Ask A Biologist anything!

The Ask a Biologist site has been relaunched and revamped, and it’s the perfect place for teachers and parents to send kids with difficult questions about biology. It’s really easy: just go to the site, click on the “ask” button, and type in a question…and with a little patience, eventually a qualified expert will try to answer it. Give it a try!

askabiologist.org.uk is back, bigger and better, to answer your questions about all things biological. We are a group of over 60 professional biologists; Ph.D. students, Post-docs, lecturers and professors, who volunteer to give their time to answer your questions. We have been around now for about 4 years now, and the site will get a brand new feel, the main thing will be that we will have increased ‘user-friendliness’ whereby people will be able to upload a photo of ‘the green insect that is really interested in fallen fruit’. We are here to answer childrens’ question about the natural world, and with biologists and palaeontologists with interests in many different areas, from insects and worms, to dinosaurs and birds, or trees and other plants, to embryos and evolution, and much more besides, we can help!

If you are a parent or a teacher who does not know the answer to a question, give us a go, we might be able to help. In fact, if you have a question, it does not matter how old you are, why not see if we can help. Answering your questions is the main thing that we do, but we also have a new blog section, where we will post exciting science stories. We also have our ‘labcoat essays’ where you can find out what we do as biologists, and we have the archive of all of the questions that we have answered since we began. Another new feature is that now you have the ability to respond to the answer we give to your questions. The only thing that we DO NOT DO, is answer your homework! Obviously there is a difference between the homework of a primary/elementary school child and that of a secondary school and college pupil, but as a rule, if it’s your homework, you have to do it yourself.

Love should be something we can hold onto all of our lives

I’ve been married for 30 years, and there’s no end in sight, fortunately. But just imagine that, in my imminent old age, I were to seriously injure myself and be hospitalized for a long period…and my wife wasn’t allowed to see me. And then it was decided that we were both so feeble and in need of care that we were put in nursing homes, for our own good…and they were separate facilities, and we were not allowed to see each other. Then, since we were obviously incompetent, our home and belongings were sold by the state to cover our costs. And finally, one of us dies…and we aren’t allowed to see each other in those final days.

That would be a nightmare. I’m pretty sure it won’t happen — oh, the dying part will, someday, but not the right to find comfort with each other. But that’s because my wife and I are acceptably heterosexual. If we were gay, it would be a completely different story.

I’m sure someone somewhere is gloating that a couple of old perverts were locked out of their sinful ways, but all I see is a tragedy of love stymied by hate.

Supreme court justice poll

Bleh. I hate this poll. I suspect any pharyngulation is going to be diluted because there isn’t going to be much unanimity of response to it, either. And answers 1 & 3, and answers 2 & 4, are pretty much equivalent, so they’re already splitting the votes no matter what your position.

Should President Obama choose a nominee who is Protestant to get religious diversity on the court?

Yes. Like it or not, this nation’s history is bound to religion. Protestants should be represented on the court.

20%

No. Justices are supposed to rule based on the law and the Constitution. Religion shouldn’t’ matter.

41%

Yes. Just as the president should be mindful of gender and race in his selections, he also should take religion into consideration.

15%

No. This is a secular nation. It’s absurd to suggest that a nominee’s religion should get any consideration.

24%

Personally, I don’t care if another Catholic is appointed, or a Protestant, or an atheist, or a Muslim. All I care about is that whoever it is had better damned well be intelligent and progressive, to counter the Scalia/Thomas/Roberts axis of reactionary stupidity.

Michael Ruse agrees with Richard Dawkins! The apocalypse is nigh!

I’m feeling a bit light-headed, and wondering if I’m still asleep. Or if it’s April Fools’ Day. Ruse actually concedes some ground to Dawkins in the religion wars. Of course, it’s in the HuffPo, so it could be some perverse nonsense, anyway.

