Evolving motors

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As we are so often reminded by proponents of Intelligent Design creationism, we contain molecular “machines” and “motors”. They don’t really explain how these motors came to be other than to foist the problem off on some invisible unspecified Designer, which is a poor way to do science—it’s more of a way to make excuses to not do science.

Evolution, on the other hand, provides a useful framework for trying to address the problem of the origin of molecular motors. We have a theory—common descent—that makes specific predictions—that there will be a nested hierarchy of differences between motors in different species. Phylogenetic analysis of variations between species allows us to reconstruct the history of a molecule with far more specificity than “Sometime between 6,000 and 4 billion years ago, a god or aliens (or aliens created by a god) conjured this molecule into existence by unknown and unknowable means”.

Richards and Cavalier-Smith (2005) have applied tested biological techniques to a specific motor molecule, myosin, and have used that information to assemble a picture of the phylogenetic history of eukaryotes.

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Koufaxes are open

Chris Clarke (whose blog sure is a lot prettier all of a sudden) has revealed that the Koufax award nominations are now open. Go nominate your favoritest blogs!

I do not want anyone to nominate Pharyngula, and if nominated in any category I’ll ask to be removed. You see, I’ve already got one. It’s a nice honor, but I don’t need any more, and I’d rather see the glory spread around. So this year I’m planning to campaign for someone else; I’m not sure who, yet, but we’ll see what kind of exciting science-oriented blogs show up in the list this time around.

Safe and sound in NY

To my great relief, I’ve made it to the big city without a hitch (last time I came out here, I spent more time sitting on a runway in Allentown). Now it’s just a busy, busy couple of days visiting with some very cool people—this time I’ll actually get to visit Seed Central—and then back home on Wednesday.

The defaming continues!

I’ve got to work on my image. Here’s another report about meeting me that says I “turned out to be a more low-key guy than I expected”. Maybe I’ve got to try and reverse expectations.

It’s true. I make Mr Rogers look like a bomb-throwing anarchist. I walk into a room and people fall asleep. If I start talking, catatonia and death ensue. I’ve got the personality and verve of a cheap mannequin.

Everyone will testify to the truth of what I say.

Eskow—yet another backlasher

RJ Eskow has a set of 15 questions he wants us “militant atheists” to answer. Apparently, we’ve been blaming every problem in the universe on religion and religion alone, and we need to eradicate faith in order to inaugurate our new world order of peace, prosperity, and reason. That isn’t really hyperbole: his questions really are exercises in the obvious. Here’s one, for instance (no, I’m not going to waste my time with all 15):

Where the wars so often cited by militants (the Crusades, etc.) primarily religious in nature, or did their root causes stem from other factors such as economics, nationalism, and territorial expansion—as many experts in the field suggest? Or is the truth somewhere in between?

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The backlash is winding up

I’m about to hop on a plane and fly off to New York for a few days, and now it seems like everyone is sending me op-eds from all over the place that are screaming against the “new atheism”. We must be effective to inspire such denunciations, and we must be striking deeply to cause so much obvious pain. It’s sad to see the agony people are experiencing as they witness the godless speaking out with such boldness, but they’re just going to have to get used to it. After all, if they’re really tolerant, they have to recognize people’s right to believe or disbelieve as they will…but I guess we’re going to have to face a few spasms of outraged accusations as religiosity is challenged.

A perfect example is in the Wall Street Journal; it shows why the WSJ opinions page has such a low reputation.

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The great Phoenix blogger get-together

A few of us infamous bloggers met at a pleasant party at the home of Jim and Kat Lippard, and here we are:

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From left to right, the hospitable Jim Lippard, inscrutable Brent Rasmussen, elusive GrrlScientist, me, and that strange Irish guy.

At last, someone has accurately reported on my awe-inspiring personal presence:

P.Z. Myers was a towering giant of a man, with a bristling piratical mustache, a rakish beard, fangs, and little sucker-tipped tentacles instead of fingers. His booming, gravelly voice took over every conversation and ranted at us until we all finally agreed with him about everything.

I think the fact that I look shorter than everyone else in that picture is an optical illusion.

Flitting through Saturday at SICB

Rather than burning out, I decided I just needed a happy fun day at the SICB meetings, so I put away the notepad and flitted about from session to session to check out a semi-random subset of the diverse talks available here. So I listened to talks on jaw articulations and feeding mechanisms in cartilaginous fishes; the direct developing frog, Eleutherodactylus coqui; Hox gene expression in the fins of Polyodon (which was really cool—that curious HoxD gene flip across the digits may be a primitive condition, rather than a derived tetrapod state); biomechanical properties of spider webs; the physics of snake slithering; and the role of university based natural history museums. It was very relaxing.

One thing I wish more people in the lay public could understand is that science is just plain fun, and that scientists do things because the natural world is so beautiful and so engrossing. Maybe these scientific meetings should be accompanied by a few lectures open to the public…