Finishing up...!

Hi All.

Time to finish up with the science elective. The last assignment is due on April 6th, Sunday by midnight. Please write up the debate as we talked about in class. I need to hand in the grades on Tuesday at the latest - NO DELAYS, NO EXTENSIONS!

Thanks for an interesting class. Do keep reading and writing science.

Good luck.

vijaya

GOOD DEBATE

Hi All.

The God vs. Gorrilla debate was very interesting and I have to commend all of you on the preparation you had put in. Hope you were able to appreciate all the different aspects of the issue.

The final assignment in the class will be to write this up. You need to highlight the issues in both ID and Darwin's theory and conclude with your position on the debate. I would like to see some specifics on examples of irreducible complexity (explanatory writing - not just the jargon) and evolution theory's rebuttal to those.

This will be due by midnight, Sunday, April 6th. This is the final deadline. I need to send in the grades soon after that. So, NO EXTENSIONS!

Good Luck and see you on Friday.

vijaya

Creationism v/s Intelligent design

Hi All

I cam across a few interesting articles on how ID is different from Creationism. Most of it is in question and answer format. so makes an easy read

Here are the links:
http://www.adl.org/issue_religious_freedom/create/creationism_QA.asp
http://www.discovery.org/a/1329
(This one is rather pro-ID. but still makes a good read)
http://skepdic.com/intelligentdesign.html
(This one called ID a hoax but has comments about ID by various people towards the end

Human Interest Science

Hi all.

There were a few comments in class today on some of the difficulties of putting human interest elements and science together in a story. Just to show you some of the approaches, here are a couple of stories I wrote on the South Pole Experiment - one for the Frontline and one for the DAWN group of publications, Pakistan.

http://www.hindu.com/fline/fl2211/stories/20050603000506400.htm
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/science/archive/071124/science1.htm

We can discuss this some more on Friday.

See you all on Wednesday evening.

vijaya

epidemic interview question

How strong is media's role in defining an epidemic very strong and dangerous? Also how can media help in reducing the ill effects of an epidemic from spreading

Interviewing Maryn Mckenna

Hi Folks.

Our interview with Maryn Mckenna is on Monday, 24th March at 6:30 pm (8 am, her time). Please start preparing for the interview, discuss with your class mates and post your questions on the blog.

She is working on a book on drug-resistant staph. Drug-resistant germs are a huge cause for concern - especially in the Indian context where antibiotics are prescribed rather too easily. If you would like more information about this book and ask her questions about this topic, here is the where you can look it up - <http://drugresistantstaph.blogspot.com>

She would also like to hear your views on the Polio Eradication Campaign. Please do spend some time researching and thinking about this.

You can ask her questions on epidemics(Bird Flu, SARS, etc.), health reporting, toxics and RISK etc.

See you all on Monday.

Vijaya

Some links for the debate

Hi,

Here are some interesting links that i came across related to the debate.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cosmo.html
http://www.health.adelaide.edu.au/Pharm/Musgrave/essays/flagella.htm (the conclusion is interesting)
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html
http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/996_intelligent_design_not_accep_9_10_2002.asp
http://www.veritas-ucsb.org/library/origins/GRAPHICS-CAPTIONS/Flagellum.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe/review.html
http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_2.htm
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/darwinism.html

cheers,
nina