A sense of giddy enlightenment emerges from reading Jennifer Ouellette on chocolate and Carl Zimmer on tapeworms. They were the highlights of my morning browse, anyway.
He really is stupid wanker—it’s no wonder his followers have problems.
(via Atheist in a mini van)
So I lack tact. I would have been pleased if the fellow had left it there, but suggesting I get tips from Dilbert? Bad form.
Larry Moran takes apart the Marcus Ross case in some detail. Ross is the young earth creationist who recently received his Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island.
That guy, John Wilkins, has been keeping a list of presentations of basic concepts in science, and he told me I’m supposed to do one on gastrulation. First I thought, no way—that’s way too hard, and I thought this was all supposed to be about basic stuff. But then I figured that it can’t be too hard, after all, all you readers went through it successfully, and you even managed to do it before you developed a brain. So, sure, let’s rattle this one off.
In the simplest terms, gastrulation is a stage in early development; in human beings it occurs between two and three weeks after fertilization. It is that stage when a two-layered cell mass undergoes a set of specific movements and interactions that establish the three germ layers of the embryo (endoderm, mesoderm, and ectoderm) and the beginnings of a three-dimensional structure. The end result doesn’t look like much of an animal, but it has set up pools of cells that will contribute to specific future cell types, and has laid down the rough outline of tissues along the body axis.
Somebody shoot me now. The Washington Post tallies up congressional votes, and in an astounding display of technological mastery, allows you to sort and display them by the congressperson’s astrological sign. If you’ve ever wondered whether Scorpios were more likely to vote for highway appropriations than are Virgos, now you can find out.
I really want to know what the conversations the editors or publishers had about this decision were like. I’m thinking they were getting worried about how idiotic and cowardly the press has been looking lately, so someone decided to do something bold and exciting and revolutionary…and this is what they came up with.
Gonad.
Testicle. Testes. Seminiferous tubule. Vas deferens. Prostate.
Penis. Corpora cavernosa. Urethra.
Urethra, urethra, urethra.
Ovary. Fallopian tube. Cervix. Uterus. Vagina. Labia majora and minora. Skene’s and Bartholin’s glands. Wolffian and Mullerian ducts.
Pudenda!
Pubococcygeal. Pelvic floor. Orifice.
Skin.
This looks like it could be a spectacularly vigorous discussion: Do Organized Religions Suppress Women’s Rights? A Panel Presentation on Women, Faith and Society. It’ll be held at the MCB on the UMTC campus next week — I’m tempted to go, even though I know the answer (yes) and the subject doesn’t go far enough (religions suppress everyone’s rights).
Quite a few people have written to me asking what’s wrong with richarddawkins.net…they can’t get through to it, and get DNS errors. No worries, everyone—it’s good news. They’ve been experiencing ever-escalating levels of traffic, so to cope with the incoming hordes, they’ve just migrated to a new and better server. Give the network a little time, you should be able to get to it in the next day or two.
Cool: here’s a duck with four hindlimbs.
I have to gripe about the description, though:
A rare mutation has left eight-day-old Stumpy with two extra legs behind the two he moves around on. … The mutation is rare but cases have been recorded across the world.
No, no, no. This is almost certainly not the result of a mutation, and it’s one of my pet peeves when the media makes this wrong assumption, that every change in a newborn is the product of a genetic change. This is the result of a developmental error, not a genetic one, most likely caused by a fusion of two embryos in a single egg.
(via Apostropher)
