Gideons getting uppity…with two polls!

This will be a tough one to dent since it already has tens of thousands of votes, but I’m sure you can give it a little bump. The Gideons have been getting aggressive and invading high school cafeterias and leaving bibles scattered about, and AOL addresses this invasion of secular schools with a hard-hitting internet poll.

What do you think about the Bibles left on tables inside public schools?

I’m for it
58%

I’m against it
28%

It doesn’t matter
14%

Are you Christian?

Yes
75%

No
16%

It’s personal
9%

I wonder how the people voting in favor of giving kids Bibles would feel if it had been Planned Parenthood that crashed the cafeteria to leave pamphlets about birth control?

Darwinius masillae

This is an important new fossil, a 47 million year old primate nicknamed Ida. She’s a female juvenile who was probably caught in a toxic gas cloud from a volcanic lake, and her body settled into the soft sediments of the lake, where she was buried undisturbed.

i-7c1a746bdef84283eca6d89008d65a2c-darwinius.jpeg

What’s so cool about it?

Age. It’s 47 million years old. That’s interestingly old…it puts us deep into the primate family tree.

Preservation. This is an awesome fossil: it’s almost perfectly complete, with all the bones in place, preserved in its death posture. There is a halo of darkly stained material around it; this is a remnant of the flesh and fur that rotted in place, and allows us to see a rough outline of the body and make estimates of muscle size. Furthermore, the guts and stomach contents are preserved. Ida’s last meal was fruit and leaves, in case you wanted to know.

Life stage. Ida is a young juvenile, estimate to be right on the transition from requiring parental care to independent living. That means she has a mix of baby teeth and adult teeth — she’s a two-fer, giving us information about both.

Phylogeny. A cladistic analysis of the fossil revealed another interesting point. There are two broad groups of primates: the strepsirrhines, which includes the lemurs and lorises, and the haplorhines, which includes monkeys and apes…and us, of course. Ida’s anatomy places her in the haplorhines with us, but at the same time she’s primitive. This is an animal caught shortly after a major branch point in primate evolutionary history.

She’s beautiful and interesting and important, but I do have to take exception to the surprisingly frantic news coverage I’m seeing. She’s being called the “missing link in human evolution”, which is annoying. The whole “missing link” category is a bit of journalistic trumpery: almost every fossil could be called a link, and it feeds the simplistic notion that there could be a single definitive bridge between ancient and modern species. There isn’t: there is the slow shift of whole populations which can branch and diverge. It’s also inappropriate to tag this discovery to human evolution. She’s 47 million years old; she’s also a missing link in chimp evolution, or rhesus monkey evolution. She’s got wider significance than just her relationship to our narrow line.

People have been using remarkable hyperbole when discussing Darwinius. She’s going to affect paleontology “like an asteroid falling down to earth”; she’s the “Mona Lisa” of fossils; she answers all of Darwin’s questions about transitional fossils; she’s “something that the world has never seen before”; “a revolutionary scientific find that will change everything”. Well, OK. I was impressed enough that I immediately made Ida my desktop wallpaper, so I’m not trying to diminish the importance of the find. But let’s not forget that there are lots of transitional forms found all the time. She’s unique as a representative of a new species, but she isn’t at all unique as a representative of the complex history of life on earth.

When Laelaps says, “I have the feeling that this fossil, while spectacular, is being oversold,” I think he’s being spectacularly understated. Wilkins also knocks down the whole “missing link” label. The hype is bad news, not because Ida is unimportant, but because it detracts from the larger body of the fossil record — I doubt that the media will be able to muster as much excitement from whatever new fossil gets published in Nature or Science next week, no matter how significant it may be.

Go ahead and be excited by this find, I know I am. Just remember to be excited tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, because this is perfectly normal science, and it will go on.

Laelaps has some serious reservations about the analysis — the authors may not have done as solid a cladistic analysis as they should, and its position in the family tree may not be as clear as it has been made out to be.

Franzen JL, Gingerich PD, Habersetzer J, Hurum JH, von Koenigswald W, Smith BH (2009) Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology. PLoS ONE 4(5): e5723. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005723.

Help Oprah out

Oprah asks so sweetly: What Should Jenny Do?

You’ve seen it all over the news…Jenny McCarthy, one of America’s funniest and coolest moms and Harpo is giving her, her own show.

Here is where YOU come in.

What would you like to see featured on Jenny’s show? What would you like for her to talk about? What are you and your friends buzzing about?

Any topics you’d like for her to tackle? Are there any questions that you have — that you would love for her to answer?

If so — we definitely want to hear from you!

Write to us and tell us exactly what you’d like to see Jenny do.

 
Make sure to include your questions and thoughts in detail. And make sure ONLY to write if you’d be willing to talk to us on national television.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Here’s the suggestion I sent to them.

