcast is now up!

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Show topics:

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…Because he would have had a mountain more evidence against him in the Kitzmiller v Dover trial.

Michael Behe, Intelligent Design Creationist Extraordinaire, started an Amazon.com blog to answer criticisms of his recent book, The Edge of Evolution. Read More…

(via Chris Mooney at The Intersection)

On the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, Senator Hilary Clinton attacked the science policies of the Bush Administration, and has laid out a plan for science in her administration, should she be elected. Clinton is the first presidential candidate (to my knowledge) to address science directly like this, and

50 years after the launch of Sputnik 1 is a very good day to do it. Sputnik was a scientific and technological wake up call right to the United States’ bedroom telephone. An elegant satellite was launched into orbit and transmitted a radio frequency beep that was heard around the world. It had a scientific payload, too, as the beeps themselves contained information about the electron density of the ionosphere, and whether or not the spacecraft was punctured by meteors. Read More…

Episode 72 of the Mindcast is up!

Download it here. Read More…