OK, I’m sure you’re all dying to crash a poll that really needs it. I’ve seen a bunch of you begging for this one in the comments of the last few posts. So here it is…
msnbc asks: Should the phrase ‘In God we Trust’ be removed from US currency?
Right now the poll is at 49% yes, and 51% no. Obviously we have some work to do. Get to it!
From LisaJ
Some more pure science from guest blogger LisaJ:
Everyone seems to love a little Sonic Hedgehog around here. Whenever PZ discusses another function that this fascinating gene is capable of, much excitement ensues in the comment posts. So I thought I would take this opportunity to talk a bit about what I study, and how my seemingly unrelated favourite protein pathway is also connected to the Shh gene.
The main protein that I study was originally identified through studies of a pediatric eye cancer, called Retinoblastoma, as loss of function of this protein (termed the Retinoblastoma protein, or pRb for short) was found to be causative in the formation of this tumour type. What we know now is that pRb is required to control normal cell division in all cell types; its functional loss leads to the formation of many types of tumours, and is thought to be involved in the development of at least half of all human cancers. Not only is pRb essential in preventing uncontrolled cell division that can lead to cancer, but it is also essential for embryonic development, as mice deficient for the Rb gene die by about the 15th day of gestation, about 5 days before they would be born.
To explain how pRb functions in the cell, I thought that I could easily pull out a figure from a review paper that diagrams a simplified cell cycle pathway and the protein interactions that take place. But instead, I’m going to show you this beautiful piece of work that a few of my talented previous lab mates created for me one day, as a means of cheering me up after a year’s worth of protein purifications and binding assays did not give me the result I was hoping for. Although a simplistic depiction of cell cycle regulation, I think it really drives home the point well of how pRb functions.
Johann Hari had a great piece in the Independent this week (with follow-up blog posts here and here) about increasing scrutiny of religion in general, and of Islam in particular.
An author named Sherry Jones has written a book, called The Jewel of Medina, that will never see the light of day because it novelizes the life and times, with particular focus on the marital details, of the prophet Mohammed.
The Jewel of Medina was bought by Random House and primed to be a best-seller – before a University of Texas teacher saw proofs and declared it “a national security issue”. Random House had visions of a re-run of the Rushdie or the Danish cartoons affairs. Sherry Jones’s publisher has pulped the book. It’s gone.
Hari goes on to criticize the kid gloves with which Islamic issues are dealt the world round, contrasting it to the relative ease with which people question the tenets of Christianity and other more ‘docile’ world religions. Although his East End perspective may not allow him to fully appreciate the rebounding resistence to criticism sought by Christians in America, his general conclusions are spot on:
It is condescending to treat Muslims like excitable children who cannot cope with the probing, mocking treatment we hand out to Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism. It is perfectly consistent to protect Muslims from bigotry while challenging the bigotries and absurdities within their holy texts.
There is now a pincer movement trying to silence critical discussion of Islam. To one side, fanatics threaten to kill you; to the other, critics call you “Islamophobic”. But consistent atheism is not racism. On the contrary: it treats all people as mature adults who can cope with rational questions. When we pulp books out of fear of fundamentalism, we are decapitating the most precious freedom we have.
Naturally, he is receiving a quantity of shrill concern-troll style email for daring to sing a refrain that might sound a bit familiar ’round these parts: NOTHING IS SACRED. The responses of anger and fear are as predictable as they are sad, and just as many, if not more, of the complaints are coming from the uber-tolerant left. It is frustrating how glibly the term ‘bigot’ is now deployed, from a seemingly untouchable ultra-politically correct position. I long as much for the freedom to call ‘bullshit’ when warranted as I do for the day when, through efforts of vocal rationalists and moderates, the chinks in Religion’s armor have been widened enough to let the light stream in, and words and symbolic actions challenging the merits of any faith or philosophy can be spoken, read and conducted with impunity.
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Just in case it’s not clear from the title, this post was authored by Guest Blogger Danio.
