Weekly sampler 5

Well, the Pats lost, and I was a little disappointed (I'm a huge fan of Tedy Bruschi, Arizona '95), although I've always loved upsets and underdogs. More importantly, I enjoyed seeing my hometown in the spotlight. (I grew up in west Phoenix, just a mile from Glendale, and 8.5 miles from the stadium.) That's all the football you'll get on this blog, though. Pitchers and catchers report in 6 days...now that's blogworthy.

1. David Sloan Wilson has a four-part series on the New Atheists on the Huffington Post, which I discovered while visiting Rationally Speaking, Massimo Pigliucci's blog. Pigliucci is a first-rate evolutionary biologist and a savvy commentator, and I recommend the blog highly. (His review of Michael Lynch's new book is a nice little introduction to the geneticists-vs.-the-world disputes in modern evolutionary science.) I read Pigliucci's critique, but I haven't read through the Wilson series. Anyone? I'll even provide the links: Part I Part II Part III Part IV.

2. I just finished reading Gordon Glover's Beyond the Firmament, and I'll have a review in print in the near future. But here's a freebie for all 156 of my blog readers. I'm frequently asked, "Can you recommend a good book on evolution that would cover all that stuff you were talking about?" And I've never had a good answer. "Well, you can read this, and that, and that, and this, and... well, just go the ASA web site." Or lately: "Try my blog." (Thinking, of course, that they'll follow links to good sites like Steve Martin's or Gordon's.) Well, now I have a great answer: "Get a hold of Beyond the Firmament by Gordon Glover." I'm going to buy a few copies and hand them out. That's how good it is.

3. I'll soon review Deborah and Loren Haarsma's new book here, and will give it similarly high marks. It's called Origins: A Reformed Look at Creation, Design, & Evolution, and it's aimed a little differently than Beyond the Firmament, but provides another very good answer to the question above.

4. At wonderful Park Street Church in Boston, which I've mentioned here before, senior minister Gordon Hugenberger is preaching a significant series on creation and science, and specifically on Psalm 19. The series (available streaming or as a podcast) started on November 25, includes three Sundays in December, and apparently resumed this last Sunday. I'm still working through them, but Gordon's sermons are always worth the trip. (I loathe "Christian radio," but most Sunday mornings in Massachusetts, I turned it on in order to listen to Gordon's preaching. Our family attended the evening service, where we had the privilege of hearing Daniel Harrell, in the flesh.) On the ASA listserv, David Opderbeck recommends some sermons at another fine church in Massachusetts, Grace Chapel. I believe the sermons in question are under "Tough Questions. Honest Answers."

5. An odd story this week: a peer-reviewed science journal, Proteomics, published (online) a paper with this title: "Mitochondria, the Missing Link Between Body and Soul: Proteomic Prospective Evidence." Wait..."body and soul"? The article reportedly includes "sections with language supporting the idea of creationism." PZ Myers is quoted in that Chronicle report, which also mentions plagiarism.

6. A teaser for an upcoming journal club, from a paper published about a year and a half ago:


For now, just enjoy the picture and think about bats. As in flying mammals, Manny. Image from an article in PNAS, 10 October 2006.

7. Larry Moran has started a series on "junk DNA" at Sandwalk. My series will get back underway this weekend, though maybe by then it'll just be a list of links to Larry and Ryan Gregory.

8. This weekend is Evolution Weekend. How am I celebrating? Saturday I'll be at the Grand Dialogue, mostly to hear Howard Van Till, but also hoping to bump into some fellow Michigan-based bloggers (and you know who you are). I'll blog it, live if there's wireless access for visitors. Saturday night it's Phil Keaggy in concert at Calvin. I'm not a Christian music fan but I have it on good authority that this one's not to be missed. Sunday a bunch of us are driving to Lansing so we can see U23D on the IMAX screen. "Now you get to see the lard-arse 40-foot tall." Can't wait! Now that's a weekend.

Tangled Bank #98

Hey! Welcome to Tangled Bank #98, and thanks for stopping by. If you've never been to Quintessence of Dust, the lobby is below and to the right. I hope you'll poke around a little.