I want Jenny McCarthy to get schooled. I want her to invite educated, intelligent scientists and doctors on her show, who each week dissect her vapid little opinions and dismantle her cherished biases. I want her to be embarrassed in every hour. And I want her to get a little wiser, episode by episode, so that by the end of a year she actually becomes an informed and interesting person.

Help people learn some actual science and medicine by making Jenny McCarthy a public example, and help McCarthy become a better human being — one who doesn’t kill children with her ignorance.

Do you think they’ll go for that?

The latest NOM ad

The National Organization for Marriage, that ridiculous group that came up with the ad that was so ripe for mockery, has a new one. It features little kids acting all confused that someone could have two daddies, or that god might have created Anna and Eve. And of course, it has a new slogan that will have you laughing: “Our kids will be taught a new way of thinking”. Oh noes…we can’t have our children learning anything new!

These guys are so inept, it’s got me wondering whose side they’re really on.

Oh, and for any kids who are actually confused, here’s how to tell who your parents are. They’re the people who love you and take care of you and worry about you all the time. That’s all that is important. Their anatomy? Not so important.

The things you learn from Whirled Nut Daily

I never sign up for these things, but apparently many people think it’s hilarious to give crazy right wing sites my email address, so part of my daily flood of email is crap from places like WorldNetDaily. Most of it just gets a filter entry and I never see it again, but I have a soft spot for WND — it’s barking mad, full of the craziest deluded wackos with this strange sense that, since the Bush years, they represent the mainstream. I learn the wildest stuff from their mail.

Did you know that the Girl Scouts are out to turn your daughters into lesbians? It must be true, since WND says it is.

But here’s a perfect example of the strangely twisted minds behind WND. In one section, the author is complaining about one of the books the Girl Scouts use, called Girltopia.

In the next age group, for teens in the ninth and tenth grades, girls are taught about wage disparities between the sexes, and a lack of assets and senior management positions held by women.

“Girltopia” poses the questions, “When women don’t earn enough, what happens to their children?” and “How could everyone help create a Girltopia?”

Asked what the purpose of including a message of inequality served in the Girl Scout curriculum, Tompkins explained:

It’s to show girls what’s going on in the country and have them be part of the dialogue. A lot of girls just aren’t aware of what’s going on. I think that specific topic might be new this year, but in the broader scheme of things, it’s not that new. I’m sure it’s something that came up in the 1920s as well. Girls Scouting has been around since before women had the right to vote, so I’m sure these discussions were always part of this.

The text praises Renaissance author Sir Thomas More for his book “Utopia,” Mary Cavendish for her book “A New World: The Blazing World” about a utopian kingdom and 24-year Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood and feminist author Sheri S. Tepper for her novel, “The Gate to Women’s Country.”

“Girltopia” encourages girls to “let songs inspire you,” and as some examples, it provides lyrics to songs such as “Independent Women, part 1” by Destiny’s Child; “Hammer and a Nail” by the Indigo Girls – an “out” lesbian rock band; and “Imagine” by John Lennon. The curriculum also asks girls to create an avatar “to represent the ideal you in Girltopia” and features “Wild Geese,” a short poem by lesbian poet Mary Oliver.

I read that and was thinking that, hey, I’d like to read that — and those sound like strong, positive messages to send out to girls. Be aware of the real problems you face, but stand up for what is right. Good stuff.

 

And then I read WND’s assessment of the book…and it’s exactly what makes these rascals such a bizarro mirror of the real world.

“This book was so depressing that I don’t know what I would have done as a teen reading it,” Garibay said. “The sense of hopelessness abounds in ‘Girltopia.’ The positivity, the enthusiasm and the vigor of youth is completely destroyed by data found to further the Girl Scout USA’s feminist agenda. It plants seeds of despair and hopelessness in today’s girls.”

I don’t quite see it. All I learn from WND is that conservatives are obsessed with lesbians, and somehow equate them with despair.

I get email — from Peter Heck

Yesterday, I tore into a reeking pile of creationist bogosity by Peter Heck. This morning, he sends me email.

Dr. Myers,

Someone sent me a nasty email that included a link to your blog. I found it a pretty thorough shallacking! Not that I’m opposed to that. If I put arguments out in front of people, I have no problem when they’re hacked up by the experts. I actually sent the column to three biologists I know and trust before it was published. They don’t agree with my views on some of these issues, but I knew they would challenge my science. They all recommended I take out the first paragraph or make it less condescending. But then folks like you might not have read it! But what each of them said in response to the article was that my conclusion was not scientifically flawed: that Britt’s suggestion that swine flu proved the Darwinian model of macro-evolution was incorrect. I’d be interested to know if you disagree. Thanks for your time and for taking an interest in my article,

Peter

This is a rather disingenuous reply; he wasn’t just shellacked, he was exposed as a dishonest fraud who knew nothing at all about the subject he was critiquing. I didn’t just criticize a few niggling errors in his article, I ripped it apart from stem to stern and pointed out that he was ignorant and unscholarly…and now he comes back and offers the feeble excuse that he had three biologists look it over? Who were these biologists, and why didn’t they point out that the article was nothing but a crudely hacked together raft of creationist fallacies?

