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Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
…and this is a pharyngula stage embryo.
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Article I Section 16 FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION; NO ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION. That religion or the duty which we owe to our creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not be force or violence; and therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other. No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion, and the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or effect their civil capacities. And the General Assembly shall not prescribe any religious test whatever, or confer any particular privileges or advantages on any sect or denomination, or pass any law requiring or authorizing any religious society, or the people of any district within this Commonwealth, to levy on themselves or other, any tax for the erection or repair of any house of public worship, or for the support of any church or ministry, but it shall be left free to every person to select his religious instructor, and to make for his support such a private contract as he shall please.
[Current Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia]
Category: Science
Last week, I described the lectures I attended at the Chicago 2009 Darwin meetings (Science Life also blogged the event). Two of the talks that were highlights of the meeting for me were the discussions of stickleback evolution by David...
Posted by PZ Myers at 10:13 AM • 31 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science
Lander began by saying he wasn't an evolutionist — an interestingly narrow definition of the term. He's a fan of the research, but considers himself a biomedical geneticist, as if that was something different. Having entire genomes of many species...
Posted by PZ Myers at 4:12 PM • 22 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Communicating science
Perhaps you are a scientist. And perhaps you have wondered how badly the popular press could possibly mangle your research. Wonder no more: we have discovered a new maximum. Behold this research summary in The Daily Galaxy, and be amazed!...
Posted by PZ Myers at 11:27 AM • 46 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science
We miss something important when we just look at the genome as a string of nucleotides with scattered bits that will get translated into proteins — we miss the fact that the genome is a dynamically modified and expressed...
Posted by PZ Myers at 4:42 PM • 69 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science
Edge hosted an amazing session that described the looming future of biology — this is for the real futurists. It featured George Church and Craig Venter talking about synthetic genomics — how we're building new organisms right now and with...
Posted by PZ Myers at 9:40 AM • 35 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science
PLoS has recently published a highly speculative but very interesting paper on how a particular signaling pathway, the Hedgehog pathway, might have evolved. It's at a fairly early stage in hypothesis testing, which is one of the things that...
Posted by PZ Myers at 12:33 PM • 97 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science
No, not really — my title is a bit of a sensationalistic exploitation of the thesis of a paper by Peterson, Dietrich, and McPeek, but I can buy into their idea that microRNAs (miRNAs) may have contributed to the...
Posted by PZ Myers at 4:59 PM • 76 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Lindau
The difference between biology and chemistry: biologists ask how natural systems and molecules work, while chemistry wants to know how to artificially re-synthesize natural biomolecules. Tsien favors a synthetic approach, asking hwo to build new molecules that will perform...
Posted by PZ Myers at 4:52 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Lindau
Chalfie is interested in sensory mechanotransduction—how are mechanical deformations of cells converted into chemical and electrical signals. Examples are touch, hearing, balance, and proprioception, and (hooray!) he references development: sidedness in mammals is defined by mechanical forces in early...
Posted by PZ Myers at 4:11 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science
This is a wonderful video: it's Richard Dawkins interviewing Craig Venter and getting a tour of his amazing sequencing facility. It also reveals how much the technology is changing....
Posted by PZ Myers at 8:53 PM • 48 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
