John McCain, professional weasel

John McCain recently spoke out on evolution and ID. He just managed to demonstrate that he’s a dissembling fool.

Responding to a question about a report that he thinks “intelligent design” should be taught in schools, the senator mocked the idea that American young people were so delicate and impressionable that they needed to be sheltered from the concept, which says God had a hand in creation and which has been challenged by Darwinists as unscientific.

“Shhh, you shouldn’t tell them,” he said, mimicking those who would shield children from the fact that some people believe in intelligent design. The former prisoner of war said he also disagreed with Cold War-era efforts to prevent Marxist-Leninism from being taught in schools, saying it was better for Americans to understand their enemy. He noted that he didn’t say that intelligent design needed to be taught in “science class,” leaving unclear exactly what class he thought it should be taught in. He said he believed local school boards, not the federal government, should determine curricula.

“From a personal standpoint, I believe in evolution,” Mr. McCain said. At the same time, he said, “When I stand on the rim of the Grand Canyon and I see the sun going down, I believe the hand of God was there.”

First of all, no one is afraid of Intelligent Design, or thinks kids need to be sheltered from the concept. American kids as it stands now get more exposure to creationism than to science—in the home and church. The fight isn’t about hiding silly ideas from schoolkids. It’s about not allowing crackpots to waste our children’s time, and about promoting good, substantive science teaching. Do you want school to be a place where kids learn, Mr McCain? Or do you see it as a propaganda arm of the ideological apparatus of the state?

The comment about local school boards is what they all say. Local control has always been a disaster: school boards consist of elected officials who rarely have any competence in education, and who get into office on promises of keeping costs under control, for instance. They should not be in the business of regulating and defining educational content, but they all too often are. Who in their right mind would think the local hardware store owner, the retired bank clerk, and the part-time realtor are automatically competent to tell the high school biology teacher what she ought to teach in her classes?

As for that last paragraph…he’s a typical politician, trying to have it both ways and avoid antagonizing anyone. It didn’t work: I see a credulous twit who also lacks the courage of any convictions.

IOKIYAC

So, has everyone read the latest investigation into Pat Tillman’s death already? I’m appalled at this astonishingly insensitive Christian bigot, Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, who basically slanders Tillman because he was an atheist.

“But there [have] been numerous unfortunate cases of fratricide, and the parents have basically said, ‘OK, it was an unfortunate accident.’ And they let it go. So this is — I don’t know, these people have a hard time letting it go. It may be because of their religious beliefs.”

Kauzlarich, now a battalion commanding officer at Fort Riley in Kansas, further suggested the Tillman family’s unhappiness with the findings of past investigations might be because of the absence of a Christian faith in their lives.

In an interview with ESPN.com, Kauzlarich said: “When you die, I mean, there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you don’t believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You are worm dirt. So for their son to die for nothing, and now he is no more — that is pretty hard to get your head around that. So I don’t know how an atheist thinks. I can only imagine that that would be pretty tough.”

Asked by ESPN.com whether the Tillmans’ religious beliefs are a factor in the ongoing investigation, Kauzlarich said, “I think so. There is not a whole lot of trust in the system or faith in the system [by the Tillmans]. So that is my personal opinion, knowing what I know.”

Huh. So, next time I’m at a Christian funeral, it’s OK if I go up to the bereaved family and suggest that they should have an easy time letting go since they’re religious, and their faith will make them happy, and they’re so lucky since they have it easier than us atheist worm dirt, and hey, it’s a good thing their gullibility will allow them to trust the system?

I think even I can tell that that is the kind of thing only an insensitive jerk would say. It’s OK If You Are Christian, though!

And isn’t he just the perfect person to have been in charge of the investigation?

