Hear, hear!

There's a great op-ed piece by Richard Dawkins in the Washington Post, where he excoriates politicians that are ignorant of evolutionary theory and milk that fact for political gain. The best quote?

"... a politician’s attitude to evolution, however peripheral it might seem, is a surprisingly apposite litmus test of more general inadequacy. This is because unlike, say, string theory where scientific opinion is genuinely divided, there is about the fact of evolution no doubt at all. Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well. Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable. It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. Thanks to Darwin, we now understand why we are here and why we are the way we are. You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today."

Couldn't agree more, and this goes for politicians here and back home!

Hunter-gatherer higher education

I recently discussed the call for paleoecologists and ecologists should make explicit effort to integrate their results and interpretations, and how Paleolithic archaeologists and anthropologists working with hunter-gatherers can, in a way, be considered as having made good strides in a similar direction. Since that post, I've been reflecting about my own training (received and given, since I teach a hunter-gatherer class every other year), and I realized that all the coursework I ever took on foragers was taught by archaeologists (Jim Savelle at McGill, Curtis Marean at ASU), which made me wonder if we can really speak of such good integration between the subfields of anthropology when it comes to foragers.

With that in mind, I figured I'd do a little informal polling of my readership to see whether my experience is normal or an aberration (in the nicest sense of the word, of course!). So, if you're an anthropologist, what kind of anthropologist did you get your hunter-gatherer education from? Feel free to add any comment if the options below are too constraining.

McGill Journal of Education Helps Fight Creationism

I saw a few mentions of this online over the past two weeks, but only had time to check it out in detail today: The current issue (Vol. 42, no. 2) of the McGill Journal of Education is dedicated to the "Teaching and Learning of Evolution". It comprises an editorial, six research papers, two opinion pieces and a book review, all revolving around that central theme and all provided with English and French abstracts. Also, they are all available in pdf format free of charge, though you have the option of contributing a few dollars to keep the journal open access. There's some really thought-provoking and useful content in there if you have any link to the teaching of evolutionary biology, geology or any related discipline.

I'm especially glad that this is being published by a journal linked directly to McGill University, where I currently work, and to its Evolution Education Research Center, led by Brian Alters., who was one of the witnesses during the Dover trial. In related news, since I don't get PBS around these parts, I simply can't wait to check out PBS' "Judgment Day" available online in its entirety starting Nov. 16, 2007. 'Liveblogging' of the show from a number of trustworthy sources suggests it is quite a good program.