Fragments and Pieces

• Steven Dutch,professor of Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, brutally dismembers fallacious reasoning of just about every stripe on his home page. Not only does he take on a variety of topics, he does so in incredibly incisive and entertaining prose. It's rare to find a writer so worthy of citation, and just downright hilarious, but Dutch's no-nonsense style fits the bill.

• Khymos.org, a blog about 'molecular gastronomy,' has a fascinating article with some surprising flavor combinations. For adventurous chefs and those bored with the familiar.

• One of my favorite rhetorical methods in any evolution debate is to compare and contrast the fruitful research of biologists to the nonexistent research of ID advocates. But we don't have to simply observe, we can model evolutionary algorithms thanks to modern computing. People like Robert T. Pennock, a philosopher now working on the Avida digital organism project at Michigan State University, don't simply debate ideas—they test them. Pennock, and others like him are using Darwinian processes, implemented in computers or in vitro, to evolve complex systems and to provide solutions to design problems in ways that are beyond the power of mere intelligent agents. Check out this page on aigamedev.com, for an overview on the research along with video of some of the virtual organisms .

• Basketball coaches beware: The ultimate anti-free-throw-weapon has been unleashed.

• The Onion, read it.