She says these guys (it’s a WALRUS, not a manatee) really like molluscs, too.
(via National Geographic)
This is far too familiar.
And they say atheists have no morals. Isn’t it proof enough of my restraint that not once in my life have I ever throttled a creationist?
I was just trying to get through the email I neglected yesterday, and then someone sent me a bomb through the web: a link that gave me sympathetic heart pains and some ghastly flashbacks.
Behold, the Bacon-Chicken-Narwhal!
I couldn’t eat that. I have a cardiovascular system, and I need it to stay alive, unlike some people. That was the first cruelty, the provocation of delicious temptation. The second cruelty is the word “narwhal”, which triggers this painful memory.
I’ve got 5 hours or so of driving on windswept empty roads through some of the flattest prairie around, and now I’m going to have that in my head the whole time.
That amazing fact should go right on my résumé. Although I was challenged to stand outside in nothing but my light jacket for 20 minutes to get the true Winnipeg experience, and I demurred — I’ll save that for my next visit, when I’m ready for the advanced class.
Anyway, I had a grand time at a talk hosted by the Humanist Association of Manitoba. People around here asked a lot of good questions, it was a lively evening, and they even had one brave creationist ask me a question (“How do I explain molecules to morality?”*). Then we stayed up until 1am working through some Canadian beer. If you’re living anywhere near Winnipeg, you ought to join the group for more regular opportunities for godless get-togethers.
Now, unfortunately, we have to make a long drive back home, and also be very, very polite to some American border guards. I’ll holler for lawyers, guns, and money if anything happens at the trepidatious crossing.
*My answer was to point out that he’s demanding a bit much for a short answer. Forget the molecules part, since they don’t exhibit morality; all you need to know is that a population of apes found it advantageous to regulate their activity to promote cooperation, and voila, here we are, apes who say that rape is a bad thing.
I was a bit skimpy on the details before, but now you can find a list of all the specific times and places you’ll be able to find me when I make the grand rounds of central California.
Once again, the Discovery Institute stumbles all over itself to crow victory over evolution, led by the inspiring figure of that squeaking incompetent, Casey Luskin. This time, what has them declaring the bankruptcy of evolution is the discovery of tetrapod trackways in Poland dating back 395 million years. I know, it’s peculiar; every time a scientist finds something new and exciting about our evolutionary history, the bozos at the DI rush in to announce that it means the demise of Darwinism. Luskin has become the Baghdad Bob of creationism.
The grounds for this announcement is the bizarre idea that somehow, older footprints invalidate the status of Tiktaalik as a transitional form, making all the excitement about that fossil erroneous. As we’ve come to expect, though, all it really tells us is that Casey Luskin didn’t comprehend the original announcement about Tiktaalik, and still doesn’t understand what was discovered in Poland.
The fossil tetrapod footprints indicate Tiktaalik came over 10 million years after the existence of the first known true tetrapod. Tiktaalik, of course, is not a tetrapod but a fish, and these footprints make it very difficult to presently argue that Tiktaalik is a transitional link between fish and tetrapods. It’s not a “snapshot of fish evolving into land animals,” because if this transition ever took place it seems to have occurred millions of years before Tiktaalik.
Errm, no. Shubin and Daeschler are smart guys who understand what fossils tell us, and they never, ever argued that Tiktaalik‘s status as a transitional form depended on slotting it in precisely in a specific chronological time period as a ‘link’ between two stages in the evolution of a lineage. A fossil is representative of a range of individuals that existed over a window of time; a window that might be quite wide. They would never express the kind of simplistic, naive view of the relationship of a fossil that the DI clowns seem to have. For instance, here’s a picture of the relationship between various fossils, as published in Nature when Tiktaalik was announced.
Notice what you don’t see? They didn’t publish this as a direct, linear relationship that could be disrupted by a minor anachronism. It does not look like this:
Ichthyostega
↑
Acanthostega
↑
Tiktaalik
↑
Panderichthys
↑
Eusthenopteron
↑
These are all cousins branching off the main stem that led to modern tetrapods. Tiktaalik was almost certainly not our direct ancestor, but a distant cousin that was representative of a transitional state in the branching cloud of species that emerged out of the Devonian. And the authors of these papers knew that all along, weren’t shy about stating it, and if they made an error about anything, it would be in assuming that a gang of self-styled scholars who claim to be presenting a serious rebuttal to evolutionary ideas would actually already understand a basic concept in paleontology.
You would think Luskin would have also read the Niedzwiedzki paper that describes this new trackway, which rather clearly describes the implications of the discovery. It does not declare Tiktaalik to be uninteresting, irrelevant to understanding the transition between fish and tetrapods, or that Tiktaalik is no longer a transitional form. It clearly is.
No, here’s the new picture of tetrapod evolution that Niedzwiedzki and others have drawn. At the top is a diagram of the relationships as understood before the discovery, at the bottom is the new order.
Look closely.
Hey, the branches are the same! The relationships are unchanged! What has changed is that the branches of the tree go back deeper in time, and rather than a sharp changeover, there was a more prolonged period of history in which, clearly, fish, fishapods, and tetrapods coexisted, which isn’t surprising at all. Tetrapod evolution was spread out over a longer period of time than was previously thought, but this is simply a quantitative shift, not a qualitative change in our understanding of the relationships of these animals. It also says that there is the potential for many more fossils out there over a bigger spread of time than was expected, which is something we can look forward to in future research. Not research from the Discovery Institute, of course. Research from real scientists.