PZ didn't give me a budget for refreshments, but if you come to the house I'll make sure we at least have plenty of guacamole. Chips are here, and beer is over there. Our city was once used by Anne Lamott as a metaphor for plainness, but it's much cooler than most people think. You can get to our house on a nice bus system, and after the carnival we can pick one of two Ethiopian restaurants. My day job is at Calvin College, but right now I'm on sabbatical in the lab of a friend and collaborator at the Van Andel Institute in downtown Grand Rapids.

I know a junior-high science and math teacher who displayed a poster on her classroom wall that read, "Free knowledge: bring your own container." The image, of course, was a human brain. That's how I feel about the blogosphere, and if there's a theme for this Tangled Bank, that's it, although "junk DNA," the plague, heat (you'll see), sex and food are some other keywords. The last two are personal favorites, so...let's eat!

Is that a shrew eating a cephalopod? A shrew gagging on a cephalopod? A grey-faced sengi gagging on a cephalopod? You probably know what it is; if you don't, head over to The Daily Mammal and check out today's special. Ambitious and beautiful. Maybe it'll be beetles next; that'd take, what, 50 years?

Uh, "grey-faced sengi?" Like Matheson knows what that is. But Brian does, despite being "educated" at Rutgers. See one, and read about it, at Laelaps.

"Indisputably cute" is how the pika is described at The Beagle Project. The article is a fascinating lesson on natural selection, and it features the cute pikas and their remarkable colonization of high, cold regions. It's Detecting natural selection: a pika's tale.

Lots of those cute daily mammals have provided hot meals to pit vipers, and especially rattlers. Curious? Of course you are. Rigor Vitae is worth a look just because of the name, but today the article to read is A Serpent's Tail, exploring the rattle and discussing a new member of this charming group of creatures.

If you prefer birds, have a look at the White-Cheeked Pintails at 10,000 Birds. Mike says they "seem perfectly suited to that relaxed West Indies environment." We're expecting 10" of snow in the next 12 hours. Harrumph, Mike. Gorgeous birds, though.

What do hummingbirds and rattlesnakes have in common? Well, some hummingbirds use their tails to make sounds. Cool sounds, too: one species (Anna's hummingbird) makes a "high-frequency chirp...during his display dive." Read more about this Novel mechanism for sound production in birds at Behavioral Ecology Blog.

It's a famous question: "What good is half a wing?" GrrlScientist recaps a very recent paper examining mechanisms of evolution of flight in her post Flying Lessons: Additional Insight into the Evolution of Flight in Birds at Living the Scientific Life. (Warning: Living the Scientific Life is a carnival unto itself, so be sure to read just one article and hurry back.) One of my first posts on Quintessence of Dust reviewed an article on bird evolution and genome size; check it out if you get the chance.

Want weird? How 'bout "cactus animals"? Technically, they're chancelloriids, and they're in the spotlight at Catalogue of Organisms in Scleritome Week: The Cactus Animals.

At Invasive Species Weblog read about how flame retardants are likely to provide assistance to invasive plants, one of which is known to make wildfires worse. We Didn't Start the Fire...or maybe we did will wipe that Tangled Bank smile right off your face.

This should help. Go to PodBlack Cat's Blog and feast on this celebration of science and poetry: Nothing In the 'Verse Can Stop Me. In The Bath should prepare you well for a segue into, um, reproductive biology – read it, then go straight to The Tree of Life and ask yourself, "Is that a sex organ on the cover of Nature?" Check out the comments.

Proceed immediately to Not Exactly Rocket Science and read Sex runs hot and cold. Well, okay, the full title is "Sex runs hot and cold – why does temperature control the gender of Jacky dragons?" but we were on a roll with the sex thing and I didn't want to lose our momentum. The post reviews a recent study that addresses a longstanding question in evolutionary biology regarding sex determination.

Have you "worked up a good sweat" at this point? At Swans on Tea you can learn about how "a good sweat" can be too much of a good thing. Read No Sweat, and bring a towel.

