| First day of spring, 2008. |
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| Right. |
1. PZ Myers blogged about this interesting new report: examination of the genes for yolk proteins and milk proteins reveals a clear story of the evolution of proteins that nourish embryos and young in vertebrate animals. Pseudogenes figure prominently, and the explanation makes no sense without them. The article (in PLoS Biology) was accompanied by a nice lay summary, but PZ's post is very good too.
Speaking of PZ, if you haven't heard about his hilarious expulsion from a screening of a propaganda film that I won't name, check out his description of the event, or Greg Laden's Blog for bunches of links.
If your kids ever ask you to explain the concept of irony, tell them that Alanis is very confused, then tell them about how PZ was expelled from a movie with a curious title.
2. Are you a former physicist who is feeling ignorant of basic principles of biology? Feeling silly about some of the things you've written about biology, that you now know are complete nonsense? Want to learn a little about biology? Just ask a biologist. They might misspell 'color' and 'honor', but they'll surely know plenty about genetics and evolution, and a quick consult might save you from the humiliation of being thought an arrogant ignoramus. Try it!
3. I've mentioned before that our little state of Michigan, with the worst economy in the U.S. and without any hope of affecting the Democratic presidential nomination, is a hotbed of world-class evolutionary biology. The walking whale Rodhocetus kasrani? In a free museum on the University of Michigan campus. The famous ongoing experiment on selection and evolution in bacteria? In a lab in East Lansing. I could go on. Here's this week's sample: the Digital Evolution Lab at Michigan State. Their simulation program is Avida, and they used it in a prominent study published in Nature in 2003. Lately, with NSF funding, they've been adapting Avida for educational use. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm very interested in the possibility of using it in the classroom.
4. Is it a waste of time – or even counterproductive – to engage folk science and/or pseudoscience? Brian at Laelaps and Abbie Smith at ERV are two of my favorite science bloggers, and they both took the bait when a blogger at ScienceBlogs suggested that responding to anti-science propaganda "enables" it. I assume you already know where I stand: with Brian and Abbie. Via Pharyngula.
5. Dr. Hunter O'Reilly, BioArtist. Very cool.
6. I just looked over an article called "Spending money on others promotes happiness." Reader's Digest? Joel Osteen? The Living Bible? Mr. Rogers? Give up? Here's a hint: the same issue of the same magazine includes an article on a proposal to let scientists edit GenBank, the massive genomic database, in essence turning it into a wiki. (Sounds smart to me.) The magazine is Science, and here's the abstract of that article on "promoting happiness":
Although much research has examined the effect of income on happiness, we suggest that how people spend their money may be at least as important as how much money they earn. Specifically, we hypothesized that spending money on other people may have a more positive impact on happiness than spending money on oneself. Providing converging evidence for this hypothesis, we found that spending more of one's income on others predicted greater happiness both cross-sectionally (in a nationally representative survey study) and longitudinally (in a field study of windfall spending). Finally, participants who were randomly assigned to spend money on others experienced greater happiness than those assigned to spend money on themselves.I wonder if there's a pseudogene involved somewhere...
7 comments:
Are you serious about Abbie at ERV being one of your favorite science bloggers?
I'm serious. She's crazy, she's feisty, she's smart, she's just short of completely out of control. She's the lady when it comes to ERVs, which are hugely important and interesting, and she's an atheist who can help us see how Christian folk science looks to a serious scientist and skeptic. Is she a science writer extraordinaire? Nah. Is she a voice I don't want to miss? Yes.
Ditto on the weather. It took me an HOUR today to get from Breton and 44th to Raybrook Manor.
I can barely stomach reading her blog (in the same way that I can barely stomach reading blogs like Uncommon Descent). I don't know ... there just seems to be a big echo chamber of ID and anti-ID folks who do little more than talk to each other.
I like readiung ERV, too. I got started when she had her confrontation with Behe over HIV. And yeah, she's a little too flip in her tone, but like PZ, she writes enough interesting science posts to merit a regular viewing.
BTW, Steve, is that a Red Sox cap in the picture? I can't tell because it's so dark.
:)
Perhaps that's my problem - I think the ratio of good science posts to inane ranting on her (and Myers') blogs is so low as to not make them not worth my time.
I hope it is okay to put this here. This is more like opening blog post but I don't have a blog for two reasons 1) I don't have the energy, but more importantly 2) if certain family members, especially in-laws learned I have accepted common descent it would cause a great deal of stress and anguish that at this time I don't think is helpful. I do however, want to discuss this with the normal audience of your blog. I want to ask about Jesus and Chromosomes. The first part is just a bit of a digression on the original sin and is a bit silly. It is the second paragraph and the discussion of ERVs that is my real question.
POOF
“Poof”
The Virgin Birth. Jesus had 46 chromosomes, and at least 23 of them were 'poofed' in. I don't know whether the other 23 came form Mary. I know a lot of people, women especially, who insist that God used Mary's egg. Indeed, because they assume He did; they then assume that sin must be passed along by the sperm. And coming full circle, then then declare the Virgin birth was necessary or otherwise Jesus would have been passed this sinful nature . I'm not sure why we are in such a hurry to assign sinful nature to something genetic. Though perhaps there is no distinction, isn't it more fitting to leave it in the realm of the soul. And if that is the case, I think we can safely assume it is passed along by God and we need not worry who contributes what chromosomes. There is a practical reason for this. Perhaps in short time we could take two different female cells, have them crossover and then split into sex cells, then recombine those sex cells with each other and “clone” a baby. This would be a distinct person. Would this person inherit sin? I say yes, all people inherit sin, except Jesus. And if you claim that is because the sin is somehow latent on one of their genes, then surely Mary's egg could not have been used. But this is all silly, and not the point of this comment. Personally, I think Jesus was born a Virgin as a demonstration that He was something else; in this case, God Himself. This would have been the message to the original audience as well as the next 1800 years of church history; I don't think the Virgin birth was a hidden message about genetics and original sin to be uncovered in the last century.
But at least 23 of Jesus's chromosomes were “poofed” in. Now chromosomes have ERVs. These ERVs were viral insertions into common ancestors many years ago, sometimes millions of years ago. Some of these are homogenous in our species and shared by everyone. Here is my point; “IF” (and I assume this is a safe if, but as a amateur I don't know how to verify it) there is a homogenous ERV located on the Y chromosome; then did Jesus have it? If He did, then God must have 'poofed' it in. And if He did, has not God now 'poofed' into existence evidence of something that never happened? In this case, God proofed in evidence of an ERV assertion even though the actual DNA strand is not the last of a long list of replications of the original viral assertion but is a 'poofed' in copy to make it LOOK like it is the last of a long list of replications; such as ours would be. In other words, God would have made it looked like Jesus' Y chromosome was a descendant of a Y chromosome that had the ERV inserted (and a descendant of everyone in between) though Jesus himself did not have any Y chromosome ancestors.
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