The god worm

Barbara O’Brien is doing a guest post for Glenn Greenwald, and she’s chosen to talk about religion—you can guess what her position is from the opening paragraph.

…sometimes I find myself defending Christians from the religion haters among us lefties.

I confess. That’s me, religion hater. Go ahead and read the whole thing. It’s interesting. It argues that we should tolerate Christians (I’m all for that), and that some Christians have very sensible secular views, and that some American Christians have been responsible for social progress. Sure thing! No argument!

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Hiking through knives and needles

Let me tell you about this Achilles tendinitis I’ve got.

My first couple of steps in the morning are flaming agony. After working it and gingerly stretching for a while, it subsides to a dull ache, and I’m good for about a half hour of cautious hobbling. After that, though, the pain builds and builds, until it’s like slamming my heel down on a white hot knife.

I’m not saying this because I’m fishing for sympathy. I spent over an hour and a half today limping through the Darwin exhibit at the AMNH. The pain I suffered through tells you a) how stupid I am to overdo it (I’m paying for it now, I tell you) and b) how good that exhibit is.

It follows the development of Darwin’s thought and demonstrates the evidence that led to his conclusions. It is completely uncompromising. It makes a few nods to the modern evidence at the end, and does mention the creationist objections briefly, as the nonsense they are…but it’s amazing how solidly the case can be made for evolution using just the 19th century data.

And then, or course, there are the artifacts. Darwin’s microscope. Annie’s box(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). Bits of his notebooks. Darwin’s walking stick. It was glorious stuff.

I strongly recommend it. Even if the exhibit is also full of psychopathic badgers with acid-dripping claws ripping at your ankles. It’s really worth it.

Now it’s those crazy dangerous physics teachers

Here’s another sad story of hysteria used to water down science teaching. David Lapp does a simple and dramatic exercise, the ballistic pendulum experiment: fire a bullet into a block of wood, and from the masses of the two objects and the movement of wood, calculate the velocity of the bullet. That sounds pretty cool to me, and seems like a clever and dramatic way to get students to see the utility of simple math. Now, though, people are practically shrieking penal codes at the poor guy and whining about the terrible example he is setting, putting those poor school kids in danger.

“It’s just absolute madness, from my point of view,” said Feinberg, one of the founding members of the National Emergency Assistance Team, which has responded to most of the school shootings in the country. “It is not only crazy in concept, in light of the world we live in it is absolutely irresponsible.”

Guns are common objects, and a lot of the kids probably have at least one in their household. A lot of those kids have probably been out shooting: they have held a gun near their face, aimed it in the direction of a target, and pulled the trigger. They may have gone hunting with a parent, a situation far, far riskier than the controlled setting of a classroom. Mr Feinberg has no control over what they experience outside the school, and seems to have no idea of what those kids are doing in real life anyway. The virtue of this exercise is that it takes something familiar and uses it to reveal the mathematics of matter and motion.

The phrase that bugs me is “in light of the world we live in”—what world is that? One where if a teacher uses a gun responsibly as a tool, kids will be inspired to…what? Learn physics? What “irresponsible” lesson does Mr Feinberg think was taught?

Modules and the promise of the evo-devo research program

Since Evolgen recognizes the importance of evo-devo, I’ll return the favor: bioinformatics is going to be critical to the evo-devo research program, which to date has emphasized the “devo” part with much work on model systems, but is going to put increasing demands on comparative molecular information from genomics and bioinformatics to fulfill the promise of the “evo” part. I’m sitting on a plane flying east, and to pass the time I’ve been reading a very nice review of the concept of modularity in evo-devo by Paula Mabee (also a fish developmental biologist, and also working in a small college in a small town in the midwest…but rather deservedly better known than yours truly). In addition to summarizing the importance of the concept of modularity to evolution and development, the paper also does something I always appreciate: it summarizes the key questions that the modern evo-devo research program is working to answer.

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Our trip so far

We were supposed to arrive in NYC at 2, this afternoon.

The plane was diverted because La Guardia was socked in with storms. We spent the afternoon sitting on a runway in Allentown, Pennsylvania. An hour passed. Another, and another, and another. We got vague promises over the intercom, always saying our departure was sometime in the near future. We stopped believing the captain in the early evening.

We had just killed the fat one, the one whose glasses we used to start the bonfire in first class, the one we called “Piggy,” when the captain came on again and told us to fasten our seat belts and be sure our carry-ons were stowed. Woo-heee, were we ever abashed.

We put our shirts and pants back on and finally landed in the Big City around about 8.

Plans, plans, plans

You may be thinking that Pharyngula is going to be awfully quiet this weekend, what with the proprietor gallivanting off to that liberal hotbed of iniquity, New York City. Well, yeah, I probably am going to be rather busy, but I think I’ll be able to squeeze in a few things, especially since this tendinitis I’ve got is going to restrict my mobility a bit. Also, if any New Yorkers want to meet up, my schedule is little bit tight, but I might be reachable at a few times. I’m staying at the Grand Hyatt New York, Park Avenue at Grand Central Station, at (212) 883-1234. Late Saturday morning I’ll be at the AMNH (of course!) touring the Darwin exhibit, and that evening at 8 we’re going to be on Broadway, attending a musical…but late afternoon and early evening are free. I’m also probably going to be hobbling about the Bronx Zoo on Sunday, before my plane whisks me back to the desolate plains of Minnesota.

Guarded outrage, with intimations of futility

Do I believe that George W. Bush stole the last election and that the Republican party is run by criminals and traitors? You betcha. With his record of sloppy analysis, though, I just wish someone more trustworthy than Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had authored that report.

I also don’t see much in the way of productive suggestions about what to do to prevent it from happening again. If Republican operatives are in a position to commit such sweeping acts of anti-Democratic corruption, what’s to prevent it from happening again this fall? What are we going to do if it does happen again?