I had to read this page twice, because the first time I thought it was a satire.

William Dembksi is perhaps ID’s most vocal proponent. His blog (I won’t link to it, ewww) is so full of holes you could ride a Galapagos turtle through them. But he’s now gone much farther than simply mislead people with fallacious logic: according to that link above, he’s reported a scientist to Homeland Security.

That link above, written by my friend Wes Elsberry, tells this tale. Read the page, but here’s a brief synopsis.

This (real) scientist, Eric Pianka, says (I am paraphrasing) that humans have so overpopulated the Earth that we are soon due for a "crash", as most populations which get too big often do. It means a huge die-off, as much as 90% of a population dying. Mind you, he is simply saying this is a typical biological situation of overpopulation, and that’s what happens quite often. He is not, say, advocating this position. Merely stating it as a scientific possibility.

Enter Forrest M. Mims III, an antievolutionist. He claims that Pianka is openly advocating the literal decimation of the human race. Then enter William Dembski, who decided that someone who would do such a thing should be reported to the government, to Homeland Security.

This is disgusting on every way. Demsbki has long said he advocates freedom of expression, since he wants to get ID into schools, yet here he is openly trying to suppress someone whose opinion he disagrees with — scratch that, whose falsely made-up opinion he disagrees with. It would be awful enough if Pianka did advocate genocide, but the IDers made that up! It’s a lie.

And to call Homeland Security on someone who disagrees with you brings to mind such visions as the 1950s Soviet Union, or Afghanistan in the late 1990s. If you disagree, then read what PZ Myers has to say about the grief the Texas Academy of Science is getting over this.

If there was some reason William Dembski wasn’t a mile beneath your contempt before, he’s got a shovel and he’s digging away. An academic, a scientist, an educator, should never, ever have to fear that their government will investigate them for simply stating what they see as truth. That is one of the scariest forms of government I can imagine. Even Dembski has the right to say what he wants. But the price of free speech is eternal vigilance.

If you believe in ID or not, Dembski is contemptible. And if you do believe in it, do you really want that guy speaking for you?

This is precisely the kind of garbage some advocates of anti-science will pull, all the while saying it’s their freedom they want to protect, and they they are the ones being suppressed by the mainstream.

I urge any and all fellow scientists reading this to put links in your blog to Wes and PZ’s pages. Give this some air time and let Dembski humiliate himself on an even larger scale.

Posts like this one. Clever, succinct. I imagine most people will say this is an attack on religion– and knowing PZ, it is. However, it can also be interpreted as being an attack on fantastical thinking, which I think is an excellent metaphor.

Thanks to a link from the most excellent Tara at Aetiology, I found out that Science magazine gave me some props. Cool!

Update: Woops! I should have said, Tara got the news from Orac.

I’m on the road today, winging my way to DC to give a talk at Goddard Space Flight Center, my old stomping grounds. Well, I never stomped there, really. Actually, it’s more like I actually fled from there, but still, it’ll be fun to be back for just the day.

Anyway, a few months ago I did an interview for a podcast with my old bud Chris Pirillo, who runs the wildly successful Lockergnome website. I met him when he was hosting the show "Call for Help" on what was then "TechTVB" but has now horribly mutated into "G4" (a web search on our names together, with the name of the show, will yield some interesting results).

Anyway, Chris asked if I’d talk to him on his equally wildly successful podcast, and I said sure. So to keep you entertained in my absence, here it is. It’s fairly long. I haven’t even listened to it yet! I plan on it while I’m on the plane. If it stinks, then I’m pretty sure it’s Chris’s fault.

Update: D’oh! I did a dumb thing– I didn’t check the date on the article. This happened over two years ago! I thought this story was familiar, but didn’t have time to check up on it, and wanted to get it up on the blog so others could see it. Well, lesson learned on my part. Sorry about this, folks.

Did a meteorite hit in eastern India, injuring people?

According to this BBC article, a fireball fell from the sky on March 25, setting fire to houses and injuring three people (there is also another, earlier, article saying 20 people were hurt).

It sounds legit, but I’m not actually convinced. Most of the time, these reports turn out to be exaggerated or even false. And in general, meteorites don’t cause fires unless the incoming meteoroid is really big. Accurate information on this is very hard to come by.

If anyone finds more info, please leave a comment here! I am always interested in following up on events like this.

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Given that the vast majority of my readers are in the US, I waited until the last minute to post about the eclipse tonight, seeing as how it’s happening over Africa and Asia. Also, I’m lazy.

The eclipse starts around 08:30 Universal Time and runs through about noon UT (in 03:30 – 07:00 Eastern US time). Granted that’s a wee bit late at night for us here in the States (stupid Earth, turning its back on the eclipse!), but you can still watch it live on the web.

First, if you’re not sure about what an eclipse is and how they work, then head over to Sky and Telescope webpage which has loads of info.

If you want to watch it over the web, there are lots of resources. Here are a few good ones:

• NASA (yes, NASA)
• The Exploratorium, a great kids science exploration place in San Francisco. For the uber-geeks, the Exploratorium also has a feed that will go into Second Life. Wow.
• The Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, California
• Lots more webcams are listed on the Sky and Tel website.

By the way, there is a lot of misinformation about eclipses. For example, there has never been a single reported case, ever, or total, permanent blindness from looking at the Sun. You can be partially blinded, but you’d have to work pretty hard to go totally blind. Still, looking at the Sun without correct protection is not too bright (hahahaha) because you can do some damage. Again, Sky and Tel has a list of ways to view an eclipse safely.

Also, if you’re pregnant, it’s still OK to watch, despite some really weird rumors (bottom of that page).’

As a followup to my run-in with a Playboy bunny (oops, more googleness), I give you here a clip from an interview I did with my local news station, KFTY Santa Rosa, a couple of years ago on the vernal equinox.