evolution
evolvingthoughts | March 27, 2007
Many words in English come directly via Latin or indirectly via French from Latin, and they have a meaning in English that is sometimes quite different from their etymology, occasionally leaching back into French.
Two such words are instruction and information, and both have peculiar meanings when used in the context of genetics.
Instruction is particularly interesting. The OED tells us that it has the following etymology:
[f. L. instruct-, ppl. stem of instruÄre to build, erect, set up, set in order, prepare, furnish, furnish with information, teach, f. in- (IN-2) + struÄre to pile up…
oracknows | March 27, 2007Really, this guy is making that very argument with a straight face!
My brain hurts after seeing such unbelievable stupidity presented as a viable argument by Chuck Missler, the minister who founded the Koinonia House. This makes Dr. Egnor's blather seem intelligent by comparison. It's even more idiotic than the now-infamous video that claimed that the banana disproves atheism and evolution:
(Hat tip to: Stupid Evil Bastard.)
evolvingthoughts | March 26, 2007
Well, it's a nice idea, but they seem to be a bit confused, on the one hand getting the kids to sing about Linnaean ranks, and on the other about five kingdoms, Animals, Plants, Fungi, Archebacteria and Eubacteria. Still, nice to see taxonomy being taught to primary kids, even if the song is excruciatingly cute.
Hat tip to atlas(t)
evolvingthoughts | March 26, 2007
As you all may know, I wrote a series of blog entries on microbial species concepts back when I first moved over to Seed, which had previously been on my older blog [links at end]. This then became a talk and later a paper, now in review. My argument was that there was a principle by which we could tell if microbes were a single species or not, depending on how regularly it exchanged its genetic material.
Now the American Academy of Microbiology has caught up with me <insert smiley here>...
A report by the AAM entitled Reconciling Microbial Systematics and Genomics raises the…
loom | March 26, 2007Before I head for Utah, let me direct your attention to two articles of mine in tomorrow's New York Times. They don't have a whole lot in common except they are examples of cool biology...
1. Virus traps. Here's a case where ecology, evolution, and medicine all come together in an intriguing mix. You can think of any population of animals, plants, or other organisms as a leaky bucket under a running faucet. The population is boosted by sources of new individuals, and drained by sinks. Sources may include rapidly reproducing individuals, or immigrants from other populations. Sinks include the…
oracknows | March 25, 2007In case you wondered, yes, ScienceBlogs is just a big cabal, and, as evidence, I present the following photo from a week and a half ago, when I managed to meet, drink, and conspire to take over the science blogosphere at the Toledo Lounge in Washington, D.C. with Tara Smith of Aetiology, Evil Monkey of Neurotopia, and Chris Mooney of The Intersection. The locale was appropriate enough, given Tara's and my Toledo connection, and a good time was had by all.
Does Orac normally look like that? Well, remember, around this time, Dr. Egnor was at the height of his foray into making still more…
evolvingthoughts | March 24, 2007The IDiot Dembski has written this:
It’s a happy Darwinian world after all …
William Dembski
Every now and again when I want to feel good about our shared humanity, I curl up with Darwin’s DESCENT OF MAN and read passages like the following:
The reckless, degraded, and often vicious members of society, tend to increase at a quicker rate than the provident and generally virtuous members. Or as Mr. Greg puts the case: “The careless, squalid, unaspiring Irishman multiplies like rabbits: the frugal, foreseeing, self-respecting, ambitious Scot, stern in his morality, spiritual in his faith,…
voltagegate | March 23, 2007European researchers at several institutions have found evidence that supports another one of Darwin's speculations: A male roe deer's antlers are representative of the individual's attributes, and thus play a central role in sexual selection.
Jean-Michel Gaillard comments, "Our results provide evidence that antler size of male roe deer mainly reflects their age and body mass, and is more resilient to variation in environmental conditions such as climate, food resources, and density."
"Body mass and age are both reliable descriptors of individual quality in most vertebrates and have been…
loom | March 22, 2007Scientists often stick genes into organism in order to create something new. Remote-controlled flies, for example, or photographic E. coli. But by creating new kinds of life, scientists can also learn about the history of life. Give a mouse human vision, for example, and you may learn something important about how our own eyes evolved.
