Molecular Fossils

My Lab Playlist: Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma

2012-01-24T18:09:00.000-05:00

2012-01-16T14:33:00.001-05:00

This post originally appeared on SkepticFreethought.com on January 16, 2012.

The origin of morality is a popular topic among both religious believers and skeptics. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed a religious debate where this point has failed to come up. Many religious people, especially Christians, view the existence of a moral code as compelling evidence of their God’s existence, and will often reference the robust moral convictions of famous religious leaders to support that claim.

The most common contemporary example is Martin Luther King Jr., a revered Baptist minister and civil rights leader. King graduated high school at the age of 15 and, after earning two bachelor’s degrees, was awarded a PhD in systematic theology from Boston University in 1955. During that time he served as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, and became an outspoken proponent of the American civil rights movement. In 1964, King became the youngest person to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 35. King was a Christian leader who undoubtedly possessed a strong moral compass. However, it isn’t at all clear that his moral convictions arose from his religion.

In fact, MLK often boldly condemned the actions of the Christian Church. As Jeff Nall points out in his profile of King’s religious beliefs, MLK roundly criticized many forms of organized religion, not only for its failure to support racial and economic equality (calling it Christianity’s “everlasting shame”), but also for its explicit support of war and violence. King noted:

In a world gone mad with arms buildups, chauvinistic passions, and imperialistic exploitation, the church has either endorsed these activities or remained appallingly silent. During the last two world wars, national churches even functioned as the ready lackeys of the state, sprinkling holy water upon the battleships and joining the mighty armies in singing, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.” A weary world, pleading desperately for peace, has often found the church morally sanctioning war.

Nall also points out that MLK was a strong supporter of church/state separation. Regarding the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that school-sponsored prayer is unconstitutional, King said:

I endorse it. I think it was correct. Contrary to what many have said, it sought to outlaw neither prayer nor belief in God. In a pluralistic society such as ours, who is to determine what prayer shall be spoken, and by whom? Legally, constitutionally, or otherwise, the state certainly has no such right. I am strongly opposed to the efforts that have been made to nullify the decision.

But King didn’t limit his criticism to the church; he was also openly skeptical of the very foundations of Christan doctrine. Despite being the son of a Baptist minister, MLK challenged traditional views of Christianity and the literal interpretation of scripture from a very young age. As Robert James Scofield describes in his profile of Martin Luther King Jr.’s religious doubts:

His entrance into Christianity at the age of six came from neither a genuine religious conviction nor a crisis moment; rather, he saw his sister make the altar call during a local religious revival and quickly followed suit. He claimed that during his baptism he had no idea what was occurring. Perhaps most striking was his denial of the bodily resurrection of Jesus during Sunday school at the age of thirteen. From this point he stated [...in his Biography], “doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly.”

Those doubts were reinforced as King continued to explore the foundations of Christianity. In a paper he wrote in 1949, King examined the psychological and historical origins of three foundational concepts of Christianity: The divinity of Jesus, his virgin birth, and his resurrection. While his analysis is worth reading in full, I’ll give away the punchline by telling you that King begins by stating, “these doctrines are historically and philolophically [sic] untenable.” He goes on to strip these stories of their literal meaning, and explore what it was about both the historical Jesus and the sociopolitical environment in which early Christianity was spreading that might have led to the propagation of such obvious inconsistencies and falsehoods as those found in the Bible.

King went on to exhibit other forms of skepticism about mainstream Christian doctrine, and even warned that it may be harmful. In 1950, King wrote a paper titled “The Humanity and Divinity of Jesus,” where he states:

The orthodox attempt to explain the divinity of Jesus in terms of an inherent metaphysical substance within him seems to me quite inadequate. To say that the Christ, whose example of living we are bid to follow, is divine in an ontological sense is actually harmful and detrimental. To invest this Christ with such supernatural qualities makes the rejoinder: “Oh, well, he had a better chance for that kind of life than we can possibly have …” So that the orthodox view of the divinity of Christ is in my mind quite readily denied. The significance of the divinity of Christ lies in the fact that his achievement is prophetic and promissory for every other true son of man who is willing to submit his will to the will and spirit of God. Christ was to be only the prototype of one among many brothers.
The appearance of such a person, more divine and more human than any other, andstanding [sic] and standing in closest unity at once with God and man, is the most significant and hopeful event in human history. This divine quality or this unity with God was not something thrust upon Jesus from above, but it was a definite achievement through the process of moral struggle and self-abnegation. [Emphasis mine.]

In other words, King’s saw Christ’s “divinity” to have arisen through his good works, not because of his particular relationship to a deity. In this sense, it seems MLK is using an external definition of morality to evaluate Christ’s behaviors.

This is a reflection of what’s known as “The Euthyphro Dilemma,” which asks if something is good simply because it is God’s will, or if God wills something because it is good. Briefly, if the first statement is true, then morality is arbitrary, and anything a god does cannot, by definition, be immoral. Moral behavior therefore becomes a synonym for “God’s actions.” However, if the second is true, then morality is independent of any gods, and therefore can’t be used as evidence of said gods.

As a secular humanist and an atheist, I believe that the foundations of morality are rooted in a concern for human welfare and are completely independent of religious belief. Martin Luther King Jr.’s opinions and writings suggest that he would agree with me.

My Lab Playlist: Ellie Goulding - Under The Sheets

2012-01-12T09:30:00.000-05:00

On 2012 Goals & Resolutions

2012-01-07T10:42:00.000-05:00

While my New Years "resolutions" rarely last past January, my general "goals" and lifestyle changes tend to have longer staying power. My wife and I had our greatest success sticking to our goals two years ago, when we decided to post our resolutions/goals around our apartment. This year I've decided to take it a step further, and post them online for the world to see.

Without further ado, here are my personal and professional goals for 2012:

1. Have a special "Date Night" with my wife at least once a month.

My parents celebrated their 40th Anniversary last month, and while this is certainly a laudable accomplishment, I wouldn't exactly say that they've experienced 40 years of wedded-bliss. Everyone involved recognizes that while they were busy being two excellent parents to their 8 children, they were pretty terrible spouses to each other. Nowadays, they hardly talk, and when they do they incessantly take little swipes at one another.

I desperately don't want to see that happen in my marriage, too. Relationships, like everything else is life, take lots of time and effort to maintain. Making a conscious effort to spend time keeping our relationship healthy is an investment worth making.

2. Read at least one book a month.

I realize this makes it seem like I don't read very much, but I actually read quite a bit. However, most of what I read tends to be news articles, blog posts, and scientific papers. For example, I read around 5 novels last year for pleasure, but I estimate I read the equivalent of 5-7 books worth of scientific papers alone (~3-5 papers/week*50 weeks). So it's not that I don't read enough, it's that I don't read widely enough. And no, perusing the occasional neuroscience manuscript doesn't count as reading "diversity."

I've got a stack of great books waiting to be read, and this month I've picked Lawrence Krauss's biography of Richard Feynman, Quantum Man. So far, the descriptions of Feynman's many contributions to quantum physics is fascinating. However, I'm finding Krauss's style of writing, which is riddled with subordinate clauses, always jumping around the subject, to be distracting.

3. Learn a computer programming language.

If I had it to do over again, I would double major in computer science. At minimum, I wish I could go back and take some introductory programming classes. Now, as a burgeoning evolutionary geneticist working with microbiome pyrosequencing data (i.e. MILLIONS of DNA sequences), I can't really put it off any longer.

I had thought my best option was to sit down and slog through online tutorials in either BioPython or BioPerl. However, I recently signed up for a guided eductional program called Code Year. Each week, CodeAcademy emails you a new lesson, and you click through it when you have time and learn at your own pace. I've gone through the first few simple lessons, and it seems to be targeted at true beginners, which is unlike many of the other tutorials I've tried in the past.

4. Write 1,000 words a week.

This is a surprisingly difficult one for me, because although I genuinely enjoy the fruits of arduous writing, I get ridiculously nervous about actually sitting down and putting words on the page. I somehow got it in my head that if every sentence I write isn't the most beautifully crafted phrase ever to grace the English language, then I don't want to write it at all. This posed a major problem while I was writing up my thesis, as you can imagine.

I realize, of course, that this fear is irrational and absurd, and that the only way to improve my writing and find my stylistic voice is to practice, practice, practice. I'd like to say I want to write 1,000 words a week about science, which is the one topic I'd really like to get better at discussing. However, writing about science, especially other people's science, greatly exacerbates my stress level. As I become a better writer, I'll write more about things I really care about. Until then, I'll write about whatever else I am interested in--as long as it gives me more practice writing.

5. Run the Cleveland Marathon --maybe.

This is a tricky one. I've run two half-marathons before, but the second was much worse than the first. I was pretty worried about my first big race, so I trained a fair amount (not nearly enough, though, I'll admit). I beat my expected time, and felt pretty good afterward. However, I must have gotten cocky, because I barely prepared myself at all for my second half marathon, and I felt absolutely awful afterwards (not to mention had a terrible race time), and vowed to never again run unless something was chasing me.

I've had a change of heart, though, and I think I'm ready to put the time into actually training for a full marathon. My wife is an avid runner, so I know it takes more than a few long runs to adequately prepare yourself for a 26.2 mile race. I'm not ready to fully commit to the marathon yet, so I'm giving myself three more weeks to decide. That will put me 16 weeks away from the race, which is the amount of time needed for my training plan.

The plan says that a beginner should be able to run 5-6 miles without collapsing, so if I can do that and actually do the 3-4 runs/week for the next three weeks, then I'll actually sign up for the race. If I don't stay motivated and fail to run anymore this month, then I'm not going to waste the money.

I know I have problems staying motivated, so I've looked into software designed to help you manage goals (like HiTask and LifeTango). However, I am also self-aware enough to realize that I'll just avoid visiting the website if I know I don't have anything good to add (Example: I can never again login to fitday.com).

Instead, I've decided to use Google Calendar to track goals and send email reminders. I already use gmail and google calendar everyday, so I can't avoid it. I can still chose to ignore it, however, but in the end, technology can only go so far to influence my behavior. The rest I've got to do myself.

My Lab Playlist: Motion City Soundtrack - Worker Bee

2012-01-05T20:57:00.001-05:00

It's been a good year, a good new beginning.
I'm through with the old school so let's commence the winning.
I've been a good little worker bee.
I deserve a gold star.

Gone are the glad hands, the black holes and liars,

the constant companions, obnoxious suppliers.
Carnivore kings milking holiday sins,
comas and cashmere.

It went from no good to fucked up and over.
a total distortion of lifelong disorders,
barreling headfirst through fresh open wounds.
This, I was not used to.
Now that my words don't quite do what they should,
now that old wounds are resurfacing too,
it makes me feel golden.
It makes me feel good

It's been a good year, a good new beginning.
I'm through with the old school so let's commence the winning
I've been a good little worker bee.
I deserve a gold star.

A gold star.
I deserve a gold star today.

Ted Haggard on Wife Swap

2012-01-02T12:53:00.000-05:00

I just finished watching the Rose Parade with my wife, and I caught an advertisement for the latest season of ABC's reality show, Wife Swap. This season features a long list of C-list celebrities, including Twisted Sister front man Dee Snider, Pro-Wrestler Mick Foley, and --most amusingly-- the meth-using, homophobic-yet-bisexual, fundamentalist pastor Ted Haggard.

As the Huffington Post reports:

According to ColoradoSprings.com, Ted Haggard, the pastor and former president of the National Association of Evangelicals who was ousted after admitting to doing drugs and having a relationship with a male prostitute, will be trading spouses with actor Gary Busey on an upcoming episode of "Celebrity Wife Swap."

Of course, this isn't Haggard's first foray into shameless self-promotion since he lost his job as pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, CO in 2006:

Haggard and his wife Gayle appeared on a 2009 episode of "Divorce Court," and featured in a TLC documentary about his fall and rise, called "Ted Haggard: Scandalous." He also had a documentary on HBO, and has appeared on countless talk shows, including "Oprah."

Don't worry though. His extremely public gay-sex-and-drug scandal hasn't cause Haggard to lose his sense of humility. In a recent interview with The Christian Post, Haggard likens himself to no less than Jesus Christ:

“I don't think there's anybody that I know of that more reflects the resurrection of Christ than I do right now,” Haggard said.

Now, I'm no Bible scholar, but I think I would remember that part of the Gospel. I'm expecting a gold-medal winning performance for the mental gymnastics Haggard will have to perform.

I usually don't watch this type of garbage reality TV, but I might make an exception for tomorrow night's episode. Apparently Busey is a Born-Again Christian and is also a pastor. We may even be treated to some rootin'-tootin', duelin'-proselytizin'. Either way, it'll be entertaining to see who can appear less crazy:

7 Things to Avoid When Introducing Humanism

2011-12-30T11:17:00.002-05:00

Jennifer Hancock, author of the new book The Humanists Approach to Happiness, has a new column in next month's The Humanist, titled HUMANISM 101: Seven Things to Avoid When Talking to Strangers about Humanism.

Her first point struck a chord with me, because I often expect the worst when discussing my religious beliefs (or lack thereof) with people I like and know to be religious:

1) Don’t expect a negative reaction. Most people have a positive initial reaction to the word “humanism” or “humanist.” They likely want to hear what you’re going to say, and chances are they’re going to agree with a fair amount, except the rejection of the supernatural. So don’t ruin someone’s initially good impression of the word humanism by assuming he or she is going to react negatively to the philosophy; a positive response allows you to lead with a positive introduction. Of course, there’s also a chance that the person you’re talking to is a humanist and just doesn’t know it.

I've found that I will often scrimp on the details while explaining humanism, partially because I'm more concerned with not offending anyone that I like and/or respect than I am with being true to myself and my beliefs. I know from experience that many people will mentally and emotionally shut off at the very idea of being godless, as if simply learning about someone else's belief system might be considered blasphemy on their part. This reaction does not seem to extend to learning about other world regions.

Hancock is exactly right when she says that most of the people that I interact with agree with the humanist approach to living a good life and being a good person. However, the "nothing is supernatural" component of humanism tends to be a non-starter for most people. This leads me to the other reason I that I shy away the details of my humanist beliefs: I'm never quite sure which aspect I should be focusing on. If I begin my referencing atheism, as I often do, it immediately puts me on the defensive and I start backpedaling and belittling my own beliefs. I've only recently become aware that I am even doing this, and it is not something I am proud of. Instead, Hancock suggests two points:

4) Don’t talk about God. Most people, including most religious people, have very little interest in talking about the existence of God. And in our scenario, you haven’t been asked about that topic. You were asked about humanism. What’s interesting is that you wouldn’t even have to make a rejection of the supernatural explicit—people understand immediately that a deity is missing when you don’t invoke God or religion as the basis for your morality.

and

7) Don’t forget to talk about morality. The most attractive thing about humanism is its strong moral foundation. And yet most of us feel an urge to talk to strangers about the existence or non-existence of God. Don’t make this mistake. Talk about morality for the sake of morality without even going into the fact that yours isn’t grounded in a God belief. The truth is, most people consider morality a highly important topic, and the most exciting part about discussing moral issues with people is that if it turns out they are also irreligious, they will at this point get really excited and want to become your friend. It happens to me all the time!

This is great advice! I am not discussing atheism - I am talking about the much larger topic of humanism. Humanism is the framework in which I think about morality. Moral actions and beliefs should be determined by careful consideration, open debate, and should be based on the best information available and updated accordingly. I don't need to add the "...and not handed down from on high" rejoinder; people implicitly understand what I am talking about. This is the strength of humanism, and therefore it should probably be the first thing I talk about when I'm introducing someone to its tenets.

You can check out Hancock's other three points here -they are definitely worth the read! I found her most interesting idea to be that you may be talking to a fellow humanist that just doesn't know it yet-- what a novel idea!

Well, that didn't take long: The First Anti-Evolution Bills of 2012

2011-12-22T10:06:00.003-05:00

...and in New Hampshire, of all places! I just received this link from the National Center for Science Education:

The two antievolution bills on the horizon in New Hampshire have now been prefiled in the state House of Representatives. House Bill 1148, introduced by Jerry Bergevin (R-District 17), would charge the state board of education to "[r]equire evolution to be taught in the public schools of this state as a theory, including the theorists' political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism."

Make no mistake about it, this bill is in direct opposition to sound science education, and is purposely politicizing an inherently non-political issue. The fact of evolution is not influenced by the theological stance of those who study it (although the inverse in not always true). The "position on the concept of atheism" requirement would likely backfire on these politicians, since teachers can point to any number of theistic evolutionists out there in the public sphere. The second bill:

House Bill 1457, introduced by Gary Hopper (R-District 7) and John Burt (R-District 7), would charge the state board of education to "[r]equire science teachers to instruct pupils that proper scientific inquire [sic] results from not committing to any one theory or hypothesis, no matter how firmly it appears to be established, and that scientific and technological innovations based on new evidence can challenge accepted scientific theories or modes." Although HB 1457 as drafted is silent about "intelligent design," Hopper's initial request was to have a bill drafted that would require "instruction in intelligent design in the public schools." Both bills were referred to the House Education Committee; HB 1148 is scheduled for a hearing on February 9, 2012, and HB 1457 is scheduled for a hearing on February 14, 2012. A columnist for the NashuaTelegraph (July 3, 2011) who interviewed Bergevin and Hopper about their bills commented, "My taxpayer dollars pay science teachers to teach science, not philosophy. Let's hope lawmakers don't try to get in the way."

Thank goodness for New Hampshire columnists like David Brooks (its a great column, you should check it out, too). One particularly ironic line is when Brooks quotes Rep. Jerry Bergevin as saying:

“My LSR is not anti-evolution, I am anti-indoctrination.”

I wonder if Rep. Bergevin is anti-indoctrination with regard to his childrens' religious upbringing. I'm guessing he made an exception in that case. Rep. Gary Hopper was less opaque about his motivation for sponsoring his bill:

“I had been filled with this theory of evolution, which if you really boil it down, is a theory that we are here by accident, that there is no purpose. The conclusion is that we’re a bunch of accidents … you really have no purpose for existence,” he said.

“Teaching a child that it’s very possible that they were designed would infer that they actually have a purpose. There’s some purpose they were created, so that is a reason to live. Right now, we’re teaching children that basically they’re animals.”

Brooks's pitch-perfect reply sums my feelings on the matter quite well:

I suspect that many people reject evolutionary theory for this very reason: It seems empty and meaningless to them.

If I may talk philosophy for a moment, I think this is exactly backward. Creationism is meaningless, but evolution is a door to infinite wonder.

Saying that I exist because of the same processes and materials that lead to sunsets, rainbows and the moons of Saturn (to choose a few cool things), and that we as humans can study and understand these processes – that is meaningful. It makes me part and parcel of this whole glorious universe in intricate ways.

Saying that we were created out of nothing by an unknown or unknowable being, an explanation that leaves no room for further study or understanding – that strikes me as ultimately empty and meaningless.

But this is irrelevant here, because it has no bearing on what to teach in science class.

The timing couldn't be better for those bill hearings, since they fall during the same week as Darwin Day 2012. I'll be watching this one closely.