Lemme guess: you're hungry now. :-) Let's carb-load on biblical pasta. No really: our server at VWXYNot? reviews "Ezekiel 4:9 Penne" in Holy Penne, Batman. Best line: "I tend to be in favour of the separation of church and dinner, but this stuff was quite tasty." So you prefer potatoes? Greg Laden writes in The Great Potato Origins Debate May Be Settled that the history of the European potato may need to be rewritten, and along with it our understanding of potato blight. And at rENNISance woman, Cath Ennis reviews recent work on the role of diet in evolutionary divergence (with regard to gene expression). She asks "Are we really evolving, or just eating too many Big Macs?" I'd say both...

I think "negligible senescence" sounds like a great name for a band, but it's also an interesting topic in evolutionary biology. Some organisms just don't age. (Like Mick Jagger. Or not.) Explore recent work on this subject at Ouroboros, in a pair of posts: The evolution of negligible senescence and The evolution of negligible senescence, part II: Organisms that are remotely like us.

Recently, The Black Death was featured prominently on some of the finest science blogs around. But a Black Death Carnival just doesn't sound right, so the plague is here on our house. Aetiology included an entire series on the topic of "What caused the Black Plague?" Retrospectacle ran five posts on the Black Death. And Archaeozoology discusses Yersinia pestis, ancient DNA and the Black Death. It's a sub-carnival of death that's worth a chunk of your remaining time on earth.

After all that heavy Black Death stuff, read about The Galaxy that ate Detroit. Why Detroit? Maybe Phil at Bad Astronomy is a White Sox fan. And is this biology? Well, it involves eating, doesn't it?

Oh, speaking of eating (again), go back to Living the Scientific Life to see how certain parasites make sure that they get from one host to another. Berry butts! Yum!

From red butts on ants to... well, have you ever wondered whether red leaves can still perform photosynthesis? Get to Further Thoughts to find the answer.

Punctuated equilibria made headlines in the blogosphere last week. To learn more about the dustup, and about the issues involved, go to Sandwalk and read Larry Moran on Macromutations and Punctuated Equilibria. Then check out a very interesting follow-up at HENRY, illustrating principles of Punctuated equilibrium and the evolution of languages.

Assessing Diversity in the Past is a detailed examination of another recent discussion of evolutionary biology on the blogs. Mike at The Questionable Authority works through a recent paper on recovery of ecosystems after the end-Permian mass extinction. People pay serious money for education like this.

Creationists make mischief with the term "junk DNA," and I'm working on a series on the subject. But the real work has already been done by Ryan Gregory at Genomicron. On his new blog, DNA & Diversity, he reposts a review of the topic – Junk DNA: function and non-function.
On the same subject, at The Open Helix Blog, you'll find a review of a recent article on non-coding RNA: Non-coding, non-functional or junk ncRNA. Pseudogenes are one kind of "junk DNA," and Science and Reason provides a basic overview in Human gene count drops again.

All this genomic analysis required DNA sequencing, and that process is becoming far faster and cheaper. Michael White at Adaptive Complexity explains in What Next Generation DNA Sequencing Means For You. And what about the converse – building custom genomes? Jim at from Archaea to Zeaxanthol provides a Synthetic life followup, commenting on the recent announcement of the first human-made genome.

If there's anything left of your brain at this point, drag it over to SharpBrains and read Looking inside the Brain: Is my Brain Fit? to learn some basics about brain imaging and the concept of "cognitive reserve."

At Pure Pedantry, Jake describes How tool use is encoded in the brain, reviewing some very recent and intriguing neuroscience. Turns out the tool is treated by the brain as a part of the body! [joke deleted]

Down Syndrome (Trisomy 21) is well-known for (among other things) its effects on the nervous system. Less widely recognized is apparent resistance to solid tumor formation in Down sufferers. At Guadalupe Storm-Petrel, barn owl discusses a recent report on this topic in Down Syndrome Mouse Models: Trisomy Represses Formation of Intestinal Tumors.

How's this for an interesting question: "Would you vaccinate against drug abuse?" Would you vaccinate against, say, cocaine? This has been recently proposed, and DrugMonkey explains the ins and outs before posing the tough questions.

