We have our nuts up north, too

Minnesota pastor Gus Booth is using his pulpit to promote candidates for political office, claiming that “God wants me to address the great moral issues of the day”. Which is fine with me, even though I disagree with him on just about everything. He clearly wants to commit himself to crusading for his causes, even though (or because) he is an idiot.

How do I know that? Because he now wants to claim that he’s being persecuted by the IRS and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, since they argue that such political activity is a violation of the rules governing his church’s tax exemption. They are not saying he can’t speak out against abortion or for his dangerously loony political candidates, they are saying he can’t both speak out and demand the privilege of not paying taxes on his political headquarters. He doesn’t get it.

I think that if he wants to fight a god-mandated war, he ought to expect to make a few sacrifices in his struggle. It’s worth it, right?

The AU has put out a nice letter on the subject.

Bad news from Louisiana

The Louisiana house of representatives has approved a bill that would allow science teachers to “supplement” classes with wackaloonery. Remember that crazy teacher with the weird ideas you had back in 8th grade? Now he would be encouraged to bring in bible tracts, anti-abortion screeds, and puff-pieces by right wing editorialists decrying climate change as a communist plot, all in order to balance the teaching of that darned evidence-based biology and earth science stuff.

Note also that this bill, the “Louisiana Science Education Act”, was introduced by a Democrat (Ben Nevers, the ignorant pissant) and was approved 94-3.

All I can think is that “Louisiana Science” must be some kind of polite euphemism for “bugfuck crazy stupidity”.

I don’t think Tom Willis likes us very much

Gosh. I sure hope the creationist extremists never get any substantial political power, because guess what some of them would like to do: they want to violently expel use crazy evolutionists. Ask Tom Willis, an utterly insane creationist (who is also, scarily, active in Kansas politics):

The arrogance displayed by the evolutionist class is totally unwarrented. The facts warrent the violent expulsion of
all evolutionists from civilized society. I am quite serious that
their danger to society is so great that, in a sane society, they
would be, at a minimum, denied a vote in the administration of
the society, as well as any job where they might influence immature humans, e.g., scout, or youth, leader, teacher and, obviously, professor. Oh, by the way… What is the chance evolutionists will vote or teach in the Kingdom of God?

i-4e9e62bef15f1d3d79b96cafb1901f17-smiley.jpg

But, of course, I myself, am not deluded. “Kingdom
Now” theology notwithstanding, I have no expectations that
such a proposal will ever be implemented, for the
simple reason that delusion is ordained by God to
reign until Christ returns. (2 Thess 2:10)

(Yes, the big yellow smiley face is actually part of his essay. So are the spelling errors.)

What great eliminationist rhetoric! Our only consolation, I suppose, is that so far he thinks his god has decreed that we shall be allowed to exist until he annihilates us in the end times.

Obviously vice-presidential material…in America

I keep telling people there is a deep dangerous strain of insanity running through this country, and here’s a perfect example: Bobby Jindal.

We’ve discovered that in an essay Jindal wrote in 1994 for the New Oxford Review, a serious right-wing Catholic journal, Jindal narrated a bizarre story of a personal encounter with a demon, in which he participated in an exorcism with a group of college friends. And not only did they cast out the supernatural spirit that had possessed his friend, Jindal wrote that he believes that their ritual may well have cured her cancer.

Reading the article leaves no doubt that Jindal — who graduated from Brown University in 1991, was a Rhodes Scholar, and had been accepted at Yale Law School and Harvard Medical School when he wrote the essay — was completely serious about the encounter. He even said the experience “reaffirmed” his faith.

Jindal is considered a serious contender for the vice presidential nomination…or at least, he’s one of the people the media thinks will appeal to a broad swathe of the country, boosting John McCain’s presidential aspirations. He’s also the governor of Louisiana. How could you people down there elect this goony bird?

Pointless poll or serious survey?

I’m going to give you a choice today.

  • If you’ve only got a moment and want to click a button and be done with something fairly trivial, vote on whether to impeach Bush.

  • For a change, if you’ve got a half hour or so and would like to contribute data to serious research, take Elisabeth Cornwell’s research survey. I think we could add a large dollop of godless attitudes to her work.

(Hmmm…I should do a poll on who would rather crash a poll vs. take a serious survey!)

Historical contingency in the evolution of E. coli

Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research

While I was traveling last week, an important paper came out on evolution in E. coli, describing the work of Blount, Borland, and Lenski on the appearance of novel traits in an experimental population of bacteria. I thought everyone would have covered this story by the time I got back, but there hasn’t been a lot of information in the blogosphere yet. Some of the stories get the emphasis wrong, claiming that this is all about the rapid acquisition of complex traits, while the creationists are making a complete hash of the story. Carl Zimmer gets it right, of course, and he has the advantage of having just published a book(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) on the subject, with some excellent discussion of Lenski’s work.

The key phrase is right there at the beginning of the title: historical contingency. This paper is all about how accidents in the genetics of a population can shape its future evolutionary trajectory. It is describing how a new capability that requires some complex novelties can evolve, and it is saying plainly that in this case it is not by the fortuitous simultaneous appearance of a set of mutations, but is conditional on the genetic background of the population. That is, two populations may be roughly equivalent in fitness and phenotype, but the presence of (probably) neutral mutations in one may enable other changes that predispose it to particular patterns of change.

[Read more…]

Now I’m embarrassed

Minnesota is a pretty darn good state, usually fairly progressive, but sometimes…sometimes it can plunge off the deep end into the credulous muck of woo. My state has just approved the title of doctor for naturopaths. I imagine the MDs are a bit aghast, and even us Ph.D.s are feeling a bit diminished.

It’s also a law that was pushed by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party. My party. Minnesota Democrats are responsible for elevating respect for quackery. I’m embarrassed by that, too.

If only I’d known, I would have proposed an alternative idea at the DFL caucus: we should ennoble naturopaths with an even older, distinguished title: “hedge-witch” or maybe “witch doctor”. That last one has “doctor” in it, so it should be acceptable, right?