Running some more Numbers

When I criticized that Ron Numbers article, I should have mentioned there were lots of other peculiar little comments that I didn’t bother to address. Jason Rosenhouse fills in the gaps. One of the things Numbers tried to argue was that creationists are pro-science because they pay lip service to science…but Jason squashes that idea.

Referring to creationists as anti-science is not meant as a description of how they see themselves. It is meant as a description of what they are. Just as the Devil can cite scripture for his purposes, so too can creationists use scientific sounding jargon in making their case. The fact remains that in both word and deed their actions drip with contempt for science and scientists. It is terribly naive for Numbers to pretend otherwise.

Acoelomorph flatworms and precambrian evolution

i-ccbc028bf567ec6e49f3b515a2c4c149-old_pharyngula.gif

One of many open questions in evolution is the nature of bilaterian origins—when the first bilaterally symmetrical common ancestor (the Last Common Bilaterian, or LCB) to all of us mammals and insects and molluscs and polychaetes and so forth arose, and what it looked like. We know it had to have been small, soft, and wormlike, and that it lived over 600 million years ago, but unfortunately, it wasn’t the kind of beast likely to be preserved in fossil deposits.

We do have a tool to help us get a glimpse of it, though: the analysis of extant organisms, searching for those common features that are likely to have been present in that first bilaterian; we’re looking for the Last Common Bilaterian by finding the Least Common Denominators among living species. And one place to look is among the flatworms.

[Read more…]

I hate to do this…

…but I have to defend Rush Limbaugh. He was detained for having a bottle of Viagra at the airport? What was he going to do, threaten Palm Beach with his little gift from god?

I think Limbaugh is a lying hypocritical scumbag, but what alarms me more here is the way airport security and customs has become an arm of fascism: a way to invade the privacy of the individual, all in the name of protecting us from the faceless evil of the other. A guy, I don’t care who it is, traveling with one bottle of Viagra is not a threat, and this shouldn’t have warranted even a prim finger wagging with eyebrow raised from an inspector.

Besides, seeing this in the news everywhere and having to imagine Limbaugh with a chubby is making me feel a little bit ill.

Tantalizing possibilities

Quite a few people sent me a link to this Foxtrot comic with the remote-controlled squid.

i-a18342be69dd6e9c194cfad89055f9b3-robot_squid.jpg

They were all just trying to tease me cruelly, because they knew it would be my favorite summertime pool toy, and they don’t exist. I looked everywhere, but the closest I could get was a remote-controlled robot shark, which is only almost as good.

i-9219b2ce917fbfe43acc870abe0d595e-robot_shark.jpg

Although, if we could mount laser beams on their heads…

Proof that God exists!

Here it is, the proof from breast ironing. Simple selectionist models can’t explain why human beings would mutilate secondary sexual characteristics and genitalia, therefore god exists. We also know the Christian right is exactly correct: God really does obsess over people’s sex lives, and he is a kind of sick pervert who likes to hurt children.

We can also suspect that he’s probably male, since testicle flattening, penis knotting, and scrotum binding don’t seem to come up often in his prescribed lists of genital abuses.

Mmmmm, octopus balls…

This really sounds delicious.

Hand-grilled in iron molds by cooks behind a large display window, the octopus dumplings are made from wheat flour paste mixed with fish stock, spring onions and boiled octopus chunks, and drizzled with a sweet sauce, dried bonito flakes and seaweed.

I could go for some takoyaki right now. Unfortunately, the bad news is that it’s from a story about introducing cephalopods as mass-market fast food in the US. If they became popular here, kiss a lot of beautiful molluscs good bye.

I’m going to have to advocate more vegetarianism, I’m afraid. Maybe we could indulge in some octopus dumplings on a few special occasions, but we’d be better off turning fruit and vegetables into the next big food fad.

<sigh> But seafood tastes so good…