Get thee behind me, Satan!

I have been tempted many times by that over-expensive sexy slab of technology called the iPhone, so I don’t need Seed adding to the temptation with a list of science apps for the iPhone.

Fortunately, the strongest argument against the iPhone for me right now is that it’s closed and only supports one carrier…who does not offer good service in the wilderness of western Minnesota. If ever they opened the gadget up, though, or if ATT built a cell phone tower in my neighborhood, I’d have to rely on my wife’s ability to slap and shackle me to prevent wasteful spending.*

*Which is, obviously, a reason to hope for more flexible service plans even if I never buy one.

Nexus in the clear

You may recall that there were some concerns about the motives and legitimacy of a social networking site, Atheist Nexus. Those concerns have been resolved to my satisfaction — it was simply a case of a recent apostate who had left a confusing trail of both religious and unreligious comments — and I’ve signed up myself.

Uh-oh. Suddenly, all these people on Atheist Nexus want to be my friend, but there’s no single page to review friend requests, so I’d have to go through them all one by one, which would be so tedious. Somebody tell me if there is a more efficient way…alternatively, send me a comment on Atheist Nexus — the comment page does make it easy to add new friends.

Me and my cyberpistol

Thomas Foley of Virginia is nuts. This is the delegate to the Republican National Convention who has called for increased security. Why? Because he has an irrational fear of us.

On Friday the Catholic League reported that Thomas E. Foley, a Virginia delegate to the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Minneapolis has asked that increased security be considered for the event in light of Myers’ threat to acquire and desecrate the Eucharist.

“I just felt security at the Republican National Convention ought to look at him and his followers,” Foley told CNA in a phone interview on Wednesday morning. He reported that he had not received an update about his request.

Voicing his concerns about Myers, Foley said: “What I think he has done, he’s loaded a cyberpistol and he’s cocked it and he’s left it on the table. He may have set something in motion that no one can stop. It was irresponsible, a hell of a thing to do.”

Foley explained that he thought Myers should not be able to incite such acts with “impunity,” saying that he was especially disturbed by the comments posted on Myers’ blog. He said it was “eye-opening” to read the people who supported Myers’ action. Even at his age of 63, Foley said, he had never “personally encountered such bigotry.”

He also objected to Myers’ recent description of Catholic League President Bill Donohue as “braying,” which Foley, a self-described Irish Catholic, claimed was “a great insult for the Irish.”

Foley said he believes Myers was telling his readers to acquire a consecrated Host at Mass, which Foley thought would result in disruptions.

“What’s he telling them to do? Consecrated Hosts are not just lying around,” he said to CNA, noting that the only other possible way to secure a Host would be to accost a priest, nun, or layman taking the Sacrament to the sick. Even E-bay, Foley emphasized, has prevented the sale of consecrated Hosts.

Wait, what? I’m armed with a cyberpistol? Is that what we atheist brigands use to rob trucks trundling down the tubes of the internet?

I had no idea that “braying” was especially insulting to the Irish. I’m sure it’s a word that is used with great frequency in reference to Bill Donohue, though. No ethnic slur was intended, since I was unaware of any association (and still am) — it’s really just intended to highlight Donohue’s personal attributes as an ass.

I’m baffled by the last paragraph, though. If the crackers aren’t just lying around, how come people are having such an easy time getting them? The people who’ve sent them to me haven’t mentioned having to disrupt anything. And if their availability is so limited, why is he calling for increased security at the RNC? Do Republicans get Christ Crackers on registration, or something?

This is precisely the kind of deranged hysteria we have to protest against, I’m afraid.

Atlanta GECCO 2008

I’m on my way home, and am actually using a fast internet connection at the airport — I’d forgotten what it was like! I quickly uploaded a few essential files, and my mail software is downloading my email. Unfortunately, I’d need a really fast connection to handle all that — the number of messages pouring in might actually hit 5 digits. If you’re hoping for a reply to anything, you might well be out of luck here.

Atlanta has been very pleasant, with friendly people and good company. I’ll have to come back sometime. The meeting itself was challenging for a mere biologist, but I might have absorbed a few glimmerings. At least it’ll help me dig into the literature a little more.

As for my talk, and since I haven’t had time to put much science here lately, I’m making my GECCO 2008 talk available as a pdf. These presentations are always a little cryptic when handed out without my explanatory overview, but at least in this one I’ve included my presenter notes, which might help a little bit. The first half is an overview of some concepts in evo devo, which includes those little reminders of what I was supposed to say; the last half is a description of two experiments, and I’m afraid my notes are a little thin there — the data in the research always seems self-explanatory to me. Sorry about that, you should have registered for the conference!

