I’m familiar with a certain company for their manufacture of electron microscopes and spectrophotometers, and there they proudly slap their name on their products. But strangely, they don’t attach their name to their most widely used, most popular, mass market product. Can you guess what it is?
Science magazine has updated their list of Twitter Science Stars to add a few of the people they missed before — so now I’m #18, rather than #10. I am crushed.
All right, Larry Moran, why did you post about this paper now? I finished the unit on the origins of life in my cell biology class over a week ago, and this summary of the metabolism first model of abiogenesis would have been very helpful. I first gave them a review of redox reactions in chemistry, and then some general ideas about events in deep sea vents that generate a source of energy that early chemistry could have tapped, but this paper is full of specifics — probably a bit too heavy going for college sophomores, but they could have appreciated some of the diagrams.
William Dembski spoke at the University of Chicago in August, and a video of the talk is available. I tried to watch it, I really did, but I ended up skipping through most of it (one of the advantages of seeing it on youtube!). Here’s my rather stream-of-consciousness monolog as I was flicking like a damselfly over the stagnant pond of his words:
“Get to the point, Bill. Skip. No biology. Skip. No biology yet. Skip. Wait, that model is anti-biology…evolution doesn’t work like that. Watches a short segment. Nope, nonsense. Skip. No biology, skip. Oh, “specified complexity”…does he define it? Listens intently for a bit. Nope. Skip. Dawkins’ weasel program? He still doesn’t understand it! No biology, no biology, no biology, I’m done.”
I know, that wasn’t very informative, but then, neither was the talk. There were a few shots of the audience, and they didn’t seem particularly enthralled, either.
Joe Felsenstein watched the whoooole thing, though, and has some very sharp observations on Dembski’s model.
Watch the fishing lure action right here — also pay attention to the closeups that reveal how transparent Grimalditeuthis is.
It would be so cool to be able to see our own guts like that.
You want closeups of an erupting volcano? Don’t go yourself, send a drone. These are some amazing shots from Iceland.
Not really. I lied. Steve Stockman made up a bunch of crap, which is only the Republican version of doing science.
You might say this is a cartoon. Steve Stockman didn’t really say anything like that, did he? Yes, he did.
Allspice, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon — they don’t actually look all that appetizing.
That same bozo who sent me the Hitler quote sent me another image in reply:
Fair enough. Darwin got a lot of things wrong. I’m actually going to be lecturing my intro biology students on where Darwin screwed up in a few weeks, focusing mainly on his bad genetics, but I’ll toss that quote into the mix, too. To be perfectly fair, I’ll also include the more complete quote below the fold…and no, nothing in the larger context excuses it.
