My plan to become a household name continues apace!

It’s nice to see these casual references to PZ Myers, as if anyone would have heard of me:

The lab is at 101 Theory Drive, a developer’s idea of a scientific street name that Lynch found presumptuous.

It is a mark of the difficulty of life sciences — biology and its many descendants — that to call something a theory is to honor, not slight it. Theory, evolutionary biologist P.Z. Myers has written, is what scientists aspire to. Lynch, for all of his bombast, was respectful of the intellectual protocols of his science.

“I would have called it Hypothesis Drive,” he said.

The article is part of an interesting series on research into learning and memory, that is also unfortunately marred by some casual sexism on the part of its subject. See, Zuska, you just had to ruin it for me!

P.S. I think of myself as more of a developmental biologist than evolutionary biologist, but OK, I am very interested in evolutionary issues.

Cretaceous Eschatology

I’m a bit reluctant to post this, because … what if they actually start using this argument? Maybe mass extinctions are actually evidence of a prior Rapture.

i-29bf1827c346ca8264912d50a8e5fb2f-dinorapture.gif

This would mean, of course, that the Tertiary corresponds to the Tribulation, and we should prepare for the return of Jesus Rex.

Greetings, fellow Slime-Snake-Monkey-Mutants!

There is this fellow, Robert Bowie Johnson Jr., who claims that the tales of the Bible are verified by ancient Greek art — ho-hum, the usual confirmation bias and failure to recognize that the existence of common motifs in Western mythology does not imply the reality of a supernatural interpretation — who has gone further and urges the use of shaming insults against “Darwinists”:

To shock the Darwinists out of their denial of the overwhelming evidence in Greek art for the reality of Genesis events, the author urges Creationists to refer to evolutionists as what they imagine they are–“Slime-Snake-Monkey-People.” Mr. Johnson, who holds a general science degree from West Point, also suggests that since Slime-Snake-Monkey-People insist they evolved over millions of years through a countless series of random mutations, Christians should also refer to them as “mutants.”

To which I have to reply … please do. We are mutants, every one of us; the replication of 3 billion base pairs is a process that, by pure chemical necessity, will have a number of errors. There’s no shame in that at all.

I’m also not at all embarrassed by recitations of my proud lineage, although I’d be a bit miffed at the inaccuracy of the characterization. There are no snakes in our ancestry, monkeys aren’t involved either (as a colloquial term for small primates, I might let it pass), although it might be fair to describe early protocells and bacteria as forming a kind of slime. I’m going to have to recommend Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) to Mr Johnson. It’ll give him many more epithets that he can apply accurately to our ancestors, but he’ll still be surprised — we love our predecessors.

I hope somebody does call me a Slime-Snake-Monkey-Mutant. It’ll make me laugh.

Ominous Dean

I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t been following the story of Hurricane Dean at all — it’s far away, and I’ve been busy traveling and trying to get my classes organized — but Chris Mooney has. In a short summary on his blog and a longer article on the Daily Green, he explains why I’m a bad person for failing to note the significance of this storm. It’s been a horrific decade for hurricanes.

Wait until the creationists try to wrap their little minds around artificial life … oops, too late

Here’s some exciting news: Artificial life likely in 3 to 10 years. It is exciting but not surprising at all — but of course we’re going to be able to assemble entirely artificial life forms soon. It’s just a particularly complicated kind of chemistry, and it’s more of a deep technical problem than anything else. I wouldn’t be quite so specific about the date — there are also all kinds of surprises that could pop up — but I’m optimistic, and I think the overall assertion is supported by the increasing rate of accomplishment in the field.

But of course, in addition to the usual suggestions from interested followers of science that I should mention this cool article on the blog, I’ve gotten a few from creationist complainers (Already! See what my email is like?) Expect to hear more outrage from the religious right as this story develops in the coming years, which might be a good thing … they’re going to have to spread themselves thin to fight all the interesting work coming out of biology, and evolution won’t be the only target anymore. Anyway, here’s one of my creationists, expressing his unhappiness in odd directions.

[Read more…]

So how did he grow up to be such an intolerant, hate-baiting jerk?

This sounds like it’s got to be a spoof, but it’s so weird it could also be true. Karl Rove’s adoptive father was a cover model … for a magazine about genital piercing. That’s fine by me, it’s just that it does make me wonder what’s going on in Karl Rove’s head — an honest biography of the man would be fascinating.