Celebrate Carl Sagan Day!

2011-11-09T09:22:00.000-05:00

I just received this very special message from the Center for Inquiry reminding me to celebrate one of the great science communicators of our time:

Carl Sagan was a Professor of Astronomy and Space Science and Director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University, but most of us know him as a Pulitzer Prize winning author, a tireless advocate for science and reason, and the creator of the groundbreaking PBS series, COSMOS.

Sagan was that rarest of individuals: a scientist and researcher who was also adept at communicating scientific ideas to the general public.

Through his work, Sagan taught us some physics, some history, some chemistry and biology, and lots of astronomy. Along the way he eased an entire generation from the abyss of cosmic insignificance to an understanding of our unique significance to each other.

Today, on what would have been his 77th birthday, thousands of people around the world are taking time out from their normal routine to pay tribute to Sagan, revisit his meaningful work, and revel in the cosmos he helped us discover and understand.

Visit carlsaganday.org to find a Sagan Day event near you.

9/11 Changed the Face of Atheism

2011-09-11T10:34:00.000-04:00

This essay was originally published on SkepticFreethought.com on September 11, 2011.

It has become almost cliché to say that the attacks on September 11, 2001 were the Pearl Harbor or Kennedy assassination of our generation. Ten years later, nearly all of us remember what we were doing the moment we heard the news. The day is seared into our collective memory not simply due to the emotional impact of the moment, but because of the startling realization that our lives would never again be the same.

The events of that day profoundly affected our way of life. Not just foreign policy or airline safety standards, but also our sense of security and our relationship to fellow human beings. For many people, it even changed their relationship with their god and religion.

The American Humanist Association’s most recent newsletter features one woman’s story of how 9/11 influenced her journey from Catholicism to Atheism. Diqui LaPenta, a biology professor in northern California, tells of losing her boyfriend, Rich Guadagno, on Flight 93, the flight that crashed in Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania.

...My parents arrived two days later, having driven all the way from San Antonio, Texas, and we flew to New Jersey for a memorial service for Rich. Some very religious relatives planned to meet us in New Jersey. I asked my parents to ensure that those relatives refrain from religious platitudes. I didn't want to hear that Rich was in a better place or with God or that it was all part of some plan that God had for us. From the moment I heard that Rich and thousands of others had been killed, I knew that the all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God of childhood stories absolutely could not exist. Rich was not in a better place. There was no place he would rather be than with his dog Raven, me, his family, and his friends. I would never see Rich again, as there is no afterlife. Pretending that I would see him again would make it impossible to heal.

Before 9/11, I’d never considered myself an atheist. After that day I was, and I let people know it. When asked what church I attend, I reply that I don’t. If prompted to explain why, I say that I’m an atheist. Some people say, “But you have to believe in something!” I do. I believe in the power of rational thought and critical thinking. I believe that we should live thoughtful, peaceful, moral lives because it’s the right thing to do and not because we’re afraid of punishment or hopeful for a reward beyond the grave. We have this one life, and we should make the best of it for the short time we are here.

Diqui isn’t the only one that felt compelled to be more forthright about her atheism after 9/11. As the CNN Belief Blog points out, the religious nature of the attacks provided the impetus for many atheists to come out of the closet and openly criticize previously unassailable religious beliefs.

Atheists were driven to become more vocal because of the 9/11 attacks and America's reaction, says David Silverman, president of American Atheists. He says many atheists were disgusted when President George W. Bush and leaders in the religious right reacted to the attack by invoking "God is on our side" rhetoric while launching a "war on terror."

They adopted one form of religious extremism while condemning another, he says.

"It really showed atheists why religion should not be in power. Religion is dangerous, even our own religion," Silverman says.

Atheists are still the most disparaged group in America, but there's less stigma attached to being one, he says.

"The more noise that we make, the easier it us to accept us," Silverman says. "Most people know atheists now. They knew them before, but didn't know they were atheists."

In fact, atheists have gained so much public acceptance that David Silverman gave a public address this morning on the main steps of the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg, in an event hosted by the PA Nonbelievers.

While some atheists began speaking out, others began writing. As Newsweek reports, Sam Harris began writing his bestselling The End of Faith on September 12th, 2001 - directly in response to the attacks. Harris's recent blog post on the 10 year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks succinctly summarizes his perspective on the distance we have left to travel:

Ten years have now passed since many of us first felt the jolt of history—when the second plane crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. We knew from that moment that things can go terribly wrong in our world—not because life is unfair, or moral progress impossible, but because we have failed, generation after generation, to abolish the delusions of our ignorant ancestors. The worst of these ideas continue to thrive—and are still imparted, in their purest form, to children.

On the other hand, while some atheists began speaking out in public and openly critiquing religious ideas, others saw the attacks as a call for greater unity and love. Chris Stedman, a Fellow for the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy, will be honoring those lost by spending today packaging 9,110 meals to be distributed to hungry children in Massachusetts. As he stated recently in Washingtion Post’s On Faith:

9/11 will live on forever in our nation’s memory. We suffered an incomprehensible loss at the hands of extremists who believed that religious diversity must end in violence. But as people of diverse religious and secular identities, we can counter them with our unity. By building bridges of understanding, we can act on our shared values and learn-from and with one another-how to be our best selves.

No matter the reaction, the attacks on September 11th caused the public face of atheism to drastically change. The 10 years since that day has seen many changes in way the world community approaches religion, but no one can say that religious beliefs are as protected from criticism as they were a decade ago.

Many non-believers have very strong opinions about the best way to prevent similar attacks in the future. Despite the ongoing debates, it seems clear to me that the courage to work with religious community groups in areas where our interests overlap, paired with the freedom to directly and openly criticize bad ideas wherever they occur in the public sphere, will be the tools that we must use to build a safer, healthier, and happier future.

Secular Student Alliance Conference - 2011

2011-07-28T11:11:00.000-04:00

Ten members of the Kent State Freethinkers are headed down to Columbus this weekend to attend the Secular Student Alliance Annual Conference, yours truly included. With a such a stellar group of speakers on the list of events, it will surely be a weekend to remember!

Speakers Include:
Dan Barker
Greta Christina
PZ Myers
David Silverman
Jessica Ahlquist
Jennifer McCreight
Hemant Mehta
Jamila Bey
Debbie Goddard
Amanda Knief

Even though PZ Myers is probably the biggest draw for most people, I am actually looking forward to hearing Jamila Bey talk about authenticity when identifying as a secularist. This is something I've struggled with in the past, so I'm hoping to get inspired.

Secretary of Defense Bird

2011-07-06T15:53:00.000-04:00

My new found respect for birds

2011-06-13T09:49:00.002-04:00

I recently came across this video of a secretarybird, an Africa raptor that hunts by stomping the crap out of snakes, amphibians, tortoises, rats, mammals, insects, birds, and basically whatever else it can bludgeon to death with its long, scaly talons.

Their peculiar name comes from the feathers on the back of their head. As the Honolulu Zoo reports:

Secretary Bird, Sagittarius serpentarius. Image Credi: Keven Law

The single species of its family, the bird gets its name from its crest of long feathers that look like the quill pens 19th century office workers used to tuck behind their ears.

Although its wikipedia article suggests that the name instead comes from a French corruption of the Arabic word saqr-et-tair or "hunter-bird."

Either way, the secretarybird is quite an amazing animal!

h/t: CRACKED

Bill Nye Boo'd for Saying that the Moon Reflects Light

2011-05-05T10:12:00.001-04:00

From BSAlert.com

Bill Nye, the harmless children's edu-tainer known as "The Science Guy," managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.

Hmm...that doesn't sound quite right. Why would such a grade-school observation rile people up?

As even most elementary-school graduates know, the moon reflects the light of the sun but produces no light of its own.

But don't tell that to the good people of Waco, who were "visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence," according to the Waco Tribune.

Nye was in town to participate in McLennan Community College's Distinguished Lecture Series. He gave two lectures on such unfunny and adult topics as global warming, Mars exploration, and energy consumption.

But nothing got people as riled as when he brought up Genesis 1:16, which reads: "God made two great lights -- the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars."

The lesser light, he pointed out, is not a light at all, but only a reflector.

At this point, several people in the audience stormed out in fury. One woman yelled "We believe in God!" and left with three children, thus ensuring that people across America would read about the incident and conclude that Waco is as nutty as they'd always suspected.
This story originally appeared in the Waco Tribune, but the newspaper has mysteriously pulled its story from the online version, presumably to avoid further embarassment. [sic]

Ahh, that makes more sense. It wasn't that the fact that the moon reflects light that pissed a bunch of people off. It was that Nye pointed out this this directly contradicts the fundamentalist biblical understanding of the world. Shame on you, Texas.

I guess it is true what they say...

Bill Nye: Some men just want to watch the world learn.

The Canary Sky

2011-05-04T13:23:00.000-04:00

I've been a bit busy lately, training for another half marathon and trying to figure out where I'll be working come next fall. However, I was so blown away by this incredibly beautiful example of time-lapse photography that I thought I'd take the time to share it here.

El Cielo de Canarias / Canary sky - Tenerife from Daniel López on Vimeo.

"El Cielo de Canarias"/ "Canary Sky"

Project produced by Daniel Lopez. elcielodecanarias.com

Scenes taken from Tenerife, more than 2,000 meters above sea level and over a year to capture all possible shades, clouds, stars, colors from a unique landscape and from one of the best skies on the planet. First in a series of videos nocturnal and crepuscular Time Lapse taken in the Canary Islands trying to capture the beauty of each island. To capture the natural movement of the earth, stars, clouds, sun and moon TimeLapse technique was used, Dolly vertical and horizontal rails, spindles with horizontal and vertical movements. HDR data collection.

Some scenes of the video:
- "The Cathedral" in the plain of Ucanca, night shot with the planet Jupiter across the scene.
- El Arbol de Piedra (Roque Cinchado) with a Tajinaste pointing to Polaris.
- Tajinastes "night", The Red Tajinaste, endemism Canario blooming in spring.
- The "hat" in the Teide. Formation of a cloud known as cap at the peak of Teide.
- "Waterfalls of clouds crossing the mountains and rivers of multicolored clouds.
- Sea of clouds crashing against the mountains as it did the sea.
- Large pool of water in the plain of Ucanca lenticular clouds where stars are reflected.
- Tajinastes night with the Milky Way taken out on the horizon with a dolly track.
- Video of the sun setting and a double green flash. "
- Pleiades and the Andromeda galaxy between rocks in the mines of San Jose.
- Scenes spectacular sunset in the Teide National Park with clouds and moving dolly.
- ArcoIris from the Teide National Park.
- Multicolor Halos around the moon.
- Clouds remain stationary hours at the site are changing their colors as the sunset

Daniel Lopez is a photographer / astrophotographer based in Tenerife . Works by photography and video, specializing in evening using many techniques, from camera tripod grasp heaven and earth in the same photo, amateur telescopes to take pictures of astronomical objects to professional telescopes to capture details and high resolution. It also performs and produces videos about nature, landscapes and interesting places in the draw is always something new and take another different view and "magical."

h/t BadAstronomy

It's DNA Day! Get your Genes Screened for Free!*

2011-04-11T10:23:00.000-04:00

*and a $9.00/month, 12 month subscription.

From the Genetic Genealogist:

23andMe has jumped the gun and is having their expected DNA Day Sale a bit early. The price will be $9 per month for a minimum of 12 months ($108) with no upfront charges. The following email was sent out to select customers:
Although DNA Day is officially April 15th, we at 23andMe just couldn't wait that long. So we're celebrating a bit early with a big sale!

For a limited time, you a 23andMe kit for $0 up front, plus a 12-month commitment to our Personal Genome Service® at $9/month. This is down from the regular price of $199 plus $9/month.

Existing customers on our v2 genotyping platform can also take advantage of this sale to upgrade to the latest v3 platform for the same price by going to https://www.23andme.com/user/upgrade/. Once your sample has been processed, you'll receive data on nearly 1 million places in your genome, information about your distant ancestry, and access to more than 180 health reports (optional). With the Personal Genome Service®, we'll also help you connect with potential relatives to fill out your family tree and keep you up to date on the latest research linking genetics to your health and traits. Learn more at http://www.23andme.com.

This promotional price will be available from 12:00AM PST until 11:59PM PST on Monday 4/11/11, or while supplies last!

Best Regards,
The 23andMe Team

I recently took the personal genomics plunge, and I'm glad I did. I haven't quite had the time to sort through the mountains of data available to you when you purchase a 23andMe test, but I can tell you that I haven't seen anything so far that is too worrisome.

My TATA Box will really get you going...

2011-04-09T14:33:00.000-04:00

And now some genetics humor to start the weekend off right:

From Octometry

Tim Minchin's Storm: The Animated Movie

2011-04-08T10:15:00.000-04:00

I've been waiting months for this! Behold, Tim Minchin's Storm: The Animated Movie

Official animated movie of Tim Minchin's 9-minute beat poem Storm. Written and performed by Tim Minchin. Directed and animated by DC Turner. Produced by Tracy King. www.stormmovie.net www.timminchin.com www.kershoot.com

Why Early Career Biomedical Scientists are Suffering

2011-03-30T11:23:00.000-04:00

Mike the Mad Biologist makes an interesting observation about why there are so many unhappy early-career biomedical scientists fighting for so few academic jobs:

So why does this dysfunctional cultural paradigm exist? I think it has to do with two things: specialization and Ph.D. training. When you go to Ph.D. school in biology, especially biomedical sciences, you learn a great many difficult techniques requiring lots of skill--it's not for dummies at all. The problem is that most of the skills you learn are only useful in...the biomedical sciences. Most don't learn enough 'generalist' skills, such as high level math or serious programming skills, to have other career alternatives if academia doesn't work out. Worse, many of the skills they learn become obsolete. A decade ago, sequencing was a Ph.D. activity, or at least, an activity supervised very closely by a Ph.D. Now, it's largely automated, and the machines are mostly run by technicians with bachellors degrees. So even within biomedical science, for some Ph.D.s 'up or out'--moving to a managerial position (i.e., becoming a PI)--is the sole option.

I've often struggled with this dichotomy when imagining my future career path: Do I plant myself in strict molecular evolution and be in a constant battle for funding? Or do I branch into an integrated neuroscience program, which would open up future funding opportunities, but at the same time I'd entering a much more competitive field. Ultimately I think I'd like to end up in a science policy or administrative position anyway, but I'm not looking to close any doors just yet.

THOR: Science vs. God(s)?

2011-03-28T10:18:00.002-04:00

This posters feature (left to right) Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Natalie Portman (Jane Foster), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Jaimie Alexander (Sif), and Anthony Hopkins (Odin).

New posters for the upcoming Thor movie (in theaters May 6, 2011) are out, and they suggest that Marvel's newest movie franchise may play up some of the conflict between science and supernaturalism. The trailer gave the first whiff of this plot point, when Chirs Hemsworth explains to Natalie Portman "Your ancestors called it magic, but you call it science. I come from a place where they are one and the same." (at the 1:45 mark)

These posters confirm it, though. While the other characters are all labeled, "The God(dess) of...", Natalie Portman's character, Jane Foster, is labeled as "The Woman of Science." This role is particularly appropriate for Portman, since she did study neuroscience and the evolution of the mind at Harvard.

I'm glad Marvel has taken the time to update the character, since as wikipedia describes, this character was previously little more than a love interest:

Jane Nelson, shortly known by her more common name of Jane Foster, was a nurse for Dr. Donald Blake, eventually developing feelings for him, not knowing that Blake and Thor were one and the same. The love triangle went on for a while, until Thor revealed his secret identity to Jane, and in return even took her to Asgard with him. There, Jane was briefly granted immortality and the power of gods, until she failed to pass the tests of courage set forth by Odin. Odin then strips Jane of her new powers and returns her to Earth with no memory of Thor or her time in Asgard where she meets her new love Dr. Keith Kincaid. Meanwhile in Asgard Odin reunites Thor with his childhood love, Sif.

But according to the LA Times, Portman's character will be an astrophysicists:

The Foster character appeared in the second “Thor” story ever published, “Journey into Mystery” no. 84, and was first presented as a blond and bland nurse who worked for Dr. Donald Blake, the disabled physician who taps his cane on the ground to transform into his alter ego, the Norse god of thunder. That’s far different than the set-up in the Branagh film, which presents Foster as a savvy and skeptical scientist who encounters Thor (played by Chris Hemsworth) after he has been stripped of his powers and banished to Earth by his father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins). Portman said that she did considerable research for the role and well beyond the pages of Marvel Comics.

“I got to read all of these biographies of female scientists like Rosalind Franklin who actually discovered the DNA double helix but didn’t get the credit for it,” Portman said. “The struggles they had and the way that they thought — I was like, ‘What a great opportunity, in a very big movie that is going to be seen by a lot of people, to have a woman as a scientist.’ She’s a very serious scientist. Because in the comic she’s a nurse and now they made her an astrophysicist. Really, I know it sounds silly, but it is those little things that makes girls think it’s possible. It doesn’t give them a [role] model of ‘Oh, I just have to dress cute in movies.’”

I'm a big fan of Natalie Portman, superhero movies, and positive portrayals of (women) scientists in the public sphere. I didn't read many Thor comics growing up, but this news definitely makes me more excited to see the movie!

The Ohio Heartbeat Bill is Bad Science

2011-03-24T10:54:00.001-04:00

Since this Bill is still raging in the Ohio Senate, I thought I should re-post my recent column about the Ohio Heartbeat Bill here:

Bad science pervades the abortion debate

In the 2007 Oscar-winning movie “Juno,” the title character is persuaded to forgo an abortion when a classmate protesting at a women’s health clinic informs her that her baby has fingernails. And now life has imitated art, when the anti-abortion group Faith2Action tried using a similar tactic on Ohio’s state legislature.

As the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports, two fetuses were called to the witness stand last Wednesday to testify before an Ohio legislative committee. The committee is reviewing a bill that would outlaw all abortions in Ohio after the first heartbeat can be detected inside a mother’s womb.

Two pregnant women, carrying nine and fifteen-week old fetuses, were given public ultrasounds to determine if a heartbeat could be detected. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Lynn Wachtmann (R-Napoleon) and co-sponsored by 49 members of the Ohio House, would require ultrasounds of all women seeking abortions in Ohio. If any heartbeat whatsoever is detected, then the fetus is deemed “viable” and any abortion procedures are made illegal unless the pregnancy poses a health risk to the mother.

Dubbed the “Heartbeat Bill,” H.B. No. 125 would ban abortions as early as 18 days after conception, meaning that a woman’s legal choice to pursue an abortion would effectively be restricted until before the vast majority of women even realize they are pregnant.

Soliciting “expert testimony” from an unborn fetus is clearly a publicity stunt meant to draw national attention, and as Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio told the Plain Dealer, "It's obvious this committee is a lot more interested in making headlines than in giving women better access to health care."

While I agree that this bill trivializes women’s health in favor of advancing particular religious beliefs in the public sphere, the larger problem I have is that this bill is based on bad science.

