Christianity & the Scottish Enlightenment

That's the name of our January term course, a trip to London and Edinburgh to learn about the Scottish Enlightenment and its relationship(s) to Christian belief. We'll be keeping a blog with pictures and reflections. So nothing on QoD till the end of the month.

In the meantime, share Mike Beidler's several minutes of fame. Then maybe read up on experimentally-induced out-of-body experiences. And don't miss Ken Miller's three-part series on the latest crap from the ID movement. And if you live in London or Edinburgh, think about dropping by to say hi. See you in three weeks!

Quintessence of Dust anthologized again

Well, wow, for the second year now one of my posts has been selected for inclusion in the science blogging anthology, The Open Laboratory. Last year it was the teosinte review; this year the honor goes to the post on Darwin's tomatoes. This year's anthology includes 50 blog posts on various scientific topics, and it looks like an excellent collection.

Thanks to Bora for his hard work as editor of the series and to Jennifer Rohn who is editing this year's edition. And thanks to Elsevier, which has granted free permission to reproduce part of a figure from the Current Biology article that I discuss in the post.

First blogiversary for Quintessence of Dust

Actually, my first post went up 3 August 2007, a little more than a year ago, but my first real article wasn't posted till 19 August, so I guess today is as good a day as any to celebrate. It's been a fun year, coinciding with my sabbatical, which ends [sniff] in 3 weeks. Once I'm back in my professor routine, I expect that my posting will be less erratic, especially since I requested a new office that's a bit removed from the beaten track. We'll see.

Thanks to all for reading and commenting. (I think I'll do better at responding to comments when my schedule calms down.) I'm especially thankful to Steve Martin at An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution for being the first to find me and welcome me to the blogosphere. John Farrell was an early encouragement, and Panda's Thumb linked to one of my first journal club articles. The high point was the teosinte article, which was linked at ERV, Pharyngula and PT and which was honored with a place in The Open Laboratory 2007. The blog has about 240 subscribers and gets roughly 100 hits a day. Room to grow, but it's nice to have enthusiastic readers.

To Mike Beidler: thanks for the compliment; it's my favorite link in the one-year life of the project. To Gordon Glover: keep up the fantastic work; your book is a precious gift.

Here's to Year 2 of Quintessence of Dust. More journal clubs, more developmental biology, a little less bitching about lame creationist claptrap. Or your money back.

Teosinte is selected...for an honor

Watching lay Christians discuss evolution in the public arena is very frustrating for me. As I've stressed repeatedly here, evolutionary biology is some of the most fascinating and dynamic science to be found. But public discourse on the subject is strongly influenced by the antics of demagogues at places like the Discovery Institute, an organization that is committed to ensuring that as few Christians as possible will encounter the reality of evolutionary science.

This, I think, is one reason why some of the finest work in all of biology is largely unknown to Christians who are otherwise convinced that they are qualified to pronounce a major scientific theory a categorical failure. A perfect example: the ongoing work on the evolution of corn and its relationship to its wild ancestor, teosinte. It doesn't get much better than that.

Back in October, I wrote an introduction to this great story, and covered just a little of the evolutionary biology involved. People liked the post a lot, and it got some nice attention in the blogosphere.

Now, the post has been honored with inclusion in the second edition of The Open Laboratory, a science blogging anthology edited by Bora (aka Coturnix) at A Blog Around The Clock on ScienceBlogs.

Woo hoo! Thanks to Bora and to Reed Cartwright, the guest editor of the 2007 edition, to the various judges, to The Panda's Thumb, ERV, and Pharyngula for the links that got the story into the larger blogosphere, and especially to John Doebley and his colleagues for assembling a world-class scientific story.