Paul Nelson in Norway

A reader sent along a few notes on Paul Nelson’s grand tour of Norway—I’ve got to say that his strategy and his talk sounds awfully familiar, right down to the vacuous thought-experiments and god-praising screen-saver that conveniently kicked in during the Q&A. Most significantly, the Norwegian audience of scientists had little patience for his nonsensical arguments, just like our audience of students.

I really wonder how Nelson gets these travel invitations. Did the Scandinavian creationist groups pay his expenses, or is the Discovery Institute funding his missionary work? I think I need some atheist organization sugar daddy to front my junkets to Trondheim and other exotic locales in my ancestral homeland—I’d willingly go into a Norwegian church to lecture on godless evilution and get hammered on by the fundies if it meant I got to visit some interesting people and places.

The summary of his talk (in English, you’ll be relieved to know) is below the fold.

[Read more…]

Evolution of alcohol synthesis

i-ccbc028bf567ec6e49f3b515a2c4c149-old_pharyngula.gif

We need to appreciate beer more. Alcohol has a long history in human affairs, and has been important in purifying and preserving food and drink, and in making our parties livelier. We owe it all to a tiny little microorganism, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which converts complex plant sugars into smaller, simpler, more socially potent molecules of ethanol. This is a remarkable process that seems to be entirely to our benefit (it has even been argued that beer is proof of the existence of God*), but recent research has shown that the little buggers do it all entirely for their own selfish reasons, and they’ve been busily making alcohol that has gone undrunk by humankind for tens of millions of years.

[Read more…]

Cats, candy, and evolution

i-ccbc028bf567ec6e49f3b515a2c4c149-old_pharyngula.gif

Here’s a small taste of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a sweet story about a poor boy and his visit to an amazing candy factory…you’ve probably heard of it, since the new movie is getting a lot of press.

Only once a year, on his birthday, did Charlie Bucket ever get to taste a bit of chocolate. The whole family saved up their money for that special occasion, and when the great day arrived, Charlie was always presented with one small chocolate bar to eat all by himself. And each time he received it, on those marvelous birthday mornings, he would place it carefully in a small wooden box that he owned, and treasure it as though it were a bar of solid gold; and for the next few days, he would allow himself only to look at it, but never to touch it. Then at last, when he could stand it no longer, he would peel back a tiny bit of the paper wrapping at one corner to expose a tiny bit of chocolate, and then he would take a tiny nibble—just enough to allow the lovely sweet taste to spread out slowly over his tongue. The next day, he would take another tiny nibble, and so on, and so on. And in this way, Charlie would make his ten-cent bar of birthday chocolate last him for more than a month.i-a420ae8c62e074dde7e2fce0652d306e-tinystop.gif

That’s how it is published, at any rate. What if it read something like this?

Only once a year, on his birthday, did Charlie Bucket ever get to taste a bit of chocolate. The whole family saved up their money for that special occasion, and when the great day arrived, Charlie was always presented with one small chocolate bar to eat all by himself. And each time he received it, on those marvelg ynfg, jura ur pbhyq fgnaq vg ab ybatri-a420ae8c62e074dde7e2fce0652d306e-tinystop.gif, ur jbhyq i-a420ae8c62e074dde7e2fce0652d306e-tinystop.gifrry onpx n gval ovg bs gur cncre jenccvat ng bar pbeare gb rkcbfr n gval ovg bs pubpbyngr, naq gura ur jbhyq gnxr n gval avooyr-whfg rabhtu gb nyybj gur ybiryl fjrrg gnfgr gb fcernq bhg fybjyl bire uvf gbathr. Gi-a420ae8c62e074dde7e2fce0652d306e-tinystop.gifr arkg qnl, ur i-a420ae8c62e074dde7e2fce0652d306e-tinystop.gifbhyq gnxr nabgure gval avooyr, naq fb ba, naq fb ba. Naq va guvf jnl, Puneyvr ji-a420ae8c62e074dde7e2fce0652d306e-tinystop.gifhyq znxr uvf gra-prag one bs oveguqnl pubpbyngr ynfg uvz sbe zber guna n zbagu.

[Read more…]

Truth in Science?

The Pagan Prattle has an article about the infection of the UK with a rather American sounding version of creationism/ID. It sounds as if the response has ranged from dismissal to dithering avoidance, so it doesn’t seem to be a big threat (yet—these nasty little strains can expand into chronic virulence fairly easily), so the most interesting thing, I thought, was some terminology.

There is an air of superficial plausibility about this, which is apparent in four lesson plans on Irreducible Complexity (Intelligent Design’s catchphrase), the Fossil Record, Homology and Natural Selection. As a geologist I will only comment on the Fossil Record Lesson Plan, where Pupils are introduced to the three theories currently used to interpret the fossil record: Phyletic Gradualism, Punctuated Equilibrium and Phyletic Discontinuity. These three are, of course, Darwinian gradualism, PE and essentially Six Day Creation. Both scientists and theologians contend, with massive evidence that it is disingenuous to present the last as a scientific theory.

Ooooh. “Phyletic Discontinuity Theory”. It sounds so…sciencey.

Hox cluster disintegration

i-ccbc028bf567ec6e49f3b515a2c4c149-old_pharyngula.gif

Hox genes are metazoan pattern forming genes—genes that are universally associated with defining the identities of regions of the body. There are multiple Hox genes present, and one of their unusual properties is that they are clustered and expressed colinearly. That is, they are found in ordered groups on the chromosome, and that the gene on one end is typically turned on first and expressed at the head end of the embryo, the next gene in order is turned on slightly later and expressed further back, and so on in sequence. That the tidy sequential order on the chromosome is associated with an equally tidy spatial and temporal pattern of expression in the body has always been one of the more fascinating aspects of these genes, and they are one of the few cases where we see an echo of phenotypic form comprehensibly laid out in the DNA.

[Read more…]

Miller gives another lecture

I’m going to be a bit distracted for a while, with some upcoming travel and various other bits of busy work, but I was listening to this lecture by Ken Miller (in which Carl Zimmer was in attendance, too) as I was puttering away on a lecture of my own . It’s pretty much the same talk he gave in Kansas, sans talk of shooting at new targets and other obnoxious language, but I still find myself disagreeing with his conclusions. I had to take just a minute to bring up my objections.

[Read more…]