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The Advent Calendar of Physics: Entropy

As I said yesterday, I'm going to blow through another entire subfield of physics in a single equation, as our march toward Newton's Birthday continues. Today, it's statistical mechanics, a very rich field of study that we're boiling down to a single equation: This is Boltzmann's formula for the entropy of a macroscopic system of particles, which says that the entropy s is proportional to the logarithm of the number N of microscopic states consistent with that macroscopic state. The constant kB is there to get the units right. Why does this get to stand in for the whole field of statistical…

Social Media Are Not Evenly Distributed

Back in June, when I was headed to DAMOP, I got email telling me that they had an official Android app. I installed it, and in with the meeting program and maps and things was a "Social Media" section, that included an official hashtag: #apsdamop. I posted a few things using it, but it rapidly became clear that there was only one other person at the meeting using it. I happen to know him, so when I ran into him later at the poster session, I commented on how we were the only people at the meeting using the official Twitter hashtag. Someone else nearby looked baffled, and we had to explain.…

Canadian bluenoses

Those Canadians have got a few prigs running things up there, and they've apparently trying to pass some laws to slap down those darned naughty artist types. There's just one line from the sour old prude that's worth mentioning, the rest is the usual noise. A well-known evangelical crusader is claiming credit for the federal government's move to deny tax credits to TV and film productions that contain graphic sex and violence or other offensive content. Charles McVety, president of the Canada Family Action Coalition, said his lobbying efforts included discussions with Public Safety Minister…

Aard Regular Makes Headlines Bashing Christian Right

My home municipality of Nacka is governed by a coalition of right-wing parties. (This, in Sweden, means that our local politics are somewhat to the left [!] of the US Democratic Party.) Aard regular Lennart Nilsson is the chairman of the Nacka section of the Liberal Party, Folkpartiet. I just received a fresh copy of the local newspaper, Nacka Värmdö Posten, whose main front-page headline reads "Folkpartiet politician: 'The Christian Democrats have Medieval moral views'". Interestingly, this is one of the governing coalition's members criticising another. And who is the Christian-bashing…

High Standards in Swedish 70s Reggae

Peps Persson is both one of Sweden's heaviest blues men and the single most authoritative reggae artist the country's produced. The sleeve of his 1975 hit album Hög standard parodies the sleeve from a likewise excellent ABBA album released earlier the same year. Yet the music is intricate studio-built stuff, far from the lo-fi live aesthetic popular with Swedish lefties at the time (who hated ABBA as a matter of political principle). The album is sung entirely in a broad Scanian dialect, including a charming cover of Bob Marley's "Stir It Up". That song's Scanian lyrics are cheerfully lewd…

In Defence of Archaeology

Somebody once said to me, "You archaeologists don't really know anything, do you? I mean, it's just guesses, right?". Well, sometimes I do despair about archaeology as a science. Can we actually know anything about what life was like for people in the deep past? Are we doing science at all or just deluding ourselves? But I always pick myself up pretty quickly. First, I remind myself that all science is a muddled process where we grope laboriously toward solid knowledge and often have to make detours. If archaeology isn't always very good science, then at least it's not alone in this. Then…

The management apologise for any inconvenience

Some flaw in the over-eager Sb security, or more likely an intermediate layer, locked me out over the weekend, so my apologies for any delayed approvals and so on. One of which was to a reference to Estimating economic damage from climate change in the United States by Solomon Hsiang et al., Science 30 Jun 2017, Vol. 356, Issue 6345, pp. 1362-1369, DOI: 10.1126/science.aal4369. Which says: Estimates of climate change damage are central to the design of climate policies. Here, we develop a flexible architecture for computing damages that integrates climate science, econometric analyses, and…

Climate models have proven extremely skillful in predicting the warming that has already been observed...

It am Michael Mann, saying Climate models have proven extremely skillful in predicting the warming that has already been observed and, by many measures (e.g. Arctic sea ice loss, melting of the major ice sheets) it is proceeding faster than climate models predicted... Notice any problems with that quote? Well yes: model inaccuracy is taken as proof of model skill. You cannot assert simultaneously that models are extremely skillful, and that change is occurring faster than they predicted. You can, of course, plausibly say If anything, uncertainty is breaking against us, not with us but that's…

MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen urges Trump: “Cut the funding of climate science by 80% to 90% until the field cleans up’?

