Stone soup; or, extracting protein fragments from T. rex bones

Science magazine has an article today on extracting and sequencing proteins from T. rex bones, and I’m already getting email from people wondering whether this is believable, whether it challenges the stated age of dinosaurs, whether this means we can soon reconstruct dinosaurs from preserved genetic information, and even a few creationists claiming this is proof of a young earth. Short answers: it looks like meticulous and entirely credible work to me, these fossil bones are really 68 million years old, and it represents a special case with limits to how far it can be expanded, so scratch “reassemble dinosaur from fragments” off your to-do list.

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Kos screwed up

Everyone’s talking about Kos, so in one sense he’s done something smart, and he’s going to rake in some more ad dollars over all this attention — but in another Kos has blown it, big time. He has dismissed the death threats against Kathy Sierra as a) same old story that he sees all the time, b) nothing to worry about, and c) reason to suggest that the victim ought to give up blogging, which, of course, is music to the ears of the “psycho losers” who carry out that kind of attempted intimidation. Is Kos really so tone-deaf that he doesn’t realize he has just sided with people who threatened to slit Sierra’s throat and rape her corpse?

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Carnivalia, and an open thread

A reminder: the Darwin Fish Contest closes early next week, and there are lots of good entries right now, so competition will be fierce. Send your entries in soon!

Don’t let these excellent carnivals distract you too much from expressing yourself artistically…or maybe something here will inspire you.

Of course this is also an open thread—talk about anything.

John A. Davison: fool in his own words

This simpering sycophant to John A. Davison has been spamming the site recently, yammering away to get everyone’s attention despite the fact that he has been banned. Please do not reply to V.Martin, or anyone who is babbling about Davison — their posts will be deleted as soon as I notice them. This particular irritating fool has not only been morphing his username to get past my filters, but has at least once imitated a regular here, a particularly obnoxious and contemptible strategem that guarantees that I won’t ever be lifting the ban.

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The other dangers of non-anonymous blogging

People who have seen your photo and know your name might notice you when you pick up two-dollar hookers in the seedy part of town.

Another useful hint: when said observers later mention this fact, it is not a convincing disavowal to state that you do not hang out in the red-light district “on a regular basis.”

(Hat tip to Zeno for providing this fabulous PSA. I note that Zeno is pseudonymous and does not have his picture on his blog.)

Take a stand, or watch it all slide away

First the ideologues came for evolution, making it uncomfortable for teachers to teach it, even when it is not only legal, but mandated by state education standards. What will they suppress with indirect social pressure next?

How about those bits of history the fascists and the religious find objectionable?

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government-backed study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

As I said in the previous post, this struggle in which we’re engaged is more than a fight against a few specific clowns — it’s for a broader ideal of striving towards a truth, against those who want to twist perception of reality to support short-sighted, selfish, and silly beliefs. It’s not just science, it’s history, politics, culture. If you side with the primacy of faith over reason in science, there is a long list of other virtues you will also be sacrificing on your altar.

Mike’s Weekly Skeptic Rant has a good rant on the subject.