The creationist fruit-loop du jour left another comment here in which he tried to taunt me with his proximity (“is Minneapolis-St. Paul close enough to Morris for you?”) which wasn’t very effective, since his IP address said he was commenting from a community college in North Carolina. And then he replied with more wacky comments:
Feeling pragmatic? Is your focus entirely practical, on what works and what will get the job done? Are you one of those fighters for evolutionary biology who waves away all the theory and the abstractions and the strange experimental manipulations, and thinks the best argument for evolution is the fact that it works and is important? This book, The Evolving World: Evolution in Everyday Life(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) by David Mindell, does make you sit down and learn a little history and philosophy to start off, but the focus throughout is on the application of evolution to the real world. It does a fine job of it, too.
Oh, no, I’m torn — I’m an atheist who thinks IQ tests are over-rated and over-interpreted, and here’s a Danish study that claims that atheists have IQs that average 5.8 points higher than theists’.
Actually, I’m lying and I’m not really torn at all. I don’t buy it. I think IQ tests are loaded with bias that favors a particular kind of thinking, the kind that signals success in academia, engineering, medicine, and so forth, and doesn’t necessarily reflect any specific biological property. It’s fair to say that atheist values parallel the values rewarded by IQ tests, but the simple-minded interpretation that it reflects an actual measure of greater intelligence is unwarranted. Unless, of course, you accept the tautology that intelligence is whatever it is that an IQ test measures.
I do confess that I suspect there may also be a selection effect: simple-minded people are going to be attracted to simple-minded answers, and you really can’t get much more simple-minded than “god did it”. Also, in the absence of a strong godless tradition in the US, your pool of atheists is going to be populated with people who have put a lot of thought into their beliefs, while the pool of theists is going to contain people who have thought about their ideas and a much larger group of people who have simply blindly accepted indoctrination.
Anyway, it’s a much more complicated situation than can be encapsulated in a magic IQ number.
Next time GrrlScientist comes to visit, we’re going to have to record what she says early in the morning, and then play it back ten times faster — I have a suspicion that we’ll hear birdsong.
At least, that’s the way this video art installation by Marcus Coates works. He had people sing strange little nonsense tunes (you can hear one here) that, when played back at a greater speed, recreated the songs of wild British birds. Why, if GrrlScientist had only talked a little faster, I’m sure the whole house would have sounded like an exotic tropical island inhabited by parrots!
It’s an interesting argument, although to be perfectly fair, it ought to admit that everyone has their own bubbles of delusion — some are just less silly than others.
These stories about the Humboldt squid invasion off the California coast keep turning up — the latest from the San Jose Mercury News is broadly informative, and even cites a fresh new paper in PNAS. The work correlates the depth range of the squid with that of the Pacific hake, and also shows a rough correlation between the squid population and hake declines over a number of years. This suggests that maybe “invasion” isn’t the right word anymore: the Humboldts are new California residents.
The present situation off central California appears to be that
a physiologically tolerant species with a fast generation time
has moved into a new area during a period of substantial climatic,
oceanographic, and ecological changes. The occupation has
lasted through multiple generations of the invading species, which indicates a sustained population rather than a relict one
or multiple invasions. The geographical range of the invader now
extensively overlaps that of a large commercially valuable fish
stock. If this trend continues, top-down forcing could have a
major impact on the most abundant commercial groundfish
population off the west coast of North America. A similar
pattern may also be taking place in the Southern Hemisphere.
As a past resident of both Oregon and Washington states, which have experienced some irritating invasions of Californians, I have to say … now you know what if feels like, nyah nyah.
The authors also suggest that we may not be able to pin this one on global warming. The overfishing of swordfish and tuna have reduced the effects of these predators of the squid, and now they’re experiencing a bit of a population boom, one that means other animals on the food chain are experiencing some new pressures. Ecology is never simple, is it?
The newspaper article reports that people are fishing for the Humboldt squid, and it’s turning up on restaurant menus in the Monterey area (anyone try it? How is it?), and there are charter boats that will take you squid fishing. If I ever get a couple of days in Monterey, I think I’d like to try that.
(hat tip to Zeno)
Zeidberg LD, Robison BH (2007) Invasive range expansion by the Humboldt squid, Dosidicus gigas, in the eastern North Pacific. Proc Nat Acad Sci USA. July 23, 2007.
There’s always the quick and easy icepick lobotomy for rapid relief.
All joking aside, follow the link: it tells of the infamous Dr Walter Freeman, who lobotomized thousands of people in this horrific fad of irreversibly ripping up people’s brains to change their behavior. The story of poor Howard Dully, whose stepmother had him lobotomize at the age of 12, is particularly tragic.
The Weekly World News, source of many an idle moment’s entertainment while waiting in the grocery store checkout line, is about to become an ex-tabloid. Bat boy will be homeless. Ed Anger will have no outlet for his rage. Fox News will have no competition.
American Journalism has lost a shining beacon, an ideal to which it could have aspired.
(via Decorabilia)
In a disturbing story, a Korean man fishing for octopus brought several aboard that were clinging to some pottery shards, which led to the discovery of rare 12th century Korean bowls left on the sea floor by a shipwreck.
No word on whether the guardian cephalopods were going to receive a cut of the loot, or even whether they were given a reprieve from being served up for dinner.
A correspondent just reminded me of this classic paper from the literature—it’s the only contemporary scientific work I know of that managed to combine a discussion of the induction of a tissue by TGF-β and BMP proteins with a discussion of the Hebrew noun tzela to suggest that the book of Genesis wasn’t talking about thoracic ribs at all. All us sneering atheist professors who’ve had to exhibit human skeletons to show the creationists in our classrooms that men are not missing a rib apparently should have been pointing a little lower — where humans are missing a bone.
This comment on the Panda’s Thumb leads to a very interesting entry on OMIM, the database of human genetic characters. We’re missing something.
OS PENIS, CONGENITAL ABSENCE OF
Deletion of the gulonolactone oxidase gene on 8p21 is a genetic disease that affects 100% of humans. Lack of the enzyme causes severe connective tissue disease and makes humans dependent upon dietary supplements of ascorbic acid; see 240400. Gilbert and Zevit (2001) pointed out that another genetic condition, affecting 100% of human males, is congenital lack of a baculum (os priapi; os penis). Whereas most mammals (including common species such as dogs and mice) and most other primates (except spider monkeys) have a penile bone, human males lack this bone and must rely on fluid hydraulics to maintain erections. The size of the rodent baculum is regulated by the posterior members of the HOXD (142987) set of transcription factors. Gilbert and Zevit (2001) suggested that it was not a costal rib but rather the penile ‘rib’ or baculum that God removed from Adam to create Eve (Genesis 2:21-23). Genesis also states that ‘the Lord God closed up the flesh.’ Gilbert and Zevit (2001) suggested that the raphe on the penis and scrotum was thought to be the surgical scar.
I’m a deformed mutant, a pathetic shadow of my bold, upright ancestors. My only consolation is that all you other guys are, too.
