I have a new favorite charity!

Check it out: The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is an Anglo-American secular charitable organization that is in the process of being set up. They have a long list of causes they will support—science and education on the top of the list, but also many other traditional charitable goals—and all with an overt secular mission. It is a brilliant idea I can get behind, and I think it has the potential to give a visible focus to the good efforts of godless people everywhere.

No conversion for Irwin

The Christian group that spread the initial rumor that Steve Irwin had been “born again” shortly before his death has retracted the claim.

But as encouraging as it might be for Christians to know they
may share heaven with Irwin, the group now concedes there is reason
to doubt the conversion. The unverified story was sent out by an
exuberant staff member, said the group’s managing director, Carl
Wieland. “Though we are able to substantiate our suggestion that
Steve’s wife, Terri, was a church-going Christian, the stories of
Steve coming forward can, at this stage, not be substantiated,” he
said in a statement on the group’s website.

Note the name: Carl Wieland. The Australian co-founder of Answers In Genesis, the creationist group. I am not surprised.

How to dismantle a body

Don’t be too grossed out, but the University of Wisconsin Madison has put a whole series of high-quality videos of human dissection online. It’s extremely cool, but not for the squeamish—there’s more than just the sight of a cadaver getting hacked up, and the sound of a saw on bone or a chisel being used to peel up the cranium are, ummm, memorable. At least you’re spared the odor and the textures.

I’d almost forgotten how muscular gross anatomy is—it takes some heft and brute force to take apart a body.

(via Mind Hacks)

Even their engineers don’t get it

ID advocates are prone to brag about their self-professed expertise, which all too often relies on some respectable knowledge of engineering or other fields irrelevant to biology. DaveScot, the raving mad anti-scientist at Uncommon Descent, is a perfect example…but even in their own domains of knowledge they too often prove to be incompetent. Case in point: their blog has somehow become delisted from Google, and now DaveScot is flailing about, trying to find someone to blame. His answer? Wesley Elsberry did it. It’s all because other sites mirror their content, which he thinks Google finds offensive.

[Read more…]

Palaeos reborn!

First I reported that Palaeos was lost, and then that it might be found, but now it looks like we can safely say it is being reborn. The old version of Palaeos has been at least partially restored, but the really important news is that a Palaeos wiki has been set up and people are working on reassembling old content and creating new information in a much more flexible format. If you’ve got some phylogenetic or palaeontological expertise, you might want to consider joining the Palaeos team and helping out with this big project.

Be proud…you’re a biology teacher!

This is what I like to see: high school science teachers blogging. Particularly when, in this new blog, Beautiful Biology, the teacher stands up for good science.

That’s exactly how it should work. Biology teachers should teach evolution unapologetically, and when clueless parents protest, they should be politely told that they are wrong. Repeat that every day in every school district, and creationism will slink back into the shadows.

Free the Tripoli Six!

These six medical professionals:

Ashraf al-Hajuj
Valya Chervenyashka
Snezhana Dimitrova
Nasya Nenova
Valentina Siropulo
Kristiyana Valtcheva

were working at the al-Fateh Children’s Hospital in Banghazi, Libya in the late 1990s. A year later, about 400 children were diagnosed with HIV; the doctors and nurses were accused of conspiring with Israel and the USA to intentionally infect children with the disease, and were thrown into jail.

Five years later — five years spent in a Libyan jail, where they were tortured with electric shocks and beatings, and two of the nurses were raped! — defenders were able to show that the children were largely victims of HIV exposure prior to the arrival of the accused, and that the real culprit was a policy of poorly trained staff, unsterilized equipment, and generally shoddy hygiene. It didn’t matter; they were convicted in a sham trial, and sentenced to death by firing squad.

They appealed (wouldn’t you?) and are now being retried. Prospects look bleak. Libyans celebrated joyfully when the initial verdict was cast down, and Mouammar Gaddafi…well, let’s just say that having a megalomaniacal dictator running the country in which the trial takes place does not encourage much hope for a merciful intervention. The Libyans are now demanding $5.5 billion in compensation if they are to release the prisoners. This is nothing but a showy and high-priced extortion plot.

Declan Butler has put out a call for more awareness and more vocal protest of the plight of the Tripoli Six, and Nature has published a strongly worded editorial.

…scientists should lend their full support to the call by Lawyers without Borders — a volunteer organization that last year helped win the freedom of Amina Lawal, who had been sentenced to death in Nigeria for having a child outside marriage — that Libya’s courts should order a fully independent, international scientific assessment of how the children were contaminated.

I agree. The prisoners should be immediately released, and if Gaddafi is actually interested in correcting the tragic problems that led to the infection of 426 children with HIV and hepatitis, he’d be better off eschewing this disgraceful scapegoating and instead encouraging a deeper and more honest investigation into the tragedy—something that might help correct problems in Libyan hospitals and avert future adversity.

3.3 million years old, 3 years old

Say hello to Selam, or DIK-1-1, a new and very well preserved member of the family discovered in Dikika, Ethiopia. She belongs to the species Australopithicus afarensis and is being called Lucy’s little sister.

i-e45e827a198c79097f0d6b1fbf5950ec-selam.jpg

She was only a toddler when she died about 3.3 million years ago, and from the teeth the authors estimate that she was about 3 years old. Most of the skeleton is intact, but doesn’t seem to have yet been fully extracted from the matrix.

Some of the surprises: the hyoid bone is chimpanzee-like, and implies chimp-like vocalization abilities. She had a long way to go before she could have a conversation. The fingers are long and curved, and the scapula is more gorilla-like than ours; there is a suggestion of better arboreal ability than we have.

Alemseged Z, Spoor F, Kimbel WH, Bobe R, Geraads D, Reed D, Wynn JG (2006) A juvenile early hominin skeleton from Dikika, Ethiopia. Nature 443:296-301.