Atlanta GECCO 2008

I’m on my way home, and am actually using a fast internet connection at the airport — I’d forgotten what it was like! I quickly uploaded a few essential files, and my mail software is downloading my email. Unfortunately, I’d need a really fast connection to handle all that — the number of messages pouring in might actually hit 5 digits. If you’re hoping for a reply to anything, you might well be out of luck here.

Atlanta has been very pleasant, with friendly people and good company. I’ll have to come back sometime. The meeting itself was challenging for a mere biologist, but I might have absorbed a few glimmerings. At least it’ll help me dig into the literature a little more.

As for my talk, and since I haven’t had time to put much science here lately, I’m making my GECCO 2008 talk available as a pdf. These presentations are always a little cryptic when handed out without my explanatory overview, but at least in this one I’ve included my presenter notes, which might help a little bit. The first half is an overview of some concepts in evo devo, which includes those little reminders of what I was supposed to say; the last half is a description of two experiments, and I’m afraid my notes are a little thin there — the data in the research always seems self-explanatory to me. Sorry about that, you should have registered for the conference!

Email download complete: it didn’t quite hit 5 digits, only 9865 messages in the last few days. Maybe if I included the spam that gmail filters out for me…

Ack! I couldn’t add this note from the airport because “Your computer was automatically blacklisted (blocked) by the network due to an abnormal amount of activity originating from your connection.” Curse you, Boingo! What good are you if I can’t even download email without you suspecting I’m up to no good?

Wide open thread for anything at all

This has been a fun and informative meeting here in Atlanta — I also think my talk yesterday went well — but it has had one downside: we broke the internet. Practically everyone here has a laptop or two, and the hotel network has been rendered nearly useless in a major net traffic jam. Who would have thought that attending a computer science meeting would be like being cast away on a desert island? Oh, well, having the web reduced to a slow trickle is a kind of vacation, anyway.

That’s about to end, though. I’m getting ready to run off and catch a plane back to Yankee-land, where the interwebs flow freely like water, and I’ll catch up with all my email then (which will be an experience to dread, I’m sure), and will also restore the outflow of regular posting. Until then, use this thread to talk about whatever.

Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy

That gadfly of the science communication world, Randy Olson, has a new movie out, Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy, and many bloggers all over the place are putting up their reviews today. I tried something a little different. The other day, I invited a group of people from Morris, Minnesota to watch the movie with me, and then we discussed what we thought of it afterwards…while my daughter, Skatje, video taped the whole thing.

Here’s the team: Nancy Carpenter (UMM chemistry), Kristin Kearns (astronomy/physics), Pete Wyckoff (biology), Len Keeler (physics), Kathy Benson (psychology), Athena Kildegaard (poet), Kathleen and Lawrence Owen (retirees), Arne Kildegaard (economics), Nic McPhee (computer science), and me.

We all watched the movie together, and then…our reaction. It got us all going, and we talked for over 45 minutes, which I’ve edited down to 10 minutes here.

You don’t want to watch the whole thing? Well, the overall response was that, alas, the movie is mediocre as both a documentary and as a movie — it’s not really about global warming at all, but is more about how people respond to information. This is one of those awkward media misfits — it doesn’t really fit into any of the conventional niches. It also doesn’t accommodate itself to passive viewing; I think sitting alone and watching it would have been exasperating. As a catalyst for a discussion, though, it was much more rewarding.

So don’t see it alone! Bring along a few people so you can have a good entertaining argument afterwards.

I guess ‘eponymous’ wasn’t on the LSAT

Nick Matzke, one of the world’s leading experts in detecting absurdities in creationist texts, has discovered a real howler from Casey Luskin. Luskin is complaining that he, Junior Woodchuck lawyer for an intellectually bankrupt propaganda mill, can’t find the wrist bones in Tiktaalik when Neil Shubin, world-class paleontologist, is directly describing them. This is, admittedly, a fairly high-level discussion by Shubin, but it’s amusing that Luskin isn’t tripped up by the science — it’s his command of the English language that lets him down.

When discussing Tiktaalik’s “wrist,” Shubin says he “invites direct
comparisons” between Tiktaalik’s fin and a true tetrapod limb. Surely
this paper must have a diagram comparing the “wrist”-bones of
Tiktaalik to a true tetrapod wrist, showing which bones correspond. So
again I searched the paper. And again he provides no such diagram
comparing the two. So we are left to decipher his jargon-filled
written comparison in the following sentence by sentence analysis:

1. Shubin et al.: “The intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik have
homologues to eponymous wrist bones of tetrapods with which they share
similar positions and articular relations.” (Note: I have labeled the
intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik in the diagram below.)

Translation: OK, then exactly which “wrist bones of tetrapods” are
Tiktaalik’s bones homologous to? Shubin doesn’t say. This is a
technical scientific paper, so a few corresponding “wrist bone”-names
from tetrapods would seem appropriate. But Shubin never gives any.

