Come on, Ken, you can say it

After that silly exercise in which Ken Ham looked at a fossil and dismissed Eosinopteryx as only a bird — a bird with clawed forearms, teeth, and a bony tail — he got chewed out not just by me, but by one of his fans, who wrote in to call him on his “handwaving” and to say that it was plainly not just a bird. Ken Ham can ignore me, but when one of the faithful can see right through him, he has to repair the damage.

And it’s great! He has to say that ancient forms of birds looked different, and that it has some features consistent with modern birds and others more like ancient, extinct forms, and then he’s reduced to quoting Brian Switek in an attempt to gather support. (I don’t think Brian accepts that the earth is 6000 years old or that dinosaurs did not evolve into birds, though; I’ve restored the usual ellipses and truncations a creationist must resort to in order to use a scientists’ words.)

Even evolutionary science writer Brian Switek, when discussing Eosinopteryx, commented on the vagaries of whether to call a creature a bird or a dinosaur. Switek wrote:

Does this mean that we should stop calling Archaeopteryx the earliest known bird? Not necessarily.

‘[T]his phylogeny remains only weakly supported,’ Godefroit and coauthors caution…[and the paleontologists point out that convergent evolution among small, feathered dinosaurs might obscure the true pattern of relationships between the feathered forms. The identity of Archaeopteryx is being questioned, and rightly so, but paleontologists have yet to fully resolve which particular lineage of dinosaur spawned the first birds.]

Birds are a special lineage of coelurosaurian dinosaurs. That is a fact. But the details of when and how that transition occurred, not to mention exactly from whom, are still areas of active debate. [Eosinopteryx underscores the increasingly complex pattern of feathered dinosaur evolution and bird origins. The tiny dinosaur is another point of reference in an ongoing discussion about when dinosaurs took to the air, and which particular lineage left avian heirs to the Mesozoic legacy.]

OK, guy, you’re really reaching. This shouldn’t be so difficult. Complex lineages, ancient extinct forms, fossils with traits of an ancient form and a modern one, major changes in anatomy over time…just spit it out.

The “T” word. You know. Try it.

“Traaaaaans…”, that’s how it starts…

Transitional form! Good! You’re making progress!

Next week, we’ll work on the “E” word, that phenomenon which explains how we get transitional forms.

This just in: Fox News ‘experts’ are lying shitsacks

You might have seen this already: Media Matters caught it and it’s making the rounds, including at my green energy joint at KCET. Fox News talking head Shibani Joshi says the reason Germany’s leading the U.S. in solar power installations by a factor of about 20 is that Germany has more sun than we do in the U.S. It’s toward the end of the clip:

Money quotes: Gretchen Carlson asked “What was Germany doing correct? Are they just a smaller country, and that made it more feasible?” Joshi: “They’re a smaller country, and they’ve got lots of sun. Right? They’ve got a lot more sun than we do.”

Here’s the inconvenient truth (as they say), courtesy the National Renewable Energy Laboratory:

NREL-Insolation-map-2-8-13

It’s almost like they just don’t care they’re lying.

Les Misery

Oh, yay, someone thinks the same way I do. I saw Les Miserables this week, and let me just say…it was the worse movie experience I’ve had since The Expendables (but for completely different reasons, of course). And just to put it in perspective, I watched Warning From Space with the @MockTM gang last week. It didn’t make me moan in pain as much as this movie did.

Anyway, the review is spot on.

At 158 minutes, this is a long musical film (it’s was a long book, and I’m talking about Victor Hugo’s, not the libretto) but I was shocked to find that it has only one song, and that’s the "Dream-de-Dream-de-Weem-de-Weem" song. The other musical numbers seem to draw their melodic inspiration from the recitatives, the kinds of tuneless tunes you might absent-mindedly whisper under your breath while you vacuum — only here, of course, they’re belted out at the tops of the actors’ lungs.

Yeah, they made a ‘musical’ with only one song, and they slugged it out early in the movie so we could spend the next two hours wondering when there was going to be some more music.

Here’s a deeply flawed parody of that one song.

It’s missing a few key pieces, like being in really intense closeup so you can see every pore and the hideous blotchy mottling of poorly applied excessive makeup splattered on a 19th century French prostitute. Also, she’s not emotional enough: you need to be able to see the watery mucus pooling in her nostrils, so you can sit on the edge of your seat through half the number wondering when it was going to flood onto her lip.

One star. In extreme closeup. With swarms of sunspots like rot corrupting the surface.

Maybe we should dress up Science in a pink dress and heels

I groan every time I see another well-meant attempt to inspire women to pursue science by dressing it up in stereotypical femininity. There’s nothing wrong with pink, and if you want to wear high heels, OK, your choice…but we don’t improve science literacy and appeal by associating it with gender stereotypes. Kate Clancy has an excellent response to some of these errors: “Pseudoscience and stereotyping won’t solve gender inequality in science.”

I get email

This letter was so out of character with all the other stuff in my mailbox, and so unexpected, that I was taken aback. I’m so used to threats and hatred and ranty angry petty bullshit pouring in that I was left confused and wondering how to reply.

Dear PZ Myers,

I read your blog. The place from which I love and appreciate your blog is deep, deep within this 59 year old woman’s self. I started reading your blog because of my interest in science. I am an amateur follower of anthropology news and started out reading John Hawks’ blog, then somehow ended up at Panda’s Thumb and then at your blog; and those 3 blogs still remain a core reading set for me.

But your blog has held me captive more intensely than any other and I return to it “religiously” in ways I don’t with the others. The reason being–you publicly stand as an ally of women and feminism. That is a new thing to see happen in the world and was not around when I was growing up and attending schools. It was deeply longed for, though.

Thank you.

I do not comment on internet sites but I wanted to let you know in a private setting how much I appreciate your fierce defense of women and feminism. I have sent your link to many friends.

BTW–I love this idea of Atheism+! I love the strong women I read about within this new push for social justice in atheist/skeptic movements. I was so let down by Dawkins’ reaction to Rebecca Watson. It was your defense of her that gained my trust and secured me as a repeat visitor to your blog. And your continued tough support has kept me reading you. I find it so healing to see a man choose to lend his influence in public support of women/feminism under attack. Girlhood in the catholic church, in a catholic family, in the world at large, leaves many patriarchal wounds that would like to be healed, even the ones we have blown off as we stomp our way through survival. For that is what we mostly do–we survive and find the ways we can best thrive by creating the love and nurturing we always wanted, despite the awfulness.

Wait, wait…there’s something. Something from a long, long time ago. My mother might have told me how I was supposed to respond when someone says something nice, but man, that’s been ages and I’m struggling to remember it. Something complicated? Something really tricky and difficult?

Oh, yeah.

Thank you.

Anil Potti likes to keep his name in the internet spotlight

Anil Potti is the dodgy researcher who, after being found guilty of scientific fraud, hired an online reputation manager to fluff up his name. Then the guy who made stuff up in 18 papers and padded his CV fled to North Dakota, where he’s working in a cancer center…now that’s chilling, isn’t it?

His latest exploit is to get posts critical of him yanked from Retraction Watch, the site that monitors journals’ behavior when fraud is exposed.

It’s a familiar strategy.

  1. A site says something rude (like the truth) about Potti.

  2. Fake site posts a copy of the rude article.

  3. Fake site files a DMCA claiming that the original article was a copyright violation.

  4. Rude article disappears! Anil Potti triumphs! He has successfully scrubbed criticism from the internet!

Oh, wait. Didn’t I just mention his name multiple times? He may have to rethink his grand plan, because it’s just going to make the situation worse for him.