As LiveScience reports, multiple studies have shown that sonograms have little impact on a woman’s choice concerning abortion. One recent study showed that when given the choice, nearly three quarters of women choose to see the ultrasound, yet in this case, none elected to forgo the abortion procedure.

More relevant, however, is the issue that having a heartbeat is neither a complete indication of viability of the fetus, nor does it speak to its ability to perceive its surroundings. Heart cells normally begin rhythmically contracting by around the fifth or sixth week, which means at this point the fetus is smaller than a grain of rice. In fact, such early sonograms usually detect the presence of the embryonic yolk sac, not the fetus itself.

Furthermore, we’ve known for a long time that a beating heart is not a good indication of life or “personhood,” since hearts are normally quite able to continue beating completely independent of the body. Even more amazingly, when heart cells are spread on a piece of synthetic mesh, the entire mesh begins to synchronously beat, just as a heart does.

These public dialogues about such contentious subjects are often muddied by irrationality and cheap appeals to emotion.

We need to consciously re-direct our discussion so that we’re basing our public policy on sound science and the real issues of human suffering, not the public promotion of a religiously motivated agenda.

Via KentWired.com

Also, check out what my favorites Kent State neuroscience blogger has to say on the issue at Dormivigilia.

A Brief Introduction to Genetics

2011-03-22T13:10:00.000-04:00

I came across this short video on genetics, and I thought it was good enough to share here. I have just three little oddities that I'd like to point out:

The "Genetic Code" diagram featured around the 1:35 mark labels amino acids as "protein 1", "protein 2", etc....
The DNA sequencing machine pictured around the 2:10 mark makes no sense whatsoever.
Around the 2:38 mark, the video states that researchers have sequenced the genomes of many organisms, while displaying the silhouettes of various animals. Most of the animals shown (kangaroo, penguin, stingray, etc.) have not had their genomes sequenced, yet. In fact, the majority of organisms with fully sequenced genomes are plants and microbes.

A Brief Introduction to Genetics is a short documentary film by David Murawsky that explores the history of genetics & genomics and the underlying concepts that provide the foundational knowledge that today's research is built upon. The film describes the history of genetics, from Gregor Mendel, to concepts such as DNA and the genetic code. Having introduced the fundamental ideas of genetics, the film moves on to describe the current techniques used to study genetics. Finally, the film explores the connection of these core concepts to genomics and bioinformatics.

Scientists need to start actively seeking out collaborations with designers and filmmakers to produce high-quality videos like this one. However, if something like this were to be useful in an educational sense, it would need far more detail than most filmmakers would be able to provide.

Friday Fungi: Metarhizium anisopliae

2011-03-18T09:00:00.008-04:00

Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science covered this Science paper a few weeks ago, but I thought it was so cool I wanted to bring it up again. The paper describes some research done to develop a genetically engineered strain of fungi to use as a biological control agent for malaria-transmitting mosquitoes.

The fungi, Metarhizium anisopliae, is entomopathogenic, meaning that it infects insects. It infects over 200 difference species, including many types of mosquitoes, termites, beetles, and weevils, and has been used a bio-control agent for over 130 years!

Surprisingly these researchers didn't engineer it to become more virulent, as one might expect. Genetic tinkering that results in fungi becoming more harmful to mosquitoes, would cause natural selection to favor those mosquitoes that were more resistant to infection, and overtime cause it to actually become less useful as a bio-control agent.

Instead, they used the fungi as a type of genetic delivery system for a couple of other genes that directly impact the Plasmodium parasite that causes malaria. One of the genes codes for scorpine, an antimicrobial protein produced in the venom of African (Emperor) scorpion, Pandinus imperator. Structurally, scorpine resembles cecropins, a group of proteins that permeate or lyse bacterial membranes isolated from the gigantic moth Hyalophora cecropia. It was this similarity that first led researchers to investigate the anti-microbial and anti-protozoan capabilities of this protein. In fact, the researchers that originally described scorpine suggested inserting this gene directly into the genome of the anopheles mosquito as a way of making it resistant to the Plasmodium parasite.

The second gene inserted into the Metarhizium anisopliae fungi is something called SM1 (“salivary and midgut peptide 1”). In order to understand how it works, you need to first know a bit about Plasmodium's life cycle.

Image Credit: Center for Disease Control

As you can see above, Plasmodium needs to spend part of its life in a human, and part of its life in a mosquito. In order to transmit malaria, a pregnant mosquito (only the females bite) needs to draw blood from a human already infected with Plasmodium in the appropriate stage in its life cycle.

The video below from HHMI does a pretty good job illustrating the sexual reproduction step that takes place in the mosquito's gut. Following fertilization, the protozoan normally makes it way to the salivary glands of the mosquito in the form of sporozoites (around the 2:48 mark), and eventually into another human host.

But the SM1 protein interferes with Plasmodium sporozoites' ability to attach to the mosquito's salivary glands, essentially preventing it from reproducing.

Image Credit: PLoS Genetics, January 2011

When scorpine and SM1 were inserted into M. anisopliae individually, researchers found that they reduced the number of sporozoite's by 90% and 71%, respectively. But when they gave it the double dose of genes, it reduced numbers by an astounding 98%!

Researchers also found that an antibody that makes sporozoites to clump together reduced their numbers by 85%.

The result is a fungi that infects infects a wide range of insects, but at the same time actually makes them less susceptible to certain other types of infections.

As you can see from the picture of a M. anisopliae-infected cockroach to the left (known as green muscardine disease), this fungi can do some serious damage. M. anisopliae is pretty common in soils, and so most soil-dwelling insects have likely developed methods of defeating infection. This, in turn, causes natural selection to favor fungal strains that develop ways of overcoming these defenses, spurring a co-evolutionary arms-race. In fact, a recent EST study found that the genome of M. anisoplia contains a diverse array of pathogen-associated genes, including proteases, chitinases, phospholipases, lipases, esterases, phosphatases, and enzymes that produce toxic secondary metabolites.

This is a great example of the need for biologists developing novel bio-control agents, especially mycoinsecticides, to consider the co-evolutionary pattern of disease resistance, and highlights the need for complete evolutionary education across the spectrum of life-sciences. By shifting the targets of natural selection, we can better anticipate and control its consequences.

Carl Sagan takes a stand on gender equality

2011-03-17T09:00:00.009-04:00

Letters of Note is a blog that publishes personal correspondences that are deserving of a wider audience.

A recent addition highlights a letter that cosmologist Carl Sagan sent to his fellow members of the exclusive Explorers Club in 1981. Sagan warned of the dire consequences of their continued to exclusion of women from their ranks on the basis of gender:

Today women are making extraordinary contributions in areas of fundamental interest to our organization. There are several women astronauts. The earliest footprints -- 3.6 million years old -- made by a member of the human family have been found in a volcanic ash flow in Tanzania by Mary Leakey. Trailblazing studies of the behavior of primates in the wild have been performed by dozens of young women, each spending years with a different primate species. Jane Goodall's studies of the chimpanzee are the best known of the investigations which illuminate human origins. The undersea depth record is held by Sylvia Earle. The solar wind was first measured in situ by Marcia Neugebauer, using the Mariner 2 spacecraft. The first active volcanos beyond the Earth were discovered on the Jovian moon Io by Linda Morabito, using the Voyager 1 spacecraft. These examples of modern exploration and discovery could be multiplied a hundredfold. They are of true historical significance. If membership in The Explorers Club is restricted to men, the loss will be ours; we will only be depriving ourselves.

I've heard many interviews where Carl has talked about his extremely close relationship with his wife, Ann Druyan, and I'm sure it influenced his opinion on these matters. Theirs is a relationship I think about when building my relationship with my own wife; one of shared aspirations, mutual respect, and unwavering love and support.

Social Spiders and Industrial Silk Production

2011-03-16T09:00:00.077-04:00

Image Credit: Alex Wild Photography
Anelosimus social spiders cooperate to capture a grasshopper. Jatun Sacha reserve, Napo, Ecuador

Alex Wild over at Myrmeco's Blog has some incredible photographs of social spiders, some species of which live 50,000 to a web. This is the first time I've ever heard that social spiders exist. According to wikipedia, there are only about 23 phylogenetically diverse species of social spiders, out of 39,000 total spider species. It seems like there is at least a doctoral dissertation lurking in the elucidation these social spiders' mating systems. Which selective forces favor cooperation among such a notoriously solitary group? Most social insects, like bees and ants, have reproductive caste system that keeps the sterile worker caste more closely related to each other that any one individual is to the fertile queen, but as far as I know, nothing like that exists in these spider species.

While poking around the internet, I found a Not Exactly Rocket Science post from a few years ago that highlights research into kin selection in a sub-social species of spider that only cooperates as juveniles. It found that sibling groups of Stegodyphus lineatus fed more efficiently than non-related groups, even when you account for familiarity. While this is quite interesting, it doesn't address how species transition from living as individuals to living in groups.

The question that immediately popped into my head is can these social spiders be exploited for industrial silk farming? One of the major hurdles of large-scale spider silk production is the fact that most spiders used in this way turn cannibalistic when in close contact with each other. With all of the major medical advancements just waiting for someone to ramp up silk protein production - has anyone looked at these potentially invaluable groups of social spiders?

White-faced capuchin

2011-03-15T13:00:00.000-04:00

White-faced capuchin (Cebus capucinus) eating a seedpod. Palo Verde, Costa Rica.
Image © Daniel Sprockett (2011)

Meet the Beetle: A Film about the Rarest Insect in Nebraska

2011-03-14T09:00:00.002-04:00

Boaz Frankel is creating a movie about the highly endangered salt creek tiger beetle (Cicindela nevadica lincolniana), which only lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.

He already has a bunch of beetle footage and and interviews, but he is now raising money to help complete this project but rounding it out with a children's musical number.

I'm looking for your help to complete a 15-20 minute documentary called Meet the Beetle. It tells the story of the Salt Creek Tiger Beetle; one of the rarest insects in the world. They only live within the city limits of Lincoln, Nebraska and at last count there were about 200 of them left. I first heard about the beetle when I was passing through Lincoln last year and I couldn't get the story out of my head. This past summer I went back to Lincoln during the few weeks a year that the beetles spend above ground to see them for myself and talk with entomologists, journalists, Fish and Wildlife employees, and even developers who've been building on the beetle's habitat.

It's a fascinating story that became more and more complicated with each new person I talked to. What will happen if the tiny beetle goes extinct? Does the beetle serve a purpose? What does it really mean when an animal gets on the endangered species list? How do you find the balance between development and conservation? These are some of the questions I try to answer in the film. Or at least in half the film. There's still a portion of the movie I want to shoot and this is where it gets a little wacky. While the beetle is pretty cool to watch it's not quite as compelling as say, a lion chasing a zebra on the African savanna, so I've come up with additional way to illustrate the beetle. I'm going to stage an elementary school pageant - sort of how they might do a Christmas or US history pageant - this pageant would be about the life cycle, trials, and tribulations of the Salt Creek Tiger Beetle complete with kids, homemade beetle costumes, and even musical numbers. I think the pageant will make an engaging companion to the more traditional interviews in the film. I also think it might make the paperclip-sized beetle a little more relatable and memorable.

He is already over 75% of the way towards his goal, and if you'd like to help him get the rest of the way there, click here.

h/t: Myrmecos

Little boxes made out of ticky-tacky.

2011-03-13T07:00:00.001-04:00

A shocking illustration of urban sprawl.

National Geographic. Photography by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Altitude

More Medical Advancements with Spider's Silk

2011-03-12T07:00:00.000-05:00

In my post earlier week, I highlighted a recent column I wrote about spider's silk, and some of the amazing things researchers are now doing with it. Little did I know that over at Neurophilosophy had just posted about a paper on another medical advancement in this field: using spider silk to build artificial nerve grafts!

EVERY year, hundreds of thousands of people suffer from paralyzed limbs as a result of peripheral nerve injury. Recently, implantation of artificial nerve grafts has become the method of choice for repairing damaged peripheral nerves. Grafts can lead to some degree of functional recovery when a short segment of nerve is damaged. But they are of little use when it comes to regenerating nerves over distances greater than a few millimeters, and such injuries therefore often lead to permanent paralysis.

Now though, surgeons from Germany have made what could be a significant advance in nerve tissue engineering. They have developed artificial nerve grafts made from hollowed-out pig veins filled with spider silk fibres and, in a series of animal experiments, showed that the grafts can enhance the regeneration of peripheral nerves over distances of up to 6cm. Their findings have just been published in the open access journal PLoS One.

Spider silk's most useful trait in this study is its inherent bio-compatibility with human tissues. Researchers used the tough dragline silk from the golden orb-weaver (Nephila clavipes) as a structural support for regenerating nerve cells. Below is a video I made of a golden orb-weaver that I encountered in Costa Rica.

'A Universe From Nothing' by Lawrence Krauss

2011-03-10T07:00:00.001-05:00

The Kent State Freethinkers will be watching this video from the Atheist Alliance International 2009 conference by physicist Lawrence Krauss at today's meeting.

I haven't watched it yet, but the summary of the talk describes it as a "current picture of the universe, how it will end, and how it could have come from nothing." It comes very highly recommended.

NSF: Become the Messenger

2011-03-09T07:00:00.034-05:00

As Chris Mooney reports, The National Science Foundation (NSF) is holding a workshop today in downtown Lincoln, NE titled Science: Becoming the Messenge:

Today, across academia and the research community, there is a growing interest in science communication. Scientists are asking how they can share their knowledge and findings across an increasingly challenging information environment.

Mooney will be presenting his Stephen Colbert inspired talk, "I Am New Media (AND SO CAN YOU!)"

In this two hour breakout, we’ll demystify blogging and social media, showing not only how to create compelling online content but how to spread it virally. Workshop participants will need to bring a laptop, which they’ll use to generate online content and to share it through social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit. The basic rules for creating an effective message apply to written blog content just as to all other written content—opeds, press releases, articles. But the high speed interactivity of web media can be intimidating at first. We’ll get past that hump and have everyone blogging, tweeting, stumbling, and just generally wired.

I just finished Mooney's most recent book, Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future. For the most part, I liked the book, but I thought many of his arguments the new atheist movement were unsupported, and the book has a nasty habit of confusing the goal of promoting science and education with the goal of promoting secular values and skepticism.

The authors also devote an entire chapter to the argument that "blogs will not save us," mainly because they only preach to the choir, meaning that they are largely read by people that already promote science. This runs counter to the entire first part of the book, which argues that scientists need to participate more in the production of science-oriented movies, magazines, and books - the contents of which are also mainly consumed by the pro-science public. The emphasis that this presentation puts on social media makes me wonder if Chris has reconsidered his view on blogs and how important they are to spreading scientific literacy in the age of new media.

Unspinning the spider’s web

2011-03-08T12:16:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago I wrote the following column for the Daily Kent Stater:

For most people, spider webs evoke visions of dusty old attics or dilapidated storage sheds. However, these complex networks of gossamer fibers are one of nature’s most underappreciated feats of evolutionary engineering.

I recently had a chance to learn more about spider webs at Science Café Cleveland, a monthly event organized by Case Western Reserve University and The Great Lakes Brewing Company. January’s topic was “Spider silk: an evolutionary experiment in a biological supermaterial” presented by Dr. Todd Blackledge, an associate biology professor at the University of Akron, and his graduate student, Sam Evans.

Blackledge’s research lies at the intersection of spider behavioral evolution and materials science. For example, he recently co-authored a description of the incredible webs built by Darwin’s Bark Spider (Caerostris darwini) from Madagascar. These spiders construct webs spanning up to 80 feet across lakes and rivers, allowing them to prey on insects that no other spiders can capture. The pressures of such a demanding ecological niche has made its silk 10 times tougher than the Kevlar used to make bulletproof vests.

Many people will be surprised to learn that while all spiders make silk, most of the 41,000 known species of spiders do not make webs. The earliest examples of spider silk preserved in amber date to the Cretaceous period around 140 million years ago, although spider fossils suggest that they’ve been using silk for much longer. Early arachnids first used silk to protect their eggs. Since then, spiders have adapted to use silk for housing, camouflage, dispersal, mating and capturing prey.

The vision of a struggling fly stuck in a spider web is well embossed on the public’s psyche. But if webs are so tacky, why doesn’t the spider stick too? The answer lies in the web’s structure.

Classic spiral orb webs, like that which you might see on the cover of “Charlotte's Web,” are made up of two distinct types of silk. The first type, dragline silk, is strong and resilient. The spider uses it to string up radial strands like the spokes of a bicycle wheel. The spider then laces these with a second type of silk—the sticky, elastic capture-spiral silk. By only touching the dragline silk, the spider avoids becoming trapped in its own web.

Dragline, capture-spiral, and other types of silk have different properties because they contain different amounts of various proteins. Silk begins its life as protein-rich liquid produced in glands in the spider’s abdomen. The spider secretes this silk rope through leg-like structures on its tail-end called spinnerets. This name can be misleading, since the spinnerets don’t actually spin. This extrusion process causes the proteins to change shape, instantly turning the liquid into a very thin, and very strong, solid strand.

You might have heard that, ounce for ounce, spider’s silk is five times stronger than steel. What you might not have heard is that, since spider silk does not usually trigger an immune response, it’s already being used to make medical implants. Researchers have used spider silk as a scaffold to help re-grow torn knee ligaments, and it could even be used one day to replace medical sutures.

The next time you see a spider web, take a moment to reflect on just how amazing this biological wonder-material really is. It might just save your life!

I'm learning alot about journalism and writing about science, especially how important it is to choose subjects that are limited enough in scope that you are able to sufficiently cover it in the measly 500 words that my editor allots me. This is easier said than done.

For example, had I an opportunity to write it over again, I would have definitely excluded much of the spider biology in the above column in favor of focusing on more of the applied uses of silk. The end of column drew much more interest from readers than the description of silk producing organs or web-shape.

Most regrettably, I didn't even make the space to mention one of Blackledge's most futuristic applications of spider silk - a possible synthetic muscle replacement.

Today's New York Times Science section has a fantastic overview of all of the amazing things that researchers are using spider silk to make, titled "The Reinvention of Silk." It describes how spider silk is being used for everything from artificial corneas to bio-sensitive plastics (think saran wrap that tells you when your food as gone bad) to holographic health sensors. I definitely recommend checking out the accompanying slideshow, too.

Silk creations by Tufts University researchers include a coil made of silk substrate and gold that can help tell when food goes bad. Photo Credit: Bryce Vickmark for the New York Times

The Best Fact.

2011-03-02T09:24:00.006-05:00

Today's XKCD is all about dinosaurs.

Easter Egg: Birds are Aves, which is part of the clade Theropoda, which is in Saurischia, which is in Dinosauria. Those birds outside our windows are dinosaurs. We can clear out the rest of our brains because we now have the best fact. [emphasis mine.]

By the way, the word the presenter is looking for is "polyphyletic."

BBC: Science Under Attack.

2011-02-21T11:58:00.001-05:00

I'm watching a recent BBC2 program, Science Under Attack.

Nobel Prize winner Sir Paul Nurse examines why science appears to be under attack, and why public trust in key scientific theories has been eroded - from the theory that man-made climate change is warming our planet, to the safety of GM food, or that HIV causes AIDS.

