Panda’s Thumb has been down since the 16th of June, owing to a hardware failure in its server machine. Reed has been working to fix that, and I have been adapting the site to be served by Github Pages. This has been possible since it was already using a locally-served version of Github Pages since 2016, in its previous configuration.

Currently most features of PT work. The comments do not appear at the end of articles, even though the count of the number of comments appears for each article on the front page of the site, and the Recent Comments list appears correctly. Current and archived posts are available. We hope to get comments working very soon. In the meantime, please be patient, and watch this space.

The title of this article, Teaching evolution in U.S. public schools: a continuing challenge, seems to me a little sterile and possibly unduly pessimistic. The main conclusions of the article are given in the figure: The fraction of teachers who teach evolution has increased from 50 to nearly 70 % in the 12 years since an earlier survey. Additionally, the fraction who teach creationism has fallen, and the fraction who give “mixed messages” has fallen precipitously, from the low 20’s to the low teens.

Among other conclusions, the authors credit the Next Generation Science Standards for the improvement.

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… And please don’t forget the photography contest!

The other day I received an e-mail from AIG, advertising a number of books that appear to be about racism, including, in particular, The Biblical Answer to Racism, by Ken Ham. The book was offered to me for $0.49, which was waived if I inserted a certain code. I found that I already had an account with AIG, so “buying” the book was trivial, and it came essentially instantaneously as a pdf.

The biblical answer to racism, I am happy to report, is that there is no such thing as race. As Mr. Ham writes,

All human beings in the world today, however, are classified as Homo sapiens sapiens. Scientists today admit that, biologically, there really is only one race of humans. For instance, a scientist at the [American Association for the?] Advancement of Science Convention in Atlanta stated, “Race is a social construct derived mainly from perceptions conditioned by events of recorded history, and it has no basic biological reality.” This person went on to say, “Curiously enough, the idea comes very close to being of American manufacture.” [Italics in original.]

This, after the mandatory attack on evolution, quoting Stephen Jay Gould out of context, and claiming that On the Origin of Species is an inherently racist document, because many people who followed it were racists. The argument, which is kind of irrelevant, is close to the genetic fallacy, but we need not get into that.

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The 11th annual photography contest begins now, Friday, June 5, at 12:00 p.m., MDT (MDT = UTC(GMT) – 6 h). Entries will be accepted between now and Friday, June 19, at 12:00 p.m., MDT. The rules are precisely the same as last year’s, except, obviously, that the dates have been updated.

We encourage entries in a single, general category, which includes pictures of just about anything of scientific interest: any object of experimentation or observation, from single-celled organisms, through nematodes, fruit flies, rats, chimpanzees, and college sophomores to volcanoes, stars, and galaxies. In order not to omit theoreticians, we will consider computer-generated pictures and also photographs of equipment. Photomicrographs and electron micrographs are likewise welcomed.

The winner and the runner-up will receive a copy of Sahotra Sarkar’s Doubting Darwin? or a copy of Elliott Sober’s Did Darwin Write the Origin Backwards?, both generously donated by the National Center for Science Education.

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