Imagine you’re a paleontologist, digging through the Sahara desert looking for dinosaur bones and you stumble, instead, upon this wondrous find:
That’s exactly what happened to Paleontologist Paul Sereno and his team back in 2000, and they have announced their findings from their excavations of this region in Northern Niger in National Geographic this week. This team unexpectedly unearthed 200 human burials on the shores of a long dried up lake, representing two very distinct cultures spanning 5000 years (between 4500 to about 9000 years ago). The image shown above is of their ‘most striking discovery’, and depicts a woman and two children, ages 5 and 8, holding hands. They also found pollen in the grave, suggesting that they may have been laid on a bed of flowers. Very cool stuff. These researchers have located the remnants of two human tribes that are thought to have lived in the Sahara during the Holocene period, when environmental factors culminated in a ‘greening’ of the desert, which attracted human inhabitants.
Here’s a video featuring an interview with Paul Sereno and some nice shots of their excavation sites. They give a really nice overview of what they have discovered about the two distinct colonies found, and how they may have lived. You can also read the whole story in National Geographic, if you’re so inclined, where you will also find a link to additional photos of the site and their excavations, which are quite amazing.
Here’s a link to the study’s paper appearing in the current issue of PLoS ONE.
From guest blogger LisaJ
Guest Blogger Danio:
I know, I know. Friday night isn’t exactly the best time to smack you with a big messy fistful of science, but PZ will be kicking us Minions out of the house early next week, so I have to stay on schedule with these Usher posts if I’m going to get through Part IV by the time he shows me the door.
In Part I, I introduced the hereditary disease known as Usher syndrome and went over a bit of the cell biology of auditory and visual sensory cells. In this post, I’ll discuss the molecules known to be affected in Usher patients, and begin to describe what is known about their function.
As mentioned previously, variations in the clinical presentation of Usher syndrome have resulted in the creation of three clinical subtypes. Type 1 is characterized by severe to profound congenital hearing loss, balance problems, and early onset vision loss, usually beginning before the patient’s 10th birthday. The type 2 hearing loss is also congenital, but tends to be less severe. The vision loss in type 2 usually begins to occur a bit later, in the early teen years, and these patients do not present with balance problems. All three categories of symptoms–vision, hearing, and balance, are progressive, commencing in childhood or adolescence rather than at birth, in Usher type 3 patients.
Despite these differences, the specific combination of deaf-blindness, plus or minus balance defects, led researchers to predict that multiple mutations in a single gene, or perhaps in two or three genes at the most, would turn out to be responsible for the symptoms observed in all Usher patients. The advent of genetic mapping led to surprising results in this regard. To date, at least 11 different genes have been implicated in the disease, nine of which have been molecularly identified thus far. More surprising still are the natures of the proteins encoded by the identified genes. In contrast to signaling or metabolic pathways, in which a genetic defect at any point in the regulatory chain of events will adversely affect the target and result in an abnormal phenotype, the Usher proteins do not act in stepwise fashion to regulate a cellular process. What they actually do is not entirely clear at this point, but the various proteins contain functional domains known to be important for scaffolding, cell adhesion and signaling, extracellular matrix formation, and motor activity.
[Read more…]
Sastra here, with a quick reminder to those who are going to Long Beach, California to hear PZ Myers speak at the upcoming Atheist Alliance International Convention that’s coming up for the weekend of September 25th – 28th : the discounted convention rate for the Queen Mary expires August 26th, and the rooms are starting to sell out. It looks like this will be another great big fat rollicking atheist-fest.
According to the flyer, Professor PZ Myers will be speaking on the topic “Science as an Instrument of Change:”
Atheism is a natural consequence of the scientific way of looking at the world; furthermore, the scientific perspective is ascendant. Myers will explain why the new atheism is a reasonable and predictable product of our culture, and why that should give us hope for a more secular future.
Yeah, right. Militant atheist. Let’s all go and heckle him.
In addition to PZ, Michael Newdow (the plaintiff in the suit against “under God” in the pledge) and Jeremy Hall (the plaintiff in the suit against atheist discrimination in the army) will be there, along with other luminaries such as Michael Shermer, Julia Sweeney, and a special surprise awardee for the 2008 Richard Dawkins Award.