He interviews scientists and campaigners from both sides of the climate change debate, and travels to New York to meet Tony, who has HIV but doesn't believe that that the virus is responsible for AIDS.

This is a passionate defence of the importance of scientific evidence and the power of experiment, and a look at what scientists themselves need to do to earn trust in controversial areas of science in the 21st century.

I suggest checking it out. Its quite good so far.

A Faustian bargain

2011-01-28T10:48:00.000-05:00

As I was browsing through some recent editions of the research journal Genome Biology yesterday, I came across a this open letter from Gregory A Petsko from the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center at Brandeis University, to the President of the State University of New York At Albany, George M Philip.

The letter is in response to Philip's recent decision to discontinue SUNY Albany's language programs in French, Italian, Russian, and classics, as well as their Theater program. Petsko's scathing letter repeatedly rips Philip for his shortsightedness, but ends with an interesting point:

One of the things I do now is write a monthly column on science and society. I've done it for over 10 years, and I'm pleased to say some people seem to like it. If I've been fortunate enough to come up with a few insightful observations, I can assure you they are entirely due to my background in the humanities and my love of the arts.

One of the things I've written about is the way genomics is changing the world we live in. Our ability to manipulate the human genome is going to pose some very difficult questions for humanity in the next few decades, including the question of just what it means to be human. That isn't a question for science alone; it's a question that must be answered with input from every sphere of human thought, including - especially including - the humanities and arts. Science unleavened by the human heart and the human spirit is sterile, cold, and self-absorbed. It's also unimaginative: some of my best ideas as a scientist have come from thinking and reading about things that have, superficially, nothing to do with science. If I'm right that what it means to be human is going to be one of the central issues of our time, then universities that are best equipped to deal with it, in all its many facets, will be the most important institutions of higher learning in the future. You've just ensured that yours won't be one of them.

I'm not sure I agree with the characterization that science is cold and sterile without the humanities, but I whole-heartedly agree that some of the best works of science are good precisely because they integrate great ideas from literature, culture, and art. Hooray for academic beat-downs!

Obama avoids the "A-word" in his State of the Union Address

2011-01-26T10:50:00.000-05:00

I stayed up watch the State of the Union Address last night, and over all I thought it was a rousing speech. He repeatedly emphasized the need to invest in science, education, and infrastructure -- all things I support spending tax dollars on.

But one thing I thought was interesting was his blatant exclusion of atheists in our military:

Tonight, let us speak with one voice in reaffirming that our nation is united in support of our troops and their families. Let us serve them as well as they have served us – by giving them the equipment they need; by providing them with the care and benefits they have earned; and by enlisting our veterans in the great task of building our own nation.

Our troops come from every corner of this country – they are black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American. They are Christian and Hindu, Jewish and Muslim. And, yes, we know that some of them are gay. Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love. And with that change, I call on all of our college campuses to open their doors to our military recruiters and the ROTC. It is time to leave behind the divisive battles of the past. It is time to move forward as one nation.

[emphasis mine]

This omission is more than a bit disappointing. I was actually silly enough to expect the following sentence to instead be, "And, yes, we know that some of them are non-believers." Don't get my wrong; I'm extremely happy to see our Commander-in-Chief openly recognizing those homosexual American's sacrificing for the United States. I just wish non-believers making those same sacrifices could get the same recognition.

What makes this even more disappointing is that, according to a 2001 survey, the number of atheists in the US military eclipses Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu soldiers combined.

More recent studies from 2010 show that percentage growing. This exclusion was probably intentional, especially considering Obama was the first US president to ever even acknowledge non-believers in his inauguration speech:

We know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers.

Despite all this, I'm hopeful after listening to our President talk about his plan for the future, especially with his emphasis on science and education. Scientific American has a nice summary of his major points if you'd like to check it out.

You can ignore science if you want...

2011-01-24T14:50:00.001-05:00

from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

First column runs today!

2011-01-12T05:00:00.006-05:00

My first column is out in the Daily Kent Stater today. It deals with the latest Republican-led attack on science. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Republicans have attacked evidence-based investigations into areas such as stem cells, global climate change and the entire field of evolutionary biology. While no one expects politicians to be experts in every scientific field, they should at least recognize that winning an election does not qualify them to judge the quality or usefulness of such highly specialized research projects.

It is clear that, with such blatant displays of ignorance regarding scientific standard practices, only scientists – not politicians or everyday Americans – are qualified to evaluate the merit of scientific research proposals.

Science.gov Debuts Image Search

2011-01-11T09:34:00.000-05:00

This was sent out by Mike Nolan to the ecolog listerv today, for people that might have missed it:

Science.gov Debuts Image Search
via Lifelong Information Literacy (LILi) by Esther Grassian on 1/3/11

Oak Ridge, TN - Science.gov now quickly finds science images, including animal and plant, weather and space, and earth and sun images and more. The information is free and no registration is required. Go to www.science.gov and select the Image Search link under Special Collections.

Initially, three databases are being searched from one search box. More image databases will be added to Science.gov in the coming months. The current federated search includes:

The National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) Library of Images from the Environment (LIFE), a collection of high-quality photographs, illustrations, and graphics covering a wide range of topics, including images of plants, animals, fungi, microorganisms, habitats, wildlife management, environmental topics, and biological study/fieldwork.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) Image eXchange (NIX), a search engine of NASA's multimedia collections, including images of space flight wind tunnel, solar system, aircraft, and education initiatives.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Photo Library, a collection spanning centuries of time and much of the natural world from the center of the earth to the surface of the sun.
In addition to the image search, Science.gov has:
undergone a significant software upgrade for quicker performance
included both the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations in the basic search
provided an author cluster on the results page
upgraded the alerts service so you can manage your Science.gov alerts directly from your alerts email and get daily alerts rather than weekly
added a Science.gov widget for download to your website or customized pages
and provided more citation download options.
Science.gov is a gateway to more than 42 scientific databases and 200 million pages of science information with just one query, and is a gateway to over 2000 scientific websites from 18 organizations within 14 federal science agencies: the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, the Interior, and Transportation; the Environmental Protection Agency, the Government Printing Office, the Library of Congress, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the National Science Foundation. These agencies represent 97 percent of the federal R&D budget.

Science.gov is the USA.gov portal to science and the U.S. contribution to WorldWideScience.org. Science.gov is hosted by the Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information, within the Office of Science, and is supported by CENDI (www.cendi.gov), an interagency working group of senior scientific and technical information managers.

Media Contact
Cathey Daniels
865-576-9539
danielsc@osti.gov

I tried playing around with the image search tool some, and despite running into all of the same issues that one normally does while image searching, overall it seems fairly useful. It was able to handle both common and scientific species names, but searching "evolution" brings up images of cosmology and other non-biological uses of the term in additional to phylogenies and the like. I have a pretty extensive image library at home (25,000+) and it will stay virtually completely useless to anyone else until I find some way to catalog it.

I highly suggest checking this site out the next time you are giving a presentation and need some free and legal science images...just be sure to cite them properly (although I still need to retroactively do this).

John Cleese Explains Genetics

2011-01-10T12:00:00.001-05:00

My PhD research will focus on finding the gene for sharing youtube videos.

Research in Brazil, anyone?

2011-01-07T09:31:00.000-05:00

A new article in The Economist points out that Brazil, despite having a history of failing education system, has made strides to becoming a major player in the world of scientific research, specifically in the areas of tropical medicine, bioenergy, and plant biology. Brazilian universities now graduate 10 times the number of PhD's as they did in 1990, and produce 2.7% of all the worlds scientific papers, 30% of which have at least one foreign author. It seems that Brazil's success, at least in part, is due to their funding model:

São Paulo, Brazil’s richest state, is leading the effort. It has the country’s best universities, including the only two that make it into the top 300 in both of the best-known global rankings. Its constitution guarantees the state research foundation, known as FAPESP, 1% of the state government’s tax take. That amounted to $450m in 2010, and comes on top of money from the federal government.

My first column for the Kent Stater deals with the federal funding of scientific research, and I'm going to try to work in this point if I can.

Friday Fungus: Panellus stipticus

2011-01-07T06:00:00.001-05:00

Panellus stipticus
Also known as foxfire or the bitter oyster, this member of the Mycenaceae family commonly grows saprotrophically on rotting hardwoods. As you can see below, this species is also bioluminescent. The fungi produces a class of enzymes called luciferases, which oxidize the pigment molecule luciferin to produce a soft green glow. Of course, the striking image below is somewhat artificially enhanced, since the exposure time needed to achieve this dramatic display was well over 8 1/2 minutes. Although the evolutionary advantage of bioluminescence to a fungi is not well understood, some evidence has shown that the glow attracts arthropods at night, which can then help disperse P. stipticus's spores. More recent research is investigating P. stipticus future role in bioremediation, since their laccase enzymes can help speed up the breakdown of industrial pollutants containing phenolic compound that are otherwise quite difficult to degrade.

[image from: wikimedia commons]

John Cleese Explains the Brain

2010-12-30T11:54:00.000-05:00

Perfectly clear, thank you.

(wait for it...)

The Wave of Reason

2010-11-23T13:11:00.002-05:00

Symphony of Science's latest music video expands its reach into the philosophy of science by auto-tuning snippets of talks from the likes of Bertrand Russell and Sam Harris.

Sesame Street and The Happy Scientists

2010-09-29T17:30:00.001-04:00

Yesterday's Sesame Street is an important step in the right direction - getting kids to understand that science is a method that everyone can use to test ideas about the world.

Gordon is grading his classes’ science experiments when Elmo, Rosita, and Telly run in and accidentally land on the papers. Gordon encourages Elmo, Rosita, and Telly that anyone, including them, can be scientists. All they need to do is to ask questions and investigate, or do things that will help them find the answers to their questions. They look around Sesame Street and see Leela giving Barkley a bath.

Elmo comes up with a question: Does everyone on Sesame Street take a bath? Gordon guides them through the scientific process. First, Elmo and Rosita hypothesize, or guess, that everyone takes a bath. Telly isn’t sure that everyone takes a bath so he forms a different hypothesis. They investigate and record their observations in their journals. They find out that Chris takes a bath, a cat licks itself and takes a tongue bath, a sparrow takes a dust bath, an owl takes a sun bath to get rid of germs, and even Oscar takes a mud bath in his trash can.

This makes Telly mad since his hypothesis was wrong-everyone does take a bath on Sesame Street. Gordon explains that it’s okay to be wrong in science, because the most important part is the process, or the steps you take to get your answer. Telly, Rosita, and Elmo become happy scientists! They not only learn all about the scientific process but also find an answer to their important question!

Hypothesis Testing: The Happy Scientists asking Oscar if he takes a bath.

Batman and Robin on Diversity

2010-09-08T20:22:00.001-04:00

Speaks for itself, really.

Discovery Channel Terrorist and Darwin

2010-09-02T10:50:00.001-04:00

By now you've probably heard about the James J. Lee's siege of the Discovery Channel headquarters. Early yesterday afternoon, the delusional 43-year-old took 3 employees (out of 1,900 total) hostage at gunpoint, and was later killed by police. Why did he do it? Well, I'm certain that untreated mental illness was largely responsible for his actions, but he seemed heavily influenced by the writings of Daniel Quinn. Quinn wrote a trilogy of books that dealt with mythology, ethics and sustainability. I've read the first book in the series, Ishmael, and I honestly enjoyed it. However, its obvious that the "New Tribal Revolution" advocated by Quinn struck a cord with the disturbed Lee, as exhibited in his list of demands:

1. The Discovery Channel and it's affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn's "My Ishmael" pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other's inventive ideas. Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order. Perhaps also forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation. Do both. Do all until something WORKS and the natural world starts improving and human civilization building STOPS and is reversed! MAKE IT INTERESTING SO PEOPLE WATCH AND APPLY SOLUTIONS!!!!

Lee's demands goes even further off the deep when he demands that the media promote forced sterilization of all humans, curtailing human population growth and preventing the birth of any more "unwanted pollution babies."

It never ceases to amaze me the asortment of ideas that a fetid human mind can gorge itself on. This type of morally authoritarian, fatalistic view of life, the same views promoted by fundamentalist religious groups, is normally a lightning rod for psycopathy. However, this little fiasco shows that an unstable mind can cloak itself in all sorts of ideas.

What I find most unfortunate, is how Lee's profound misunderstanding of Darwin will be held up as an example of the terrible things a Darwinian view of like can bring. Lee's demands include:

7. Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people's brains until they get it!!

This point was rapidly seized by Disco'-'stute Senior Fellow David Klinghoffer:

My purpose here, of course, isn't to suggest that Darwinism drives people mad or anything like that, but merely to point out, as I've done in the past, the strange attraction Darwinian theory exerts on some people who are crazy, or wicked, or both. This is a truth that's suppressed again and again, yet it remains true.

Witness the recent examples of Holocaust Memorial Museum shooter James von Brunn, Columbine High School shooter Eric Harris, Jokela High School shooter Pekka Eric Auvinen. Historical figures who drew inspiration, if indirectly, from Darwinian theory include Charles Manson, Mao Tse-tung, Joseph Stalin, Josef Mengele, and of course Adolf Hitler. I've written about this many times before and received much abuse for it, not least when I took up the theme on the Huffington Post. (An editor advised me they will not let me do that again.) There's also an interesting connection between Darwinism and modern occult theories.

Fashionable opinion habitually directs our attention to the evils committed in the name of religion. It's no less relevant to note that such things, and worse, have also been done in the name of other ideologies and worldviews, Darwinism being prominent among them.

True to form, Klinghoffer fails to mention the influence of religious ideas on the likes of Charles Manson, Adolf Hitler, the 9-11 Terrorists, and the Ku Klux Klan (and others too numerous to name here). The fundamental difference between James J. Lee's action and those that commit violence in the name of religion, is that religious texts, the supposed source of man's knowledge of God's will, DO in fact instigate and often demand violence be done in the Lord's name. Long lists of instances have been gathered elsewhere, but let me point out one such instance from the Bible, Numbers 23:24:

Behold, the people shall rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself as a young lion: he shall not lie down until he eat of the prey, and drink the blood of the slain.

So did Lee's lunatic ravings about forced sterilization have anything to do with Darwin's actual work? It seems unlikely. As P.Z. Myers points out, you'd expect true Darwinians to be avoiding risks, and "expending a great deal of effort in courtship, or at least frantically making lots of donations to the local sperm or ovum bank." Lee was much more engrossed in the long debunked theories of 18th-century economist Thomas Malthus (via Quinn's novels). Malthus ideas about unsustainable population growth did influence Charles Darwin, as noted in his autobiography:

In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long- continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The results of this would be the formation of a new species. Here, then I had at last got a theory by which to work.

But for as useful as Malthusian principles were to Darwin, they've continually been shown to be overly-pessimistic economic nonsense. As Salon columnist Andrew Leonard points out:

The original "dismal scientist's" main contribution to economics -- the theory that the growth of population would always outrun the growth of production, thus dooming humanity to crushing poverty -- was proven wrong by the Industrial Revolution almost immediately after he set his thoughts down on paper. Few theorists whose names have endured for centuries have been more spectacularly off the mark. In almost every measurable way, the world is immensely richer than it was at the time of Malthus, even in the face of a surge in global population that the economist would never have dreamed remotely feasible. For at least the last century Malthus' ideas have been routinely dismissed in introductory economics textbooks and scoffed at by most mainstream economists, whether liberal or conservative, Keynesian or Chicago School.

So while I agree that a diverse assortment of ideas can become fettered and perverted while incubated with mental illness, Klinghoffer's notion that Darwinism (even though its clearly really Malthusism, via Darwin, via Daniel Quinn) is somehow responsible for Lee's outburst is patently false. In order to tease apart how much of a person's actions were the result of literary inspiration and how much was simple, bold-faced lunacy, one must simply compare how those actions line-up with actions promoted in the original works. Darwin and evolutionary biologists simply don't promote murder or terrorism, but other types of ideologies explicitly do - and the distinction is clear.

The Cretaceous period is ok. Triassic period was better though.

2010-08-30T20:30:00.001-04:00

F*@#ing Hipster Dinosaurs - they ruin everything. Thank you, Molly Lewis (@Molly23), for creating the best social critique of this BPR-drinking, American Apparel-wearing, suburban-subculture since LATFH.

Note the comb-over.

so true.

Via BuzzFeed

I'M BACK!

2010-08-03T12:49:00.013-04:00

Its been 101 days since my last post, and I've decided to make a comeback to blogging. Why the multi-month hiatus? Well, it was partially because I've been so frackin' busy. As many of you know, blogging can take up a substantial amount of free time, and with life events like moving, getting married, and some extensive travel taking precedence, I had little extra time to devote to writing.

All of this "makes-life-worth-living" stuff was in addition to getting my first manuscript published in the Journal of Molecular Evolution, as well as preparing my masters thesis for publication. Some readers will notice that I'm also debuting an entirely new layout, complete with a fancy header image and a vastly expanded blogroll (including new blogs on science, genetics, evolution, neurology, ecology, philosophy, and anthropology). I've only glanced at many of the 100+ blogs I've gathered here -- and while they all appear to be interesting and frequently updated -- including them in my b-roll is not an endorsement of their content. However, two that have immediately impressed me are The Mermaid's Tale (A conversation about the nature of genetic causation in evolution, development, and ecology), and The Rogue Neuron (for those interested in neurology, sexuality, and human behavior). I would definitely suggest checking them out.

Finally, today begins classes at Kent State University - although I will not be attending any. I'll be huddled away in my corner of the Anthropology Department, untangling the genetic elements responsible for Hox gene expression in time for these data to be included in a forthcoming manuscript. I do have plans to survey a course on Ardipithecus taught by distinguished NAS member C. Owen Lovejoy, but only as time allows. Either way, here's hoping that every one has a great fall 2010 semester!

Venter Creates Synthetic Life

2010-05-21T07:35:00.005-04:00

Over two years ago genomic pioneer and human genome entrepreneur Craig Venter gave a talk at TED outlining the his goal of creating synthetic life. Today's All Things Considered reports that hes taken one step closer to accomplishing that goal.

Venter has successfully synthesized the tiny genome of Mycoplasma mycoides (1,211,703 bp, 485 protein-coding genes), the pathogen responsible for contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, and transported it into a cell of the related species Mycoplasma capricolum. The real trick, Venter says, was getting the cell to "turn on" and begin replicating after the genome had been transferred. While some critics are saying that this isn't true synthetic life because these organisms already exist in nature, some are raising concerns that these organisms might escape and wreak havoc on the natural environment. These seem to be competing claims, since if these organisms already exist in nature, it isn't clear how they would go about destroying ecosystems. Evolution by natural selection is supplying constraints which these organisms are now operating under, be they truly synthetic or not. There is the chance that their engineering techniques will have unforeseen evolutionary consequence (perhaps making them more responsive to selection pressure, for example), I think it is FAR more likely that these Frankenstein's monsters of the microbial world will be quickly digested or out-competed by their more natural counterparts. They have had a 3.5 billion year head start, after all. Either way, Venter's team has not only disabled the Mycoplasma's pathogenicity genes, but have also engineered four "watermarks", or stretches of DNA that have been replaced with unique sequences that allow scientists to identify these cells and their descendants if something should go awry. As Venter told The Guardian:

"It's a living species now, part of our planet's inventory of life."

