“Explore Evolution”—displacing good science with ‘dumbed-down’ creationism

The various ID blogs are all atwitter over the new textbook the Discovery Institute is going to be peddling, Explore Evolution. I’ve seen a copy, but I’m not going to give an extensive review just yet. I will say that it’s taking a slightly different tack to avoid the court challenges. It does not mention gods anywhere, of course, but it goes further: it doesn’t mention Intelligent Design, either. The book is entirely about finding fault with evolution, under the pretext of presenting the position of evolutionary biology (sort of) together with a critique. The biology part is shallow, useless, and often wrong, and the critiques are basically just warmed over creationist arguments.

What it actually is is Jonathan Wells’ Icons of Evolution rewritten and reworked as a textbook.

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Keeping up with Behe

While we’re waiting for the Panda’s Thumb server to come back up, with some new material on Behe’s new book, I’ll recommend Blake Stacey’s dissection of the malaria mutants. This little fable that Behe summarized about the frequency of chloroquine-resistant mutations in the malaria parasite is the centerpiece of his book, and the important odds of 1 in 1020 was the yardstick by which he measured evolution — it was the magic number, the limit to evolution, the likelihood that a fairly simple set of mutations could occur … and the whole story is bogus. The book has been out for only about a week and the whole thing is just crumbling to pieces already.

Not that it will matter in the slightest, of course. The Edge of Evolution isn’t a science book, it’s a propaganda piece — and the big lies are just fine for that purpose.

That’s a sight to make a fellow toss his cookies

It’s an article titled “I love teaching evolution”…on the Chalcedon foundation page, in column on homeschooling, beneath a quote and a picture of crazy ol’ R.J. Rushdooney.

Evolution is a topic that repeatedly enters into our curriculum the same way that sin is a topic that gets covered in depth. How am I adequately educating my child if I fail to cover in detail the lies and deceptions that are prevalent in our humanistic culture? The Christian homeschooling parent must be prepared to understand, articulate, and refute the preposterous claims that currently serve as explanations for the origins of life and the presence of all creatures great and small. Fortunately, there are many good books and publishers that have taken the time to make this task much easier.

I think this one belongs to Greg Laden. I’m going to stagger off and rest my bedazzled, overloaded brains.

(thanks to Jesse for that horrible vision.)

If only banality disqualified one from running for president…

I passed on listening to the Democratic debates, so you can sure as heck bet I skipped the recent Republican debate. Just as well, too; the candidates got pressed on that evolution question again, and wouldn’t you know it, it simply triggered an avalanche of idiocy, with Mike Huckabee leading the way. Just look at these quotes.

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Tangled Bank #81

The Tangled Bank

The very freshest, sweetest, neatest Tangled Bank is now online. It’s got links! To science!

P.S. A few people are worried that the Panda’s Thumb seems to be down right now. They’re having some server problems, it’s nothing to be too concerned about (it is not an external attack), and they’re in the midst of migrating to a new server anyway, so all should be well again soon without too much fuss.

Cephalopod camouflage, or: turning invisible is easier than it looks

i-82e420e4939b377f9fc00c2e618c326a-octo_camo.jpg
Octopus vulgaris reacting to a diver (predator).

The initial change from camouflaged to conspicuous takes only milliseconds due to direct neural control of the skin. Full expression of the threat display (right) is two seconds. Video frame rate is 30 frames per second. Watch the video clip.

Everyone here is familiar with the incredible ability of cephalopods to change their appearance, right? If you aren’t, review your cuttlefish anatomy and watch this video. A few frames from the video are shown on the right.

This is an amazing ability, and the question is how do they do it? Roger Hanlon has been spending years tinkering with cephalopods, trying to puzzle it out and come up with an explanation. There are a couple of things a master of disguise needs.

  • A good visual system. To match the background, you need to be able to see the background at least as well as the predator trying to see you.

  • Fast connections to the effector organs. Cephalopods have motor nerves that go straight from their brains to the chromatophore organs with no synaptic delays along the way.

  • The hard part: cutaneous chromatophore organs that can change intensity and texture with a fair amount of spatial resolution. Cephalopods have tiny, discrete sacs of pigment scattered all over their body, each one ringed with muscles that can iris shut to conceal the pigment, or expand the sac to expose the pigment. There are also muscular papillae that work hydrostatically to change the texture of the skin from smooth to rough to spiny/spiky.

  • An algorithm. A set of rules that translate a visual field into an effective skin pattern that hides the animal.

One of the minor surprises of this work is that that last item, the algorithm for generating camouflage, may not be that complex. By studying many camouflaged organisms, they’ve categorized camouflage techniques into just three different strategies.

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Marketing genius?

Do you really have to be a marketing genius to sell sex? This crazy Scot in Australia has hit on a scheme to combine aphrodisiacs: he feeds oysters Viagra. It sounds silly—if you want an erection, take the Viagra directly, without the additional step of having it diluted, filtered, and processed by a mollusc—but he claims his business is booming.

Now I just have to convince investors that my plan to breed rhinoceroses raised on a diet of Viagra-fed oysters is the Next Big Thing…hey, getting them to breed won’t be any problem at all, will it?

(via Hillary Rettig)

Hovind’s criminal memoirs

Speaking of unqualified dimwits trying to pass themselves off as competent scientist, take a look at this affidavit Kent Hovind filed in 2005. It’s Hovind’s history as Hovind himself sees it.

In his literature and in his talks, one of the subjects Hovind always brings up as part of his qualifications is his history as a high school science teacher. If I made a list of the most important jobs in America, I’d put teaching science in high school way up near the top, so that’s always been a discombobulating and disquieting claim from the man. When you read his history, though, you’ll discover that he never had a moment’s training in science—he went through a succession of bible colleges, worked as an assistant pastor and pastor, and then, with no background at all, starts teaching his version of “science” at Christian schools and a Baptist college.

It’s both reassuring—that clown and fraud did not earn a position deserving of much respect—and disturbing—these Christian educational institutions apparently have very low standards if they’re willing to accept ordination in the Baptist church as a substitute for actual knowledge in a discipline for their teachers.

The other thing that’s amusing about this document is that it is so freaking god-soaked, you want to wash the anointing oil off your eyeballs after reading it. And in the middle he tries to testify about Creation “Science” to the judge reading it. It makes me wonder whether judges and lawyers get tired of testimonials from criminals that mention god and jesus in just about every sentence.