As mammals go, we have unusual eyes. Most mammals produce two kinds of pigments for catching light. One is sensitive to short wavelength light (at the blue end of the spectrum). The other is sensitive to a longer wavelength, in the green or red part of the…
evolvingthoughts | March 21, 2007
OK, I recently recommended Medlar Comfits, but I thought I'd mention a few other blogs and sites I've come across lately.
George Bristow's Secret Freezer is a bird watcher's site of great grace and interest. Martin Collinson, near Aberdeen, does history, morphology (beautiful plumage!) and all kinds of nice stuff. A bit like an old bookshop that does natural history.
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog discusses the forgotten aspect of biodiversity - the crops and animals we rely upon, and their wild relatives.
The Ranger's Blog has interesting snippets about environmental and…
oracknows | March 21, 2007...like this (explanation here):
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evolvingthoughts | March 21, 2007
I can't believe I didn't think of this first:
Customer: Hello. I wish to complain about this so-called 'scientific theory' what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very establishment.
Salesman: Oh yes, 'Intelligent Design'. What, uh... what's wrong with it?
Customer: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. Its vacuous, that's what's wrong with it!
Salesman: No, no, uh... what we need now is to 'teach the controversy'...
Customer: Look matey, I know an empty 'argument from incredulity' when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
Salesman: No, no, it's not empty: it's just…
jrosenhouse | March 21, 2007As a companion piece to yesterday's post, have a look at this article from today's New York Times. It begins:
Damage to an area near the center of the brain, several inches behind the eyes, transforms the way people make moral judgments in life-or-death situations, scientists are reporting. In a new study, people with this rare injury expressed increased willingness to kill or harm another person if doing so would save others' lives.
The findings are the most direct evidence to date that humans' native revulsion for hurting others relies on a part of neural anatomy, one that likely evolved…
jrosenhouse | March 20, 2007I only have time for quick blogging today, so why not have a look at this article from The New York Times? It discusses the evolutionary origins of morality. Here's the opening:
Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days.
Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the precursors of human morality. They further…
mikethemadbiologist | March 20, 2007In response to my latest post about Michael Egnor, I received a couple of comments lamenting my intemperance towards Egnor. Below is the long version, but Mark sums up the short version quite nicely (bold original; italics mine):
But his illness is the result of the actions of many doctors - doctors like Dr. Egnore who ignore reality, and don't practice medicine with an awareness of how their actions contribute to the evolution of the other species that surround us. It's people like Dr. Egnor who hand out antibiotics like candy, because after all, bacteria don't evolve, and so their…
clock | March 20, 2007No Sex For 40 Million Years? No Problem:
A group of organisms that has never had sex in over 40 million years of existence has nevertheless managed to evolve into distinct species, says new research published today. The study challenges the assumption that sex is necessary for organisms to diversify and provides scientists with new insight into why species evolve in the first place.
The research, published in PLoS Biology, focuses on the study of bdelloid rotifers, microscopic aquatic animals that live in watery or occasionally wet habitats including ponds, rivers, soils, and on mosses and…
oracknows | March 20, 2007Day four and still no answer to the challenge.
I think I agree with some of my readers who've complained about this; I'll cut back on the frequency of reminders to something less than every day...
oracknows | March 20, 2007The longer I maintain this blog, the more I find unexpected (to me, at least) intersections and relationships between various topics that I write about. Of course, a lot of it simply has to do with the fact that one of the overarching themes of this blog is skepticism and critical thinking, which leads one to seek patterns in various pseudoscience, but sometimes it's a little more interesting than that. For example, a couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about the "individualization" of treatments in "alternative" medicine and how it's largely a sham that alt-med practitioners claim that their…
evolgen | March 20, 2007Darwinian evolution means different things to different people. To me, and many other population geneticists, it refers to positive selection. To Jeffrey Schwartz, an anthropologist at the University of Pittsburgh, Darwinian evolution means gradual change. By the way, Schwartz also thinks humans are more closely related to orangutans than they are to chimps and gorillas.
I'm having a hard time making heads or tails of Schwartz. He seems hypercritical of all molecular evolution -- to the point where one wonders whether he even understands the field. He appears to not understand that evolution…