While I agree that this work raises ethical concerns, I completely reject criticisms of Venter that claim he is "playing god." To be honest, I'm not so sure what that even means. I find this criticizing akin accusing to civil engineers contrusting a dam to be "playing Moses." We change and impact the natural world in a myriad of ways. Literally thousands of researchers transfer DNA between species every day. We do it every time we create hybridized plant species. The entire idea of a "species" is by-and-large a human book keeping construction. While Venter's announcement is what I consider to be a milestone if biotechnology and bioengineering, I have little worry that life will now change in any appreciable way because of it.

Read the official announcement in Science here.

Fig. 1. The assembly of a synthetic M. mycoides genome in yeast. A synthetic M. mycoides genome was assembled from 1,078 overlapping DNA cassettes in three steps. In the first step, 1,080-bp cassettes (orange arrows), produced from overlapping synthetic oligonucleotides, were recombined in sets of 10 to produce one hundred nine ~10-kb assemblies(blue arrows). These were then recombined in sets of 10 to produce eleven ~100-kb assemblies (green arrows). In the final stage of assembly, these eleven fragments were recombined into the complete genome (red circle). With the exception of 2 constructs that were enzymatically pieced together in vitro (27) (white arrows), assemblies were carried out by in vivo homologous recombination in yeast. Major variations from the natural genome are shown as yellow circles. These include 4 watermarked regions (WM1-WM4),a 4-kb region that was intentionally deleted (94D), and elements for growth in yeast and genome transplantation. In addition, there are 20 locations with nucleotide polymorphisms (asterisks). Coordinates of the genome are relative to the first nucleotide of the natural M. mycoides sequence. The designed sequence is 1,077,947 bp. The locations of the Asc I and BssH II restriction sites are shown. Cassettes 1 and 800-810 were unnecessary and removed from the assembly strategy (11). Cassette 2 overlaps cassette 1104 and cassette 799 overlaps cassette 811.

Figure from Gibson et al. 2010

A formal test of the theory of universal common ancestry

2010-05-13T09:28:00.006-04:00

I've been away from blogging while I've been busy moving, working, marriage-prepping, and trying to get my masters thesis ready for submission, but today's Nature has such a great article I couldn't resist commenting.

Doug Theobald from Brandeis University, whom some of you might know from his excellent FAQ on the TalkOrigins Archive entitled 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent, has published an extensive statistical evaluation of the Theory of Universal Common Ancestry. I don't have time to give much of an analysis, but at John Wilkins of Evolving Thoughts comments on the importance epistemology when testing the assumptions of evolution, while over at Panda's Thumb Nick Matzke gives a brief primer on some of the statistical foundations of the work. Its definitely worth a look!

"Boobquake" rumbles...

2010-04-22T21:53:00.006-04:00

Its official: Jen has now made a major national news outlet:

"It’s not supposed to be serious activism that is going to revolutionize women’s rights, but just a bit of fun juvenile humor,” she wrote. “I’m a firm believer that when someone says something so stupid and hateful, serious discourse isn't going to accomplish anything - sometimes light-hearted mockery is worthwhile."

I'm quite proud.

And I'm also very happy that they included the part about adequate sample size. Bit-by-bit, scientific thinking is beginning to permeate the public sphere -especially in feminist circles, which have traditionally been susceptible to various types of pseudo-scientific woo.

62,000+ have now read the description, which I'm guessing will set a new record for the blaghag. Its just too bad all this commotion is coming so close to finals week...but when internet-fame calls, you answer!

UPDATE: The Boobquake facebook group now has over 100,000 people attending! How big will this get!?

John Cleese Explains Extremism

2010-04-14T11:30:00.002-04:00

A bit old now, but still quite relevant:

Its actually pretty entertaining to see how 1980's England defined "extremist", as compared to today.

Via Political Irony

Education Reform Overlooked in the Health Care Overhaul

2010-03-30T18:17:00.004-04:00

The New York Times reports on one aspect of the recent health care overhaul that has been largely ignored by the media: student loan reform

In this final piece of health reform, Democrats added in a restructuring of the way the government handles loans affecting millions of students.

The law strips banks of their role as middlemen in federal student loans and puts the government in charge. The president said that change would save more than $60 billion over the next 10 years, which in turn would be used to boost Pell Grants for students and reinvest in community colleges.
...
The government will essentially guarantee that workers in low-paying jobs will be able to reduce their payments. Current law caps monthly payments at 15 percent of these workers' incomes; the new law will lower the cap to 10 percent.

Its good to see this administration hasn't lost sight of what will be the major impetus for American economic growth and technological advancement in the next century - the accessibility of higher education.

Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions

2010-03-24T09:42:00.010-04:00

Sam Harris, author of Letter to a Christian Nation and The End of Faith, caused a bit of a stir this week after his TED talk was posted online. His thesis is that science can answer moral questions, which is also the topic of his forthcoming book.

This video has caused quite a flurry of conversation around dem internets (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), among scientists and philosophers alike. I have some thoughts, but I haven't found the time to put them into a coherent arc yet. What do you think?

Atheism is Not Extremism

2010-03-22T11:34:00.008-04:00

Aaron Rockhold, Vice President of the Kent State Freethinkers, had his opinion piece/ rebuttal published in today's Daily Kent Stater:

An opinion piece was published March 11 (“Neither evangelism nor atheism”) in the Stater, penned by a Mr. Christopher Hook, condemning what he terms “the atheist movement.” Perhaps the kindest thing that can be said about the article is that it is useful as a perfect example of the kind of damaging misconceptions that the nonreligious must contend with every day.

Mr. Hook falls at the first hurdle simply by using the term “atheist movement”. There are atheists, and they move. There is not, however, one atheist movement. This distinction is difficult for many to grasp.

There is no atheist dogma, no atheist church and no atheist pope. Atheism is not, by definition, a religion, any more than not collecting stamps is a hobby. Speaking about “the atheists” as though they were a group of people all sharing the same opinions is, ironically, exactly the same generalization that religionists often accuse atheists of making about them. The only thing that all atheists are guaranteed to have in common is lack of belief in deities. If you want to condemn actions you find distasteful, you’ll have to criticize individuals and specific groups, rather than tarring every atheist in the world with the same brush.

Mr. Hook presents an out-of-context quote by Freedom From Religion Foundation co-founder Annie Laurie Gaylor to support his claim that the “atheist movement” deserves its bad reputation. He says groups are “holding conferences ... to recruit new members away from religion.” Truthfully, conferences and national advertising campaigns are meant to reach out to people who are already atheists, in order to provide a sense of community to individuals who find themselves outcasts in their communities for their lack of belief. Yet even these measures are seen as too aggressive. The “battle lines” have been drawn, Cook says, by atheists like the FFRF who take such drastic actions as forming groups and producing literature.

Casually, Hook mentions that he hates atheists, an admission as disturbing as it is unsurprising. A 2006 study by the University of Minnesota found that atheists are America’s most distrusted minority, ranking below Muslims and homosexuals. Atheists also placed dead last among minorities respondents would approve his or her child becoming married to.

More than anything else, I credit these bigoted attitudes to inexperience; it’s easy to rattle off any number of good Christians you know, but any given person is unlikely to know many atheists, who are ostracized and largely invisible in a society where — despite Hook’s absurd claim that the religious are afraid to talk about their beliefs — it is Christians who hold the reins of power. Presidential candidates name-dropping Jesus Christ isn’t even newsworthy, but a politician’s admission of atheism would instantly torpedo his or her campaign. To illustrate my point more dramatically, ask yourself: Would Mr. Hook’s article ever would have been published if he had instead expressed hatred towards “organized Jews” or “organized black people”? Of course not. Yet the nonreligious remain one of the last few “acceptable targets” in society.

The only way that will change is through atheists becoming more visible so that the religious can see we are as human as they are.

Aaron Rockhold is a junior psychology major and vice president of Kent State Freethinkers.

Texas Textbook Standards and American Education

2010-03-12T13:52:00.006-05:00

ABC's Nightline has a nice concise video outlining the current state of national educational standards, and the incredible amount of influence that Christian fundamentalists like Don McLeroy have over curricula nationwide. The New York Times reports:

Dr. McLeroy still has 10 months to serve and he, along with rest of the religious conservatives on the board, have vowed to put their mark on the guidelines for social studies texts.
For instance, one guideline requires publishers to include a section on “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”

Powerful conservative leaders are continuing their anti-intellectual assault on American society. Attacking science and evolution is bad enough, but they're now widening their efforts to re-write American history and politics as well. It seems they believed Stephen Colbert when he said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

Don't Eat The Agarose!

2010-03-10T08:10:00.010-05:00

I wanted to share some pictures of the cookies that my wonderfully bookish and supportive fiance made for my Darwin Day party. For those of you that aren't molecular biologists, they're electrophoresis gels, and are used to separate DNA or proteins by size and/or charge. Generally, DNA is loaded into a well at one end of the agarose gel. An electrical current is then passed through the gel, and since DNA is negatively charged, it slowly migrates toward the positive electrode. Smaller fragments are able to move faster than the bigger ones, so it acts as a kind of molecular sieve -causing the DNA to separate into the bands seen below. The gel is then stained with the chemical (in this case Ethidium bromide) that allows you to see the DNA. The Ethidium bromide binds to the DNA and fluoresces under a UV light, which is why the bands look hot pink in color.

The cookies were delicious and huge hit with my Darwin Day'ers. You can find this cookie recipe at the blog Not So Humble Pie, along with plenty of other science-themed treats.

An excellent likeness, if I do say so myself!

Another Year Down.

2010-03-01T21:57:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was my 26th birthday, and all-in-all, it was a pretty great weekend. I spent time making merry with people I love, and really that's all you can ask for in this world. Mortality has begun its slow creep towards me though, and I already feel like I'm staring down the short end of my twenties. I've reached the age I'm going to be when I get married, which is a strange but exciting thought. Andrea and I have been talking alot about how we're going to spend the next 5 years (and the next 50+), but so much is still up in the air that we're infuriatingly unable to satisfactorily plan for even the next 5 months, seized in the sludge of bureaucracy and bet-hedging.

On a related note, Friday was science jounalist Brian Switek's 27th birthday, and on his blog Laelaps he presented the cover of his forthcoming book, Written in Stone: Evolution, The Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature. It made me realize that, if I can clear my life of distractions, I too am perfectly capable of completing such a project by the age of 27. As I've said before, I've been diagnosed with a serious case of shiny-ball syndrome and I need to structure my life as an academic accordingly. This point motivated me to download the Firefox Add-on LeechBlock:

LeechBlock is a simple productivity tool designed to block those time-wasting sites that can suck the life out of your working day. All you need to do is specify which sites to block and when to block them.

I configured the system so that I'm unable surf one set of time-sink websites while I'm at home at night, and a whole slew of others while I'm at work during the day. The next step is to complete the final 10% of the work necessary to submit my thesis work for publication. I'm not sure why I have such a mental aversion to working on it. I'm so ridiculously close, and yet it still feels ages away from completion. Its the worst case of writers block I've ever had in my life, so I welcome any strategies or advice for overcoming it!

Progress! Obama Administration to Meet with Heathens

2010-02-25T21:56:00.005-05:00

Tomorrow is a historic day in the Freethought movement. For the first time ever, White House officials will meet with the Secular Coalition for America. Their press release says it all:

President Obama was the first U.S. president to acknowledge nonbelievers in an inaugural address, an event which began a constructive and meaningful relationship between the administration and American nontheists. When administration officials meet with the country's national nontheist advocacy organization for this briefing—joined by a group of other nontheists from every corner of the nation and all walks of life—it will be the latest indication that the secular movement is gaining significant momentum, and that secular Americans, numbering in the tens of millions, are a constituency that must be included.

The SCA is the first ever lobby group for non-religious Americans. Religious groups spend millions of dollars every year to have their opinions hear by our elected officials, and its high time non-believers get a louder voice in public policy. As is stressed in the SCA website, we aren't looking for special treatment, we're looking for equal treatment. Topics that are slated to be discussed tomorrow include: the religious medical neglect of children, proselytizing in military, and reforming faith-based initiatives.

I first heard about the SCA at the Secular Student Alliance conference this summer. I ran into Sean Faircloth, their new Executive Director, on a tour of the creation museum in Kentucky. He later gave a rousing speech entitled "On Nation Under the Constitution" that was one of those times that made me proud to be an American. I would highly suggest watching, except it seems to be marked "private" for some reason. Instead, I've embedded what appears to be a similar version of his speech that was given at the SSA West Coast 2010 Leadership Conference.

The Almighty Dollar: Mapping Distribution of Income by Religious Belief

2010-02-23T17:34:00.006-05:00

Good.is has an interesting infographic illustrating the distribution of wealth among the America's major religions. The biggest surprises for me was the proportion of Hindu's in the $100,000+ range (43%), and the proportion of Jehovah Witnesses that make under $30,000 (42%). Those unaffiliated with a religion seem to be fairing just about about equal with the national average.

(Click to Enlarge)

I would also like to see this compared to the world average. I imagine the millions of poor Muslims would change the look of the graph quite drastically.

Airport Evangelism and Evolution

2010-02-21T21:00:00.001-05:00

Near the end of last year, D.J. Grothe, notable skeptic and new president of the JREF, had an interesting tweet:

Off to Ft Lauderdale. Reading Dawkins on the plane inspired a "fun" chat with the guy next to me. #skeptic
8:56 AM Dec 7th from TweetDeck

...and it reminded me of the conversation I had with the man sitting next to me on a recent trip to Costa Rica. I mentioned that I was flying down as part of a 3-week conservation ecology trip, and that I earning a graduate degree in evolutionary biology. The otherwise enjoyable conversation went south after the man asked how long it would take him to "turn black" if he moved to Costa Rica permanently. The question itself was asked innocently enough, but the thought speaks volumes about our nation's ignorance of basic scientific concepts. He seemed uneasy and unsatisfied with my reply that race is a biologically nebulous concept, and that evolution simply doesn't work that way; like he would prefer an inaccurate but easy answer over having to deal the the complexity and uncertainty of science. We both resolved that watching the mindless dreck that was our in-flight movie (Stardust - really De Niro, REALLY?!) was preferable to an impromptu Biology 101 lesson.

But it was because of D.J.'s post that I chose to pick up reading Jerry Coyne 's Why Evolution Is True on my way home from Nebraska last December. At the very least, I figured I'd have some time to review another succinct yet clear overview of the evidence for evolution, but I was vaguely hoping it would spur a conversation with a fellow traveler. I soon got my wish.

Jim, a Catholic campus missionary from Nebraska, approached me as we were gathering our belongings to get off the plane. He on his way to the FOCUS national conference in Orlando. He asked if I was enjoying Coyne's book, and if I had ever read anything by creationist author Michael Behe. We ended up talking in the terminal for a few minutes as he waited for his connecting flight to board.

I found a few things particularly interesting about the conversation. The first was that he seemed unaware of the explicit and unequivocal endorsements of biological evolution by at least two Popes, as summarized in this statement, as quoted in Science, Evolution, and Creationism from the National Academy of Sciences:

“In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points. . . . Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis. In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies — which was neither planned nor sought — constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory.”
— Pope John Paul II, Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, October 22, 1996.

From my understanding of Catholic doctrine, the words of the Pope are considered to be inerrant divine revelation. I've had creationists from Answers in Genesis tell me that the Pope is not a true Christian because he doesn't follow the Bible closely enough. Conservative Nebraskan Catholics are known for being close followers of Vatican edict, so this form of young-earth creationism was hardly what I expected from a Catholic missionary.

He also seemed particularly sure that there is a fair amount infighting among scientists over the validity of evolution. From his view, creationist seem to be making quite alot of noise in the public sphere. Despite my personal testimonial of having never met a creationist working seriously in science, he had already heard of Mike Behe (and probably a few others). By contrast, how many evolutionary biologists do you think the average Catholic missionary could name? Even if one would be able to name twice as many scientists as creationists, this is still a huge distortion of the ratio between creationists and evolutionists. The closest thing to an empirical study of evolution acceptance among scientists that I know of is Project Steve from the NCSE. As of Feb 11th, 2010, they estimate at least 113,400 PhD-holding scientists unequivocally support evolution as a "vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences." Religious people would need to know of 1,000+ evolutionary biologists for every creationist in order to get a real sense of the paltry proportion of Darwin-deniers.

Jim seemed genuinely interested in learning, so I gave him my card and pointed him toward the Talk Origins Archive. What was most troubling about our exchange was a few of his statements about the completeness of the fossil record. He was fairly sure there were definite holes in it, even though I'm not sure if he knew exactly what that meant. Archeopteryx came up, but he was also sure that it had be "disproved." When I pressed a bit farther about it, he told me that he was pretty sure that it had been shown to be a bird fossil showing no transitory features. I showed him the section of Jerry's book dedicated to dinosaur-bird fossils, that clearly explains which features are bird-like and which are characteristic of reptiles. As far as I know, Archeopteryx and the dozens of other fossils from that era are examples of intermediate fossils, although there are some interesting new ideas out there surrounding the transition. More data will clarify this point, but even though it is perfectly possible that Archeopteryx is not an ancestor of modern birds, this would in no way effect our understanding as evolution as a process. To assert such would be like discovering a new ancient Egyptian tool and concluding that therefore aliens built the pyramids. The evidence just doesn't fit the claim.

It is extremely troubling to see this type of misinformation being purposely perpetuated in religious circles, and gives little hope to ever finding common ground between secularists and religious moderates. Aligning yourself among such history-deniers as Answers in Genesis pits your beliefs against reality. Hope as you might, nature isn't going to yield to your dogma.

Finally, he told me that he usually encourages people of faith to delve into these issues. He probably meant that he wanted those people of faith to rise to levels of influence within the scientific community. I replied that I always encourage people to learn more about evolution, not matter what their philosophical bent. First off, I just find it inherently interesting, and would like others to experience the satisfaction that I feel from understanding. Secondly, I feel that exploring the preponderance of data supporting and reinforcing a wholly naturalistic understanding of the world might help those people of faith shed the shackles of dogma that have burdened them most of their lives. This need not lead to strict atheism, but it may lead to questions, and I firmly believe that science holds the best answers to those questions.

Every Debate with a Creationist Ever

2010-02-19T01:42:00.000-05:00

Brian the Skeptic: Psychic Nonsense on Family Guy

2010-02-14T18:47:00.004-05:00

From the Sneak Peek available on Hulu, you can see that the plot of this week's Family Guy episode is centered around Lois's belief in woman that claims to have psychic powers. This video clip shows Brian plainly explain the technique known as "cold reading," where the psychic medium gives the appearance of having privileged knowledge about a person by making general statements that would apply to almost anyone.