Kauzlarich, now 40, was the Ranger regiment executive officer in Afghanistan, making him ultimately responsible for the conduct of the fateful operation in which Pat Tillman died. Kauzlarich later played a role in writing the recommendation for the posthumous Silver Star. And finally, with his fingerprints already all over many of the hot-button issues, including the question of who ordered the platoon to be split as it dragged a disabled Humvee through the mountains, Kauzlarich conducted the first official Army investigation into Tillman’s death.

One useful thing about all this is that we atheists are going to be able to make the case, if a draft is ever reinstated, that we wouldn’t be able to trust our fellow soldiers to refrain from killing us, and that we therefore must have a deferment. I know I would never allow any of my kids to go off to a war where they can’t rely on the raving religious fanatics around them…and commanding them.

Generic bumps and recycled genetic cascades

How do you make a limb? Vertebrate limbs are classic models in organogenesis, and we know a fair bit about the molecular events involved. Limbs are induced at particular boundaries of axial Hox gene expression, and the first recognizable sign of their formation is the appearance of a thickened epithelial bump, the apical ectodermal ridge (AER). The AER is a signaling center that produces, in particular, a set of growth factors such as Fgf4 and Fgf8 that trigger the growth of the underlying tissue, causing the growing limb to protrude. In addition, there’s another signaling center that forms on the posterior side of the growing limb, and which secretes Sonic Hedgehog and defines the polarity of the limb—this center is called the Zone of Polarizing Activity, or ZPA. The activity of these two centers together define two axes of the limb, the proximo-distal and the anterior-posterior. There are other genes involved, of course—this is no simple process—but that’s a very short overview of what’s involved in the early stages of making arms and legs.

Now, gentlemen, examine your torso below the neck. You can probably count five protuberances emerging from it; my description above accounts for four of them. What about that fifth one? (Not to leave the ladies out, of course—you’ve also got the same fifth bump, it’s just not quite as obvious, and it’s usually much more tidily tucked away.)

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More stem cell talk

DarkSyde is on the stem cell story, and he uses Neurotopia’s summary of the biology.

I just don’t understand the other side’s argument. Adult stem cells are not a substitute for embryonic stem cells, at least not yet. The anti-stem cell research crowd wants to claim that we don’t need ES cells, that AS cells will do everything we need, but they don’t think it through. If we want to make AS cells that are functionally equivalent to ES cells, we need to understand ES cells—but they want to deny us the ability to look at ES cells. Furthermore, if we could convert an AS cell line to totipotency what we’d have is…millions of cells we could replicate in the lab, each of which has the potential to become a human being. We’d go from a few “snowflakes” to a blizzard. Then what?

There are no limits to creationist stupidity

Every time I talk to creationists, I’m always stunned at the depth of their misconceptions. There are always the same old boring arguments that are ably dismissed with a paragraph from the Index to Creationist Claims, but there are also occasions when they get, errm, creative, and unfortunately they always take your gape-mouthed I-can’t-believe-you-are-so-stupid-that-you-said-that reaction as a triumphant vindication that they must be right.

Orac takes a right-wing idiot to task, and I don’t need to jump in—he’s done a fine job dismantling him—but I made the mistake of actually reading the ghastly blog article he’s criticizing, and even worse, reading some of the comments there. The very first comment will make your jaw drop at the combination of sublime arrogance and impenetrable stupidity. There’s a list of 7 objections to evolution, all wrong, but I’ll spare you and show just the first.

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A stem cell veto prediction

Despite Brownback’s snowflake stunt and Santorum’s insistence that zygotes are persons, the House stem cell bill, HR810, has passed, as have the two inconsequential smokescreen bills that Santorum tossed up. It’s going to be interesting to hear Bush’s stammered excuses when he vetos it; I’d figure he’d be reluctant to do the veto because it would mean taking undeniable responsibility for an action, something he doesn’t like to do, but then I realized he has another out. He’s going to blame God for telling him to kill the bill.

I predict that he will make some pious excuse like that when he vetoes it. That’s our George: he didn’t do it, it’s not his fault, the buck stops somewhere else, he’s a delegater, not a responsibility-taker.