There will, of course, be a Pharyngula meet-up at some point, wedged in among all the rest of the partying. If anyone knows of any other upcoming meetups elsewhere, or just wants to whine that PZ never comes to their ship, mention them.
MAJeff here, getting all gay and stuff. It’s been a pretty big year for LGBT folks in the U.S. A couple weeks ago, the state in which I live repealed a law enacted during the height of anti-miscegination activity, and is now allowing same-sex couples from anywhere to marry here. Prior to that, California joined us in offering full equality to same-sex couples. That victory may be short-lived, though. There is an effort underway to take away the right to marry. Folks here can help out by contributing to Equality California who are leading the NO ON 8 campaign.
I had to chuckle the other day when I came across this post at an LA Times blog about their meeting with the folks trying to make life worse for queer people:
The measure’s supporters are generally careful to avoid appearing anti-gay, probably because they realize that, for all the voter split on same-sex marriage, Californians generally support gay rights. They professed in our meeting to have no ill will toward gay people…until the talk went deeper.
Wait, you mean they’re lying when they say they have no problems with gay people? I’m shocked! Shocked, I say!
The LA Times writer continues:
one Prop. 8 supporter said, gay rights are not as important as children’s rights, and it’s obvious that same-sex couples who married would “recruit” their children toward homosexuality because otherwise, unable to procreate themselves, they would have no way to replenish their numbers. Even editorial writers can be left momentarily speechless, and this was one of those moments
Ah, the recruitment line, code for “They’re coming to rape your children.”
The Times blogger is right: the anti-gay folks are careful to avoid showing their true colors; they work very hard to hide the anti-gay animus that drives them. But, lurking beneath the surface of their “We only want to protect marriage” lie is a deep and abiding hatred of queer folks and our communities. Their problem isn’t that we want equal access to the same rights our heterosexual counterparts have. No, their problem is that we exist at all.
That was brought home pretty clearly in a recentletter-to-the-editor in the Boston Globe:
ENOUGH ALREADY with the Globe’s gay agenda. How many front-page stories do we have to see to know that your agenda is to promote the gay/lesbian lifestyle? The July 21 article “Bloom’s off the brick row house: Buyers picking modern high-rise over classic style” could and should have been written from the heterosexual perspective. What you’re writing about is not a gay issue, it’s a human issue, and casting the story in a manner to feature gays is inappropriate. It’s time to straighten out, and I mean that in all senses of the word.
I have my own problems with such stories–namely that they continue to put forth an image of gay men as wealthier than the general public, when there’s actually a wage-penalty attached to those of us who aren’t hetero, and, regarding marriage issues, gay parents are getting by with fewer resources than their straight counterparts (that report is specifically for CA)–but that’s not the point. The bigoted letter writer isn’t concerned with accurate presentations, he’s concerned that there are gay presentations at all. Housing issues may be universal, but the universal is particular–and it’s straight.
I’m sure some folks will trot out the, “Just because I’m against gay marriage doesn’t mean I’m anti-gay” or “just because I disagree with the homosexual lifestyle doesn’t make me a bigot.” Well, it does. What they’re saying is that they want us gone. They want us to disappear. They want gay life to cease.
When folks come out and say they’re opposed to discrimination against people but actively foster such discrimination, they’re lying. They are pro-discrimination. That goes for John McCain, too, who recently said a pro-choice running mate would be acceptable, but not a pro-gay one. He has opposed every effort at including gay people in the institutions of American life. He may not be one of the crazy-ass-type fundies, but he’s also no social moderate. He’s just a “nicer” version of the “agents of intolerance” he “denounced” 8 years ago. His policy preferences on issues related to sexuality are very similar to those of Pat Robertson and John Hagee and Pope Nazinger.
McCain, Robertson, Hagge, Nazinger, McConnell…. These folks and the organizations they lead aren’t just opponents of gay rights, but enemies of gay people. They are all pushing for a return of the institutional closet. They want us neither seen nor heard. And, as ACT-UP so accurately put it, Silence=Death. They may not always want individual gay people to die, but they want our communities to do so.
I take that back, by attempting to push us back into the closet, they do want us to die. There is no life in that miserable space.