Recently, the New Atheists’ most prominent representative, Richard Dawkins, wrote a highly emotive piece for the Washington Post, in which he derided the present pope and expressed glee and satisfaction that such a person was now leading the Catholic Church. In Dawkins’s judgment, not only was this no less than the Church deserved, but such leadership could only hasten the Church’s demise. I thought at the time that Dawkins was over the top and wrong. I now think that he was right and that it was I who was wrong. Let me say at once that, unlike Dawkins, I don’t necessarily want to see this as the end of religion or even of the Catholic Church in some form. I stress that although I cannot share the beliefs of Christians, I respect them and applaud the good that is done in the name of their founder. But I do now think that as presently constituted, the Catholic Church is corrupt and should be eradicated.

…

Dawkins is right. The moral mess gets worse and worse. Hope of change is illusory. Götterdämmerung beckons. Although we have different motives and undoubtedly hope for different outcomes, I join Dawkins in welcoming the prospect.

He also points out that one of the most damning things about the church’s problems is that they are responding by digging in and resisting change. He’s not alone in noting that Ratzinger’s papacy has been bad news for Catholicism.

However, just a note of reality, though: this is what the Catholic Church has always done. They have never been a bastion of liberal thought, and what they’ve always done in response to problems is recover by retrenchment — and it doesn’t hurt them. Those who revel in arcane dogma will not be deterred by the material aberration of wicked priests engaging in buggery.

Seriously — Catholicism survived the Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War, blatantly political and corrupt popes, schisms and violence. The current events are trivial in comparison.

The church is going to exist for a long, long time to come. What we should expect, though, is that as the more liberal membership boils off to join progressive churches or to abandon religion altogether, as the elements lobbying for change give up and go elsewhere, what will be left behind is exactly what we’re seeing: a hard kernel of very conservative Catholicness that will become increasingly crazy and detached from reality. It will become much worse…but it will still exist, and will be populated by the devout ranks of the truly fervent, the Bill Donohues and the Father Coughlins, and they aren’t going to be dissuaded at all by us weird atheists or those wishy-washy Anglicans. Don’t expect demise, just a diminishment and a hardening.

In which my faith in Apple is shaken

This is very bad news: I don’t mind at all that Apple’s Mac/iPhone/iPad technology is closed and proprietary, but when they use that to censor delivered content, I get very, very unhappy. Mark Fiore is a fabulous web political cartoonist, and he came out with an iPhone app to provide access to his work…and Apple rejected it.

But there’s just one problem. In December, Apple rejected his iPhone app, NewsToons, because, as Apple put it, his satire “ridicules public figures,” a violation of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, which bars any apps whose content in “Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory.”

A while back, apparently Apple blocked a whole bunch of apps that were basically soft-core porn — girls in bikinis, that sort of thing — and I didn’t notice, because I’m not in the market for that stuff, and don’t favor that kind of exploitation of women anyway. But when we didn’t stop the censorship of soft-core girlie pictures, who knew the next stop would be the censorship of political satire?

Apple needs to get out of the censorship game. Review apps for compatibility, but not content; it’s OK if Apple will only market neutered, innocuous apps through their branded store, but not OK if they use their tech to restrict access and allow no other app outlets.

This is a serious enough danger that I’ve decided to put off any purchase of an iPad until I see some resolution of this problem. Unlock the apps.

I’ve been a bad maintainer of the Molly Awards

I have been reminded that I neglected the last round of nominations for the Molly. Forgive me! I have gone back and quickly tallied the last set of votes, and the Molly for the month of February goes to…AJ Milne. Belated fireworks and applause and hugs and kisses!

Now it’s time to leave your nominations for the best of the month of March right here in the comments.

I’m such a card

There is a whole collection of Skeptic Trump cards available on the web, and what do you know, I’m in there:

i-d9f099ff810318ceccadef90c3459f19-trump.jpeg

A bit chipmunky, but look: I have no worthy adversaries, and no arch nemesis! I guess I’ll be scampering to the goal line unopposed, then. (I notice, though, that Dawkins’ nemesis is Alister McGrath — that’s like saying the biggest obstacle in your way is a blob of jello.)