Monday Science Links

This week's science:

Orac at Respectful Insolence posts on medicine and evolution. One thing that continues to irritate me is just how widespread rejection of evolutionary theory is. Anti-evolution ideologues are unrelenting in their attacks on "Darwinism," the worst of which occurred just last year when Ben Stein starred in a movie that linked evolution to the Holocaust. Worse, from my perspective as a surgeon, are the numbers of physicians and surgeons who reject evolution, one of whom, such as neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor, have even become hacks writing for the Discovery Institute.

• The Planetologist talks about information and entropy: A reader commented on my recent post about entropy, and asked how information and entropy are related. Creationists sometimes argue that information can’t spontaneously increase because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics (they’re wrong), and then they use that mistaken understanding to try and assert that evolution is impossible. I mentioned that issue briefly in my post, but left further elaboration for later. Well, now is later.


• Bee at Back Reaction weighs in on the science blogger vs. science journalist fight: Science bloggers and their sometimes troublesome relation to science journalists is a topic that I have come across many times since I started writing this blog. And in many instances I have heard statements of the sort that blogging will render journalism obsolete.


• Over at the Shores of the Dirac Sea dberenstein looks at looking for messages in numbers: Over at Cosmic Variance, they had a recent post on big surprises that one could have in physics. In the comments someone suggested that we should be looking for messages from the creator in the digits of pi. I’m sure this was said in jest, but I’ve seen enough similar attempts forwarded into my e-mail box to know that this goes on. Of course, this is just one more version of what we in physics pejoratively describe as numerology: some random collection of facts about some really important mystical number, that has no physical mechanism to describe a physical situation . Apart from pi, another very popular set of such numbers are 42 and 137. The plan of this approach is that everything there is to know about the world is encoded in these numbers, if you only have the correct algorithm to decode it. One of the popular algorithms is to look for the digits of pi or some other irrational number and to try to see patterns in them."


• Judith at Zenobia: Empress of the East tells us why they're laser scanning the relief at Hung-e Azhdar: This extraordinary relief is carved on a huge limestone boulder at the cliff edge of a remote, not to say 'hidden' valley in the rugged mountains of northeastern Khuzistan [at the southwestern edge of the Iranian plateau, sharing a border with southern Iraq (= the big red blob on the map, below right)]. In ancient times, this was the heartland of Elymais, sometimes a small empire, more often a vassal to more powerful states. At the time this relief was carved, Elymais was under Parthian rule. Or was it? Well, yes and no. As so often, scholars differ. Look closely at the relief. You'll see that it is divided into two very different compositions -- and carved in entirely different styles. So, the question is: does this relief record a single historical event? Or are two different happenings accidentally fused together by craftsmen too lazy to smooth away an earlier unfinished relief?

Enjoy!