Now also, please look at the b phylogeny above, and tell me where the evidence for Intelligent Design creationism in this new figure lies. Perhaps you can see how a cladogram illustrating the evolutionary relationships between a number of fossils challenges our understanding of evolutionary history, because I don’t see it. If anything, it affirms the evolution, not the Sudden Appearance by Divine Fiat, of tetrapods.
For extra credit, explain where in diagram b of the Niedzwiedzki paper it shows that Tiktaalik has been “blown out of the water,” as Luskin puts it. Should they have scribbled in a frowny face or a skull and dagger next to the Tiktaalik bar, or perhaps have drawn a big red “X” over it? Because I can guarantee you that Niedzwiedzki and coauthors still consider Tiktaalik a transitional form that is part of the story of tetrapod evolution. All they’ve done is put it on the end of a longer branch. Nothing has changed; Tiktaalik is still a revealing fossil that shows how certain vertebrates switched from fins to limbs.
Finally, just for fun, maybe you can try to explain how the “Big Tent” of Intelligent Design creationism is going to explain how the Young Earth creationists in their camp — you know, the ones that think the planet is less than ten thousand years old — are going to find it heartening that a fossil discovery has pushed one stage in tetrapod evolution back farther by another 20 million years. That’s 2 x 103 times greater than the entire span of time they allow for the existence of the universe, all spent in shaping a fin into a foot. There ought to be some feeble expression of cognitive dissonance out of that crowd, but I suspect they won’t even notice; as Luskin shows, they aren’t particularly deep thinkers.
Ahlberg PE, Clack JA (2006) A firm step from water to land. Nature 440:747-749.
Daeschler EB, Shubin NH, Jenkins FA (2006) A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan. Nature 440:757-763.
Niedzwiedzki G, Szrek P, Narkiewicz K, Narkiewicz M, Ahlberg PE (2010) Tetrapod trackways from the early Middle Devonian period of Poland. Nature 463(7277): 43-48.
Shubin NH, Daeschler EB, Jenkins FA (2006) The pectoral fin of Tiktaalik roseae and the origin of the tetrapod limb. Nature 440:764-771.
Just in case there is more than one of you, I’ll mention that a Pharyngula fan group has been formed to coordinate social activities in Baltimore. Surely this will not involve alcohol or blasphemy, will it? Nor will there be rudeness and vociferous argument? Perhaps there will be squid.
Oh, lord, I am convinced. Look at this fossil; it’s a perfect human footprint, with a dinosaur track right on top of it! The people who found it promise that it’s not a fake, they’ve actually done a CAT scan of the rock to show that it is genuine, somehow. This will revolutionize paleontology and shake up the entire field of evolution!
It’s also available for the taking on ebay. Only $5, and more than 10 of them are in stock.
It’s a bit pricey, but worth it for something that would get me an easy publication in Nature. I wonder…I’ve got a gross of nails from the True Cross here that I’ve been selling for the same price, maybe they’d take one in trade?
I wouldn’t let one of those quacks get near my neck, let alone any other body part, but apparently Connecticut chiropractors are fighting hard to suppress the information about risk of serious injury from cervical manipulation. And it’s poll time!
Yes (505 responses)
28%
No (1155 responses)
63%
Depends (163 responses)
9%
Nice spin in the question, too. It’s only a “remote risk” of paralysis, stroke, and death from an ineffectual ‘treatment’. Maybe Connecticut should go further and require that patients also be informed that chiropractic is also a pointless exercise that in good hands is nothing but physical therapy, and in ill-informed hands is dangerous nonsense based on 19th century pseudo-science? Yeah, tell your patients about “subluxions”.
Iris Robinson is an MP in Northern Ireland who has been, umm, frolicking. She was 58; she had been having an adulterous affair with a 19 year old. Eh, that’s a private matter between her and her husband, you’re thinking, and we shouldn’t care about it, as long as it doesn’t affect her performance in her job.
Except…
She’s been using her government connections to funnel money to her boy toy. Lots of money.
He [the young man] said Iris Robinson, now 60, gave him two checks for 25,000 pounds ($40,000) each, but she then asked him for 5,000 pounds ($8,000) back, possibly to donate to the evangelical Protestant church she attends.
Wow. Teen-aged lovers cost $80,000 now? Even with the 10% rebate, that’s way out of my price range.
But wait…she needed the money back to give to her church? That’s a bit hypocritical, I think, unless this is the Church of Free (or Not-So-Free) Love. It’s not though; she actually has a reputation as a conservative freak about sex. She doesn’t like homosexuals at all.
There can be no viler act, apart from homosexuality and sodomy, than sexually abusing innocent children.
There must be sufficient confidence that the community has the best possible protection against such perverts.
…
What I say I base on biblical pronouncements, based on God’s word. I am amazed that people are surprised when I quote from scriptures. It shows the churches either aren’t preaching God’s word or are watering it down.
I cannot think of anything more sickening than a child being abused. It is comparable to the act of homosexuality. I think they are all comparable. I feel totally repulsed by both.
Get that? Consensual homosexual behavior: more vile than raping children! And she isn’t even Catholic.
She may have been boinking a youngster 40 years her junior and barely above the age of consent, but at least she wasn’t cavorting with a peer and an equal with similar backgrounds and interests and the same sexual organs! That would be bad.
