General Science
sa smith | April 17, 2009T. Boone Pickens. Never heard of the guy till I moved to OK. Some gazillionare that donates a shitload of money to Oklahoma State in Stillwater.
Now while Pickens seems kinda like a cliche Republican (oil man, Swift Boat contributor, hoarding water), evidently his wife is a PETA nutbar. Oh certainly shes done 'good' things-- donated money to help pets stranded after Katrina, horse rescues-- But Madeleine Pickens is causing OSUs vet school to be under lock-down right now due to bullshit shes been puking to the local media.
So the Pickens donate lots of money to OSU, right? Well Madeleine…
evolvingthoughts | April 16, 2009Elio Schaechter has a nice piece up on the recent success at growing a pure line of Coxellia pathogens, the cause of Q Fever. I have been told that fewer than 10% of all microbes are able to be grown in cell-free media, so perhaps this will be the start of a new set of methodologies. Doing this means that pathogens and other microbes will be able to be sequenced and studied in vitro.
evolvingthoughts | April 3, 2009There's a famous anecdote about Wittgenstein and his friend Piero Sraffa by Norman Malcolm (Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir):
Wittgenstein was insisting that a proposition and that which it describes must have the same 'logical form', the same 'logical multiplicity', Sraffa made a gesture, familiar to Neapolitans as meaning something like disgust or contempt, of brushing the underneath of his chin with an outward sweep of the finger-tips of one hand. And he asked: 'What is the logical form of that?' Sraffa's example produced in Wittgenstein the feeling that there was an absurdity in the…
sa smith | March 17, 2009The worlds most famous living biologist, Casey Luskin, is either an IDiot, or the biggest IDiot in the known universe.
Being an expert in molecular biology, Casey has previously discussed Junk DNA, ie ERVs, at his blog 'Evolution News and Views'. Now hes written a blog post on this paper about Junk RNA:
Chromatin signature reveals over a thousand highly conserved large non-coding RNAs in mammals.
Larry covers all the bases nicely. Now I know, as a fact, Casey does not understand this paper. I know he didnt even read the paper. Larry cites a relevant portion at his blag, but the paper,…
sa smith | March 17, 2009Just in case you all were worried OK legislators were only concerned with how to teach children Creationism, Bill 1326:
B. No person shall:
1. Knowingly conduct nontherapeutic (ERV-- he means any research that intends to 'save the life' of the embryo is okay) research that destroys a human embryo or subjects a human embryo to substantial risk of injury or death;
2. Transfer a human embryo with the knowledge that the embryo will be subjected to nontherapeutic research; or
3. Use for research purposes cells or tissues that the person knows were obtained by performing activities in violation…
evolvingthoughts | February 26, 2009PD Magnus on the history of the philosophy of science in the last 50 years, in around 1400 words.
A short primer on the Greenhouse Effect
Mendeley, a bibliographic cloud project, has raised funding from Last.fm, Warner and Skype execs. Looks like next gen after Endnote...
evolvingthoughts | February 21, 2009A 6th grade maths and science teacher emailed me about whether theories could become laws. Below the fold is his request and my reply. The short answer is that when laws grow up, they become theories, not the other way around.
Cameron Peters wrote:
Dr. Wilkins,
I was hoping you might be able to provide some insight on a question that is circulating amongst the NSTA email list serve concerning laws and theories. Specifically, there is some disagreement ( I would say confusion) of the difference between the two and, in particular, why a theory cannot become a law. Also, the question has arisen…
evolvingthoughts | February 10, 2009We are going to hear a lot about Darwin this year, especially this month for his birthday (happy 200th, Chas. You don’t look a day over 150) and in November for the sesquicentenary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. And you will hear or read repetitions of a number of common myths about Darwin’s ideas and theories. I thought, being a fecal disturber, that I would try to clarify one of these below the fold, in celebration of his birthday. I'll do the others when I can. If you can think of any more, let me know.
Myth 1: Darwin did not believe in the reality of species
Myth 2:…
evolvingthoughts | February 3, 2009
"Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us About Development and Evolution" (Mark S. Blumberg)
This book came to me well recommended, and as far as the content goes, I am very impressed. The writing style, however, and the intended audience, are at odds with each other.
Blumberg is a developmental biologist who has a real grasp of the topic, is enthusiastic about it, and has a clear target in his sights. That target is sometimes misleadingly called "The Modern Synthesis", although a better term might be something like "gene centrism"; the view often expressed in words like "genes are the…
evolvingthoughts | January 30, 2009Ron Amundson is a philosopher and historian of biology at the University of Hawai'i - Hilo who has done some great work in my field. So I was greatly amused and more than a little sympathetic to see this disclaimer linked to from Leiter's blog:
Metaphysics DISCLAIMER
Phil 310, Metaphysics, is a course in some core topics in Western Philosophy, including the Free Will Problem, the Mind-Body Problem, related problems in Philosophy of Mind, and the Problem of Personal Identity. If you’re interested in what these involve, you can find long discussions online in the Stanford Encyclopedia of…
evolvingthoughts | January 24, 2009It came as an email. Then it was on the Seed Bloggers Forum. Now it's on my frigging Facebook - they really want me to answer this:
In his first speech as President-elect last November, Barack Obama reminded us of the promise of "a world connected by our own science and imagination." And on Tuesday, in his inaugural address, President Obama cemented his commitment to a new ethos and culture by vowing to "restore science to its rightful place."