“Waaaaah,” whines Luskin, “Shubin didn’t tell us the names of the corresponding tetrapod wrist bones!”

Only he did. I guess “eponymous” is too difficult a word for a Junior Woodchuck.

Shubin is saying that there are bones with the same positions and articulations with neighboring bones in tetrapods and Tiktaalik, and that they have the same names. They have a small wrist bone that articulates with the ulna called the ulnare, and they have another bone called the intermedium. They have the same names.

Here’s a nice diagram, color-coded and everything, just for Casey. Here are some fish:

i-23bc14d239d04710b9dcbfda718de4ae-fins_patterns_sm.jpg
(click for larger image)

And some tetrapods:

i-87e1865d9385b162cdbae6ca7cddb1fd-fin-limb_2006_sm.jpg
(click for larger image)

These clowns at the DI would be much funnier if more people would realize that they are performance artists with little talent and no expertise, except in lying and tripping over their own shoes.

Carl Zimmer has also noted Luskin’s absurd error.

Stop it NOW, please

So I have this new policy of posting email that threatens violence with full identifying information. I may have to retract that, since it looks like it’s getting abused. The idea was that I would have a public record of the threat, and that the smart people commenting here would be able to do a little sleuthing for me.

It is most definitely not intended to incite harassment. I do not want you to be dunning these people with email, threatening them back, signing them up for spam, or otherwise being a jerk. For one thing, we can’t be certain that an innocent’s account hasn’t been hijacked; for another, we’re supposed to be better than that. With the size of the readership here, any reaction by you is likely to be repeated a thousand-fold and turned into an over-reaction. I welcome any suggestions from you all but let me take care of any writing back.

I’m going to have to rethink my policy, which is unfortunate. Exposing roaches to the light is usually a good way to get them to scuttle away, but it’s not so good if people use it as an opportunity to swing sledgehammers in the kitchen to squash them.

Throttled!

Yeesh, not only am I busy at this meeting, but two factors are conspiring to keep me away from the web.

  • The internet service in this hotel is abominable — I’ve tried both the wireless and wired access, and it’s like trying to read the 21st century internet over a 300 baud modem. I tried to edit a few trolls’ comments, and while I waited to load the page, I took a shower, walked a mile down the street, got breakfast and coffee, came back, found the maid service had cleaned up the suite (nice!), sat down to the computer, and just then it finished. I suspect the fact that the hotel is packed to the gills with computer scientists might have something to do with this.

  • This is a conference way outside my discipline — I’m here to give some outsider’s context, talking about evo-devo to a bunch of evolutionary and genetic algorithms people. And everyone I talk to is telling me that they have very high expectations for my talk! Damn. These things are so much easier when I walk in and people have low expectations. Anyway, so I’m feeling mildly panicky — not too bad, though, because I think what I’ve got is at least a good talk — so I’m feeling like hiding away and just working it a little harder. Thanks, Conor Ryan and everyone else here, I’ve got butterflies now, and I never feel this nervous!

So you’re just going to have to talk amongst yourselves for a while, or browse some of the other fine sites in the Scienceblogs stable, as long as I’m choked up here in Atlanta…although I may just look elsewhere for an internet cafe later. Or if you want something to keep the flames burning bright, my atheist’s creed was cited in the comments — chew over that.

Please behave, don’t feed the trolls, etc.

Mail dump

Please STOP SENDING EMAIL TO THESE INDIVIDUALS. There are too many of you, the over-reaction is excessive, and you are not doing our reputation any favor. See this message for more.

Some of you may have noticed the little promise over in the left sidebar.

I reserve the right to publicly post, with full identifying information about the source, any email sent to me that contains threats of violence.

I’m posting without comment the worst of today’s crop of email threats. Formatting will be little wacky since it is just a raw dump of the mail with headers.

[Read more…]

Keeping the new people busy

I’m going to be tied up in work and meetings most of today, yet there are all these new people still flooding the site, begging for entertainment and objects to rage against. Since many of them can’t seem to get beyond the first article at the top of the page, and since, judging by my most recent email (come on, people…do you have to stoop to insulting my mother?) we’re getting down to the dregs, I think we need some more distractions for them. So here’s a little collection of past articles that will serve to infuriate and enlighten. Have fun!

Idiot America

Planet of the Hats

The proper reverence due those who have gone before

Niobrara

Why the wingnuts hate Plan B

What should a scientist think about religion?

A godless ramble against the ditherings of theologians

The Wall: A Sunday morning story

We stand awed at the heights our people have achieved

The hopeless inanity of Egnor

Sanctimonious monsters

Theology is a deceitful strategy

The Courtier’s Reply

The Geoffrey Simmons “debate”