Hilarity ensues when Peter buys into his own psychic abilities and becomes a T.V. mentalist a-la Crossing Over's John Edward. British mentalist Derren Brown has a wonderful video clip showing just how convincing this illusion can be. I would definitely recommend checking it out.

I think its great that skeptical celebrities are wielding their influence over popular opinion to preach the gospel of critical thinking. Family Guy creator Seth Macfarlane is a well-known "out" atheist, and produced a recent episode depicting the discrimination that Brian, the ever-present voice of reason, experiences after opening up about his non-belief. Stewie is also often critical of religion and woo of various types, as are many of Macfarlane's youtube series of cartoon shorts, The Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy.

I'm just a little worried that this episode will leave the ending ambiguous about the virtues of a belief in psychics. I don't expect Family Guy, a show well-known for its bathroom humor, to have a scientific bent. But in another recent episode, Road to the Multiverse, Brian and Stewie briefly travel to another dimension where Christianity was never invented. This means the Dark Ages never happened and the world was therefore 1,000 years more technically advanced than it would have been otherwise. It was an interesting interpretation of a very old thought experiment, but I thought it was strange that they added a joke about the lack of art and music in this Christianless universe. I think the evidence is strong that the natural world if wonderful enough to inspire plenty of musical and otherwise artistic masterpieces.

You don't use science to show you're right, you use science to become right.

2010-02-14T10:00:00.002-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day everybody.

Fortunately, this comic does not apply to my love life, I just thought it was funny and a little sad. My sweetie is currently in Nebraska, so our annual fancy macaroni night will have to wait until next weekend.

Celebrate Darwin Day!

2010-02-12T08:27:00.007-05:00

Today is the 201st birthday of Charles Darwin. As both a celebration of his life and ideas, and as a means of scientific public outreach, I gave a talk last night entitled:

I got the first part of the title from the question and answer session after a presentation on creationism that P.Z. Myers gave in Manitoba. One audience member charged P.Z. with the task of explaining how evolution red in tooth and claw could have resulted in a "molecules to morality" transformation. P.Z. rather tactfully responded:

"...he's demanding a bit much for a short answer. Forget the molecules part, since they don't exhibit morality; all you need to know is that a population of apes found it advantageous to regulate their activity to promote cooperation, and voila, here we are, apes who say that rape is a bad thing."

After seeing the same inane question pop up again during a debate between Frank Turek and Christopher Hitchens (i.e. "How do you get morals from an carbon atom?"), I felt obligated to take this opportunity to give other materialists an answer.

My presentation gave a brief overview of some of the ways we understand how altruistic behavior can evolve in natural systems, and rebuts the idea that morality can have only been a gift from a higher power and is therefore proof of that higher power's existence. You can view the slides below:

From Molecules to Morality: The Evolution Of Altruism

View more presentations from MolecularFossils.

I was pleasantly surprised that my presentation was standing room only. I wish I had actually counted, but the room holds ~18 chairs so there were probably around 25 people that showed up. I wish I had been a bit more entertaining (everyone loves a good sight gag) and presented less but did it more clearly. Some of the details about kin selection and reciprocal altruism could have been cut back, and I wish I had done a better job explaining the examples of altruistic behaviors observed in animals. Still, I think it was a great turn out and hopefully the people there went home a little more informed than they were when they came.

I'm also having a Darwin Day party tonight at my house, so call me if you're in the Kent area with nothing to do. Since I'm a huge nerd, I'm making it a theme party: come dressed as your favorite adaptation! I blatantly ripped that idea off from another party, but it is so good I couldn't resist. My amazing fiance also made me some delicious "electrophoresis" cookies, which I will definitely have to post pictures of later. Happy Darwin Day everybody!

Epic Frog Fail.

2010-02-05T10:00:00.000-05:00

I think this video gets funnier the more you watch it.

Epic Frog Fail - Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Did Life Begin In Geothermal Vents?

2010-02-03T10:42:00.005-05:00

Science Daily is reporting on a new paper in BioEssays that claims to overturn the long held understanding that life probably arose in the oceans of the early earth through processes mediated by ultraviolet sunlight. Proposed by J.B.S. Haldane, this idea has been used as a conceptual framework for modeling abiogenic processes for over 80 years. However, senior author William Martin from the Institute of Botany III in Düsseldorf is unimpressed with the model, and is proposing that instead life arose in geothermal vents at the bottom of the early oceans, and was powered through energy provided by the earth's core:

Despite bioenergetic and thermodynamic failings the 80-year-old concept of primordial soup remains central to mainstream thinking on the origin of life, but soup has no capacity for producing the energy vital for life.

Unfortunately I don't currently have access to the paper itself, so I'm just going by this description. I know better than most people how science journalism can fail at communicating the nuanced complexity of scientific concepts after reducing them to mere sound bytes, but Science Daily generally does a respectable job of it. BioEssays has a mid-level impact factor around 5.3, but the fact that this research isn't in being presented in Science or Nature tells me that it's highly speculative and probably incomplete. Notwithstanding, it is an interesting idea. Team leader Nick Lane from University College London provides a nice description of the general concept:

We present the alternative that life arose from gases (H₂, CO₂, N₂, and H₂S) and that the energy for first life came from harnessing geochemical gradients created by mother Earth at a special kind of deep-sea hydrothermal vent -- one that is riddled with tiny interconnected compartments or pores.

I'm not ready to completely throw out my textbooks, but this is sure to become a progressive (and contentious) area of research as more evidence accumulates supporting or refuting this compelling hypothesis.

UPDATE: It seems this article will be coming in next month's issue:

How did LUCA make a living? Chemiosmosis in the origin of life
Martin, William; Lane, Nick; Allen, John F

Chris Mooney to host CFI's Point of Inquiry

2010-02-01T14:23:00.012-05:00

I just received the following email from the Center for Inquiry announcing three new hosts for its excellent podcast, Point of Inquiry.

Center for Inquiry Announces Three New Hosts for its Popular Podcast, ‘Point of Inquiry’

The Center for Inquiry has announced that there will be three new hosts for its popular podcast, Point of Inquiry. Joining the podcast are Chris Mooney, Karen Stollznow, and Robert Price.

“We are tremendously excited about having Chris Mooney, Karen Stollznow and Robert Price as hosts for our podcast,” said Ronald A. Lindsay, president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry. “All three are smart, articulate, witty individuals, with a depth of knowledge in their respective areas of expertise. We expect the podcasts to be thought-provoking and engaging—an entertaining intellectual feast. Moreover, given the scope of topics to be covered, we anticipate we will be able to broaden the audience for our podcast.”

Mooney is expected to host about half of the approximately 50 new shows per year, with the balance evenly split between Price and Stollznow. The first episode to feature this new format is scheduled tentatively for February 12.

The Center for Inquiry launched the weekly podcast in 2006, and it was hosted by CFI Vice President for Outreach D.J. Grothe until his recent departure from CFI to become president of the James Randi Educational Foundation.

About the hosts:

Chris Mooney is a 2009-2010 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and the author of three books, The Republican War on Science, Storm World, and Unscientific America. Mooney maintains a blog hosted by Discover magazine titled “The Intersection” with Sheril Kirshenbaum and serves as a contributing editor for Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

Robert M. Price is professor of theology and scriptural studies at Coleman Theological Seminary and professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute. He is a fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion and the Jesus Seminar. Dr. Price is the author of a number of books, including The Reason Driven Life, Deconstructing Jesus, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, and The Da Vinci Fraud. He has appeared widely in the media, and was featured prominently in the movie The God Who Wasn’t There. His latest book is Top Secret: The Truth Behind Today’s Pop Mysticisms.

Karen Stollznow is an author and skeptical investigator with a doctorate in linguistics and a background in history and anthropology. She is an associate researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and a director of the San Francisco Bay Area Skeptics. A prolific skeptical writer for many sites and publications, she is the “Naked Skeptic” Web columnist for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, the “Bad Language” columnist for Skeptic magazine, a frequent contributor to Skeptical Inquirer, and managing editor of CSI’s Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice. Dr. Stollznow is a host of the Monster Talk podcast and writer for the Skepbitch and Skepchick blogs, as well as for the James Randi Educational Foundation’s Swift.

Point of Inquiry is the premier podcast of the Center for Inquiry, drawing on CFI’s relationship with the leading minds of the day, including Nobel Prize-winning scientists, public intellectuals, prominent authors, and social critics and thinkers. Each episode combines incisive interviews, features, and commentary focusing on issues of science and public policy, pseudoscience and the paranormal, and religion and secularism.

P.O.I.'s original host, D.J. Grothe, recently accepted a position as President of the James Randi Educational Foundation. I credit this show as one of the major forces influencing my foray into skepticism and the way I think about communicating science. Its been off the air since November, when D.J. made the switch from CFI to the JREF. The first episode of his new podcast, For Good Reason, premiered last week.

Chris Mooney recently became infamous around the skeptic-blogosphere for his attacks on notable atheist writers like Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, and P.Z. Myers. In his latest book, Unscientific America, Mooney argues that vocal atheism from scientists, is actually hurting the public understanding of science in a largely Christian American populous. This lead to a flood of atheist bloggers harshly criticizing openly atheist Mooney, labeling him an "accommodationist." Mooney has tried to defend himself at his blog, The Intersection, but having this new international platform may place a renewed spark in this debate. Stay tuned!

The Real Reason the Dinosaurs Went Extinct

2010-01-25T23:39:00.001-05:00

Ohio Freshwater Creationism Case Ends Today

2010-01-22T06:00:00.005-05:00

As The New York Times reports, the John Freshwater case is expected to end today. Freshwater, a public school teacher in Mount Vernon, Ohio, has been accused not just of teaching intelligent design/creationism in his eighth-grade science class, but of religiously indoctrinating his students with religious paraphernalia (including at least 4 copies of the ten commandments, multiple other posters featuring biblical scripture, and a desktop bible that he refused to put away -even after an explicit request from the principal to do so) and by BURNING A CROSS into his student's arm. Yes, you read that correctly. Freshwater used a high voltage device known as a Tesla coil to brand a cross in his students forearm. He has defended himself by claiming that it was supposed to be an "X", and that he has performed similar demonstrations hundreds of times over his 21 years of teaching without complaint.

First off, as you can see [photograph from Panda's Thumb], the mark is clearly a cross. Secondly, I consider hands-on science to be a valuable teaching too, but I draw the line at using electricity to burn shapes of any sort into my students' skin.

One account of the hearing can be found at the conservative-leaning blog Accountability in the Media. The entry recounting the 2/27/09 testimony of Corbin Douglas Heck, a student in Freshwater's class, clearly shows that in this student's opinion, the Tesla coil demonstration did not cause any pain to himself or to Zachary Dennis, the student whose parent's initially brought suit against the school district.

Heck described having the Tesla coil run across his arm as feeling like “a brief tickle.” He said that it did not hurt. No immediate mark was visible, but later a faint mark did appear, Heck said.

...

When Dennis had the Tesla coil applied to his arm, his eyes went up and he laughed, Heck said. Heck did not see Dennis pull away, cry, or that he was harmed in any manner. He did not remember Freshwater ever holding anyone’s arm down when applying the Tesla coil.

However, just a cursory look at the available wikipedia entry for Tesla coils shows that high frequency electrical current, like that of the Tesla coil, can cause tissue damage even though the brain is not perceiving pain:

...The reason for the lack of pain is that a human being's nervous system does not sense the flow of potentially dangerous electrical currents above 15–20 kHz; essentially, in order for nerves to be activated, a significant number of ions must cross their membrane before the current (and hence voltage) reverses. Since the body no longer provides a warning 'shock', novices may touch the output streamers of small Tesla coils without feeling painful shocks. However, there is anecdotal evidence among Tesla coil experimenters that temporary tissue damage may still occur and be observed as muscle pain, joint pain, or tingling for hours or even days afterwards. This is believed to be caused by the damaging effects of internal current flow, and is especially common with continuous wave (CW), solid state or vacuum tube type Tesla coils.

Freshwater was to be fired in June of 2008, after the parents of one student sued the school district for violating The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and the right to free speech. However, the school district granted him a pre-termination hearing before a referee, that will then make a recommendation to the school board. The hearing has been dragging on since October of 2008, and has cost the school district over $500,000.

In my humble opinion, this joker should have been canned long ago. Freshwater claims that this whole trial is just a Christian witch-hunt, since the school board has been after his since he "ruffled a few feathers" in 2003 by suggesting that they adopt a policy to teach evolution as a theory and not a fact. That suggestion alone beautifully illustrates his ineptitude as a science educator. How can you sufficiently teach life science if you aren't capable of handling the clear differences between the scientific and colloquial uses of the word "theory"? Furthermore, his administrators and colleagues are being unfairly burdened by this sub-par teaching skills:

One high school teacher said she consistently had to reteach evolution to Mr. Freshwater’s students because they did not master the basics. Another testified that Mr. Freshwater told his students they should not always take science as fact, citing as an example a study that posited the possibility of a gene for homosexuality.
“Science is wrong,” Mr. Freshwater was reported as saying, “because the Bible states that homosexuality is a sin, and so anyone who is gay chooses to be gay and is therefore a sinner.”
A third teacher testified that Mr. Freshwater advised students to refer to the Bible for additional science research.

This unfortunate reality makes me embarrassed to be a product of the Ohio public education system. Fire this joker so we can get back to investing this wasted time and money into what Ohio needs to be productive - real science education.

NOTE: This post first reported that the verdict was due to be reached today. I've since corrected that statement to reflect that even though the trial expected to end today, the verdict is not expected for a few more months.

...Silly me, I have a lot to learn about the U.S. court system.

Creation: Paul Bettany on Darwin

2010-01-12T15:08:00.006-05:00

Creation, the new biopic starring Paul Bettany as Charles Darwin and Jennifer Connelly as Emma Darwin, is due out January 22, 2010. This is the first time the real-life married couple have appeared on screen together. As many of you surely know, this quasi-controversial movie from BBC films almost wasn't released in the US due to its inability to attract an American distributor. Luckily, indie film distributor Newmarket agreed to pick up the film. Newmarket Co-founder Chris Ball issued the following statement:

"We at Newmarket pride ourselves in getting behind important films that help open the door for discussion and conversation, as is the case with 'Creation.' While Darwin's name has come to symbolize one side in a debate between the scientific and the theological, 'Creation' personifies the debate, with both sides contending, sometimes violently, within the man. In that sense, we believe that the film will appeal to both people of faith and people of science."

I happen to prefer Bettany's own take on portraying the renown British naturalist:

"I’d think that perhaps Darwin’s ideas would have been more broadly accepted at the time had he had an AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifle. That would’ve been survival of the fittest.”

Giddyup.

UPDATE: It seems that Creation will not be debuting in the Cleveland/Pittsburgh market, however those readers in the Boston area are able to get an advanced screening tomorrow night at 7pm, at the Kendall Square Cinema in Cambridge (RSVP at CreationBoston@43kix.com). The rest of us will have to wait until it achieves a high enough level of financial success that it is expanded into smaller markets. You can get a sneak peek of the film by reading Euginie Scott's review of the film or by watching the trailer below.

From The Panda's Thumb:

Creation is first and foremost a movie about the relationship between Charles and Emma. The actors, married in real life, and themselves parents, do an excellent job portraying the range of emotions that must have been part of the Darwins’ life together—from tenderness as they hold their baby Annie, through their shared grief over her death, to the tension over their different attitudes towards religion, and other aspects of their relationship. Darwin wrote several times about his concern that the death(s) of his children (two died in addition to Annie, alas) was the result of the close familial relationship shared by him and his cousin, Emma. As a breeder of pigeons and livestock, he knew that close inbreeding could bring out “weaknesses”, even if he didn’t understand particulate inheritance.

Praying Mantis from San Ramon, Costa Rica

2010-01-10T14:43:00.005-05:00

Kent State's Tropical Biology and Conservation class is currently trekking there way across Costa Rica. I've been fortunate to participate in this field experience twice now. According to Justin, they've already made there way to the Alberto Manuel Brenes Biological Reserve in San Ramon, Costa Rica. Today's post is a tribute to them, as they pick through their leaves and sort their aquatic invertebrates. I took this picture while we were visiting two years ago. It features a praying mantis bent over and clawing at itself, perhaps removing a post-copulatory plug, although it got away before we investigate further.

Praying Mantis
From whence arrived the praying mantis?
From outer space, or lost Atlantis?
glimpse the grin, green metal mug
at masks the pseudo-saintly bug,
Orthopterous, also carnivorous,
And faintly whisper, Lord deliver us.

- Ogden Nash, from Custard and Company

Symphony of Science - "The Unbroken Thread"

2010-01-08T13:10:00.006-05:00

Today debuts the latest from the fascinating science/art cross-over project, Symphony of Science. I've been a huge fan of all of their releases thus far, but I'm especially excited for this video because it emphasizes the coolest of the cool subjects, Natural Selection. "Unbroken Thread" features elegant melodies punctuated by eloquent auto-tuned descriptions of complex scientific concepts from such popular science communicators as David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, and of course, the venerable Carl Sagan:

I have a feeling that John Boswell, the head musician and producer behind the Symphony of Science, has rummaged through quite alot of video footage of scientific presentations looking for repetitive or alterative statements from scientific big-leaguers. It certainly makes for some powerful and beautiful music! I wonder if he is hiring...

2009 Darwin Award Winners Revealed

2010-01-05T16:13:00.004-05:00

The Darwin Awards are an annual honor bestowed on people that kill themselves doing very foolish things.

Wendy Northcutt, the founder of the annual awards, declared them the 2009 winners of the Darwin Awards, given to those "doing the most to improve the human gene pool by removing themselves from it".

I have a problem with this premise, however, since the award has no stipulation exempting parents. Selection would not work to remove foolishness or carelessness from the gene pool if said stupidity occured after the person had already reproduced. This is why diseases that strike later in life, like Huntington's Disease, is still around. Huntington's doesn't prevent most people from reproducing because symptoms usually begin after they've reached sexual maturity. Similarly, I think people that inadvertently sterilize themselves should also be eligible for the award. I think we've all heard plenty of stories about people (mostly men) mangling their genitalia to warrant their inclusion, even if not all of them are true. Either way, permanent removal from the gene pool doesn't necessarily require death.

The 2009 "Double Darwin" Award has been awarded to two Belgian bank robbers that managed to blow themselves up while trying to open an ATM with dynamite. They not only killed themselves in the blast, but they also over-estimate the amount explosive needed so grossly that they demolished the entire bank building.

Robber One was rushed to the hospital with severe head trauma; he died shortly after arrival. Investigators initially assumed that his accomplice had managed a getway, but the second bungler's body was excavated from the debris twelve hours later. Would-be Robbers One and Two weren't exactly impoverished--their getaway car was a BMW.

Amazingly, the third place winner was the first woman ever to make the list. Rosanne T., 50, of North Carolina, drowned while trying to pull her moped from a flooded creek. This story might seem a bit sad, until you consider that this was only moments AFTER she had lost control and veered into the stream but was quickly rescued by police. Oh, and did I mention that this was also after she blew through a police roadblock meant to prevent people from going near the stream? Oh, and did I mention that she was drunk at the time, and was riding a moped because she had already lost her license due to a D.U.I. conviction?

