And she has pictures to prove it! You can also download the podcast in which we both speak. Oh, and there’s about 40 people who showed up at the Pharyngubrunch at Q. Cumbers who can testify that we all had a wonderful time.
People keep writing to me about this wretched scumbag who shot up a Unitarian church in Tennessee, killing two people there to watch a children’s play. I don’t know what happened, but despite it happening in a church, I don’t get the impression that it’s a consequence of a conflict between Christians and an atheist. It was a Unitarian church, full of secular humanists and deists and non-specific theists, not exactly a prime target for a psychotic atheist. More likely issues are that the place had a sign out front saying “Gays welcome”, that he was a Confederate South sympathizer, that he was insane, and that he “was motivated by frustration over being unable to obtain a job and hatred for the liberal movement.” At least, that’s the word that has leaked out of a long note he left behind.
So until we know more specifics, it sounds to me like this is the work of a far right-wing nut who targeted a particular church not because it was religious, but because this is the kind of church where you’ll find the highest concentration of bleeding heart liberals. We’ll have to wait until more details are made available, though, to know for sure.
New reports: “He disliked blacks, gays, anyone who was a different color or just different from him”, and his ex-wife was a member of the church he targeted. There’s a whole bunch of crazy motives behind these actions, I suspect.
Christopher Hitchens was impressed by the existence of blind cave organisms, and wrote that they argue against a linear progression in evolution. He’s quite right; creationism doesn’t explain why their god tossed in to salamanders and fish a collection of complex developmental mechanisms that the animals simply throw away and do not use. Evolution does — descent from a sighted ancestor explains how blind cave animals can still possess the machinery for a lost organ.
Do you think the Discovery Institute would let this challenge pass by? Of course not. They put their top man on the job, so Casey Luskin wrote a rebuttal. After a long weekend and before a busy day of work, it always makes me happy to find a new Luskin screed — they’re so dang easy to shred. Here’s his devastating critique:
Hitchens, Dawkins and Carroll can have all the evidence they want that the neo-Darwinian mechanism can mess things up, turn genes off, and cause “loss-of-function.” No one on any side of this debate doubts that random mutations are quite good at destroying complex features. Us folks on the ID side suspect that random mutation and natural selection aren’t good at doing very much more than that. And the constant citations by Darwinists of “loss of function” examples as alleged refutations of ID only strengthens our argument.
The claim that evolution can’t create new features is one of the oldest and most tired fables in the creationist playbook — note that that link cites the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society and Henry Morris. It’s false. In this case, their superficial knowledge also trips them up. The loss of eyes seems like a clear-cut case of degeneration…but when you look deeper, it’s not.
The best studied case is the comparison of blind and sighted forms of Astyanax, a fish that has species that live in surface waters and have eyes, and others that live in caves and have lost them.
The Jeffery lab has worked out the molecular details of eye loss, and it isn’t as simple as messing things up, turning genes off, and causing loss-of-function mutations. To the contrary, all the genes for eyes are there and functional in the blind species. Simply transplanting small bits of organizing tissue from species with eyes to embryos of the blind forms can recruit host tissue to build a complete functional eye — that tells you the genes are still there. A comparison of gene expression patterns between the two also reveals that the blind species actually upregulates a majority of its developmental genes. Contrary to what Luskin claims, this is a positive change in development, not a loss, but an active suppression of eye expression.
What’s actually going on is that there is an increased expression of a gene called Sonic hedgehog, which causes an expansion of jaw tissue, including both the bones of the jaw and the array of sensory structures on the ventral surface — this is an adaptation that produces stronger jaws and more sensitive skin, what the fish finds useful when rooting about in the dark at the bottom of underground rivers to find food. The expansion of Shh has a side effect of inhibiting expression of another gene, Pax-6, which is the master regulator of eye development. Loss of eyes is a harmless (if you’re living in the dark) consequence of selection for better tactile reception.
Pathetic, isn’t it, how abysmally wrong Luskin can be? His conclusion is even sillier.
Meanwhile, ID proponents seek to explain a far more interesting aspect of biological history: the origin of new complex biological features. Despite his quotation of Michael Shermer on the evolution of the eye, Hitchens has yet to do that.
Actually, despite claiming that ID proponents are trying to explain the origin of biological features, Luskin hasn’t used this opportunity to even try. He can’t; “Designer did it” is not an explanation.
This is supposed to be the Carnival of the Elitist Bastards, a celebration of excessive arrogance and bare-knuckle commentary, where smart-assed brutes with swords for tongues receive their rightful acknowledgment. I have received two dozen requests for inclusion in the rolls of the Elitist Bastards.
Alas, not one has met my standards. This is the empty carnival, with nothing to celebrate. At least it makes for short work on my part, leaving more time to bounce the Trophy Wench on my knee and guzzle down a few pints with gusto. Now go away. I’ve got better things to do.
But wait…
What would a black-hearted bastard enjoy more than an opportunity to knout the knaves who have disturbed his rest? And what would an elitist find more satisfying than making his inferiors grovel while he delivers instruction? Read on, and I shall chastise those impudent supplicants who are not quite as elite and definitely not as bastardly as yours truly.
Sunday at 9am on Atheists Talk radio it’s…me! And C.L. Hanson, too! Listen, and if you’re local, come on down to Q.Cumbers restaurant at 11 for a godless brunch. We shall have fun!
