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gregladen | June 13, 2013No. Not if it is natural.
In a decision that could have broad-reaching effects on the future of science and medicine, the Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that:
— "A naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated."
— But, synthetically created "strands of nucleotides known as composite DNA (cDNA)" are "patent eligible" because they do not occur naturally.
SOURCE
Our system of patents is badly broken, I think. About the only people I've ever heard say otherwise are ... wait for it ... patent lawyers.
At least this one little…
jrosenhouse | June 11, 2013Adam Laats is an assistant professor of education and history at SUNY Binghamton, and he is the author of Fundamentalism and Education in the Scopes Era: God, Darwin, and the Roots of America's Culture Wars. Over at his blog, he has posted a review of Among the Creationists. So, what did he think?
Rosenhouse's book is required reading for any outsider who hopes to understand the world of American creationism in the twenty-first century. Rosenhouse deliberately eschews the simple, satisfying approach of most outsiders. He does not belittle or deride these ideas or their adherents, though…
gregladen | June 11, 2013Bob Alberti is a friend of mine in Minneapolis (actually, he was even my student for a few weeks). I was rather startled to see is very scary face staring at me from the Internet this morning (see above). All I can say, is if you run into this guy, watch out! His snark is very, very sharp.
From the Star Tribune article featuring Bob:
A recent study declared Minneapolis parks the best in the nation. We also have another fine natural resource: technology pioneers/comedians who go on the Internet and smack down snooty New Yorkers. Which brings us to Bob Alberti.
...
“When I was a kid, I went…
jrosenhouse | June 10, 2013I was in Kentucky for most of last week, visiting friends. I ended up in Bowling Green, stopping along the way in Morehead and in Loveland, OH (near Cincinnati). My friends in Bowling Green took me to Mammoth Cave National Park, which is really quite spectacular. All in all, an enjoyable trip.
I'll be hitting the road again on Wednesday for a little over a week. Part of that time will be spent visiting the 'rents at my New Jersey office, but I'll be spending several days in New York City as well. A mix of business and pleasure.
There's plenty of blog fodder out there. ID backbencher…
gregladen | June 9, 2013I've noticed a lot of Internet chatter about the Mantis Shrimp lately, and I don't know what that is about. But it could be this:
How would you design an experiment to test each of the hypotheses suggested here?
(Also, I note that I do not endorse the contents of this video. Spiffy music and a smart sounding voice tells our brains this must all be true and accurate but most YouTube videos like this in areas I now about are full of mistakes. If you are an expert on this stuff feel free to make comments or corrections below. Also, my reference to "cold fusion" is snark, in case that was…
gregladen | June 8, 2013Geoffrey Miller, author of The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature, has made a goof.
Miller is an evolutionary psychologist with an interested in IQ, the usual sex related things Evolutionary Psychologists are interested in, etc. etc.
On June 2nd he wrote this tweet:
Dear obese PhD applicants: if you didn't have the willpower to stop eating carbsk, you won't have the willpower to do a dissertation #truth
The number of way in which this is wrong is myriad.
Anyway, he's in a heap of trouble. Here is a video from his university, the University of New Mexico,…
gregladen | June 6, 2013On June 6th, 1944, some 160,000 soldiers aboard about 5,000 boats of diverse design crossed the English Channel and carried out the Invasion of Normandy, one of the more important events in recent history. Many of the soldiers were so sick from choppy seas that leaving the boats and walking or running into German gunfire seemed like a good idea. The invasion was originally planned for the 45h of June, but a very precise weather forecast told the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, to wait until the next day. The forecast for the 6th of June, integrated with the logistical features of the…
gregladen | June 6, 2013D-Day was today in 1944. My father was involved. Wikipedia is silly. Kids these days have no idea. There is, of course, a classic movie on the topic.
[A timely repost]
What does "D-Day" mean?
The term "D-Day" is military for "The Day" just like "H-Hour" is military for "The Hour" on which something will happen. However, once D-Day happened everyone started to use the term "D-Day" to refer to this event. The idea is you can put the date "D-Day" in your planning documents and refer to it without having the date set, or if you do have the date set, to avoid saying the date out loud.
