So here I am still in Alaska, waking up and sitting up in bed with this always-crashing company-issue dialup laptop trying to find yet another story for SciScoop, and while flipping through TV channels for background noise I come across a GREAT open forum program on C-SPAN2 Book TV.  Steven Pinker is hosting a talk about the book he edited, “The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004” (not to be confused with The Best American Science Writing 2004, a completely different book).  Chet  Raymo, for two decades a science essayist at the Boston Globe, read his GREAT selected contribution to the book about how the history of the universe past and future follows the traditional science breakdown of physics, chemistry and biology taught in high school.  The online repository of his columns is a national treasure.

Now the show is in the audience Q&A section of the program, and appropriately for a Sunday, all the audience questions tie into the relationship between science and religion.  One interesting point being discussed by Pinker is that religious organizations will soon turn on neuroscience the way they have already turned on evolution as a body of science that directly attacks the religious concept of souls.  

When that day comes, it may become necessary to set up another version of The Steve Project.  This was set up by Pinker and the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) in response to a twenty-scientist “truth squad” that attacked evolutionary theory on behalf of the creationist-oriented Discovery Institute.  Pinker found 200 scientists – ten times the evolutionary critics number – who supported evolution, and in a tip of the hat to Stephen J. Gould, all of these supporters had to have names that were variations of the name Steve.  Their membership is now over 400 and growing.

It’s almost enough to make me wish my name was Steve instead of rickyjames, top-of-Google tho I have become by that moniker.  Guess I’ll have to just try to write better and get in a future edition of Pinker’s series.  Now if I could just come up with an idea for today’s SciScoop story…