Nice picture. Even nicer smackdown.

Look, it’s the Burgess Shale!

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The photograph was taken by Callan Bentley, a geologist who posts lots of lovely images. The Discovery Institute was prowling the web looking for good illustrations for their latest piece-of-crap book by Stephen Meyer, and they asked him if they could use it. He sent them a very civil reply.

Hello Andrew,

Thanks for your interest.

I hold the Discovery Institute in the lowest regard, and it sounds like the new book will be a further perversion of reason in the name of pseudoscience. As a science educator, I could never support such an effort! I will not grant reproduction rights to any of my photos or drawings to any creationist effort such as the one you describe here.

Best wishes for your good health, and the speedy demise of the sham institution that employs you.

Callan Bentley

There were a few more extremely instructive exchanges. The DI lackey dragged out the usual arguments:ID is science, the Galileo gambit, conspiracy theories, etc., but no evidence, which is kind of the minimal expectation we have for something we’re going to call science. It’s a wonderful reply, you should go read it…well, you’ll enjoy reading it, but creationists need to read it. And understand it. Which is probably too much to ask.

By the way, we now learn that the latest effort from hack philosopher Stephen Meyer is going to be called Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosion of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design, and will be the usual nonsense about how a 15 million year long transition in evolutionary history is a problem for evolution. I’m just hoping it’s less padded with fluff and extravagant egotistical back-patting than the last one he wrote.

The Desert Tortoises With Boltcutters Civility Pledge

Read and add your signature, if you want to. It’s easy and fun, and shorter than an iTunes TOS update!

I pledge not to fetishize civility over justice. I recognize that the very notion of “civility” is defined in large part by those in whose benefit the status quo is maintained. I further recognize that the structure of “civility” at least in part has been created with the express purpose of bolstering chronic injustices. As Malvina Reynolds sang, “it isn’t nice to block the doorways, it isn’t nice to go to jail; there are nicer ways to do it, but the nice ways always fail.”

I pledge to remember that civility and compassion are not the same thing. Executive Order 9066, for example, was an emphatically civil document. There was not a mean-spirited or insulting word in the entire document, with the exception of the phrase “alien enemies.” In fact, it specified that a group of people would be provided with food, housing, and transportation. And yet it was one of the most unkind, uncompassionate acts of the US Government in the 20th Century. Civility is a very effective camouflage for hatred.

I pledge to remember that a fetishized civility is a field mark of insulation from suffering. The cries of the wounded on a battleground may be very unpleasant and uncivil indeed. I pledge to nod sympathetically and help bind those wounds rather than chide the wounded for bleeding so indecorously.

I pledge to keep a sense of perspective. Tossing basic civil rights under the bus in order to maintain a jury-rigged superficial peace in a single-issue movement is a bad bargain.

Rather than worry overmuch about civility, I pledge to be as kind as possible. And sometimes the kindest possible contribution to a discussion with someone acting in bad faith and harmfully is to tell them to go fuck themselves sideways.

Awww, I got a valentine

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It is acceptable. I shall hush the chitterings of unseen chitinous creatures in the shadows beneath the giver’s home tonight; there will be an absence of strangely glutinous slitherings over their windowpanes; the unspeakable colors will cease flickering on the edge of their vision, as the malign influence of the Old Ones temporarily recede.

Just for tonight. One night of respite. We will resume tomorrow.

Note to self: do not trust reviews in the NY Times

Tesla-Model-S

John Broder of the NY Times recently reviewed the Tesla Model S electric car, and panned it. Now I know nothing at all about this car; I’m not endorsing or criticizing it myself, and I’m not going to be able to tell you anything about the specs on this vehicle or how well or how poorly it delivers on its promises. But I can tell when someone is actively lying in a review, when evidence is provided.

The Tesla company had a device installed in the reviewed vehicle to automatically log just about everything the driver did. And the reviewer lied about what he did. It’s an appalling example of outright faking his observations — a scientific publication with that degree of fudging the data to achieve a desired conclusion would get you fired.

But now I’m wondering why — why would somebody cheat on his evaluation of a car? Personal bias? Or — uh-oh, conspiracy theory time — were there financial interests behind doing a bad review?

And now…the counterargument.

What I taught yesterday: master genes and maps

On Wednesdays, I try to break away from the lecture format and prompt the students to talk about the science of development. We’re working our way through Sean Carroll’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful, and yesterday we talked about chapters 3 and 4.

Chapter 3 has an overview of basic molecular biology — transcription and translation, that sort of thing — and since these are junior and senior students who’ve already heard that a few times, we skipped right over it and they explained to me what master genes are, with specific examples of homeobox-containing genes like the Hox genes and Pax6. They caught on fast that what we call master genes are actually just transcription factors located high up in a regulatory hierarchy.