Vaccination makes me think of homeopathy. (Poo.) Evolved and Rational contributes A skeptical look at homeopathy.

At Effect Measure, Revere patiently explains the potentially alarming but surely complex situation leading to "an unexpectedly high rate of Tamiflu resistance" in European influenza this year. The article is Tamiflu resistance in seasonal flu: the devil is in the details.

Okay, we're almost at the end. But before we hit the bottom, get acquainted with ResearchBlogging.org by reading the introduction at BPR3. Most of the posts in this carnival were flying the ResearchBlogging icon, and the aggregator is a great resource in which to find quality science blogging. Free education!

Deep Sea News belongs at the bottom, I think, although the subject is about The Beginning. Check out Hydrothermal Vents, Life and Everything Else to learn about The Lost City and carbonate chimneys.

Here ends Tangled Bank #98. Thanks for coming by. The 99th Edition will be hosted by Greg Laden's Blog on Wednesday, February 20.
---
Image credits: star-nosed mole from this post at The Daily Mammal; others created at this sign generator site.

Call for submissions: Tangled Bank #98

The next Tangled Bank science blog carnival will be here at Quintessence of Dust on Wednesday. Send me your submissions!

The previous edition included articles on cooking & evolution, shower temperatures, dental plaque, and plant identification, all with a theme of keeping warm. (The Mind is a whiner.)

Weekly sampler 4

This week's theme is, um, "fun with biology." Seemed apropos after all the bickering I did this week. Which I'll mention as well.

1. So I assume you saw that Craig Venter's outfit produced the first "synthetic genome" recently. All this means is that they synthesized a very long piece of DNA, and included within it all the components known to be necessary for bacterial life. The simplistic line is that this is "synthetic life"; the standard scientific caveat is that this human-made genome hasn't been used to direct an actual organism. Yet.

2. And I'm guessing that you heard that the makers of this synthetic genome included within it a "coded message." The message itself is pretty uninspiring. ("METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL" would have been perfect, but anything would be better than the name of a company and its techies. Boooooorrrrrring!)

3. Well, what kind of message would you put into a genome? And by the way, it's not a completely silly question; it will soon be easy enough to do, and will take the place of name an asteroid/star after yourself/loved one as the latest vanity gift. Want to check it out? First you need to have a look at the alphabet that's available. Don't worry – it's not just A,T,G,C. That's the DNA alphabet, which is translated into the protein alphabet. The means of translation is what is commonly called the genetic code: each three-letter DNA "word" is translated (via RNA) into a single amino acid, a string of which adds up to a protein. There are 20 different amino acids in nature, and scientists have devised a single-letter abbreviation system to facilitate the display of protein sequences. So, here's your alphabet:

Letter	Amino acid	Letter	Amino acid
A	Alanine	M	Methionine
C	Cysteine	N	Asparagine
D	Aspartate	P	Proline
E	Glutamate	Q	Glutamine
F	Phenylalanine	R	Arginine
G	Glycine	S	Serine
H	Histidine	T	Threonine
I	Isoleucine	V	Valine
K	Lysine	W	Tryptophan
L	Leucine	Y	Tyrosine

You may have noticed that we're missing some very useful letters. Two vowels are out (O and U) and you'll have to do without B, J, X and Z. The Venter folks used V in place of U (a neat trick), but I don't know what we'll do for an O. (I guess we can use Q in a pinch.)

Still, you can do a lot with an alphabet like that, starting with "Methinks it is like a weasel." (But not "in the beginning.") And you can search genomes to see if they contain favorite words or secret codes just for you. (Is "ELVIS" in the human genome? Yep. "LIVES"? Yep. "ELVISLIVES"? Alas, no.) Want to try? Go to the Protein Blast page at NCBI, enter your word or phrase in the big box at the top, select "Non-redundant protein sequences (nr)" for your database, and enter "human" (or any other interesting species, or nothing to search all genomes) in the organism box. Click on the Blast button at the bottom, and ignore the window that comes up first; it will probably report that it hasn't found any "putative conserved domains" and will give you an estimate of how long you'll have to wait for results (mere seconds, usually). Then...presto!

