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So, I'm prepping for a talk that looks at some of the scientific elements behind music, stuff that builds upon some of the stuff I've looked into in the past. Anyway, seeing that I like to place elements of pop culture in my talks, I thought it would be interesting to do a little "google image"…
Seed Video Feature: Noam Chomsky + Robert Trivers (Full Cut)
Watch two of the greatest living intellectuals discuss deceit for over a half an hour. Do you hear that tooting? That's our horn, baby.
'This Topic Annoys Me'
Female astrophysicist Janna Levin talks without an Adam's apple about her…
A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Patricia Callahan and Trine Tsouderos in the Chicago Tribune: Chronic Lyme disease: A dubious diagnosis (via Orac, who critiques the backlash against the article)
The Economist: Migrant farm workers: Fields of tears
Christina Larson in Yale Environment 360: In…
Watch this appalling video of homeschoolers misusing the Denver museum to promote creationism. Aside from the general pattern of lies from the tour guides, two things jumped out at me.
The really awful pedagogy. Over and over again, the creationist says some stock phrase and then pauses, waiting…
Off topic: Junk No More: ENCODE Project Nature Paper Finds "Biochemical Functions for 80% of the Genome" - Casey Luskin September 5, 2012
Excerpt: The Discover Magazine article further explains that the rest of the 20% of the genome is likely to have function as well:
"And what's in the remaining 20 percent? Possibly not junk either, according to Ewan Birney, the project's Lead Analysis Coordinator and self-described "cat-herder-in-chief". He explains that ENCODE only (!) looked at 147 types of cells, and the human body has a few thousand. A given part of the genome might control a gene in one cell type, but not others. If every cell is included, functions may emerge for the phantom proportion. "It's likely that 80 percent will go to 100 percent," says Birney. "We don't really have any large chunks of redundant DNA. This metaphor of junk isn't that useful.""
We will have more to say about this blockbuster paper from ENCODE researchers in coming days, but for now, let's simply observe that it provides a stunning vindication of the prediction of intelligent design that the genome will turn out to have mass functionality for so-called "junk" DNA. ENCODE researchers use words like "surprising" or "unprecedented." They talk about of how "human DNA is a lot more active than we expected." But under an intelligent design paradigm, none of this is surprising. In fact, it is exactly what ID predicted.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/09/junk_no_more_en_1064001.html
Bits of Mystery DNA, Far From ‘Junk,’ Play Crucial Role - September 2012
Excerpt: The system, though, is stunningly complex, with many redundancies. Just the idea of so many switches was almost incomprehensible, Dr. Bernstein said.
There also is a sort of DNA wiring system that is almost inconceivably intricate.
“It is like opening a wiring closet and seeing a hairball of wires,” said Mark Gerstein, an Encode researcher from Yale. “We tried to unravel this hairball and make it interpretable.”
There is another sort of hairball as well: the complex three-dimensional structure of DNA. Human DNA is such a long strand — about 10 feet of DNA stuffed into a microscopic nucleus of a cell — that it fits only because it is tightly wound and coiled around itself. When they looked at the three-dimensional structure — the hairball — Encode researchers discovered that small segments of dark-matter DNA are often quite close to genes they control. In the past, when they analyzed only the uncoiled length of DNA, those controlling regions appeared to be far from the genes they affect.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/science/far-from-junk-dna-dark-matter…
DNA - Replication, Wrapping & Mitosis - video
https://vimeo.com/33882804
What Is The Genome? It's Not Junk! - Dr. Robert Carter - video - (Notes in video description)
http://www.metacafe.com/w/8905583
Multidimensional Genome – Dr. Robert Carter – video (Notes in video description)
http://www.metacafe.com/w/8905048
The Extreme Complexity Of Genes – Dr. Raymond G. Bohlin – video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/8593991/
The Mysterious Epigenome. What lies beyond DNA? – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpXs8uShFMo