New Book in the Physics/Math/Astronomy Library

There is a new book in the PMA Library: Contact Geometry and Nonlinear Differential Equations.

For some reason, this title bothers me. I can't help but imagine being poked in the side by a particularly insistent acute angle.

I Coulda been a Baraminologist

I recently discovered a new source of humor and fun, although I'm not sure that was the intention of the homeschooled founders of conservapedia.com -- a site designed to counter the "Anti-American, Anti-Christian Bias" of wikipedia.

After reading the section on kangaroos, I found that my background in biology and anthropology has most likely disqualified me as a career as a baraminologist:

"According to the origins model used by creation scientists, modern kangaroos, like all modern animals, originated in the Middle East^[1] and are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah's Ark prior to the Great Flood. It has not yet been determined by baraminologists whether kangaroos form a holobaramin with the wallaby, tree-kangaroo, wallaroo, pademelon and quokka, or if all these species are in fact apobaraminic or polybaraminic.

Also according to creation science, after the Flood, kangaroos bred from the Ark passengers migrated to Australia. There is debate whether this migration happened over land^[2] -- as Australia was still for a time connected to the Middle East before the supercontinent of Pangea broke apart^[3] -- or if they rafted on mats of vegetation torn up by the receding flood waters^[2]."