At Seed, we are firmly committed to President Obama's vision and want to help make it a reality. We begin today by asking you, our friends and…
evolvingthoughts | January 23, 2009There's been a slew of "Darwin was wrong" and "Evolution is more complicated" stories in the media lately. It's nearing Darwin day so simple minded media hacks can be explained as needing to find the requisite "drama" in their "stories". But the real picture is a lot more nuanced, and ultimately a lot more interesting, than the dichotomies pedalled by what passes for science journalism these days. I am picking up themes also covered by Larry at Sandwalk, Evolutionary Novelties, and Jason at Evolution Blog.
The targets journalists I wish to attack here are those of New Scientist, Newsweek, The…
evolvingthoughts | January 16, 2009Larry Moran points us to the following video on what science is and why pseudoscience is not to be taught or accepted without serious evidence (which makes it science). My only comment to add is that emotional appeals are information and evidence, but they are information and evidence about the speaker, and not about the things that are being spoken of.
There are a number of people trying to give short definitions of science on the blogs right now (see here). I have a one line definition that I think captures everything I want it to, and nothing else:
Science is the process of saying as much…
evolvingthoughts | January 14, 2009Chris Nedin at Ediacaran has a nice discussion of the metaphor of the adaptive landscape, "Climbing Pit Improbable". It should be noted that the genetic notion of adaptive peaks is exactly the same thing as the AI notion of gradient descent learning., which inverts the "landscape" the way Chris describes.
The philosopher responsible for initiating the "deep ecology" movement, Arne Naess, has died at the age of 96. Maybe there is something to this exercise thing.
John Whitfield, at Blogging the Origin, is, well, blogging his way through the Origin. Chapter 1 is here. Comments by various folk…
sa smith | January 13, 2009As SciBlogs resident cowgirl/GMO-shill, I feel an obligation to post a response to a few posts up at 'Whats New In Life Science Research' (Jan 8 through today). I dont want to start a blag-fight, I just want to correct some of their errors and start a conversation (LOL! BLAG FIGHT! BLAG FIGHT!) because I dont think they are anti-GMO green anarchists. I think they are GMO-phobic, and education fixes phobias :)
Several authors made it clear they would like it if all GMO foods were labeled 'GMO'. I think that is silly. I can tell you what foods in your local grocery store are GMO: Basically…
evolvingthoughts | January 2, 2009I's an ego thing, sure, but it's also a handy way of seeing what one did this past year. Here are what I think of as the substantial posts of Evolving Thoughts from 2008. Sorry for the lateness - it's a longish list. I (and my guest blogger) have been real busy this year...
Religion and Creationism
Desecration, blasphemy in public, and manners
Why are there still monkeys?
Can a Christian accept natural selection as true?
Does religion evolve?
The heat of religion
The religious we have always with us
Agriculture and the rise of religion
The origins of agriculture now extended
Darwin, God and…
revere | December 27, 2008Compared to five years ago, there is a lot of great science on the web, most of it free. New Scientist is one of the best general science publications dand comes from the UK (much like the US-based Science News). While each have subscriber-only Premium Content, there is quite a lot of free access material, including some great videos on New Scientist. As part of a year-end wrap up New Scientist just posted their five most popular videos. Here they are. If you always wanted to see a human egg ovulate, here's your chance (you have to wait to get to #1):
evolvingthoughts | December 23, 2008Damn it's hot. Around here, snow is at a premium, which means our solstitial celebrations are less active than those oop north. Anyway, I got interviewed last night on national radio, the ABC's National Evening show, talking about the early ideas of philosophy to presenter Rhys Muldoon. Nice fellow. It was more like a chat than an interview (which means I did most of the talking, as my chats tend to). It seems I am the sole contactable philosopher in Australia.
So anyway, to entertain you there are some pre-solstitial items just announced. First off, I'm going to put all the internet…
evolvingthoughts | December 16, 2008The Bradley Report [Here] is proposing, among other things, that [Australian] students have vouchers to attend the university they want to, rather than making the university the funding recipient directly. Two things stand out to me. One is that this makes higher learning a marketable commodity, in which the desires of the consumers determines what is most important intellectually. So if everyone wants to be a business manager, accountant or surfing doctor, that is what we should fund? There's no important cultural legacy to be supported? If not, why does the government support art? Surely…
evolvingthoughts | December 14, 2008
Just a couple of days ago I mentioned the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. They must have heard me because today I get my email notification that they have published this year's volume. I'd like to mention three papers of interest to me. Alas, children, if you don't have a library subscription (or a personal one), you won't be able to access these papers directly...
To start with the last one first, here's a paper (Coates et al.) that discusses the history and biology of the relationships of early tetrapods - organisms with four limbs, backbones, and bony skeletons. We…