Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I’m going to be attending the Women in Secularism conference in Washington DC this May (go, everyone, go!), and now I’m going to another conference: Empowering Women Through Secularism on 29-30 June in Dublin, Ireland. If you can’t make it to the CFI event, go to that one! Or both! They’re going to be excellent.
Here’s the speaker list so far for the Dublin conference:
I see three gentlemen on that list who are going to be the recipients of lots of ‘mangina’ comments…but I don’t care, this is important.
Also, Dublin, a marvelous city. I’ll see you there.
Long time (and I mean grizzled hoary ancient) commenter Zeno has a book, Land of Milk and Money
A meteor exploded over Russia, injuring hundreds of people. At last report, no one had been killed, fortunately. Most of the injuries were caused by flying debris from the shock wave, but official police reports are describing the impact site and showing small fragments — it really went kablooiee.
There are also lots of videos of this event, because apparently everyone in Russia drives with a dashboard cam.
Russian drivers are probably scarier than rocks from space (usually), but it’s still got to give you pause— the universe really doesn’t care about us at all, and there is scary stuff whizzing about overhead.
Nothing at all! I gave the students an exam instead! While I got a plane and left ice-bound Morris to fly to Fort Lauderdale, Florida! Bwahahahahahaha!
Sometimes it is so good to be the professor. And if ever you wonder why my students hate me with a seething hot anger, it’s because I’m such an evil bastard.
Here’s what they have to answer.
Developmental Biology Exam #1
This is a take-home exam. You are free and even encouraged to discuss these questions with your fellow students, but please write your answers independently — I want to hear your voice in your essays. Also note that you are UMM students, and so I have the highest expectations for the quality of your writing, and I will be grading you on grammar and spelling and clarity of expression as well as the content of your essays and your understanding of the concepts.
Answer two of the following three questions, 500-1000 words each. Do not retype the questions into your essay; if I can’t tell which one you’re answering from the story you’re telling, you’re doing it wrong. Include a word count in the top right corner of each of the two essays, and your name in the top left corner of each page. This assignment is due in class on Monday, and there will be a penalty for late submissions.
Question 1: We’ve discussed a few significant terms so far: preformation, mosaicism, regulation, epigenesis. Explain what they mean and how they differ from each other. Can we say that any one of those terms completely explains the phenomenon of development, or is even a “best” answer? Use specific examples to support your argument.
Question 2: Tell me about the lac repressor in E. coli and Pax6 in Drosophila. One of those is called a “master gene” — what does that mean? Is that a useful concept in developmental genetics, and is there anything unique to a gene in a multicellular animal vs. a single-celled bacterium that justifies applying a special concept to one but not the other?
Question 3: Every cell in your body (with a few exceptions) carries exactly the same genetic sequence, yet those cells express very diverse phenotypes, from neurons to nephrons. The easy question: explain some general mechanisms for how development does that. The hard part: answer it as you would to a smart twelve year old, so no jargon or technical terms allowed, but you must also avoid the peril of being condescending.
Wait…I’m going to have to fly back to Morris on Sunday, and then I’m going to have to read and grade all those essays! Aargh — they’re going to get their revenge!
Look, it’s the Burgess Shale!
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.
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.
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.
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.
My students are also blogging here:
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.