Via Twitter via ClimateDepot (hold your nose) we come to RealClear Investigations which quotes Lindzen as saying, inter alia, They should probably cut the funding by 80 to 90 percent until the field cleans up... Climate science has been set back two generations, and they have destroyed its intellectual foundations.” This is classic crusty old boy down the club stuff: it was all better when he were a lad, and so on. Just to remind you, I declared Lindzen emeritus in 2011, but he only became a shark-jumper in 2013. Although now I look he was pretty wacky even back in 2005 (older readers may…

Sea ice: dull as expected

Time to declare this year's sea ice race over - thanks to those of you who pointed this out to me while I was on holiday. As an apology for the lack of interesting things to say about sea ice, there's a couple of nice pix of mountain ice at the end. Follow them to links to the full set but believe me there are far too many to look at. My lead pic I've ripped from Tamino; as compensation to him, if you click on it you'll get to his post. Before people get confused, I should point out that "dull as expected" just means "the long term trend of decline continues". Those predicting imminent…

Film Review: Sizzle

I know what a documentary film is. I know what fiction is. And I know what a mockumentary is: a fictional documentary. Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy attempts to combine these approaches within the framework of comedic fiction, and it left me really confused. Director and narrator Randy Olson exists, I know that. But what about the scientists he interviews? Are all of them real? Some of them? None? There certainly are a few pretty outlandish characters there. Yet the only people in the movie I could be entirely sure must be played by actors were the in-movie camera man and sound guy, because…

The Warsaw Communiqué

Another round in the carbon wars. If you make money by producing coal, then the chances are that you'd like to keep doing so. Hence The Warsaw Communiqué (full PDF). I think its good that the World Coal folks feel the need to do some PR and push the idea of "clean coal"; they must be a little bit worried that someone is going to try to lean on them, so they'll get their words in. But, many of their words are silly. Not that many of them are wrong; just pointless. They start playing nicely: Recognising international consensus on the need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, in…

Rowe on Incorporation of the Establishment Clause

Jon Rowe has an interesting post up about the question of incorporating the Establishment Clause of the first amendment. It was sparked by a discussion on the Panda's Thumb between Sandefur and another frequent commentator here, Ed Darrell (you have to scroll down a ways in the comments to find the right ones). All attorneys, and all essentially on the same side, but arguing over what I at least think are interesting details of constitutional interpretation. I think the quote from Akhil Amar that Jon offers really nails the issue: Perhaps the greatest elaboration came from Thomas Cooley's…

A Poker Post

It's been a while since I wrote anything about poker and things have been much too serious lately, so here's a post few people will care the least bit about from last night's game. We had two hands that were really pretty crazy. The first was very expensive for a couple of people. Flop is 10 J Q of clubs. Shane bets the pot, Jeff calls, Kevin calls. Turn is the 4 of clubs. Shane bets the pot, Jeff raises, Kevin reraises, Shane reraises again all in. Jeff agonizes for a minute and folds, Kevin calls. River is a blank. The cards are turned over. Kevin has the A of clubs for the nut flush...and…

The Irony of Robert Novak

Amy Sullivan has this delightful little passage in an article about Robert Novak, the reporter/commentator who passed on information from "senior administration officials" about the identity of Valerie Plame, ending her CIA career, damaging years of undercover work on WMD programs and putting the lives of Plame, her family, and her foreign sources at risk: Robert Novak was in high dudgeon. He and his colleagues on CNN's "The Capital Gang" were squabbling over whether CBS should have run a story on President George W. Bush's National Guard service, a story which relied on documents whose…

Robert O'Brien Trophy Winner: Max Ross

I know it's only the first of the month, but this one really can't be topped. I actually had made a note of this ridiculous column by Star Parker for a possible Idiot of the Month award. In it, she cites a study showing that 51% of Americans think abortion is immoral, but 63% of Americans support Roe v. Wade and want it to remain legal. Then she proceeds to argue that the compromisers on the filibuster in the Senate will surely be punished by the voters because they may be keeping judges off the bench who will overturn that decision because, well, 51% think abortion is immoral. That bit of…

Interesting View on Potential Court Nominees

Tom Goldstein of the SCOTUSBlog has an essay up on potential nominees and makes some interesting points. First, I think he places the abortion question into context: It is essential to Republicans that the President nominate someone who is very solidly conservative. To pick someone more moderate or liberal would move the Court to the left. In this context, "conservative" (like "non-activist" or "strict constructionist") is often mistakenly perceived a code word for - or reduced by the press the simplistic formulation of - "willing to overrule Roe v. Wade." Abortion is certainly the most…