I lived in Indiana for a short while long ago, and they didn’t have any of these freethought groups in my neighborhood. It’s good to see Hoosiers are wising up: FreeThought Fort Wayne is hosting Dr. Robert M. Price who will be speaking about his recent book, “Top Secret: The Truth Behind Today’s Pop Mysticisms.” The presentation with a Q&A will be on Wed. Aug. 6th at 7 PM in the Main Allen County Public Library theater located on lower level 2.
Get on out there — Price is very entertaining.
Good news! While I still get flooded with email every time Bill Donohue puts my address in a press release, I’m getting 90% fewer death threats! I think that maybe the example of Ms Kroll and her trollish husband has made people thinking twice before explicitly spelling out their gruesome plans, so that’s an improvement.
I’m still getting way too much repetitive crap, though. Yes, people, I know you’re offended. You don’t all need to tell me. If I had time to reply to each one of you individually, I’d simply tell you to tough it out — I’m offended by you, but none of us have a right to not be offended. So let me just tell you collectively: I’ve heard that message, and the message that you’ll pray for me, and the message that I’ll be going to hell, and the message that you think I need to be sent to jail or an asylum, and I don’t care what you think, so put a sock in it already. OK? OK. I’ve now got a bunch of filters in place that trash mail that mentions certain common keywords (hint to people legitimately attempting to contact me: try not to sound too Catholic), so there’s not even the point of harassment to your continued volleys. You can all stop now.
Anyway, in the hopes that at least a few of these loons will notice how silly their protestations look, I’ve put a semi-random sampling below the fold. Or, at least, I hope it will at least induce them to proofread before they send their whines into my trash folder.
The Tangled Bank was scheduled to appear on the Blue Collar Scientist this week, but as many of you already know, Jeff was diagnosed with hepatocellular carcinoma, and obviously he has more important issues to tend. So let’s leap into some science right here right now!
We’ve got two articles on the recent work by Rabosky and Lovette: Evolution of the Wood Warblers and DNA Reveals Tempo and Chronology of Speciation for Dendroica Warblers. This clade reveals evidence of a rapid burst of speciation events that slowed as they new species filled available niches.
If you want the big picture of bird evolution, it seems the molecular data is causing some major renovations of that branch of the family tree: Early Birds Shake Up Avian Tree of Life. It’s a good thing I don’t know much about avian phylogeny, since it sounds like I’d have to relearn a lot of it.
For a narrower view, here’s an unusual bird: Hybrid Thrush Found in Vermont. It was spotted because it sang a song that was part Bicknell’s Thrush and part Veery, and blood tests confirmed that it really was a hybrid.
Field trip! Follow the Ramblings of a Field Biologist as he follows some nesting Northern Rough-Winged Swallows, as well as anything else that flits before his eyes.
Our sole entry from the vast field of botany is a short one, on La Zucca. I think you’d better go visit this member of the mesoamerican trinity so it doesn’t feel too lonely.
At least we’ve had the recent discovery of a transitional flatfish to stir up some interest in The Mysterious Origin of the Wandering Eye.
Wait, what, really? Obviously, one place you shouldn’t get your science is from Cereal Box Science — this one begins with an amazingly bad statement straight from a box of Kellog’s Mini-Wheats, which leads into a useful discussion of decent experimental design.
While I think there’s a germ of interesting science in evolutionary psychology, it’s also prone to excesses, and through no fault of its own, is also easily mangled by the media. In Girls gone guilty: Evolutionary psych on sex, we get a criticism of the premises, interpretations, and media abuse of work on women’s attitudes towards sex.
No discussion of the abuses of science would be complete without the Discovery Institute, and their new cause, animal rights. Weird, I know, but it’s somehow all part of the perceived plot by evilutionists to dehumanize humanity, built on the DI’s poor understanding of logic. Check out Animal Rights, Evolution, and Morality: Who’s Afraid of the Slippery Slope?
Here are a couple of catalogs of useful resources: The Best Sites To Introduce Environmental Issues Into The Classroom, and for when your teaching fails, The Best Websites For Learning About Natural Disasters.
This might seem to contradict the lessons of those last links: I would think a great way to start a cataclysmic natural disaster would be to prolong human lives. But then, we are selfish, and I’m sure not planning on disappearing in the near future. Besides, these articles are about Stressor-specific hypersensitivity in the mole rat and Recent progress in yeast aging research. In my immortal future, I want lots of scurrying sausages with teeth, and beer.
Tangled Bank #111 will appear at Giovanna Di Sauro on 6 August — until then, do stop by Blue Collar Scientist and leave Jeff some encouragement.
What happens when you put two of the dumbest right-wing pundits together on the air? Madness.
On the July 23 edition of CNN Headline News’ Glenn Beck, guest Ben Stein, while discussing Sen. Barack Obama’s plan to deliver his speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination at Denver’s Invesco Field, stated that he did not “like the idea of Senator Obama giving his acceptance speech in front of 75,000 wildly cheering people” because “[t]hat is not the way we do things in political parties in the United States of America.” Stein continued: “Seventy-five-thousand people at an outdoor sports palace, well, that’s something the Fuehrer would have done. And I think whoever is advising Senator Obama to do this is bringing up all kinds of very unfortunate images from the past.”
Beck then went on to suggest that Obama was like Mussolini.
No, sir, this is a democracy. We can’t go off electin’ people who are popular!