You might get nothing of course, or you might get a report of X number of Blast hits on the sequence. Scroll down to see the various alignments, which might only encompass part of your search string.

'STEVE' hits dozens of proteins (some "hypothetical"); here's a partial screen shot of the results for 'STEVE' in the human repertoire, showing what the alignment looks like:
The alignments, perfect in this case, are indicated by the subtle red arrows. When I Blasted 'STEPHEN' the best match I got was 'STEPHE.'

So much more fun than biblical numerology, if you ask me, and Carl Zimmer seems to agree: he's sponsoring a contest to see who can find the longest word embedded in protein sequences. I'm gonna work on it!

4. Another way to waste time: GenePaint, a site full of anatomical maps, for the purpose of revealing gene expression patterns. Just what I need, Shelley.

5. Some of the bloggers at ScienceBlogs are having a book club of sorts, simultaneously reading and blogging on Stephen Jay Gould's hefty opus, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. I haven't read it yet, and maybe now I won't have to.

6. Instead, I'm reading H.W. Brands' biography of Ben Franklin, The First American. Very interesting; expect some quotes to find their way here.

7. Seen any good science blogging lately? Send me a heads-up – I'm hosting Tangled Bank next week and I'm looking for submissions, especially from bloggers who might not know about this excellent carnival.

8. Some seem to think I've been too hard on Tony Campolo. Well, check out what I wrote about Jerry Coyne in response to his brainless outburst in response to a blog post about "hopeless monsters." (There was a related discussion on Greg Laden's Blog in which I commented further.) See? I'm an equal-opportunity basher.

More on Campolo, Darwin, and Hitler

At about the same time that I posted on Tony Campolo's flawed piece on Darwin and racism, Christopher Heard posted a vastly better analysis – "Campolo gets Darwin all wrong" – on Higgaion. Required reading. There may be a quiz.

The real danger in anti-Darwinism is...

Here at Calvin we used to have a super-cool club called SNUH, which sought to discuss and enjoy The Simpsons. I was a guest speaker there twice, but their biggest catch by far was Prof. Tony Campolo, who came to Calvin three years ago, specifically in response to an invitation from the wacky SNUH. I generally like Tony Campolo, mostly because he's good at uncoupling evangelical Christian faith (yay) from American evangelical politics (ick).

But Campolo really stepped in it a week and a half ago, when he put his name on a screed in the Philadelphia Inquirer called "The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism." It's a weird little rant, riddled with red herrings. For example, referring to those (like me) who oppose the teaching of "the intelligent design theory of creation" in public schools, Campolo writes:

Arguing for what they believe is a nonprejudicial science, they contend that children in public schools should be taught Darwin's explanation of how the human race evolved, which they claim is value-free and depends solely on scientific evidence.

Huh? "Value-free?" Who says that? It's a pretty simplistic and unsophisticated view, and while I'm sure quote miners can dig up examples of commentators who say stuff like that, I'm very suspicious of Campolo here. It's not just that he's wrong; his claims about Darwin's racism – and Darwin's alleged influence on (of course) the Nazis – are very nicely dispatched in a piece by Joshua Rosenau at Thoughts from Kansas. Rosenau shows just how wrong Campolo is on the facts, and on the moral implications of common descent. (And readers of the Inquirer did some good work, too.)

But there's something else I don't like about the piece. It seems to be crafted as an argument in a case for "the intelligent design theory of creation." Campolo chides young-earth literalists, but links ID to the "suggestion" that "the evolutionary development of life was not the result of natural selection, as Charles Darwin suggested, but was somehow given purposeful direction and, by implication, was guided by God." That's a pretty soft view of ID, and though Campolo has expressed reservations about the ID program elsewhere, it looks to me like he's bought some of its most intellectually damaging claims.

Anyway, check out the Campolo piece, and don't miss Rosenau's excellent work at Thoughts from Kansas. He cites another hero of mine, Mark Noll. Superb.

