Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Would you believe that atheists are to blame for the Westboro Baptist Church?
They can’t be real Christians. They must be part of an atheist cabal.
Their goal? To undermine churches. To give religion a black eye. To plant in the minds of the young a twisted and evil view of Christianity.
Somebody needs to be introduced to Poe’s Law. Besides, everyone knows that crazy religion can’t be blamed on the godless … it’s actually a conspiracy by squirrels.
I’m busy preparing my lecture for genetics this morning, in which I’m going to be talking about some chromosomal disorders … and I noticed that this summary of Fragile-X syndrome that was on the old site hadn’t made it over here yet. A lot of the science stuff here actually gets used in my lectures, so they represent a kind of scattered online notes, so I figured I’d better put this one where I can find it.
I haven’t even finished grading the last of the developmental biology papers, and already my brain is swiveling towards the genetics literature, as I get in the right frame of mind to teach our core genetics course in the spring. And, lo, here is a new paper in PNAS that addresses details of a topic I bring up every time.
There are a surprising number of heritable diseases that share a couple of common traits: they are neurodegenerative, causing progressive loss of neural control, and they also exhibit a phenomenon called genetic anticipation—they tend to get worse, with earlier onset and more severe affects with each generation. Some of these diseases may be rather obscure, for instance
Haw-River Syndrome (AKA Dentatorubral-pallidoluysian atrophy),
Friedreich Ataxia,
Machado-Joseph Disease, or
X-linked Spinal and Bulbar Atrophy Disease (AKA Kennedy Disease), but others you’ve probably heard of, like
Myotonic dystrophy and
Huntington Disease. These are dreadful diseases that are variable in their pattern of appearance, and have terrible symptoms, like loss of motor control, chorea, seizures, dementia, and eventually, death.
Jay Hosler has a new book out, Optical Allusions(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). If you’re familiar with his other books, Clan Apis(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) and The Sandwalk Adventures(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), you know what to expect: a comic book that takes its science seriously. Hosler has a fabulous knack for building serious content into a light and humorous medium, just the kind of approach we need to get wider distribution of science into the culture.
This one has a strange premise. Wrinkles the Wonder Brain is an animated, naked brain working for the Graeae Sisters, and he loses the one eye they share between them — so he has to go on a quest to recover it. I know, it sounds like a stretch, but it works in a weird sort of way, and once you start rolling with it, you’ll find it works. Using that scenario to frame a series of encounters, Wrinkles meets Charles Darwin and learns how evolution could produce something as complex as an eye; talks about the sub-optimal design of retinal circuitry with a cow superhero; discovers sexual dimorphism with a crew of stalk-eyed pirates; learns about development of the eye from cavefish and a cyclops; chats with Mr Sun about the physics of radiation; there are even zombie G proteins and were-opsins in a lesson about shape changing. This stuff is seriously weird, and kids ought to eat it up.
It isn’t all comic art, either. Each chapter is interleaved with a text section discussing the details — you can read the whole thing through, skipping the text (like I did…), and then go back and get more depth and directions for future reading in the science. This is a truly seditious strategy. Suck ’em in with the entertainment value, and then hand ’em enough substance that they might just start thinking like scientists.
It’s all good stuff, too. A colleague and I have been considering offering an interdisciplinary honors course in physics and biology with the theme of the eye, specifically for non-science majors, and this book has me thinking it might make for a good text. It’ll grab the English and art majors, and provide a gateway for some serious discussions that will satisfy us science geeks. I recommend it for you, too — if you have kids, you should grab all of Hosler’s books. Even if you don’t have kids, you’ll learn a lot.
Jay Hosler also explains the intent of the project, and you can read an excerpt.
From the Salt Lake Tribune:
Every semi-knowledgeable moviegoer and reader of movie criticism knows what the words “not screened for critics” means: The movie is a dog.
We’re going to be seeing more humor like this in the next few weeks, I suppose. I like the tag line: Because Ben Stein is just as qualified to make software as he is to talk about evolutionary biology.
And if you’re confused about what this “evolutionary biology” thing might be, here’s a picture of Stein’s understanding of the subject.
If that’s too much for you, just seek solace by reciting a prayer from the Book of Bon Jovi, Chapter Wanted Dead or Alive. (via some other Canadian.)
Some of the politicians in the benighted state of Florida want to sell a new license plate.
The Florida Legislature may create a new license plate that features the words ”I Believe” and the image of a cross in front of a church stained glass window. The measure is moving in both the House and Senate.
Rep. Ed Bullard, a Miami Democrat and a sponsor of the license plate, conceded that ”some people” may find something wrong with it, but he said it was a license plate for those people who may want something other than a plate that has a manatee or picture of the Challenger space shuttle.
Look at it this way: the stupid people in Florida are going to be conveniently self-labeling themselves with the Mark of the Buffoon.
(And seriously, this is OK with me. They’re going to be charging people an extra $25 for the privilege of sticking something so silly on their car; consider it another dumb tax.)
Here’s the story of a young Yemeni lady filing for divorce from her abusive husband.
“My father beat me and told me that I must marry this man, and if I did not, I would be raped and no law and no sheikh in this country would help me. I refused but I couldn’t stop the marriage,” Nojoud Nasser told the Yemen Times. “I asked and begged my mother, father, and aunt to help me to get divorced. They answered, ‘We can do nothing. If you want you can go to court by yourself.’ So this is what I have done,” she said.
Note the year, too.
Although, to be perfectly correct, we aren’t descendants of theirs…we’re distant cousins.
Here, let me ruin your morning, just in case you hadn’t already heard the story of this raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
A raid was finally triggered April 3, after a family violence shelter received a hushed phone call from a terrified 16-year-old girl saying her 50-year-old husband had beaten and raped her.
State troopers put into action the plan they had on the shelf to enter the compound, and 416 children, most of them girls, were swept into state custody on suspicions that they were being sexually and physically abused.
Doran said it was not until after the raid began that he learned that the sect was, in fact, marrying off underage girls at the compound and had a bed in its soaring limestone temple where the girls were required to immediately consummate their marriages. Also, investigators said a number of teenage girls there are pregnant.
I think “fundamentalist” has become a synonym for “misogynistic pedophile”.