Email download complete: it didn’t quite hit 5 digits, only 9865 messages in the last few days. Maybe if I included the spam that gmail filters out for me…

Ack! I couldn’t add this note from the airport because “Your computer was automatically blacklisted (blocked) by the network due to an abnormal amount of activity originating from your connection.” Curse you, Boingo! What good are you if I can’t even download email without you suspecting I’m up to no good?

Wide open thread for anything at all

This has been a fun and informative meeting here in Atlanta — I also think my talk yesterday went well — but it has had one downside: we broke the internet. Practically everyone here has a laptop or two, and the hotel network has been rendered nearly useless in a major net traffic jam. Who would have thought that attending a computer science meeting would be like being cast away on a desert island? Oh, well, having the web reduced to a slow trickle is a kind of vacation, anyway.

That’s about to end, though. I’m getting ready to run off and catch a plane back to Yankee-land, where the interwebs flow freely like water, and I’ll catch up with all my email then (which will be an experience to dread, I’m sure), and will also restore the outflow of regular posting. Until then, use this thread to talk about whatever.

Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy

That gadfly of the science communication world, Randy Olson, has a new movie out, Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy, and many bloggers all over the place are putting up their reviews today. I tried something a little different. The other day, I invited a group of people from Morris, Minnesota to watch the movie with me, and then we discussed what we thought of it afterwards…while my daughter, Skatje, video taped the whole thing.

Here’s the team: Nancy Carpenter (UMM chemistry), Kristin Kearns (astronomy/physics), Pete Wyckoff (biology), Len Keeler (physics), Kathy Benson (psychology), Athena Kildegaard (poet), Kathleen and Lawrence Owen (retirees), Arne Kildegaard (economics), Nic McPhee (computer science), and me.

We all watched the movie together, and then…our reaction. It got us all going, and we talked for over 45 minutes, which I’ve edited down to 10 minutes here.

You don’t want to watch the whole thing? Well, the overall response was that, alas, the movie is mediocre as both a documentary and as a movie — it’s not really about global warming at all, but is more about how people respond to information. This is one of those awkward media misfits — it doesn’t really fit into any of the conventional niches. It also doesn’t accommodate itself to passive viewing; I think sitting alone and watching it would have been exasperating. As a catalyst for a discussion, though, it was much more rewarding.

So don’t see it alone! Bring along a few people so you can have a good entertaining argument afterwards.

I guess ‘eponymous’ wasn’t on the LSAT

Nick Matzke, one of the world’s leading experts in detecting absurdities in creationist texts, has discovered a real howler from Casey Luskin. Luskin is complaining that he, Junior Woodchuck lawyer for an intellectually bankrupt propaganda mill, can’t find the wrist bones in Tiktaalik when Neil Shubin, world-class paleontologist, is directly describing them. This is, admittedly, a fairly high-level discussion by Shubin, but it’s amusing that Luskin isn’t tripped up by the science — it’s his command of the English language that lets him down.

When discussing Tiktaalik’s “wrist,” Shubin says he “invites direct
comparisons” between Tiktaalik’s fin and a true tetrapod limb. Surely
this paper must have a diagram comparing the “wrist”-bones of
Tiktaalik to a true tetrapod wrist, showing which bones correspond. So
again I searched the paper. And again he provides no such diagram
comparing the two. So we are left to decipher his jargon-filled
written comparison in the following sentence by sentence analysis:

1. Shubin et al.: “The intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik have
homologues to eponymous wrist bones of tetrapods with which they share
similar positions and articular relations.” (Note: I have labeled the
intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik in the diagram below.)

Translation: OK, then exactly which “wrist bones of tetrapods” are
Tiktaalik’s bones homologous to? Shubin doesn’t say. This is a
technical scientific paper, so a few corresponding “wrist bone”-names
from tetrapods would seem appropriate. But Shubin never gives any.

“Waaaaah,” whines Luskin, “Shubin didn’t tell us the names of the corresponding tetrapod wrist bones!”

Only he did. I guess “eponymous” is too difficult a word for a Junior Woodchuck.

Shubin is saying that there are bones with the same positions and articulations with neighboring bones in tetrapods and Tiktaalik, and that they have the same names. They have a small wrist bone that articulates with the ulna called the ulnare, and they have another bone called the intermedium. They have the same names.

Here’s a nice diagram, color-coded and everything, just for Casey. Here are some fish:

i-23bc14d239d04710b9dcbfda718de4ae-fins_patterns_sm.jpg
(click for larger image)

And some tetrapods:

i-87e1865d9385b162cdbae6ca7cddb1fd-fin-limb_2006_sm.jpg
(click for larger image)

These clowns at the DI would be much funnier if more people would realize that they are performance artists with little talent and no expertise, except in lying and tripping over their own shoes.

Carl Zimmer has also noted Luskin’s absurd error.