Weekly Sampler 3

Junk DNA is still a-happening. Ryan Gregory's blog Genomicron is the place to learn about it. He's especially adept at driving trucks through the gaps in ID claims about non-coding DNA. My gestating posts on the subject [sigh] will focus more on Reasons To Believe. Watch for a quote from Obi-Wan!

So here are some things I've been munching on this week.

1. I'm not that crazy about Cell Press, at least since they sold out to Elsevier, but they do give some stuff away (e.g. a "Featured Article" is free in each issue), and Neuron is still the best neuro journal. Now they're providing a very nice free resource called Evaluating Techniques in Biomedical Research. Some of the chapters cover techniques that I use regularly in my own research (fluorescence microscopy, RNA interference) and some cover procedures I intend to learn soon (FRET). And there's a chapter on biostatistics, which no one seems to know anything about.

2. So how exactly does one go about discussing the misuse of science by Christians, especially when the discussion is among Christians? I've been worrying about this lately, and it will soon be clear why. If you're similarly nervous (and/or frustrated) about this, check out the healthy discussion of this issue on the ASA listserv, looking for the thread called "Sins of pseudoscience" (and others).

3. My colleague Dan Harlow (Calvin College Religion Department) has an important new paper in the new issue (Winter 2008) of Christian Scholar's Review, called "Creation According to Genesis: Literary Genre, Cultural Context, Theological Truth." It's based on a paper he gave in the Origins Symposium here at Calvin in 2006, where I met Todd Wood, and it should be worth your trouble to get a copy. (Contact me if you need a hand.)

4. Want your genome sequenced? Your dog's genome? The genome of whatever it is that's growing on the leftover Thai food in the back of the fridge? The company is Helicos Biosciences and they're developing technology that will sequence a genome in 10 days for $1000. Hey...I have four kids...I'll get at least that much from Uncle Sam in a few months...

5. Well, speaking of peer review...Answers in Genesis has started a new peer-reviewed online journal. The news blurb in Nature has a good quote from Keith Miller. I'll be watching.

6. Tara Smith's blog Aetiology is amazing. Current series: "Did Yersinia pestis really cause Black Plague?" Shelley Batts at Retrospectacle also celebrated a "Plague week." Did I miss something on the calendar?

7. Michael Behe's case in The Edge of Evolution relies heavily on estimates of mutation rates. Last August an article in Science reported that adaptive (i.e., beneficial) mutation rates in bacteria have been spectacularly underestimated. The Science paper explains why this is so, providing both a vastly different estimate of the adaptive mutation rate and an explanation for why previous studies got it wrong. You'd think that Behe would provide a thorough response. Silly you!

8. I note that Alvin Plantinga was the 2007 speaker in this series. I'll listen and comment sometime; anyone else?

Tangled Bank here in two weeks

I don't know if Les Misérables will ever come to Grand Rapids, and all we got from U2 was a lecture by Bono. But, in two weeks, Quintessence of Dust will host Tangled Bank, and that'll have to do in the meantime.

Tangled Bank is an excellent old science/medicine blog carnival, and the 6 February edition will be #98. The current edition just went up at The Inoculated Mind. It's a blog I've visited occasionally; its author has turned up in discussions on the Reasons To Believe site, and it's a cool blog. Go check out Tangled Bank #97 over there, and see what else The Mind has to offer. Free admission!

So, please send me links to articles that you think the world should see. And get a haircut, will you?

Evolution + Christianity + Integrity = "The New Theology"?

A long and fascinating piece in Sunday's Chicago Tribune Magazine ("The New Theology" by Jeremy Manier) explores some interesting results of the collision of faith and evolution in the lives of some famous people. The article prominently features Howard Van Till, a Calvin College emeritus and one of the reasons why Calvin is safe for evolutionary creationists like me. I think Howard's story is a sad one, partly because he seems to have abandoned Christianity, but mostly because his mistreatment is a scandalous disgrace to the Christian community of which I am now a part. Despite my discouragement at his rejection of Reformed Christianity, I consider him one of my heroes, and have already quoted at length from his work. He's the keynote speaker at this year's Grand Dialogue (annual science-faith conference here in Grand Rapids), and I am eager to hear from him anew.

