Todd's Blog

  Now that ICC is over, let's talk about skeletons. I hardly know where to begin.  I've spent three years now immersed in skeletons, slowly amassing the information I needed to assess the skeletal similarities of fossil hominins.  For most of my career, I was just too intimidated to try this.  I'm not an expert in human anatomy.  I don't understand anthropology jargon.  A person with my lack of training is extremely likely to make foolish mistakes, and I didn't want to make a fool of myself. Then things changed.  After years of being frustrated by the "hobbit" Homo floresiensis , I decided to see for just this one fossil form if I could fill in more information in the matrix of skull characteristics I was using.  I was surprised to find how accessible it was.  Oh, I had to spend a lot of time studying anatomical diagrams and looking up unfamiliar terms, but sometimes the information I wanted was just stated in the scientific papers describing the fossils.

I am exhausted, but in a very good way. The Ninth International Conference on Creationism is now in the record books.  We're still waiting for the papers to be released, but the presentations have been made and the conference itself is over.  I thought the last one was pretty good, but I'm certain this one topped it.  Attendance was massive, behavior was pretty much exemplary, and I had a lot of silly fun with the "Let's Talk Creation" photo booth.  Most importantly, I got to sit in on what I would consider to be one of the most important presentations in a very long time. Where to begin?  The crowds were impressive.  I didn't know what to expect moving the conference from Pittsburgh to Cedarville University, and I'm glad to say the attendance was still strong.  I presented and heard papers in rooms where people were lined up in the back and sitting on the floor.  The theater that held the plenary sessions in the evening was also standing room only.  This