It’s a friend with a face full of necrotizing venom, which just makes him a little more special, I think. Anyway, it’s a good story about a responsible, rational reaction to finding a brown recluse spider in the house, and the little guy is so darned cute, too.
We’ve often heard this claim from creationists: “there is no way for genetics to cause an increase in complexity without a designer!”. A recent example has been Michael Egnor’s obtuse caterwauling about it. We, including myself, usually respond in the same way: of course it can. And then we list examples of observations that support the obviously true conclusion that you can get increases in genetic information over time: we talk about gene duplication, gene families, pseudogenes, etc., all well-documented manifestations of natural processes that increase the genetic content of the organism. It happens, it’s clear and simple, get over it, creationists.
Maybe we’ve been missing the point all along, though. The premise of that question from the creationists is what they consider a self-evident fact: that evolution posits a steady increase in complexity from bacteria to Homo sapiens, the deep-rooted idea of the scala natura, a ladder of complexity from simple to complex. Their argument is that the ladder cannot be climbed, and our response is usually, “sure it can, watch!” when perhaps a better answer, one that is even more damaging to their ideology, is that there is no ladder to climb.
That’s a tougher answer to explain, though, and what makes it even more difficult is that there is a long scientific tradition of pretending the ladder is there. Larry Moran has an excellent article on this problem (Alex has a different perspective), and I want to expand on it a little more.
I have just been informed that those sneaky Europeans at AFOE are having a poll, and I’m on it in the category of “Best Non-European Weblog”, and I’m losing badly. This wouldn’t be so bad if losing meant I got the title of “Best European Weblog”, but apparently trivial geographic and cultural differences will be used as an excuse to disqualify me there. Somehow, though, Sadly, No is winning in a landslide. I don’t understand how that can happen, and can only attribute it to the fact that a bunch of foreigners are voting, and they can’t read the title as an injunction to not vote for them. Sadly, of course. It means “NON” or “NEIN” or “NYET”, people!
I’m also getting whomped by LGM and the Agonist. Maybe the voters think the crews over there are French. Or that the winner of the vote is required to stay as far away from Europe as possible.
And then, perhaps, another problem is that they’ve misspelled this blog as “Pharyngyla”. Pharyngyla? Everyone knows that Pharyngyla is a blog that sucks. Pharyngula, though, is a whole ‘nother kettle of writhing tentacles.
I urge all of you who think I am the most non-European of them all to get out there and vote for someone. Anyone but sucky Pharyngyla. Or send me a kettle of tentacles, instead.
Even the webcomics are making fun of him. Click on the panel to read the rest—it’s pretty good. It also points out why we shouldn’t be displeased that he’s been imprisoned: one of his ‘accomplishments’ has always been to make the scientific and rational thinkers of all ages feel ostracized by an ignorant majority. He’s a sad little man, but he’s also done a lot of evil.
I got about 5 times my usual traffic yesterday, which explains why there were some occasional slow-downs all across scienceblogs. I think the server held up fairly well, though, and I know the big guys here are planning some server upgrades to handle future growth.
Don’t worry, it’ll ease up. You can tell from the relatively small increase in page views vs. visits that most of these people zipped in to read one post and didn’t hang around. The new creationists trying to argue weakly in that thread have been mildly amusing, though.
What are you doing this evening? Two big events:
Pirates of the Caribbean 3 is opening at the Morris Theater tonight at 8! I was thinking of going, but Skatje works there, and she’s got the inside scoop: people are already lining up. In Morris. I might wait a few days for the mob to fade away.
If PotC3 is too crowded, there’s always Drinking Liberally—7:00pm at Old #1.
Who says Morris isn’t a happening place?
There are new epistles from convicted swindler and evangelical Christian — but I repeat myself — Kent Hovind. The first is an account of his transfers within the prison system, and although I don’t feel even a twinge of sympathy for Hovind, I do feel for the other prisoners who experience the impersonal neglect and arbitrary abstention from human contact that is imposed by they system. I can’t feel much for Hovind, because his accounts are loaded with increasing amounts of frantic piety—he’s praying, praying, praying and proselytizing, proselytizing, proselytizing as if he’s desperated for some kind of magical redemption. It’s just too bad and too late; the poor man is trapped in his useless and self-serving cycle of looking for help from a non-existent being.
The second entry is just plain weird. It’s an extended metaphor in which he compares himself to an ax, and the people he preaches to to trees, and he’s in a vise (which he spells as “vice”) which prevents him from chopping wood, and oh, how he loves to chop wood, and he likes to cut deeply. It’s a little bit disturbing. I hope that when he gets out he is kept away from sharp objects.
The creationist science fair article got picked up by both Digg and Reddit, so we’re experiencing a bit of a traffic spike. Watch out for slowdowns and more of those pesky “internal server errors” while we undergo a kind of stress test. Also watch out for the brand spankin’ new, virginal creationist newbies who are showing up, and I will remind you all of the three comment rule: be patient, try to explain first, and only after they’ve said 3 stupid things, then can you whack them with a 2×4.
Oh, and if they post the same thing 3 times, that’s the server acting up, and it only counts as one, OK?
