Carnivalia, and an open thread

I’m home at last, after a long flight and a long drive through more thunderstorms, and boy am I tired. Not from the flying and driving, but from being the old geezer amongst the youngsters at that recent meeting, and trying to keep up with them. Did you know those whippersnappers stay up to all hours of the night, drinking and dancing and sinning, and they don’t take naps, even?

OK, while I try to restore my disturbed equilibrium and restart my poor overtaxed brain, here are a few things you can read elsewhere.

Hello, New Yorkers!

So, there’s about 30 or so of the ScienceBlogs clan gathered in New York City this weekend. We’ve been busy, ummm, bonding or something, and also having some serious discussions, but now we’re more or less free. We’re kind of dispersed in a chaotic fashion, but some of us, including at least me and Bora, and probably several others, are planning to meet at the BBar and Grill, at 40 East 4th St., from about 7:00 on. All are welcome, come on down and join us!

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What happens in NY should stay in NY

You may be wondering what I’m doing in New York. I’m not going to tell you, except that I will mention a dreaded phrase: late-night inebriated karaoke. Not me, sweet jebus, but there I was, overwhelmed with culture shock, in a karaoke bar, something I have never experienced before. Let me tell you, Dave can dance if he wants to, Janet does a pretty fair Liz Phair, Rich is an enthusiastic whoever-that-was, Chris truly is angry drunk Dylan, and Bora is hereafter known as monotone Elvis, but Razib stole the show with a flawless, pitch perfect impersonation of a goat on psilocybin being anally violated by an angry Wookie. Purportedly, it was a duet with Shelley, but she seemed to be singing something completely different, with melody, meter, and a single common pitch, and was drowned out by the syncopated howling.

There may be further reports from New York, unless I’m overwhelmed by the madness.

Endless Forms Most Beautiful

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I just finished Sean B. Carroll’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo-Devo the other day, and I must confess: I was initially a bit disappointed. It has a few weaknesses. For one, I didn’t learn anything new from it; I had already read just about everything mentioned in the book in the original papers. It also takes a very conservative view of evolutionary theory, and doesn’t mention any of the more radical ideas that you find bubbling up on just about every page of Mary Jane West-Eberhard’s big book. One chapter, the tenth, really didn’t fit in well with the rest—the whole book is about pattern, and that chapter is suddenly talking about a few details in the evolution and development of the human brain.

So I read the whole thing with a bit of exasperation, waiting for him to get to the good stuff, and he never did. But then after thinking about it for a while, I realized what the real problem was: he didn’t write book for me, the inconsiderate bastard, he wrote it for all those people who maybe haven’t taken a single course or read any other books in the subject of developmental biology. I skimmed through it again without my prior biases, and realized that it’s actually a darned good survey of basic concepts, and that I’m going to find it very useful.

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They should rename it again to The Journal of Delusional Rationalization

If you want to take a look at one of the sources of creationist thought, the workshop where the red-hot anvil of pseudoscience and the inflexible hammer of theology are used to forge the balloon animals of creationism, The Journal of Creation (formerly the Creation ex nihilo Technical Journal) is now online … or at least part of it is. They’re working on it. For now, it’s enough that you can browse through several issues and see how they put up this superficially persuasive façade of analyzing matters objectively and scientifically, while somehow coming to the weirdest and most nonsensical conclusions that flout the evidence but somehow always magically end up supporting Christian theology of some sort.

A perfect example, and favorite bit of insanity off their list, is a review of Carroll’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful* titled “Evo Devo refutes neo-Darwinism, supports creation”. It’s fairly typical: most of the articles that address modern science do this same process of complaining that nothing means what the science says it does, quote-mining a few fragments that are distorted to support creationist claims, and winding up with a triumphant fist in the air and a victory dance while they insist that evolutionary biology is actually a tent-revival meeting for Jesus.

Anti-creationists should browse it anyway. It’s amazing how many of these arguments will percolate into public discussions of evolution — while they can’t be troubled to read any actual science, creationists will devour the bullshit in The Journal of Creation and regurgitate it for you.

*Hey, I just noticed that my review of that book didn’t make the move over here to scienceblogs. I’ll have to correct that.

Double Molly opportunity!

I was bad. I completely forgot to have Molly nominations for July, and here it is August. So let’s catch up: name your fave commenter for either month right here, or just your favorite for any time, and I’ll tally ’em up when I get back from New York — we’ll have a super-duper double induction ceremony, with both cake and pie.

A day spent traveling

If it’s been a bit dead here today, it’s because I’ve been on an aeroplane most of the afternoon, and am now holed up in the lovely little village of New York for a few days of urban thrills.

While I was cruising through the skies, Vox Day has responded to my rebuke of his pathetic anti-scientific efforts. He’s now claiming that if evolution were capable of rates of 200,000 darwins, then we could turn a mouse into an elephant in 20 years, and since we haven’t, then evolution is bogus.

I trust Pharyngula readers are smart enough to see the obvious logical hole. That evolution does not proceed at an extravagant rate dictated by a creationist does not call evolution into question in the slightest. As I mentioned, those extreme rates are observed in extreme experimental situations and involve changes in size of a few percent over short intervals in small and prolific invertebrates. No biologist claims elephants shot up over the span of decades, and it is entirely inappropriate to pretend that those kinds of rapid transformations should apply to the situation Day invented.