I think we also got across a less-than-naive idea of the evolution of Hox genes. There is a recognizable, conserved motif in each of these genes, but the proteins are far more than just their homeodomains, and can exhibit considerable variation — necessary functional variation, because the expression of different Hox genes are going to have distinct morphological consequences.

Chapter 4 has a general theme of maps and geography — what does it mean for a cell to be in a particular position and to have a particular fate? We also get into details. This is a very fly-centric chapter, and we get a picture of early development in the fly and the specific patterning and positional organization in the early embryo of that organism, with an introduction to many genes we’ll be hearing much more about during the course of the term. We also got enough information on vertebrate development that I could ask them to play the compare and contrast game: what’s different and what’s the same in fly and mouse development? I’m trying hard to be the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of development in this class: it’s so easy to say, “they’re the same!” and focus on common molecular mechanisms, or to say “they’re different!” and talk about the numerous quite radical innovations between them (especially in the fly, which is a weird, highly fine-tuned machine for rapid robust development). I’m trying to get across that both statements are absolutely true, and they really taste great together.

Friday is their first exam. Next Monday, class will be an overview of nematode development, to prime them for the lab exercises for the next two weeks which will be all about photomicrography of worm development and behavior, and also more details about early fly embryology to get them prepared for a couple of weeks of nothin’ but flies. I also warned them that next Wednesday we’ll be discussing chapter 5 in Carroll, just chapter 5, because I’ve found in the past that that’s usually the brain-clogger chapter, with all its talk of boolean logic and gates and circuits.

Need more Creation Science Fair?

Here’s another moderately detailed summary of the Twin Cities Creation Science Association’s Homeschool Science Fair. It’s about as I expected: some kids were enthusiastic about the science and actually thought about what they were doing, others were coasting by blankly, doing the work because they were required to. In other words, not any different from a secular science fair, except for the Bible verse nonsense and for some, the attitude that they were there to refute science…by using science.

How about if we stop pretending religion is an important academic subject at all?

I was asked to promote this petition to stop forced religious indoctrination in Greek schools, and I support it and you should go sign it if you agree.

Greek public schools hold daily Orthodox prayer, schedule regular church visits as well as mandate the taking of a “religious studies” class every year. However, Greek law also allows students to opt out by submitting a simple form signed by their guardian if they are under 18. Unfortunately, many school administrators are either unaware or simply refuse to allow the exemption and ministry officials are not holding them to account.

The latest case is Stavros Kanias, School Principal in the Glika Nera suburb of Athens. Kanias is refusing to allow a middle school student to opt out even stating that his refusal is based on a desire to “follow the law of Christ”. Even though the required form has been submitted it is not being accepted. Many similar cases are often not publicized.

When Greek MP’s have raised the question in parliament, the Education Minister has simply reiterated the procedure and deferred to lower ministry officials.

But I do have one reservation: it doesn’t go far enough. It’s a good idea to give students the ability to opt out of religious instruction, but why is religious instruction in any school any where?

I’ve usually taken a pragmatic perspective on this issue before. We don’t have much choice to but to give way on minor compromises in school curricula, and this is often an easy one: if religion is taught comparatively and objectively, it’s a good tool for breaking dogma. I can’t get too irate at a school offering a “world religions” class, because I know that would be the first step towards atheism for the students (for the same reason, though, I’m suspicious. Our opponents aren’t morons, and they’d know this too — I suspect them of plotting to smuggle orthodoxy into the classroom under cover of objectivity, and for instance, knowing that a local priest of the dominant cult will often offer to teach the course.)

But here’s my major problem. It’s a useless subject. And no, I’m not one of those elitist yahoos who thinks art and philosophy are useless subjects, rejecting anything that isn’t a hard science; I mean, it is literally useless, distracting, and narrow. If right now students were getting an hour a week in a “religious studies” class, I think they’d be far better served by getting an hour a week for anthropology, or philosophy, or poetry…or sure, more math.

I know what the usual argument would be: but every culture has a religion of some sort, it’s a human universal, people find it important and we ought to acknowledge it. So? Every human culture has parasites and diseases, so why don’t we have a mandatory weekly course in parasitology? It would be far more entertaining, interesting, and useful. What wouldn’t be quite so useful, though, is a course taught from the perspective of the malaria parasite, praising its role in shaping human civilizations for thousands of years, which is pretty much equivalent to what kids get in a “religious studies” class right now.

I don’t think religion will ever disappear, but I’ll be satisfied when seminaries and theology departments all shut down everywhere for lack of interest.