Isaac Newton's Birthday

2010-01-04T09:03:00.008-05:00

Today is Isaac Newton's 367th Birthday, and Google is celebrating with an animated logo on their homepage:
Unfortunately, the well-known story about Newton discovering gravitational theory after an apple falling from a tree struck him on the head, is false. The idea of being struck in the head in order to understand the "force" of gravity is likely the result of over-imaginative cartoonists. In actuality, watching an apple fall was simply his inspiration for considering that gravity extended much farther from the earth than was previously thought. Newton used this idea, along with a plethora of other data, to show that his gravitational theory was consistent with Kepler's Law of Planetary Motion.

This is the first google-doodle I've seen that is animated, but I still think I like Darwin's logo featuring his Galapagos finches a bit better:

NOTE: Interestingly, The Guardian brings up is that January 4th isn't the birthday that Newton himself would be celebrating if he were alive today:

Newton was born on Christmas day, 25 December 1642 under the Julian calendar introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, and still in use in Britain. We changed to using the Gregorian calendar in 1752, which was after Newton's death in 1727. Google is celebrating the Gregorian date today, but it's not one that Newton would have recognised.

Red in Tooth and Claw: Frog Eats Snake

2010-01-03T10:56:00.005-05:00

For those of you that like to root for the underdog, here is a fascinating instance of the hunter becoming the hunted. These photographs, taken by Ian Hamilton near North Mackay in Queensland, Austrailia, show what appears to be either a common keelback (Xenochrophis flavipunctatus) or brown tree snake (Boiga irregularis) being eaten by a frog. Treehugger.com describes the frog as being a cane toad, but I've seen cane toads, and this is definitely not one of them. The Daily Mercury takes a stab at identifying the snake, but I haven't been able to find anyone identify the frog. Maybe those folks over at Montegraphia.com or WanderingWonderment might be able to help out?

Via Treehugger.com

The Foundation Beyond Belief

2010-01-01T11:56:00.018-05:00

New Year's Day Blog Bonanza

Today is the official launch date of the Foundation Beyond Belief, a charitable and educational non-profit foundation created by Executive Director Dale McGowan. I first learned of Dale through his blog, The Meming of Life, which was one of the first blogs dedicated to raising skeptical children that value science and critical thinking. He is also the author of two books on the subject:

Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion

Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief

Dale created the origination to focus, encourage and demonstrate the generosity and compassion of atheists and humanists, and to provide a comprehensive education and support program for nontheistic parents. On the educational side, the Foundation will help create and fund local groups for the education and social support of humanist/atheist parents.

Our Mission: To demonstrate humanism at its best by supporting efforts to improve this world and this life; to challenge humanists to embody the highest principles of humanism, including mutual care and responsibility; and to help and encourage humanist parents to raise confident children with open minds and compassionate hearts.

On the philanthropic side, the Foundation will feature ten charitable organizations per quarter. Featured beneficiaries may be founded on any worldview so long as they do not proselytize. Members join by signing up for a monthly automatic donation in the amount of their choice, and distribute it however they wish among the categories, and contributions are fully tax-deductible. At the end of each quarter, 100% of the collected donations are forwarded on to the charitable organizations and a new group of beneficiaries are selected. Here is a promotional video that gives a nice overview of the foundation:

I would encourage everyone to join and get involved in making this world a better place for believers and non-believers alike. After all, with no divine plan and no god looking out for us, we're the ones that are responsible for doing so. Happy New Years!

Year End Wrap-Up: Blogging in 2009

2009-12-30T12:28:00.011-05:00

I'm finally home safe from a wonderful trip to visit the future in-laws, and I can honestly say that Nebraska winters are worse than Ohio's. I've been snowed in for an extra 3 days as emergency crews struggled to clear roads that were almost immediately re-covered with snow drifting from the tightly shorn corn fields. You win this time, plains, but I still contend that Ohio is in the midwest!

Midwestern states, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau

But anyway, I've realized that this year in blogging has taught me a few things about myself. And since this will likely be my last post of the year, I decided to recap them here for your enjoyment. In no particular order, I present my list of things that blogging as taught me about myself in 2009:

1. I am a terrile proofreader.
I'm not sure how many times I have to go back and fix mistakes immediately after posting, but its an awful lot.

2. I am easily distracted.
This makes my 70th post of the year, and yet I've got at least 90 other posts in my queue waiting for completion. Some of them have since become irrelevant and will probably never see the light of day, but I hope to get to a good portion of them in the next few weeks. Some of them, like the 3 part creation museum series, is nearly completed. Others are little more than interesting links and thoughts I've scribbled down and saved - sure that they would make fine future rants.

This really isn't anything new, as my graduate advisers will surely tell you. As Chris once told me, I have shiny ball syndrome. At first I thought he was asking if I had some sort of STD, but then he explained that it meant I start wondering off to some other task as soon as any distraction or shiny ball passes by. Its not often about procrastination, but about lacking the ability to stay focused on a task until it is completed.

3. I care way more about promoting science than I do about non-belief.
Many of the blogs I often read are far more concerned with the building community within the atheist/agnostic/secular humanism/freethinking community. Comparatively, 24 of my posts were tagged with "science", as opposed to only 5 tagged with "godlessness." This may be a function of my tagging preferences, but I really feel like there are so many other, better blogs about non-belief, that I have nothing more to say about it. This is a blog written by an atheist, but it is not an atheist blog.

4. I still feel uncomfortable calling myself an atheist.
Its still probably the most accurate description of my beliefs (although I admit I am agnostic with regard to my knowledge of a god or gods), it still gives me pause to write it here. I know I'll never be a good spokesperson for the cause until I can shed this embarrassment, but its something I'm still finding difficult to do. I've been told I should submit this to the atheist blogroll maintained over at Deep Thoughts, and I still might. It'd be an easy way to expand my readership, but I'm still a total chicken about some family member stumbling onto my blog and creating a big fuss about it. Actually, the big fuss isn't what scares me. A fuss would be welcome, because then we could actually talk about the issues at hand. What really scares me is the silent judgment that might follow after I've been officially "outed." I've gotten easy instant credibility most of my life because I've widely been considered a "good catholic" boy. None of my behaviors or morals have changed, but its pretty much a given that people will assume they have. If anything, I feel most socially conscious than I was growing up. The understanding that there is no holy puppet-master following some divine script means that we as human beings are responsible for making the world a better place. Atheists just lack the social structures that make religiously-based community service easier and therefore more common. Some people, like Dale McGowan, are working to change that through organizations like the Foundation Beyond Belief:

I'm also worried that Andrea will get flack from her more devout relatives about marrying an non-believer. I almost regret giving her family my business cards with this URL on it. This weekend I was sitting around with her family playing Taboo, the board game where you have to get your team members to say a word without saying any of the related words listed on the card. I had the phrase "Ouija board", and as a clue I used "something I don't believe in." All together the family shouted "GOD!"

I thought this was pretty funny, since I don't think I've ever really talked about my beliefs with them (I must give off the vibe), but Andrea's mom definitely had some awkward nervous laughter after that. I've only sort of alluded to my beliefs while talking to her mom, but I think she'll probably have alot of questions about them when it inevitably comes up.

5. I still haven't found my niche.
As the title implies, this blog was originally meant to be about molecular and genetic evolution. However, I think I've had more posts about The Colbert Report than about molecular evolution. I think its because I feel the need to write this for the general public, but communicating complex issues about abstract topics requires an immense amount of work and planning.

I've got it in my head that I'm going to start out by breaking down the issues into blog-sized pieces and go through them one by one, and then when I start talking about new research I can simply link to earlier descriptions. This is a daunting task, though.

I've also posted on a wide range of scientific topics, from Astronomy to Philosophy, most of which I have no expertise in. A generalist strategy might be advantageous to already popular blogs, but getting people to care about what you have to say because you've studied it in depth is probably a more successful one before you gather any readers. According to my Google Analytics data, I've had 541 visitors this year. Although since there are about 4 months where it registered no visitors, I'm pretty sure this isn't accurate. Since I've re-installed the code on December 17th I've had 36 visitors, so I think 541 might have been a pretty sizable underestimation.

6. The world is a small place.
According to Analytics, I've had quite a range of readers from all over the world. The break down is as follows:

Australia: 7
Brazil: 31
Canada: 8
Costa Rica: 15
India: 11
Iran: 2
Japan: 2
Mexico: 4
Mongolia: 2
Pakistan: 1
Philippines: 3
South Africa: 1
South Korea: 3
Turkey: 1
Thailand: 1
United Kingdom: 13

This list isn't exhaustive, since there were many European countries that had 1-2 visits as well, but the fact that 31 people in Brazil and ANYONE in Mongolia has visited a website that I created is astonishing to me. There were visits from well over 200 different cities around the globe, meaning the internet has made the world a very small place, and given those that promote science and reason a much louder voice than we would have otherwise.

A Visit from St. Secular

2009-12-15T14:35:00.005-05:00

Since apparently I'm on a Colbert kick, I thought I would share an excerpt from Stephen's book, I Am America (And So Can You!):

A Visit from St. Secular

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even an mouse;
Mamma in her kerchief, and I in the nude,
Were shocked that our holiday had been misconstrued,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
(Mind you, I'm still nude.)
Out on the lawn in my glory, I flew.
To see my manger disassembled by the ACLU.

-Written by Clement C. Moore, 1822
-Updated by Stephen Colbert, 2007

And to REALLY get into the spirit of the season, check out Colbert's Another Christmas Song:

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

A Colbert Christmas: Another Christmas Song

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

U.S. Speedskating

Kent State Freethinkers in the Media! (sort of...)

2009-12-10T13:58:00.003-05:00

Finally! The Kent State Freethinkers are actually getting mentioned by name in our student-run newspaper, the Daily Kent Stater. Today's issue has on the front page of the ALL (Arts. Life. Leisure.) section that mentions the Festivus party we threw last week. This is a big step up from getting our Blasphemy Day/Free-Speech demonstration completely ignored, despite having a photographer sent to document it. Twenty minutes of picture taking yielded only one blurry photograph of a book covered in caution tape, with absolutely no mention of blasphemy day, our group, or why we were there.

Today's article also completely ignores our group and our purpose for celebrating Festivus, but at least it mentions our name:

Last week, the Kent State Freethinkers organization held their annual Festivus party in the Rathskeller. Sophomore psychology major, Aaron Rockhold attended the event for his first time and said there was a turnout of about 25 or 30 people. They had a Festivus pole, but had to make some changes to the Festivus events.

"There are quirky events like the feats of strength and the airing of grievances, and we incorporated most of those into our own celebration, although obviously in the Rathskeller it's a little hard to have like wrestling matches or whatever so we had to skip the feats of strength part," Rockhold said.

I'm just excited to see that they recognize that "Freethinkers" is one word. I wish I could say the same for the Center For Student Involvement, who still officially lists us as the "Free Thinkers", despite multiple requests to fix it.

We'll really know we've made it if we ever see the video that was promised to us ever surfaces. We had a very cordial member of TV2 film at our "Ask An Atheist" event, and attend Festivus to gather more footage and interviews with student members (including yours truly, of course). I'm looking forward to seeing what she was able to put together, but after getting screwed last year on a supposed "featured student organization" scam, I won't hold my breath.

Conservapedia Founder on Colbert tonight!

2009-12-08T12:05:00.012-05:00

Tune in to Comedy Central tonight at 11:30 to Catch Andrew Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia.com, on The Colbert Report. For those that don't know, Conservapedia is the online, user-edited encyclopedia with a strictly conservative bent. So conservative, in fact, that they felt it necessary to edit out all that disgusting liberal bias from the bible:

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Tip/Wag - Conservapedia, Louvre & Honda Unicycle

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

U.S. Speedskating

Anyway you look at it, it should be an interesting interview.

A quick glace around the Conservapedia homepage is equally good for a few laughs. The subtitle of the site is "The Trustworthy Encyclopedia", instantly implying that Funk & Wagnall were a bunch of no-good liars. Furthermore, they've also elected "Evolution" as their article of the year. Check it our if you are looking for a compendium of tired, long-refuted creationist talking points, misrepresentations, and outright lies. True to form, they also consistently attempt to link evolution to liberalism, the holocaust, homosexuality and that dreaded lancet of the intellectual elite, atheism.

And if you REALLY want some entertaining reading, check out the exchange between old Schlafly and Rich Lenski, the biologist behind one of the most exquisite demonstrations of observed experimental evolution to date. Lenski has spend the last 20+ years growing successive cultures of the common bacterial model organism E. coli. After more than 40,000 generations, one of the 12 lines of E. coli has evolved the ability to metabolize citrate under oxic conditions. Schlafly asks...nay, demands that Lenski give up the primary data showing that beneficial mutations have occurred. Below is my favorite part of Lenski's lengthy response:

...it is obvious that you lack any expertise in the relevant fields. Several of your acolytes have pointed this out to you, and that your motives are unclear or questionable at best, but you and your cronies dismissed their concerns as rants and even expelled some of them from posting on your website. [Ed.: citation omitted due to spam filter] Several also pointed out that I had very quickly and straightforwardly responded that the methods and data supporting the evolution of the citrate-utilization capacity are already provided in our paper.

Latest from the Lenski lab:

Barrick, J. E., D. S. Yu, S. H. Yoon, H. Jeong, T. K. Oh, D. Schneider, R. E. Lenski, and J. F. Kim. 2009. Genome evolution and adaptation in a long-term experiment with Escherichia coli. Nature 461:1243-1247.

Just in case you've forgotten...

2009-12-04T09:38:00.002-05:00

Happy holidays everyone, and a very good Fevstivus to you!

Copyright © Lore Sjöberg
under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License.

Michael Shermer should watch out

2009-11-23T14:14:00.006-05:00

The most recent XKCD makes a menacing threat for skeptic leaders:

Particularly astute (or superstitious) readers should also note that this is the 666th comic.

I also came across another comic that I'm going to consider a meta-comic, since it's one comic that refers to another (as well as another fine work of classic literature):

Ray Comfort Disses Darwin

2009-11-19T13:03:00.024-05:00

Around 9:30am yesterday morning, a slurry of facebook messages screamed across my live news feed:

Wow ray comfort's copy of origin of species is currently being handed out at osu.

It seems Ray jumped the gun.

For those that don't know what I'm talking about, let me give some background. Ray Comfort is a creationist proselytizer and anti-atheist anti-intellectual that achieved a high level of internet infamy after a clip from his televangelist program The Way of the Master spread like wild-fire across the intertubes. Co-hosted by former Growing-Pains star Kirk Cameron, this episode entitled "The Beauty of a Broken Spirit – Atheism," began by making the following logical leaps:

1. Soda cans exist, have complex properties, and have been designed
2. Bananas exist, have properties that are functionally similar to soda cans, and therefore also appear to have been designed
3. *Poof* God exists.

...cue the godless heathen awakening in a cold sweat.

Of course, we know that the bananas we buy at the grocery store are the product of thousands of years of an intelligently designed selective breeding program. In fact, nearly all modern bananas are essentially clones of each other, grown from a tissue cultured root-stock called a corm . If you need some more evidence, here is a picture of me on a Dole plantation in Costa Rica, with two varieties of squat, fibrous, seedy, real bananas.

After having his ignorance pointed out to him repeatedly, Comfort issued a video "apology ," explaining:

...an illustration presented by Comfort in which he compared the complex design elements of a Coke can to the complex design elements of a banana in order to demonstrate that thoughtful design by a Designer is required for both examples…

…

… atheists removed the Coke can from the [banana video] and sent it across the Internet saying that Comfort believed that the banana was conclusive proof of God’s existence… missing the point of the illustration completely.

No, we get the point, Ray. Bananas look as designed as a Coke can, therefore they must have a designer, and therefore the designer is your Judeo-Christian conception of an omnipotent, benevolent God.

You also may remember that 2009 is the Year of Darwin. Of course, creationists have felt the need to cash in on Darwin's celebrity too. To celebrate, Comfort and his creationist cronies have already raised nearly $200,000 in order to print and distribute 170,000 copies of On the Origin of Species at top universities around North America. The only catch (and its a doozy of a catch), is that Comfort has added his own 54 page introduction, chalk full of trite old creationist propaganda, including the assertion that Darwin was a racist and misogynist, and that the holocaust was merely the logical conclusion of evolution. Desmond and Moore's 2008 book Darwin's Sacred Cause soundly puts to rest the idea that Darwin's obsession with "...The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life" stemmed some sort of a racist worldview.

Furthermore, the NOVA biopic Darwin's Darkest Hour is a dramatized historical love-story between Darwin and his wife, Emma, based on his extensive writings. While I obviously don't accept dramatized movies as fact, it depicts Ol' Chuck as a penitent man; deeply conflicted between his urge to release his blockbuster idea to the world, while still worrying about the impact it would have on Emma's Unitarian beliefs. The facts remain: Charles put off publishing one of the greatest ideas of all time for over 20 years, expressly because he was concerned about what his wife thought. "Sexist" isn't exactly the the term I'd use to describe such a man.

Of course, it seems to be beside the point that even if all of Comfort's claims were true, it would still have absolutely zero impact on the truth of evolution. Creationists of Comfort's standard are often guilty of committing the is-ought logically fallacy, sometimes known as Hume's Guillotine. These fallacies arise when some tries to derive an "ought" (or prescriptive statement, like "we ought to ethnically cleanse Europe") from an "is" (or normative statement, such as "biological entities do evolve"). Another way of say this, is that just because nature is red and tooth and claw, does NOT mean we ought to structure and run our societies that way. [For a more complete exposition on this subject, see John Wilkin's essay Evolution and Philosophy: Does evolution make might right?]

Comfort's first printing of On the Origin was an abridged version, leaving out 4 chapters of Darwin's evidence for evolution. The venerable Eugine Scott of the NCSE publicly called in out on it in their recent debate in U.S. News and World Report. Comfort promises that the second print run will encompass the entire book. The NCSE has even set up a website, Don't Diss Darwin, to help local freethought and science groups organize counter-comfort events and distribute educational resources, including this video:

What really gets my goat is that, not only can Comfort just nonchalantly order 170,000 copies of a 300 page book, but that he also flaunts his ample buying power by offering to reimburse the Secular Student Alliance for book marks they supposedly had printed:

I noticed that the Secular Student Alliance went to some expense printing quality bookmarks with a full color picture of a banana on them, that were supposed to be given to everyone who took a copy of On the Origin of Species. Owing to our date change, no doubt they have a lot left over.

If someone has contacts with the SSA, could you please let them know that I will gladly pay their printer's bill for the bookmarks.

This, of course, is a thinly veiled jab at the SSA for daring to support and help organize student groups to counter his grab-bag give away. In actuality the bookmark he refers to is being distributed for free by the NCSE. No printing fees exist because these were distributed electronically. What Comfort lacks in cognitive ability, he makes up for in skillful self promotion. He of course will claim ignorance and cloak his spite in an air of feigned generosity. Its been brought up time and time again that if Comfort actually cared about making the world a better place, he quit with the tried publicity stunts and raise money for an actual worthy cause.