MAJeff here, getting all gay and stuff. It’s been a pretty big year for LGBT folks in the U.S. A couple weeks ago, the state in which I live repealed a law enacted during the height of anti-miscegination activity, and is now allowing same-sex couples from anywhere to marry here. Prior to that, California joined us in offering full equality to same-sex couples. That victory may be short-lived, though. There is an effort underway to take away the right to marry. Folks here can help out by contributing to Equality California who are leading the NO ON 8 campaign.
I had to chuckle the other day when I came across this post at an LA Times blog about their meeting with the folks trying to make life worse for queer people:
The measure’s supporters are generally careful to avoid appearing anti-gay, probably because they realize that, for all the voter split on same-sex marriage, Californians generally support gay rights. They professed in our meeting to have no ill will toward gay people…until the talk went deeper.
Wait, you mean they’re lying when they say they have no problems with gay people? I’m shocked! Shocked, I say!
The LA Times writer continues:
one Prop. 8 supporter said, gay rights are not as important as children’s rights, and it’s obvious that same-sex couples who married would “recruit” their children toward homosexuality because otherwise, unable to procreate themselves, they would have no way to replenish their numbers. Even editorial writers can be left momentarily speechless, and this was one of those moments
Ah, the recruitment line, code for “They’re coming to rape your children.”
The Times blogger is right: the anti-gay folks are careful to avoid showing their true colors; they work very hard to hide the anti-gay animus that drives them. But, lurking beneath the surface of their “We only want to protect marriage” lie is a deep and abiding hatred of queer folks and our communities. Their problem isn’t that we want equal access to the same rights our heterosexual counterparts have. No, their problem is that we exist at all.
That was brought home pretty clearly in a recentletter-to-the-editor in the Boston Globe:
ENOUGH ALREADY with the Globe’s gay agenda. How many front-page stories do we have to see to know that your agenda is to promote the gay/lesbian lifestyle? The July 21 article “Bloom’s off the brick row house: Buyers picking modern high-rise over classic style” could and should have been written from the heterosexual perspective. What you’re writing about is not a gay issue, it’s a human issue, and casting the story in a manner to feature gays is inappropriate. It’s time to straighten out, and I mean that in all senses of the word.
I have my own problems with such stories–namely that they continue to put forth an image of gay men as wealthier than the general public, when there’s actually a wage-penalty attached to those of us who aren’t hetero, and, regarding marriage issues, gay parents are getting by with fewer resources than their straight counterparts (that report is specifically for CA)–but that’s not the point. The bigoted letter writer isn’t concerned with accurate presentations, he’s concerned that there are gay presentations at all. Housing issues may be universal, but the universal is particular–and it’s straight.
I’m sure some folks will trot out the, “Just because I’m against gay marriage doesn’t mean I’m anti-gay” or “just because I disagree with the homosexual lifestyle doesn’t make me a bigot.” Well, it does. What they’re saying is that they want us gone. They want us to disappear. They want gay life to cease.
When folks come out and say they’re opposed to discrimination against people but actively foster such discrimination, they’re lying. They are pro-discrimination. That goes for John McCain, too, who recently said a pro-choice running mate would be acceptable, but not a pro-gay one. He has opposed every effort at including gay people in the institutions of American life. He may not be one of the crazy-ass-type fundies, but he’s also no social moderate. He’s just a “nicer” version of the “agents of intolerance” he “denounced” 8 years ago. His policy preferences on issues related to sexuality are very similar to those of Pat Robertson and John Hagee and Pope Nazinger.
McCain, Robertson, Hagge, Nazinger, McConnell…. These folks and the organizations they lead aren’t just opponents of gay rights, but enemies of gay people. They are all pushing for a return of the institutional closet. They want us neither seen nor heard. And, as ACT-UP so accurately put it, Silence=Death. They may not always want individual gay people to die, but they want our communities to do so.
I take that back, by attempting to push us back into the closet, they do want us to die. There is no life in that miserable space.
A ne pas manquer: Cephalopods strike back!
My favorite part is when they ‘ink’ the antagonist.
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Zut alors! I forgot to identify myself as Danieau