Anyway, have a look at the article, and let me know what you think.

Weekly Sampler 2

Well, I still haven't gotten to my "junk DNA" posts, which is a shame since the topic has been pretty hot in the blogosphere lately. The term ("junk DNA") is confusing in itself, which creates cover for propagandists, but there are some actual disagreements among the real scientists. The discussion among various bloggers is largely technical in nature, but the rancor is oh-so-bloggy.

1. Bickering about non-coding DNA is not new, and there is healthy controversy in the field. The simmering pot seems to have boiled over most recently when Greg Laden posted a little review of a paper on non-coding RNA that is expressed in the brain. Laden made a few errors, and although I happen to agree with his critics, T. Ryan Gregory and Larry Moran (at least because Gregory is an expert on the subject) I do think Laden is being spanked a little too hard. Read the comments in Laden's followup post to get a taste of the rhetoric.

Much of the "debate" is semantic, but ultimately I think Moran's got it all right here:

I hate to break it to you Greg, but junk DNA is not a myth. It really is true that a huge amount of our genome is junk. It's mostly defective transposons like SINES and LINES [Junk in your Genome: LINEs]. It's a lie that we don't know what most non-coding DNA is doing. We do know. It's not doing anything because it's mostly screwed up transposons and pseudogenes like Alu's.

More to come. No, really.

2. Read my friend and colleague Jamie Smith on the Fall in a book review in Books & Culture. His piece is plainly highly relevant to ongoing discussions here on QoD regarding the Fall, scripture and common descent. This paragraph is a feast:

What is consistently lacking in these secularized or formalized versions of the Fall is the distinct nuance of the Christian vision, viz., the ability to imagine the world otherwise. Without the prior goodness of creation, there is no Fall. Our present condition is "not the way it's supposed to be," as Cornelius Plantinga so aptly put it. So, too, the doctrine of the eschaton, which enables the Christian story to imagine humanity remaining finite and human but inhabiting the world otherwise. This is why Abraham Kuyper suggested that Christian scientists and scholars would always be "abnormalists," not tempted to confuse our currently observable world with the way things ought to be. To confess with the creed that God is the "maker of heaven and earth," and conclude our confession with the hope of "the resurrection of the dead," is to be able to imagine humanity otherwise while still affirming the finitude and embodiment that are constitutive of being creatures.

"Abnormalist"? Moi?

3. You've probably read elsewhere about the new publication from the National Academies, Science, Evolution, and Creationism, which can be freely downloaded from the NAS site. The NCSE has posted an article noting praise for the book in the press.

4. I'm not the only Reformed Christian who has praise for the New Atheists; The Banner is the newsmagazine of my church denomination, and a recent issue includes this gem: "Thank God for The God Delusion."

5. Here's a refreshing new voice, writing about his "journey" to The Dark Side an understanding and acceptance of common descent. Check it out, and go Mike!

6. We're counting the days in our household...we intend to be in the front row, and we'll camp out if we have to. Unos...dos...tres...CATORCE! (If you think I'm pitifully ignorant of Spanish, the joke's on you: according to Bono, this is Gaelic.)

7. I wonder if anyone at the Discovery Institute has mentioned or discussed an important article, published in the 13 December issue of Nature, titled "The origin of protein interactions and allostery in colocalization." I'll review it here soon.

8. In that same issue of Nature you'll find an article on "The molecular sociology of the cell." I'll give a prize to anyone who can explain the joke.

9. I gave a guest lecture at Calvin on Monday in the Evolutionary Biology course, on evolutionary genetics. Missed it? Here are some of the articles we discussed:

Restoring sight in blind cavefish, Current Biology, 8 January 2008
Using mobile genetic elements to determine whale ancestry, PNAS, 31 August 1999
Signs of selection: the concept of a "selective sweep" in a genome, PNAS, 10 February 2004
Mobile elements & how they drive genome evolution, Science, 12 March 2004
Detecting positive natural selection in humans, Nature, 18 October 2007

10. It was otherwise a hard week at Calvin.