Small World

Posted on April 25, 2009 by Troy Britain

P. Z. Myers, who lives in Minnesota, posted a peice on his blog Pharyngula about a pro-animal testing/pro-science rally held at University California Los Angeles. In his post he included a link to a video of a local So. Cal. (where I live) TV news (KTLA) report on the rally.

But that isn’t the only thing that makes it a small world. What really does it is that at 1:06 into the video there is a shot of some of the Pro-Testers carrying a white banner that reads:

“UCLA Pro-Test

Animal Research

Saves Lives“.

Pro-Test02_arrow

I helped to make that banner, two of them actually, at the print shop where I work last week and wondered what they were going to do with them.

So P. Z. in Minnesota, writes a blog that I happen to read regularly and in one of his posts he points his readers (including me) to a video from a Southern California TV channel that has a shot of a banner I made a week ago.

Small world.

Oh, and I agree with P. Z. and the Pro-Testers on the issue of animal testing.

A (slightly embarassing) Darwin day at USC

Posted on April 20, 2009 by Troy Britain

This past Wednesday (4-15-09) I attended an interesting set of ‘Darwin Year’ lectures at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (Darwin Today: Evolution and Scientific Thought). The lectures were moderated by USC anthropologist Craig Stanford and the speakers included: Donald Johanson (paleoanthropologist and discoverer of the famous Lucy fossil), USC paleobiologist/ecologist David Bottjer, USC microbiologist Steve Finkel and last but certainly not least was my friend Eugenie Scott, director of The National Center for Science Education.

All the talks were interesting but the most entertaining was probably Dr. Finkel’s which focused on bacteria. In addition to all the fascinating stuff on evolution in prokaryotes his talk contained lots of amusing gross-out trivia about such things as how there are 300,000,000 bacteria per gram of fecal material living in the average persons colon (that’s about the same as the number of people living in the U.S.).

The talks wrapped up with an interesting round-table discussion of sorts between the speakers and the audiences (which contained several other USC faculty members), mostly revolving around the subject of Genie’s talk, which was of course on K-12 science education and the effects of antievolutionists on it.

I’ll be kicking myself for months because of Genie though (it’s not her fault though). Within the first minute of her talk she put up a slide of the NCSE’s logo and asked if anyone recognized the image. When no one spoke up she quickly said “tell’em Troy”.

Deer in the headlights.

I wasn’t expecting to be put on the spot, at least not that soon, I mean Genie has asked me questions during her talks before, which is normally fine, but this time my brain locked up. Fortunately she quickly let me off the hook and told everyone that it was based on a drawing from one of Darwin’s notebooks.

NCSE's logo

Of course this sort of thing happens to all of us, especially when we are surprised and under pressure, but in this case I have little excuse. You see just a few months ago I went to a special Darwin exhibit at the Huntington Library (San Marino, CA) and contained in that exhibit was the very notebook of Darwin’s in which appears the drawing which the NCSE’s logo is based upon. I even remember saying to myself, “oh look, there is the drawing the NCSE is using for their logo.”

The original from Darwin's notebook.

Flash forward to last Wednesday, and it’s “ah, uhm, ah, I don’t remember exactly where that’s from…”. Arrrrgh!

Ah well, as a consolation prize I was able to get a photograph of myself with Don Johanson to add to my collection.

Donald Johanson and yours truly.

[slapping self in head, “Darwin’s notebook, Darwin’s notebook…”]

Iowa Supreme Court Upholds Gay Marriage

Posted on April 7, 2009 by Troy Britain

This is via my friend Ed Brayton over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars:

The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Friday that the state must allow same-sex couples to get married. See full ruling here. Long excerpt from the ruling below the fold:

We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective. The legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification. There is no material fact, genuinely in dispute, that can affect this determination.

We have a constitutional duty to ensure equal protection of the law. Faithfulness to that duty requires us to hold Iowa’s marriage statute, Iowa Code section 595.2, violates the Iowa Constitution. To decide otherwise would be an abdication of our constitutional duty. If gay and lesbian people must submit to different treatment without an exceedingly persuasive justification, they are deprived of the benefits of the principle of equal protection upon which the rule of law is founded. Iowa Code section 595.2 denies gay and lesbian people the equal protection of the law promised by the Iowa Constitution.

Bravo.

Bravo indeed.

And queue the shrill cries of “unelected judges” followed shortly by vague, unsubstantiated claims that Iowa families are somehow in danger because of this ruling in 3, 2, 1…