Which brings us back to yesterday. In order to avoid the counter demonstrations being organized by groups such as the Secular Student Alliance and the Center for Inquiry, sneaky old Ray deceitfully moved his up his distribution day. However, due to some fantastically networked and tech-savvy secularists, local freethought groups in Columbus were able to respond at a moments notice.

It appears that Kent State did NOT make the cut for Comfort's give away, but I was able to secure a copy of the book anyway through my connections as OSU. I know that Case Western Reserve and Oxford also were visited yesterday, while the bananaman himself showed up at UCLA. The Ohio State University's Students for Freethought are collecting copies for some sort of community project, but I plan on keeping mine planted firmly on my bookshelf until I have time to read it. We're still keeping our eyes out though, since Living Waters' lackeys also showed up today on Purdue's campus. Comfort has shown that he can't be trusted, so it behooves the Kent State Freethinkers to stay nimble. Our year of Darwin celebration, which kicked off last February, concluded last week with a talk I gave on the evidence for evolution. I'll post details of that event later, but for now, I'm off to bed.

Remebering Carl Sagan

2009-11-10T14:30:00.004-05:00

Yesterday would have been Carl Sagan's 75th birthday. The first ever Carl Sagan Day was celebrated with a day full of events at Broward College, with speakers including D.J. Grothe, Phil Plait, and the keynote address venerable James Randi, who knew Sagan personally. My own Carl Sagan Day celebrations were much more muted, including sleeping in my office while trying to prepare my thesis for final submission (and working on a few other projects), and listening to Glorious Dawn on repeat:

Today's Science Times had a fascinating article on one of the real space research projects Carl hand a hand in creating. In 1980, he founded the Planetary Society, a group that has contributed to the modern day equivalent of a space sail. LightSail-1, as it is called, is an incredibly thin piece of Mylar that can literally ride a sunbeam. Photons from the sun have no mass, but when the high energy particles bounce off a reflective surface, they transfer a minute amount of energy. LightSail-1 is only a slightly over 20 feet across, but future incarnations will be many times larger and designed for deep space travel. While these space sails are no where near has powerful as a rocket, they're major advantage is that they don't require fuel. Once the projects are scaled up to miles, they would be capable of attaining speeds on the scale of 100,000 miles per hour. High levels of prolonged solar radiation makes them impractical for carting life around the universe, but only time will tell which advancements will come to be indispensable for us in the future. I'll close with a Sagan quote (one of many) that succinctly relates our true place to the Cosmos:

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

So Close to the End!

2009-10-27T16:20:00.004-04:00

Well, last Wednesday I successfully defended my thesis on the Evolution and Ecology of Glycosyl Hydrolase Family 28 in Fungi. The whole ordeal was much less intimidating than I was expecting. I managed to clean up my powerpoint presentation in the just the nick of time, and I think it came across as a clear, coherent piece of work. The Q & A session wasn't as terrible as I thought it would be, either. I definitely snuck a lot of methodological details into the presentation that I probably would have left out otherwise, just to nip those possible thorny questions in the bud.

My biggest mistake was not having the proper documentation ready for my committee to sign afterward. Now I have to schlep around the department getting all 5 forms signed needed to make this official. I've also got a few weeks to address all of the minor problems with my thesis, correctly format everything, and get it approved by the College of Arts and Sciences. I'm ok with calling myself a "Master of Biology" before I actually graduate, but not before I get everything turned in and approved. I'm SO CLOSE though!

...Aaaaand, Thesis finisied.

2009-10-13T11:11:00.003-04:00

Well, as you can see from the expired time on my Thesis Countdown Clock to the right there, my 95-page Masters Thesis is completed and turned in. That page count is a little inflated because of some additional figures I added last minute, but it was a substantial amount of work nonetheless. The next step happens next week, when I have to actually defend it in front of my committee. I'm not incredibly worried about it, since two of my committee members have been guiding the work the whole way, but there are a few key points I need to make sure I have clear before my practice presentation this Friday. I'm sure I'll have some corrections to make before its turned in the the College of Arts & Sciences, but I'll have a few weeks to do so before its due. This was a major step on my graduation check-list though. Its time to celebrate!

Free Speech Day: Celebrate International Blasphemy Day and Banned Books Week

2009-09-30T14:44:00.004-04:00

The Kent State Freethinkers had a table up in the student center today with pristene white tag board taped across the front, just ripe for some naughty college students to come scrawl all over it. We also had our tri-fold up, with plenty of pamphlets and information up about our group. We also had copies of the infamous Jyllands-Posten Muhammad Cartoons that International Blasphemy Day was organized in response to. I was surprised out how completely unremarkable these dozen or so sketches were, especially considering they led to over 100 deaths and the torching of Danish embassies around the world.

We were also celebrating Banned Books Week in full force. Our fearless librarian leader was able to round up nearly all 74 that have been challenged, restricted, removed, or just outright banned in the past year alone. You can download the complete list for 2008-2009 here. Unfortunately, one book, The Joy of Gay Sex, is apparently checked out of every library in Ohio. Maybe next year.

These events were part of The Center for Inquiry's Campaign for Free Expression.

Send Grrl Scientist to Antarctica!

2009-09-29T08:00:00.002-04:00

Quark Expeditions is sending one blogger on a trip of a lifetime: a month-long expedition to Antarctica! Unfortunately I won't be entering the competition, but Devorah Bennu (AKA Grrl Scientist) is currently 3rd place in the competition. Devorah holds a PhD in Zoology from the University of Washington, is a trained ornithologist, an experienced science communicator (both to the blog-reading public and the most respected professional journals like Science and Nature), and above all is an excellent science-blogger.

Now remember, this position is expressly for an adventure and science-blogger, and currently Grrl Scientist is the only one in the top four with any scientific training.

Quark Expeditions is relying on the good sense of people like you to ensure that the right person becomes the Official Quark Blogger. Please review the entries of the competitors. We're looking for a blogger with an adventurous spirit, a commitment to the environment, a keen sense of observation, and the ability to write with style and imagination.

A cursory review of Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) shows she is more than capable of expressing intricate, beautiful, and fascinating scientific concepts with ease and poetry.

Conversely, the current top vote-getter is a Portuguese radio-host that promises he'll:

...not omit any personal details which in my case are normally hilarious! If a penguin "bites" my *ss for example…you’ll know how bad it felt!

No one gives a shit about your personal details, Luís, and the fact that you made a joke about penguins biting your ass just proves you have no idea what its like to do remote field work in a harsh yet pristine part of the world like Antarctica. There is little that annoys me more than morons that get to have incredible trips like this with no chance of appreciating them beyond the surface. I don't know how many times I've had lines pop up on my facebook feed that read something like:

2 weeks in teh Amazon n had an amazin tiem!! brazilion babes r smokin n they had these huge fuckin bugs everywhere!!

I hate you, Luís, and all the douchebags like you that don't and can't appreciate the world beyond its usefulness to humans. Current second place is a unremarkable post-undergrad, probably looking for something to do between shifts at Starbucks. Her extensive travel experience includes:

I recently spent 2 months in England, and even though I endured missed flights, incorrect outlet adapters, ghastly phone charges, a break-up with a boyfriend, overweight bag fees, and about a million other "oversea travelling" roadbumps

The title of her essay is "Why Antarctica is better than Europe", even though it not only gives no reasons for Antarctica being better than Europe, but its also an extremely US-centric view of the world. I wonder if Europeans would agree that Antarctica is better, simply because you're traveling there? And I can't imagine the "ghastly phone charges" from the North Pole. She even states that she wants her blog posts to sound this inane:

"Today I met some baby penguins! Real live penguins! I wonder if I brought the right travel adapters for Antarctica..."

UGH!! Are you freaking kidding me?? How are you beating Devorah ? Especially when you say outright that you're going to be more concerned with being able to plug in your ipod than blogging about LIFE! Life in the biological sense, not the "omg, u have no life" sense.

So go vote for Grrl Scientist! Tomorrow is the final day to do so!

I think I'm on step 4

2009-09-28T08:30:00.003-04:00

I saw this on bioephermea this morning. It appears the AAAS is giving these t-shirts out with memberships. I'm only writing my masters thesis, but I've got the steps down cold. At print time I have exactly 10 days, 15 hours, 25 minutes and 55 seconds to get from "despair" to "printing."

TMZ on Growing Pains and Ray Comfort

2009-09-25T10:03:00.013-04:00

TMZ usually publishes some pretty raunchy crap, but they've actually hit on something here when they picked up on Kirk Cameron's latest youtube video. It outlines his plan to distribute 50,000 copies of Darwin's On the Origin of Species at the top 50 universities around the country. The only catch is that fellow fundamentalist Ray Comfort has written a 50 page introduction to Darwin's book, outlining:

...the history of evolution, a time-line of Darwin's life, Adolf Hitler's undeniable connection with the theory, Darwin's racism, his disdain for women, and Darwin's thoughts on the existence of god...

Cameron also cites a survey that shows 61% of biology and psychology professors at the top 50 US universities describe themselves at atheist or agnostic. He then goes on to say that students are therefore being "brainwashed into atheistic evolution, without even hearing the alternative." I'd be interested to see how many atheistic college students have never heard of religion. How exactly could a student leave religion without ever hearing of it, I wonder?

I'm reminded of a recent exchanged I had with traveling campus preacher Tom Short. He posed this question to a group of gathering students, "What is the number one reason why college students become atheists?" He claimed that is was because of ... *GASP*...sexual immorality, but my response seems to be supported a bit more by evidence:

"Because they're becoming educated."

I agree that education and intelligence are not the same thing, but I digress. Back to the original topic of this post, TMZ has spoofed the ~~Mike Seaver~~ Kirk Cameron video, and its asking some of the same questions I want to know:

"How is it like Hitler?"

P.S. Does any one out there know why the embedding code from TMZ is putting a big gap in the post? I know little to no html.

Best Post Of All Time!

2009-09-18T15:38:00.009-04:00

I'm not really one for spreading internet memes, but this one is too hilarious to pass up.

I happen to like Kanye West's music, and was pretty un-impressed when I finally saw the video of what his interruption. The radio talking-heads made it sound like the rushed the stage, assaulted a country starlet and ran off laughing manically. Don't get me wrong - it was a dick move. But I've seen people do a lot worse when caught up in the moment. And Taylor Swift is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine, too, despite her nonsensical mixed-literature references:

Cause you were Romeo - I was a scarlet letter,
And my daddy said "stay away from Juliet"

If young Taylor is a Nathaniel Hawthorne fan, then she is admitting to being an adulteress, and possibly a witch. That is a bit of a non-sequitur in the context of the song.

But on the other hand, if Miss Swift happens to be more of a Richard Dawkins fan, then being a scarlet letter taking on a WHOLE new meaning.

I don't think I should be so lucky, however. I guess Julianne Moore, Uma Thurman, Angelina Jolie and Jodie Foster will have to suffice.

For more Internet hilarity, click here.

Biologists in the Dating World

2009-09-09T14:29:00.006-04:00

Well, I've been away from the blog for a while, feverishly working on my thesis and new functional gene project (while preparing to teach tomorrow), so I thought I'd throw something up to let my readers I'm still alive.

Mom, I'm still alive.

Otherwise, the most recent XKCD is pretty funny, although its more interesting to see what a physicist thinks dating in the world of biology is like:

It's a little surprising Randall Munroe didn't realize matings are independent events. The chance of getting a given hair color is equal no matter how many children you have! Maybe he did, since a "better-than-even chance" of something is pretty nonsensical.

Photography Contest: Vote for Me!

2009-08-17T15:08:00.002-04:00

My photograph of the red passion flower from Costa Rica is being featured today on Panda's Thumb. Go check it out! This round of voting begins this Saturday, and winners can receive one of three books! Help me out!

Passiflora coccinea – Red Passion Flower, Red Grandilla, being visited by an unidentified flying invertebrate.

Let the Countdown Begin

2009-08-17T13:32:00.009-04:00

As you may have noticed, I've added a clock to my sidebar, counting down the days until my Master's thesis is due. Its really just a reminder to keep the pressure on, since one of my admitted personality flaws is under estimating the amount of time it takes to complete writing-related tasks. Since at this point I've got just over 50 days left, I'm going to restrict the number and time investment in blog posts until I'm ready to turn that baby in.

However, I've got a lot of good posts brewing, including a 3-part account of my trip to the creation museum with the SSA, a few ruminations that might help put the recent accommodationist debate into perspective, and some comments on intellectual property concerning gene-patents and Microsoft's recent attempt to patent phylogenetic inference methods. So stay tuned!

On a personal note, I want to let newlyweds Aaron & Karen Marando know that their wedding this weekend was fantastic, and that I had a great time despite injuring myself. For the rest of you, I've got a clip that should let you know exactly how the Marandos like to party:

Don't Visit The Creation Museum! - A Rebutal To Criticisms

2009-08-07T12:00:00.002-04:00

While I'm currently down in Columbus, this post should show up right about the time my fellow skeptics and I are in the Creation "Museum's" special presentation for us:

The Ulitmate Proof of Creation

There is a defense for creation that is powerful, conclusive, and has no true rebuttal. As such, it is an irrefutable argument—an “ultimate proof” of the Christian worldview. This presentation will equip you to engage an unbeliever, even a staunch atheist, using proven techniques.

Ooo...that sounds thrilling. This should be a pretty good show. However, I would like to take this opportunity to address a few concerns and critisizms the SSA and its members have been taking from others in the skeptical community:

1. "I'm not giving those crazy fundamentalists any of my money!"

Yes, I agree. Adding $2,500 of income to the incredibly deep coffers is a less than ideal situation. However, they are letting our group in at less than half the normal price of admisson ($10/person vs the normal $22). I once paid a buddy $10 to drink a jar of other people's spit, so this probably doesn't even register on the life time stupidest-things-I've-ever-blown-ten-bucks-on list.

Furthermore, as of last month, 750,000 people have visited the museum. At $22 a head, that is roughly $16.5 million in the 2 years since its opening. That’s not too shabby, even if it took $27 million to build. Our generously discounted admission is a small drop in their very deep buckets.

2. "You all are just looking to start trouble."

Absolutely nothing could be further from the truth. There will be no trouble from either side as much as I can help it. And we're under strict orders to take group members aside or kick them out before they get kicked out by security. As a science educator and future professor, I'm using this trip to learn about one the most prevalent barriers to evolution education. Fighting about it isn't going to make the situation any better, but an open and honest dialogue might help us find a common ground. Besides, we've already got one militant athiest in the group, so from me it will be smiles and cordial how-do-you-do's all the way.

I’m HOPING that the SSA has done their part to get some positive media attention for the event. The trip from the North American Paleontological Convention last month got written up in the New York Times! Any attention we can bring to the ridiculousness of its existence is a good thing.

Creation "Museum" Tomorrow

2009-08-06T12:00:00.000-04:00

Well, tomorrow is the big day. I'm headed to Columbus to meet up with the Secular Student Alliance on our way to the Creation "Museum" in Kentucky. We've got over 250 people going, including the world's foremost science and atheism blogger, PZ Myers. This is probably this biggest non-religious group that has ever visited, much larger than the group from North American Paleontological Convention that visited this June, and will have more students than The Ohio State's Students for Freethought visit with Micheal Shermer last March. While there, Shermer interviewed Dr. Georgia Purdom, The Creation Museum's head science director:

It is a fairly enlightening exchange, although I was frustrated that Shermer wasn't more forceful with his line of questioning. Especially when she starts talking about the "slippery slope" of belief, where certain passages of the bible are taken literally in a given denomination and not others (for example, Catholics believe in transubstantiation, whereas most Protestants don't). I completely agree that there inconsistency there that begs the question of how people decide which portions of the bible to accept and which to reject. However, the next logical question for her would be ask when was the last time she stoned an adulterer, or murdered her children for not respecting her. Everyone, or nearly everyone, purposely disobeys god's orders everyday. Maybe Shermer just didn't want to be thought of as one of those damned, vitriolic atheists... always asking their "questions" and stating their "facts."

However, Purdom's response is example the type of backwards reasoning that we are expecting tomorrow. If you start with the conclusion that the Bible is the inerrant word of a divine creator, than everything you look at through your god-colored glasses is proof of his existence. But forget all that for now. These people from Answers in Genesis aren't hurting anyone because they're Christians or because they believe in god. They're hurting people because they're willfully spreading ignorance.

These people aren't just creationists, they're the worst kind of creationist; they are the bible-literalists; they are the young-earthers. These people believe the best way date the age of the earth is by ignoring the observable cosmologic and geologic record, radiometric decay, and genetic evidence, and instead simply counting backwards the number of generations listed in the first book of the bible. They believe the best way understand and account for the staggering intricacy and diversity of life on this planet by rejecting the elegant dance of evolution by natural selection, and instead reducing all earth's glory and wonder to a few frivial "Let there be X" statements. Perhaps most relevant, they believe that the source of the whole of humanity's goodness...morality, conscience, love and compassion...stems not from the common ground of a shared kinship with all life, but from the fictional example of a vindictive, genocidal, supernatural bully. They fights so fervently for a complete and literal interpretation (although, Dr. Purdom did look to be wearing cloth made from two fibers--tisk, tisk-- Deuteronomy 22:11), because they legitimately believe that if people accept a material world view, than people will cease treating each other well. But it is precisely that material world view that allows us to understand not just why we some times treat each other well and some times treat each other poorly, but also why it is so important to cooperate and care for others.

I can't go into a detailed description of Game Theory now, but Richard Dawkins made a nice program back in the 1980's describing it. I strongly encourage taking the time to watch Nice Guys Finish First:

Otherwise I should have plenty to say after this weekend's events. I'm sad to say that I won't be able to stay for PZ's talk on Saturday night, but I'm hoping a video will appear somewhere afterward. I will be heading a small sub-group of secular students around the museum as a professional evolutionary biologist, which is quite exciting. To be honest, I'm not sure what in my formal education has prepared me to refute the claim that:

Before man's Fall, animals were vegetarians. In a "very good" creation, no animal would die, so there were no carnivores. All the beasts of the earth, not just the "beasts of the field" that God brought to Adam to name, ate only plants.

...but I'll do my best. The very idea that natural laws have ever been suspended is more of a philosophical question than an biological one. But I guess I have answers for that, too.

New Mobile Device

2009-08-03T14:30:00.003-04:00

I'm submitting this post from my new mobile device, the Palm pre. I haven't quite figured out how to highlight text, so I probably won't be posting any links from my phone any time soon. This does mean, however, that I might now be able to live blog events at the Secular Student Alliance's trip to the creation museum this weekend. Stay tuned!

UPDATE: I figured it out! Highlighting requires you to hold the shift key while brushing your finger over the screen. What will they think of next?

Biology Knows Best

2009-07-31T08:52:00.005-04:00

Today's XKCD is notable, not just because of its insightful satire, but because of its Easter Egg:

"My biology grad student friends tell me that different types of alcohol don't actually have different effects. I trust their expertise, not because of the 'biology' part, but because of the 'grad student'."


Secretary Bird, Sagittarius serpentarius. Image Credi: Keven Law