Cheney's Backpeddling and the Lapdogs in the Press

First, Cheney comes out and says that if you vote for Kerry, the terrorists will attack us: "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Cheney told supporters at a town-hall meeting Tuesday. Breathtaking, isn't it? If you vote for Kerry, the terrorists will hit us again and hit us even harder. Never mind that the last time they hit us, it was when Bush was in office. But…

Hurricanes and Blasphemy

The last few days were rather stressful because of the hurricanes in Florida. Hurricane Charley was projected to be heading right for the community that Lynn lives in and she evacuated along with her brother and his family. As the hurricane approached land, however, it took a turn to the east and ended up hitting about 100 miles south of where she lives and her house and community ended up sustaining very little damage. This was quite a relief to both of us, as you can well imagine. But there's another side to that. It was an unexpected blow to the folks in Polk County, who thought they were…

What About Mid-Century Cooling?

This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic. Objection: There was global cooling in the 40's, 50's and 60's even while human Greenhouse gas emissions were rising. Clearly, temperature is not being driven by CO2. Answer: None of the advocates of the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming claim that CO2 is the only factor controlling temperature in the ocean-atmosphere climate system. It is a large and complex system, responsive on many different timescales, and subject to numerous forcings. AGW…

Hurricanes and Blasphemy

The last few days were rather stressful because of the hurricanes in Florida. Hurricane Charley was projected to be heading right for the community that Lynn lives in and she evacuated along with her brother and his family. As the hurricane approached land, however, it took a turn to the east and ended up hitting about 100 miles south of where she lives and her house and community ended up sustaining very little damage. This was quite a relief to both of us, as you can well imagine. But there's another side to that. It was an unexpected blow to the folks in Polk County, who thought they were…

DonorsChoose Incentive: Quantum Physics and Free Will

I promised a while back to write a post on a topic of your choosing, in exchange for a $30 donation to my DonorsChoose challenge. I've got a fair number of requests, and I should really start paying them off. The first one comes from Ewan McNay, who aks: what quantum mechanics can tell us about the existence of free will (if anything) Oh, sure. Stick me with the tough questions. This will be somewhat rambling and discursive, because it's not really an area that I've thought much about, or where I know anything solid about the science. In fact, my first thought on hearing the question has…

The Academic Physics Job Market, Part 2

It's job-hunting season in academia, which also means it's talking-about-the-job-market season. After writing the previous post, I noticed a post on the same topic by Steve Hsu, who was interviewed for a Chronicle of Higher Education article (temporary free link, look quickly!) about the lousy job market in science. Steve has most of the relevant bits in his post, including this graph about the job situation in physics: Of course, being a contrary sort, I'd like to quibble a bit with the graph and its presentation in the article. The article makes a point of noting that: In physics nearly 70…

This Is a Scandal?

So, Bill Belichick has been fined half a million for the incident last week in which a Patriots assistant coach was caught videotaping Jets signals. The team was also fined $250K, and will lose at least one draft pick over the incident. Now that the punishment has been handed down, can somebody explain to me why this is such a huge deal? I mean, maybe it's just that the sports I played regularly (basketball, rugby, soccer) are much less pattern-driven than football, but I really don't see what's so utterly terrible about this business. It's not like they sent a spy to the Jets' practice…

"Richard Stark," Ask the Parrot [Library of Babel]

"Richard Stark," is, of course, the name that Donald E. Westlake uses when he wants to write books tat aren't funny. Ask the Parrot is the umpteenth Parker novel, picking up mere minutes after the previous volume, Nobody Runs Forever. In that volume, Parker and a crew of other guys robbed a bank in western Massachusetts, and the job, as always, went a little bit wrong. At the end of the book, the cops are hot on Parker's tail-- trailing him with dogs as he flees up a hill into the woods. As this book opens, he reaches the top of the hill, and find a man there who offers to help him escape, if…

Idle Curricular Thoughts

A couple of years ago, we undertook a grand revision of our General Education curriculum, the set of core liberal arts courses that all students are required to take in order to graduate. The old system was very specific, requiring a large-ish number of courses in very specific areas, and was biased toward Western culture in a way that really doesn't reflect the modern realities of academia-- students were required to take four courses in either American or European history and culture, or four courses in Classics, and that was it. Nobody was happy with this, so it needed changing. In the…

Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid [Library of Babel]

Noted travel writer Bill Bryson has a real gift for making entertaining anecdotes out of basically nothing. His travel books are frequently hilarious, but if you think carefully about what actually happens in the books, there's very little there. His gift as a writer is to inflate mundane experiences-- waiting on line at a train station in Italy, dining alone in a Chinese restaurant-- into vast epics of comic ineptitude. He really doesn't experience anything out of the ordinary, but he manages to make it sound tremendously entertaining. This comes in handy for his new memoir, The Life and…

Plaxico Burress and the Short Skirt Theory

Via Ezra Klein, Adam Serwer takes dim view of conservative attempts to blame the Mumbai attacks on Indian culture, specifically the relative lack of guns among the geenral population: This is a really strange and immature coping mechanism that manifests on the right in times of high profile tragedy. Rather than contemplate being a victim of a terrorist attack, the subject imagines him or herself as the star of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. I'd say it's simple racism, but it really is fear masquerading as bravado, a cultural chauvanism that directs itself at other Americans as readily as it does…

New "Meme": Manly or Self-Sufficient?

As mentioned in the previous post, Cut to the Chase offers two lists of skills to look at: The Popular Mechanics list of "25 Skills Every Man Should Know" and a new list of "20 Practical Skills Every Self-Sufficient Adult Should Have." This seems ripe for an Internet "meme" thing, so here's a the proposed game: Go through both lists, and determine how many of the listed skills you can claim. Compare the fractions to see if you're more of a ManlyMan or a Self-Sufficient Adult. A quick pass at the lists gives me 14/25 from the Popular Mechanics list, and 17/20 from Chase's list. That makes me…

Links for 2010-08-27

6 Baffling Flaws in Famous Sci-Fi Technology | Cracked.com "For instance, when the main reactor fails in Star Trek they call it a "warp core breech" and it happens so often there's an entire page listing times it has happened on the Star Trek wiki. Seriously, it was like every third episode. Their only safety measure against this was, hilariously, to "eject" the warp core out into space to allow it to explode (taking anyone nearby with it) and leave the ship utterly disabled. You know, like how when you have engine trouble on your car, your only option is to punch a button that makes your…

I Am Baffled Regarding Chris Mooney

The kerfuffle of the moment in the science blogosphere once again relates to Chris Mooney, who is pretty much a kerfuffle looking for a place to happen at this point. This time around it centers around a Washington Post op-ed that is basically the executive summary of a American Academy of Arts and Sciences paper that is itself the executive summary version of a series of four workshops on science and the public. You can get a reasonable sense of the kerfuffle from the links in Chris's responses to the responses. I'm currently making one of my intermittent attempts to be a better person--…

Series I Like Disappoint Me

Jim Butcher's Changes, the 12th Dresden Files novel, came out not too long ago, and there's been a bunch of discussion of it in various places on the Internet. I seem to have a slightly less positive take on the book than a lot of other people, so I figured I'd put up a slightly grumpy post about it, to get it out of my system. There are good things about the book, to be sure-- the ending is very eventful, to say the least, and fires a lot of the guns that have begun cluttering up the mantel. Butcher very emphatically justifies the title, ensuring that nothing will be the same after this…

Amazing Laser Application 10: Surgery!

What's the application? Using lasers to cut and/or cauterize tissue during surgical procedures, instead of the traditional very small very sharp knives. What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How can we do surgery without touching the tissues being operated on?" 2) "How can I get rid of these annoying glasses/contact lenses?" How does it work? First, you strap a device to your head that lets you shoot laser beams from your forehead, like one of the X-Men. then you use a magnifying glass to focus it to where it needs to be. Like so: (I'm not sure exactly what sort of procedure that is,…

Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End [Library of Babel]

Opinions differ about Vernor Vinge's latest book, Rainbows End (the apostrophe was intentionally left blank), and mostly seem to be correlated with how people approached the book. For example, Mike Kozlowski approached it from the standpoint that it's a new Vinge book, and thus expected to be as good as A Deepness in the Sky, and found it "disappointingly okay". I, on the other handed, looked at the jacket copy and said "It's a Singularity book, it'll probably suck," and was quite pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed this quite a bit, actually, and it might be the best Singularity book I've read…

A few good reads on the CRU email hacking

I have had these tabs open in Firefox for quite a while now hoping to have the time to comment on them in a bit of detail but time is not on my side (sorry Mic). So I would just like to list them briefly and recommend them for your review. From Balloon Juice: Especially early in this story's life cycle, when you could hardly expect an average reporter to make much sense of the science, a sheaf of personality stories (e.g.) complained about the defensive attitude among climate researchers. Again, you have to wonder what people expect. Taken collectively the "science" of warming denial has…

Is the Upper Midwest a center for medical denialism?

