Category Archives: Education

Mysteries of the Roundhouse Revealed!

Posted on April 4, 2016 by | Leave a comment

What’s New in the NM Legislature

May Speaker Meeting

Saturday, May 28, 10 am to noon
Botts Hall, Special Collections Library, 423 Central NE, ABQ
Free and open to the public

In May our speaker will be Gwyneth Doland, a multimedia journalist with New Mexico PBS, KUNM Radio, and New Mexico in Depth. She will be filling us in on all of the goings on at the Santa Fe Roundhouse. Come and find out what your legislators are up to!

You may know Gwyneth from “New Mexico in Focus” on PBS.  She covers government and politics on the radio, television and online for the grant-funded People, Power and Democracy project. She is also an adjunct lecturer in the Communication and Journalism Department at UNM.

Gwyneth investigated corruption in state government in 2015 and 2012 for the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C. She was previously the executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, the editor of pioneering online news site, The New Mexico Independent, and a staff writer for the Santa Fe Reporter and the weekly Alibi. She is a former director of the Journalism and Women Symposium and the Society of Professional Journalists Rio Grande Chapter.

 

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Posted in Education

Creationism Under the Hood

Posted on January 24, 2016 by | Leave a comment

February Speaker Meeting
Saturday, February 27, 10 am to 12 noon
Free and Open to the Public

Special Collections Library, Botts Hall
423 Central Avenue NE

Cargo-Cult Science in the Intelligent Design Movement’s Attack on Evolutionary Algorithms

by Dave Thomas

Genetic (or evolutionary) algorithms have been used many times to successfully “breed” innovative answers to difficult problems in physics, math and biology. Creationists realize that the successes of such programs provide additional evidence for evolution, and have mounted a vigorous attack on Genetic Algorithms. Dave Thomas countered these attacks a few years ago by publishing a new genetic algorithm for solving the difficult “Steiner network problem”. Intelligent design creationists have since reacted by publishing two “analyses” of the Thomas algorithm. Dave will show that these new attacks are based on fallacious logic and outright misrepresentations. Are the creationists wrong? Is 1217 less than 1246? The answer to both of these questions is a resounding “Yes!”

Dave Thomas is a physicist and mathematician. He received bachelor degrees in mathematics and in physics, and a master of science in mathematics, from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, where he was awarded the Brown Medal and the Langmuir Award.

Dave is president of the science group New Mexicans for Science and Reason (http://www. nmsr.org), and also is a Fellow of CSI (Committee for Skeptical Inquiry), the publishers of Skeptical Inquirer. He has published several articles in Skeptical Inquirer on the Roswell and Aztec UFO Incidents, as well as on the Bible Code. Dave has also published in Scientific American (Dec. 1980 cover article), and has several patents. He received the National Center for Science Education’s Friend of Darwin Award in 2000.

Dave is past president of the Coalition for Excellence on Science and Math Education (CESE), and is past president of the New Mexico Academy of Science.

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Posted in Education, Humanism, Science