Month: February 2005

Incredible!

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Here’s a webpage that claims to have color photos from WWI. It looks reasonably legit from what I can see, but I can’t say for sure.

Click on over and have a look.

UPDATE
Reader Paul Stinchfield has sent me two links where WWI color photos may be found. They are this one and this one.

If you’re interested in looking over a huge online archive of French photographic pioneers, then I suggest that you click this link and start browsing. Lots of stuff there.

(Hat tip to Spoons, and he got from Vodkapundit.)

C-SPAN 1 & 2 (times e.t.)

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Book TV Schedule, on C-SPAN 2.

This Sunday Q&A (8:00 p.m. and again 11:00) on C-SPAN 1 features Michael Steele, the Republican Lt. Governor of Maryland.

At After Words on BookTV (Sunday at 6 & 9)

William Hague, member of Britain’s Parliament and former Leader of the Conservative Party discusses his first book titled, “William Pitt the Younger.” It’s the biography of the man who in 1784 at the age of twenty-four became the youngest Prime Minister in the history of England. Mr. Hague is interviewed by Martin Turner, Washington Bureau Chief for the BBC.

BookTV highlights (at 7:00 Saturday evening) a “State of Science Journalism” panel, with Nick Gillespie, Sally Satel, Ronald Bailey and Chris Mooney.

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Consilience: Shannon & Lit Crit

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Shannon’s discussion has been remarkably fruitful. Several contemporary scholars in fields influenced by evolution have noted the inconsistency she describes; rather than rejecting Darwin they have applied his insights, ones honed in evolutionary psychology, to the humanities. Harold Fromm’s “The New Darwinism in the Humanities” (Hudson Review.com) is a useful introductory bibliographic essay. This link to Hudson Review includes both Part I: From Plato to Pinker from Spring 2003 and Part II: Back to Nature Again from Summer 2003. Fromm spends much time on Pinker’s The Blank Slate which was then climbing the best-seller lists.

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The Left and Evolution

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I was educated as a biologist and evolutionary theory remains an intellectual interest of mine. I spent many hours in my youth arguing with “scientific” creationists. These hours were largely spent educating the creationists on the actual theory they were criticizing, or debating the finer philosophical points of scientific methodology. I eventually gave up due to pure frustration because in the end creationists believe what they believe as a matter of faith. You can’t argue somebody out of his faith.

So this post over at Powerline pointing to a biology professor who is denouncing the Powerline guys for being idiots because one of them doesn’t believe in evolution grabbed my attention .

Creationists are exasperating because they never study evolutionary theory in any detail. Since they start with the unshakable presumption that the theory is wrong, they can never actually honestly analyze the theory and therefore can never understand it in any depth. They just skim over the theory looking for points that confuse them and then pronounce the misunderstood points as fatal flaws within the theory itself.

Frankly, most creationists’ knowledge of evolutionary theory boils down to, “them scientist fellas what says we alls comes from monkeys!”

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