I was quite dissapointed this morning to hear the Minnesota Public Radio station interview a guy who had kept medical treatments from his son several years ago withoiut asking some of the truly critical questions that would be needed in this kind of situation. In that case, the father claims, doctors claimed that the boy had cancer, but the parents somehow knew that he did not, kept him from treatment, and he was fine. There was no great interest on their part in "alternative treatments" ... just a disbelief that the doctors were competent. Which may well have been the case ... I have no…

Swine Flu Update: Nothing has changed

The press has been reporting that the swine flu is waning, and that it is not as serious as once thought. Well, they've got that totally wrong, as usual. No one directly involved in this thought or asserted that the H1N1 swine flu was especially serious. They simply did not know. Being a very deadly disease that would spread quickly and kill easily was a possibility. Being like the seasonal flu in severity and pattern of spread was a possibility. For days now, people have been leaning towards the latter, and now that is pretty much where everyone is. The swine flu H1N1 virus is at present…

Correcting some misapprehensions…

Some people have taken blogroll amnesty day the wrong way—or perhaps it has been used in the wrong way. Jon Swift registers the impression that this was an undemocratic purge that simply re-enthroned the same old elites and tossed the little guys on the scrapheap. But the more I learned about this Amnesty Day, the more I realized that it was a very strange amnesty indeed. The amnesty he granted turned out to be amnesty for himself [Atrios]. He wanted to assuage himself of the guilt he might feel at kicking blogs off his blogroll instead of granting amnesty to others to swarm across the border…

Hell hath no fury like Joe Biden. Or so we hope.

Final notes on the election This is it. This is the last time I'm talking about the election. I'm quite worn out and the Republican National Convention was the last straw. I am still feeling nauseated from it. So other than a few comments below, this is the LAST political commentary you will see on this blog. Ever. Back to science only. Unless something interesting or important happens, of course. I do want to point out a few posts that I think are worth looking at for a perspective on current issues. The first is Pharyngula's version of a recent John Stewart bit explaining how…

The Evolution of Cats: Sabertooth vs. Regular

Sabertooth Cat, Megantereon nihowanensisl There are two kinds of "true cats." Cat experts call one type feline or "modern" partly because they are the ones that did not go extinct. If you have a pet cat, it's a modern/feine cat. This also includes the lions, tigers, leopards, etc. The other kind are called "sabercats" because this group includes the saber tooth. It is generally believed but not at all certain that these two groups of cats are different phylogenetic lineages (but that is an oversimplification). It has been suggested for some time that the bite force mechanics for at…

Ken Hubert, Hero of Life Science Teaching

Continuing with our discussion of the Evolution 2008 conference ... Yet another item from the first day of the conference, the pre-conference teachers day sponsored by Evolution 2008 and the Minnesota Citizens for Science Education (MnCSE) ... The Minnesota Citizens for Science Education presented Ken Hubert with an award. I am blanking on the name of the award right now, but eventually, the MnCSE web site will probably have a page on this, or an announcement about it. (We need time for some dust to settle.) Who is Ken Hubert? Well, when it comes to the Evolution - Creationism 'debate…

How brains work, how brain imaging works: Astrocytes

Blood flow in the brain is linked to neuronal activity. Therefore, various 'brain scanning' techniques can be used to observe neuronal activity in the brain. This has led to an astonishing revolution in knowledge of how the brain works. Of course, you knew that already. Also astonishing is that the reason for changes in blood flow in relation to what neurons are doing is unknown! We know this system works, but we don't know why! Until now... It turns out that it is the glia cells. There a different kinds of glia, and they are very important in brain function. Glia do a lot of…

Sunday Chess Problem

Throughout this series I have endeavored to bring to your attention some of the major themes that problem composers use. So far, though, there is one big one that has not been featured. I am referring to Allumwandlung, typically abbreviated AUW. This is a German word that translates loosely as “All conversion.” To chess composers it refers to a problem in which promotions to all four pieces (queen, rook, bishop and knight) appear in the course of the problem. A lovely example appears in the current issue of The Problemist, which is the official magazine of The British Chess Problem…