Now he also tries to salvage something by claiming that he was still correctly rebutting “Britt’s suggestion that swine flu proved the Darwinian model of macro-evolution was incorrect”. Go ahead, read Britt’s article (note also that Heck’s article did not include a link to the source); you won’t find him claiming proof of anything, nor will you find him discussing macro- vs. microevolution. He straightforwardly and entirely correctly describes viral evolution as a very real phenomenon with real-world consequences.

Here’s part of Heck’s flogging of a straw man.

In a recent article for Live Science magazine that attempts to prove Darwin by using the swine flu of all things, author Robert Roy Britt sneers, “Anyone who thinks evolution is for the birds should not be afraid of swine flu…if there’s no such thing as evolution, then there’s no such thing as a new strain of swine flu infecting people.” His supposedly witty remarks were meant to mock creationists, castigating their “junk science.”

But the intellectual dishonesty inherent in Britt’s statement is almost as obvious as his failed attempt at humor. Britt is using a common ploy of Darwinists: confuse people into believing that their utterly unsubstantiated speculation of species-to-species macro-evolution is synonymous with the universally accepted scientific fact of adaptation and development within a species (sometimes called micro-evolution).

Britt described an actual fact: viruses evolve. This isn’t just short-term physiological adaptation, but the acquisition of new properties by recombination and mutation that produces novel strains, strains which then succeed or fail (from the virus’s perspective) by how well they thrive and spread in their hosts. He consulted two competent experts, who he named in the article, and linked to other articles that summarized some of the general points he was making.

The only intellectual dishonesty was Heck’s, in claiming that an article about viral evolution was claiming proof of the evolution of frogs, lizards, or whales.

But if he wants to get into the argument about, for instance, whale evolution, I’d be happy to carve him to bits. The whole creationist version of the micro/macro evolution distinction is complete nonsense. Scientists do make the distinction, usually reserving macroevolution for the larger scale accumulation of change over time that produces new species or lineages, but they don’t argue that one is unsupported speculation.

What you have to understand is that the concept of macroevolution came first, although it wasn’t called that; it was just called evolution or transformation theory, among other things (“evolution” was a term that actually became popular relatively late). Darwin himself examined biology largely on a grand scale, looking at biogeography and populations and fossils, and making an argument on the basis of what we would now call macroevolutionary phenomena for changes in form of species over geological time. He wasn’t alone, either; many other authors preceded him in seeing that the evidence supported a history of evolutionary change. What made Darwin particularly persuasive, though, is that he coupled the evidence of changing species to a hypothetical mechanism, natural selection. He didn’t have the tools or the details to work out how heritable change was accomplished, however; that took the discovery of genetics and molecular biology to allow us to see how this ‘microevolution’ actually worked.

When creationists argue that they believe in microevolution, but that macroevolution is dubious, they’ve got it backwards. Large scale historical change was confirmed and thoroughly documented in the 19th century! Darwin was a bridge, who explained how small scale, natural processes could produce the known variation between species, and the triumph of 20th century biology was to confirm and expand upon our understanding of how those changes occurred. Neither macro nor micro evolution are speculative. Neither one is lacking in evidence.

Heck was merely flaunting the tedious ignorance of creationists, which is no longer ever surprising. He was also making a dishonest pretense to knowledge, which is also not surprising, and is one reason to never, ever trust anyone who claims to be a creationist — it’s a synonym for lying, stupid fraud. I don’t even trust his letter. Does anyone really believe that he will regard the series of arguments he made in his article as “hacked up”? I would bet that he’ll be thumping the same old lies again next time he preaches in front of his fellow phonies.

I’d also still like to know who his biology consultants were. I’m sure they’ll remain anonymous and mysterious, lest we discover that they are yet another batch of creationists with a collection of pretend knowledge and made-up “facts”.

I’m going to CONvergence!

On July 2-5, right nearby in Minneapolis, we’re having a SF con, CONvergence. One of the great things all the cool cons are doing nowadays is having a skeptics’ track, and this one is no exception. We’ve got skepchicks (they’re everywhere!) and me on various panels, so you locals ought to show up.

Unfortunately, they shifted the dates a little bit (actually, they expanded it to a four day event), and it now overlaps horribly with my trip to the Nobel conference in Lindau, so I have to miss the first part…but I’ll be there for the last half, all exhausted and jet-lagged, so you’ll be able to push me around entertainingly.