At Cosmic Variance, find out how the once active physicist Frank Tipler now registers high on John Baez's crackpot index:

In science, we tend to valorize (to the point of fetishizing) a certain kind of ability to abstractly manipulate symbols and concepts — related to, although not exactly the same as, the cult of genius. (It’s not just being smart that is valorized, but a certain kind of smart.) The truth is, such an ability is great, but tends to be completely uncorrelated with other useful qualities like intellectual honesty and good judgment. People don’t become crackpots because they’re stupid; they become crackpots because they turn their smarts to crazy purposes.

Is a recent PNAS paper a knock against evolution? Does it support a "the concept of a preexistent design, with front-loaded genetic programs"?

Nonsense. PZ explains why. Go read this if you're at all tempted to believe the intelligent design peanut gallery over at Uncommon Dissent. Remember, those guys do no science - they have no labs, they do no field work, they don't test any hypotheses. They just sit back and distort the latest findings published by real scientists.

If you haven't already, you should read this interesting guest post at Olivia Judson's blog:

Many of the best-known scientists of our day are men and women exceptionally talented in herding the resources — human and otherwise — required to plan, construct and use big sophisticated facilities.

Along with a 223-page instruction manual, the NIH offers gems like this to help clear up the confusion:

# What part of the application/award number is the IC and serial number?
NIH's grant application/award numbers consist of the following parts:

* A single-digit Application Type
* A three-digit Activity Code
* A two-letter IC Code
* A six-digit Serial Number
* A two-digit Grant Year (preceded by a dash to separate it from the serial number)
* Additional suffix information that may include the letter "S" and related number for a particular supplement record, the letter "A" and related number to identify an amendment and/or the letter "X" and related number to identify a fellowship's institutional allowance record.