Another rabies survivor

All the neighborhood kids love mah puppeh, Arnie. They are out playing in the playground, see me and Arnie coming, and they come running over to give Arnie lovies and to get Arnie kissies. And, seeing as my parents and most of my aunts and uncles are teachers, I make sure to use this opportunity to teach the kids something: "While its okay to run over to give Arnie lovies, they should always ask an owner whether it is okay to pet their puppy and to never, ever, EVER approach an animal when their owner is not around." I need to add "If you see a sick birdy or kitten or puppy, tell your parents…

GMO chickens and herd immunity

HA! You remember a while ago, I wrote about how GMO papaya creates a population of 'papaya' that has herd immunity against papaya ringspot virus, thus is able to protect non-GMO papaya from the virus? Theyre trying to do a similar thing with chickens (any commercial bird, really-- ducks, geese, turkeys, etc) and avian flu! Suppression of Avian Influenza Transmission in Genetically Modified Chickens Fundamentally this is the same idea as the GMO papaya, but the way they are accomplishing it is different. With the papaya, the GMO plants themselves were resistant to the virus, thus stopped the…

The Antarctica Files: SKUUUUUUUUUUUAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!

Just to reenforce this aspect of my personality: I dont like birds. Yes, they are pretty, as long as they are 'over there' and arent all up in my face about being birds. I mean, Im not all up in their face screaming "IM A HUMAN", rite? Anyway, I think birds instinctively know that I dont like them. Arnie and I go on the same walkie route 1-3 times a day. Every Spring, there is one god damned bird... one god damned bird that gets all bitchy about his nest or chicks or something, and freaks the hell out whenever anyone (but especially me and Arnie) get too close to his nest. And by 'too…

OKCAtheists: Best atheist group ever.

Jen, over at BlagHag, has recently started graduate school in Seattle. Apparently, despite being in a hippie liberal city, Seattles atheist meet-up has a lot of the same problems as other atheist groups-- small, few female members, and too many of the people who do show up are assholes. Ive dealt with small groups before (theyre fine, its just most groups always want more members) and low female numbers ("HI! IM THE TOKEN GIRL!") too, as well as being the only member under 40, and the victim of 'atheist politics'. The incident with 'atheist politics' put me off of doing anything for any…

HIV-1 and 'epigenetics': Still not magic, but is it still epigenetics?

A long time ago, I think on Pharyngula, Richard Dawkins said something that really pissed me off. Its been so long ago I cant find the right comment thread anymore, but Dawkins said something regarding epigenetics along the lines of "Um... isnt this just a fancy word for transcription regulation? Stuff weve been studying for years and years..." And I went all WARBLEGARBLE "OMG NO EPIGENETICS IS SO NEW AND DIFFERENT AND SO MUCH COOLER THAN TRANSCRIPTIONAL REGULATION OMFG RICHARD DAWKINS UR SUCH A N00B!!!" Yeah... Yeah...... I totally get it now. Ive slowly been getting it since that…

XI, ksī, *sigh*

Kevin Miller, XI Kevin Miller, ksÄ« Kevin Miller, *sigh* I love how Intelligent Design is SO NOT Creationism. I love how professional proponents of ID, when confronted by real scientists and real educated laymen, feign ignorance. Go all Po-Mo "different ways of knowing". Act like little know-it-alls, but when they get stuck and cant provide evidence for their parroted claims, they pull 'Oh gorsh golly! I aint no scientist!' And all their personal sources are conveniently Anon. Kevin Miller XI, the fellow who wrote EXPELLED (you write documentaries?) did all that and more when he…

ew... epigenetics in SEED...

*sigh* My swooning over Venter on the cover of the latest edition of SEED was rudely interrupted by Larry Moran. Evidently he really does get SEED 'for the articles'. heh. Epigenetics at SEED Yeah, um, this SEED article... this article is not helpful. For you, or me, or the scientific literacy we are fighting for. If someone held a gun to my head and screamed "DEFINE EPIGENETICS!!!!", this is what I would say: Histone and DNA modifications that alter chromatin structure--> gene expression. Some people also include siRNA. I think that is kinda an idiomatic definition of 'epigenetics',…