So…
gregladen | June 5, 2013Hey, check this out:
Dr. Donald R. Prothero recently retired from his professorship at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA after 27 years of teaching in order to concentrate on his writing and consulting. Dr. Prothero is an indefatigable advocate for geology and paleontology, which he combines with a passion for communicating science to the public. Notably, he has served as a consultant for Discovery Channel, History Channel and National Geographic specials. He frequently gives public talks and presentations to groups interested in Earth science, including presentations to the NYC Skeptics…
gregladen | June 4, 2013This is a guest post by David Kirtley. David originally posted this as a Google Doc, and I'm reproducing his work here with his permission. Just the other day I was speaking to a climate change skeptic who made mention of an old Time or Newsweek (he was not sure) article that talked about fears of a coming ice age. There were in fact a number of articles back in the 1970s that discussed the whole Ice Age problem, and I'm not sure what my friend was referring to. But here, David Kirtley places a recent meme that seems to be an attempt to diffuse concern about global warming because we…
gregladen | June 4, 2013Global Warming is the increase in the Earth's temperature owing to the greenhouse effects of the release of CO2 and other gasses into the atmosphere, mainly by humans burning fossil fuel, but also by the release of Methane from oil wells and melting of Arctic permafrost, natural gas from leaky pipes, and so on. This increase in temperature occurs in both the atmosphere and the oceans, as well as the land surface itself. During some periods of time most of the increase seems to happen in the atmosphere, while during other times it seems to occur more in the oceans. (As an aside: when you…
gregladen | June 3, 2013For the near future, this site will not accept comments on older posts. This is an anti-spam measure. Comments on older posts will be re-allowed in the future at a yet to be determined time. Thank you very much for your cooperation.
gregladen | June 2, 2013Breasts are interesting. For starters, people interested in behavioral biology make much of the fact that in many species males have elaborated or exaggerated traits. But they seem to ignore that other than size and a bit of redistribution of muscle mass, males in humans don't. Maybe facial hair is an elaborated trait, possibly a deeper voice, but both of these could be argued to be non-elaborated in males and, rather, altered in females. Meanwhile, human females have a whole bunch of elaborated traits. Breasts are among these traits.
There is a good explanation for this we may touch on…
gregladen | June 2, 2013Cathie Adams, leader of the Texas Eagle Forum, of anti-woman Phyllis Schlafly fame, has proof. And, this relates to what is going to happen in certain important upcoming elections including Minnesota's 6th district. Let me 'splain.
gregladen | May 31, 2013Jim Graves, the candidate who almost beat Michele Bachmann in her bid for re-election to Congress last year, has suspended his campaign.
I do hope he re-enters the race when Bachmann changes her mind and decides to run again!
Here's the letter from Graves:
This is the most difficult message I’ve ever had to write.
A year ago, we set out on a mission: To restore civility, functionality and honesty to Washington by removing Michele Bachmann from office. Her hateful rhetoric and dangerous policies fueled an extremist movement unlike anything we’d seen in a long time. The tone it created was a…
jrosenhouse | May 30, 2013I've been a Stephen King fan for a long time, so you can imagine my excitement at the fact that he has two books in the queue over the next few months. His novel Joyland will be available next week, while his Shining sequel, Doctor Sleep comes out in September.
I'll be reading both of them, of course, but for now I want to call attention to this interview with NPR's Terry Gross. You see, he said the following about belief in God:
I choose to believe it. ... I mean, there's no downside to that. If you say, 'Well, OK, I don't believe in God. There's no evidence of God,' then you're missing…
gregladen | May 30, 2013As you know, Michele Bachmann, Congressperson for Minnesota's Sixth District, has announced that she will not seek re-election to her seat in Washington DC.
Bachmann almost lost her re-election to challenger Jim Graves last year. I'm convinced that had the election been held a few weeks later, Graves would have won. Recently, internal polling data from within Bachmann's campaign became known, and showed that as of a couple of weeks ago Bachmann was actually behind Graves. Bachmann's response to this polling was an ad buy; the Bachmann campaign started up early with local ads, clearly…
jrosenhouse | May 29, 2013A while back P. Z. Myers wrote a snotty, obnoxious post about how much he hated the big Les Miz movie. Now, I happen to be a bit protective of Les Miserables. I regard the original novel as the finest ever written, and I think the stage version of the musical does a good job of capturing the novel's spirit (far better than any of the many non-musical movie versions). The movie musical certainly had its problems (Click here for my review), but overall it was pretty good. If it was truly the worst movie experience of his life, as P. Z. claimed, then I must assume that he sees only the very…
jrosenhouse | May 29, 2013A while back I engaged in an exchange of blog posts with paleontologist Robert Asher. It started with an essay Asher wrote for HuffPo, extolling the virtues of reconciling science and religion. I felt his arguments were insufficient, and said so in this post. Asher eventually replied. I felt his arguments were still insufficient, so I replied again.
During the exchange, Asher suggested it was unfair of me to criticize him for not addressing various theological issues, since he was only writing a short essay. I thought that was reasonable, so I suggested we exchange books. I sent him a…
carlyo | May 28, 2013Celebrating Role Models in STEM!
Read more about the life of educator and mathematician Edith Luchins here