Life has overtaken me in the form of a busy week of teaching, plus a brain-devouring virus to slow me down. So once again I beg your patience. I have plenty of ideas for posts, so to give you an idea of what’s on my mind this week, here are some quickies:

• Nature News has an excellent article about the Templeton Foundation, which supports research on topics at the intersection of science and religion. For obvious reasons, this can lead to conflict and certainly suspicion on the part of many scientists. The Foundation gave itself a black eye for its earlier support of Intelligent Design research, which it has since disavowed.
• PZ Myers addresses the arrogance many of my fellow physicists have in assuming they can explain anything in science, whether or not it’s merited. I hope to have avoided this trap, but it’s a risk when explaining things out of my immediate area of expertise that I might be wrong. If I am, I hope some of my biologist friends will kindly kick me in the posterior.
• The National Center for Science Education has the low-down on the Tennessee anti-evolution bill introduced last week. As a recent Tennessee resident, I obviously have a lot to say about it (not all of which is printable on a family blog).
• I’m currently reading The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature by Daniel J. Levitin, which has a lot of really interesting stuff for a music lover like me, but which also occasionally drifts into the territory of evolutionary psychology. I think the author is aware of the common problems of evo psych, however, so he manages to avoid some of the more obvious pitfalls. I’ll post a review when I’m done (time permitting, of course).