See this map of religiosity? I’m stuck there in the brick red swath of traditional dumbassery running down the middle of the country.
I grew up in those lovely areas of Light out on the west coast.
May the benighted darkness someday fade from my current home.
(via Res Ipsa Loquitur)
or•gan•ic | ôr’ganik | adjective. denoting a relation between elements of something such that they fit together harmoniously as necessary parts of a whole; characterized by continuous or natural development.
One of the wonderful things about how development works is that organisms function as wholes, and changes in one property trivially induce concordant changes in other properties. Tug on one element, changing it’s orientation or size, and during embryogenesis any adjacent elements make compensatory adjustments, so that the resultant form flows, fits, and looks organic. This isn’t that surprising a feature of development, though, unless you have the mistaken idea that the genome encodes a blueprint of morphology. It doesn’t; what it contains is a description of interacting agents that work together in a process to produce a complex result. Changes in genes and regulatory elements can essentially produce changes in rules of development, rather than crudely specifying blocks of morphology.
What does this mean for evolution? It means that subtle changes to the rules of development can be caused by small changes to genes (and especially, to regulatory regions of genes), and that the resulting morphological changes may be dramatic, but are still integrated organically into the form of the organism as a whole. Our understanding of how development works is making it clear that large scale macroevolutionary change may be much easier than we had thought.
Here’s an example where this insight is clarifying the evolution of an organism: the fossil record of bats shows an abrupt appearance of fairly sophisticated creatures with elongated digits, clearly capable of gliding or powered flight, with no known intermediates. We expect there were less fully flight-ready predecessors, but fossil preservation is not kind to small, delicate boned animals. It’s also possible that the transitional period was fairly brief; it looks like turning a paw into a long-fingered membranous wing may be a fairly simple change on a molecular level.
It always gives a fellow a warm feeling to see an old comrade-in-arms publish a good paper. Chris Cretekos was a graduate student working on the molecular genetics of zebrafish at the University of Utah when I was a post-doc there, and he’s a good guy I remember well…so I was glad to see his paper in Developmental Dynamics. But then I notice it wasn’t on zebrafish—Apostate! Heretic!
Except…it’s on bats. How cool is that? And it’s on the embryonic development of bats. Even cooler! I must graciously forgive his defection from the zebrafish universe since he is working on an organism that is weird and fascinating and important.
That’s one big mean-looking dinosaur.
I can’t do it anymore. I can’t possibly keep up with the competition, who are willing to sink to sick, perverse depths to which the real porn kings and queens willingly immerse themselves. And they’re so close to me—just a few miles to the west, across that state line.
I’m talking about South Dakota.
As an example of understatement, I could say that I’m no fan of Mark Steyn—he’s another of those deeply confused and stupid far right pundits who is convinced that vigorous support for violent action by others will compensate for his intellectual deficiencies—so I’m not really surprised to learn of his new phrase for bombing the hell out of Iran: “de-nuking”. We are going to nuke their nuclear facilities to de-nuke their potential to nuke. I guess it’s a new way to jigger a sentence to insert more “nukes” and thereby bring the sad little man to his desired wargasm.
But don’t think I actually read Steyn—I got this second-hand from Bouphonia, who neatly summarizes the world view of Steyn and so many others:
The notion that our era might be defined not by “de-nuking” Iran, but by some gruesome and perfectly predictable consequence of George W. Bush’s ostensible attempt to do so, would never occur to Steyn in a million years. Where sane people imagine a discredited, unpopular, bankrupt, and incompetent administration attacking a third country while botching the occupation of two others, Steyn imagines boundless fields of glory.
Somehow, I don’t think Steyn is a member of the reality-based community.
No, really, it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. See Richard Feynman interviewed, for example.
Once again, I bravely plunge into the fascinating world of kinky sex research in humans. This time, we learn something incredibly useful. Gentleman, would you like to know how to improve the potency of your semen? Do you need a good excuse to give your significant other when she catches you browsing porn sites? Do you want another excuse to sneer at those pompous business types who flaunt their fancy cell phones? Here’s the study for you.
I don’t quite understand this etiquette thing. So Maryscott O’Connor is angry about war and corruption and our incompetent administration, and that’s bad. Naughty leftist, she should be better mannered and respectful to our president, no matter how badly he screws up.
Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin sics her mouth-breathing minions on some college-aged peace activists, and they get swamped with death threats from right wingers. And she does it twice, even after learning what kind of sewage her pals are spewing.
Hmmm. Decisions, decisions. Angry denunciations of political actions vs. vicious but infantile threats. Unstinting demands that our leaders do right vs. outrageous extortion. Which side do I want to be on?
I’ll pick the door on the left, Bob. Without hesitation.
Hey, and could someone point David Finkel to a real story about bloggers?
You’ve got to hand it to TBogg for giving the Malkins the treatment they deserve.
By way of Over My Med Body, I found this article that finds new virtues for seafood: it reduces anti-social behavior. This is great news! I plan to announce when I’m feeling cranky here at the Myers household, which will prompt an immediate serving of tasty salmon. I’m going to be eating fish every day!
Well, maybe not…I’m really not that cranky. But it is yet another piece touting the virtues of polyunsaturated fatty acids, especially the essential ω-3 fatty acids in which sea food is rich, so it reinforces my preferences, anyway.
