How can you not believe in creationism when such famous authorities in biology and human anatomy accept it?
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
How can you not believe in creationism when such famous authorities in biology and human anatomy accept it?
No three words are more pregnant with the promise of error in a conversation with a creationist than to hear them say “what evolution predicts…”. It’s practically a guarantee that you’re going to hear something bizarre and fundamentally erroneous — but it is at least a good start on identifying basic misconceptions. Orac has found a doozy, a creationist who goes on at remarkable length, building a house of cards on a few flimsy premises. He’s dealt with it thoroughly, so I just want to focus on one piece of Pat Sullivan’s deeply flawed understanding of evolution.
I’d almost forgotten, myself. But look, Gannon shows up in the virtual flesh at Denialism to try and defend his record.
Trust me on this, Jeff. You want us to forget your sleazy softball approach to fake journalism. You aren’t helping yourself by reminding us.
Dave Munger has been spearheading a useful tool: Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research, an aggregator and set of icons to be used on blog posts that are summaries of actual, genuine, peer-reviewed research. Read the guidelines; the idea is that when you see the icon, you’ll know that the blog article is something more than an opinion piece, but is specifically an attempt to explain some specific technical research papers for the general reader.
This is not just an effort for those of us at scienceblogs.com — if you are an unaffiliated science person who explains research to the citizenry, use the icons. It’ll help people recognize what you are doing, and when the aggregator is in place (I think the plan is to get it done in the next month or so) it will help readers find you.
I mentioned that Eric Hovind, son of Kent, was lecturing lying at Shakopee this weekend. A reader, Evan Olcott, made the trip and has reported back.
This is the last time I’ll pester you, I promise. The DonorsChoose challenge ends after the end of this month, and we’ve done well. We met my goal of raising $20,000 dollars, 200 freethinkers have stepped up to make donations, and 30 of my 31 chosen projects have been fully funded. That does mean that there is one project that isn’t quite there yet: Embryology in the Classroom is $292 shy of completion. If a few more could chip in a few more dollars, we can achieve perfection.
Good work, everyone!
Here’s an interesting thought and modeling experiment: how to evolve a watch, literally.
As an example, it’s nice, but there are also real biological examples of organisms evolving clocks — evolution of the period gene, for instance, which also shows evidence of being calibrated to day lengths by natural processes, or the somitic clock. Most organisms on the planet seem to have multiple clocks built right into them, and they’ve all evolved.
(via No More Mr. Nice Guy!)
A friend of mine has a badger preoccupation. It was his expertise I consulted for last week’s blurb on badger culling. Between speaking with him and trying to plan a mad dash to Madison for its famous Halloween party, I’ve had badgers on the brain all week, so for this week’s post, I decided to couple “badger” and “neurobiology” in a literature search.
I found a delightful 2001 article on “Daily Activity Budgets of the Taiwan Ferret Badger (Melogale moschata subaurantiaca) in Captivity” by Kurtis Jai-Chyi Pei. It turns out ferret badgers spend most of their awake time traveling about followed by eating, drinking, playing and “staying alert.” But don’t give a ferret badger cause to think unfavorably upon you. The article goes on the describe how “…the noxious anal secretion is the most apparent weapon of the ferret badger.” This works best on mammals; apparently if you’re a bird of prey it isn’t so bad.
The point is… I want to be a ferret badger. Besides avoiding predation and competing for mates etc., it sounds like my kind of fun. We humans do too many activities that make us unhappy. I mean, what would a badger analysis of my activity budget look like?
Individual spends 33% sleeping, 15% eating/drink, 5% feigning disinterest in prospective mates, 5% time running in place, inordinate amount of time depleting natural resources, and somewhat less time complaining about the depletion of natural resources. For the remainder of active time, individual toils at some task or another the direct benefit of which is not apparent at this time. There is a curious lack of play exhibited– a behavior that has myriad benefits (Bandit and Thumper, 1996).
I think one of these days I’m going to relax and have myself a ferret badger day. If anyone nags me…POW. I’ll hit ’em with the noxious secretions.
You guys are so unlucky. You don’t get to regularly read the glory that is the awesome creationist Neal. I shall be generous and share a few of his latest rants with you.
Note: the language in these comments is about what you’d expect from a potty-mouthed 8-year-old. You have been warned.
Not that I’m any fan of fast food anyway, but these photos of what the stuff really looks like has me cured. I may have to become a vegetarian, which wouldn’t be too bad. Or at least swear off cheese.
(via Greg Laden)
