Mailund on the Internet

I have strong opinions about creationism, but I usually don't voice them here.  Even discussing it is giving it too much attention.  I prefer just to ignore it, like I ignore astrology, palm reading and other crazy pseudo-sciences.

The reason I mention it today is that today a new Danish website on evolution goes online: evolution.dk

The purpose is to present the science of evolution (yeah, it is called the theory of evolution, but it is science, damn it!) and discuss the various myths about it made up by creationists and their pseudo scientist bedfellows in "intelligent" design.

Anyway, rant off...

I guess it is good to have some public discussion of this, even if I would prefer to kill it with silence.  After all, if only one part in the discussion is heard, you will get the wrong impression about the controversy.  Mind you, the controversy I'm referring to here is not a scientific one, but one between scientists and religion.

And there is a bit of a debate going on now in the media.  Tonight there will be a television show on it, and there was a piece on the new website in my morning paper today.

We also have two seminars on this next week at BiRC, that I plan to attend.  The speakers are not from BiRC but from Science Studies, the group we share our building with.

Anyway, if you can read Danish, go check out their website.

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As I promised last week, I am planning to post a list of the posts I've enjoyed during the week, at the end of each week.

It is, of course, going to be a very subjective selection and is going to reflect what my interests have been the past week as much as what has been going on in the blogs the past week.

This week, that means that it will be a bit programming heavy with no genetics or bioinformatics.  Not that I haven't been thinking about that this week, but it's mainly been my own research and that is more the topic for separate posts (when I get around to it).

I've just recently started reading Michael Nielsen's blog, with much enjoyment, so there's a few favorite "open science" links as well.

Anyway, here goes...

Programming

• From Podcast 38 (Joel on Software)
• How does your programming language rate? (Code Capers)
• Zwart (Drinkable Chicken)
• High-performance computing with R (Revolutions)
• Class attributes and scoping in Python, Part 1 (It's Not Easy Being Genes)
• Tips for writing better SQL (Code Capers)
• Multiprocessing in hindsight (Jesse Noller)

R graphics

• 10 tips for making your R graphics look their best (Revolutions)
• Multicolor text in R (Revolutions)

Open science and blogs in science

• Microblogging finds its way into PLoS (business|bytes|genes|molecules)
• The logic of collective action (Michael Nielsen)
• Doing science online (Michael Nielsen)

Statistics

• What should an introduction to statistics be like? (Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science)

Reviewing

• What are journals for? (Journal of Biology)

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