In Case You Haven't Noticed...

... I have tried to steer my blog, Evolution Engineered (EE), towards more engineering topics. The posts, Redundancy - A Mark of Design? and WTC7 & ID have been, in my opinion, very successful in terms of providing stimulating and entertaining discussions. I hope to continue this trend in future posts, but I also reserve the right to post on stuff that interest me (call it the blogger's home field advantage).

I hope you continue to enjoy visiting and commenting at EE.

Information Theory Post at PT

I'd like to think that I have a reputation of being fair to both sides of the ID/evolution debate, giving credit and criticisms where due.

That said, I enjoyed a recent post at Panda's Thumb by PvM entitled "Information Content of DNA" (see my blog roll at the right). I found the post to be interesting and fair. I would have preferred more details (i.e. equations, reference papers) to support the claims made, but I'm sure someone will point me in the right direction.

As some of you know, I believe Information Theory is a key area of interest/research in biology and could help shed light on the ID/evolution debate. The tricky part is determining exactly what constitutes information in biology, something the PT post commented on.

Critical Thinking

From a post at Mike Gene's blog. I particularly like numbers 2 and 4:

"2. understand and define terms (make others define terms, too)

4. question the conclusion: do the facts support it? is there evidence of bias? remember correlation does not equal causation."

Free Plug For AcademicFreedomBlog

I like the blog AcademicFreedomBlog so much that it is part of my blog roll at the right. Like Tom Gilson at Thinking Christian (another free plug!), I find Dr. Mc's commentary to be even-handed and level-headed.

In the latest post, Baraminology and Pseudoscience, Dr. Mc made some, what I will call, in-your-face comments; direct and brutally honest (IMHO):

"The current classification structure of genus (meaning general) and species (meaning specific) is bankrupt.I don’t think that’s too strong a statement, since after hundreds of years of use a clear definition of what a "species" is has not emerged. Take for instance the coyote ( Canis latrans), the gray wolf (Canis lupus), and the black backed jackal (Canis mesomelas). They are classified as three different species in the genus Canis, yet domesticated dogs of any description are all considered to be the same species (Canis familiaris). The term virtually has no meaning. So why haven’t scientists abandoned this antiquated classification system, developed by an 18th century creationist, in favor of a more precise one? Because fuzzy boundaries serve evolution theory well. If clear boundaries are discovered between classifications of organisms, then that lends support to creationism and undermines evolution. So science is not allowed to advance in that direction! In order to keep baraminology as pseudoscience, we must live with pseudospecies."

I would encourage you to make any comments you feel are necessary over at AcademicFreedomBlog. I am too busy at work to follow the comments at EE (with the exception of this one).