SFalopods

The Biology in Science Fiction blog has a short article on color-changing chromatophores in cephalopod skin, and asks for examples of biological adaptive camouflage used in SF stories — I want more. I want to know what SF novels have used cephalopods or cephalopod-like aliens as major characters or antagonists. There’s usually a tendency to make anything with tentacles the representative of evil in these stories, unfortunately.

Coulter drives a stake through irony’s heart

Ann Coulter is coming out with a new book: If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans. I read Coulter’s last book, Godless, and I can tell you that having Ann Coulter call anyone else stupid is like seeing cockroaches complaining about vermin, or a pig farmer turning up their nose at someone else’s stink. It’s just not right.

Speaking of that Godless tripe, my challenge to her fans still stands. I still get email now and then from supporters whining that I dare to criticize her, but not one has ever plainly pointed to one single paragraph in the evolution chapters that they will stand up for as factually correct.

The daily egnorance: the mind reels

What are we going to do with Michael Egnor? He seems to be coming up with a new bit of foolishness every day, and babbling on and on. Should we ignore him (there really isn’t any substance there), or should we criticize him every time (although he’s probably capable of generating idiocy at a phenomenal rate—he’s got a real talent for it)?

I’m not going to link to the awful “Evolution News & Views” site, and I’ll make this brief. His latest gripe is with the recent Newsweek cover story (that I had some problems with, too), but his argument is silly.

This is your assignment. You are to read the mind of someone named “Lucy.” Actually, you are to find out where Lucy’s mind came from. You can’t meet Lucy. She’s been dead for 3.2 million years. Your only data will be a fragment of Lucy’s fossilized skull and genetic analysis of some apes, men, and lice.

This isn’t a bad dream. This is an exciting new branch of evolutionary biology, and it’s on the cover of Newsweek magazine. And they’re serious.

The article doesn’t claim to be able to read dead minds. It cites a few studies in paleoneurology, where some interesting correlations between hormones and brain-associated proteins with behavior might provide some general insights. If Egnor is going to build straw men, he could at least try to make the stuffing a little less obvious.

He also goes on and on about how he can’t read brains by looking at blood flow in his work. We know. No one claims that we can. Of course, Michael Egnor does use these indirect measures to diagnose general properties of the brain — broad function, health, injury, etc. Unless he wants to argue that the physical state of the brain has nothing to do with the individuals possessing it, in which case he is out of a job, it’s awfully strange for him to claim that we can’t learn anything by examining brains and the molecules associated with him…and the only way he can do it is by inventing this false claim that biologists are saying they can “read the mind”.

He’s going to have to do better than this dishonest junk. I’m getting bored with him already.

Masochistic pleasures

The blog Startling Moniker has a nice acknowledgment for being added to my blogroll, but the main interest in that post is that he admits to a guilty pleasure I share: fishing through seedy bookstores. You can sometimes find the weirdest stuff in old bins in fringe bookstores. DaveX explores a Christian bookstore (speaking of masochism…) and finds a copy of Gish’s 1972 Evidence Against Evolution, which of course does not contain any.

I can do him one better—I have this treasure on my bookshelf:

i-25fb0effeb7bd673d7b74d82e6443b8d-twilight_of_evo.jpg

Yes indeed, Henry Morris was announcing the Twilight of Evolution 44 years ago, in 1963. It also has a section on the evidence against evolution, which begins with this not-so-promising paragraph.

In this chapter and the next we shall summarize the evidence against by showing, first, that there is no evidence of evolution occurring at present, and second, that there is no evidence that evolution has occurred in the past. In doing this, it is necessary to start with the Biblical record.

The rest of the chapter consists of bible quotes, the second law of thermodynamics, more bible quotes, mutations cause decay, more bible quotes, Big Bang vs. steady state, and concludes that “the revealed Word of God, supported completely by all true science, teaches that the evolutionary principle, as applied to present processes and events, is not only not valid but is essentially impossible.”

The last chapter also explains the title—we’re in the twilight of evolution because soon enough Jesus is going to appear with a fiery sword and put it to death. There’s a lot of gloom and doom and threats of Armageddon to wrap up this story, so just in case you don’t accept Biblical Science, be prepared to be tortured. One happy note: it also admits that they have no hope of defeating evolution “until Satan himself is destroyed”!

More signs of DI desperation

Geoffrey Simmons, a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, is going to be on the prestigious Coast to Coast AM show to talk about evolution and the impossibility thereof on Tuesday night. Simmons is an MD (lately, we’re seeing a trend in DI’s taste in proponents, aren’t we?) in Eugene, Oregon … one of my favorite places, so it’s a little sad to see craziness that isn’t of the granola-and-herb type coming out of there.

But Coast to Coast AM … I remember listening to that years ago, when it was just Art Bell broadcasting out of his double-wide in Pahrump. It’s a show for loons — conspiracy theorists, bigfoot specialists, people dreading apocalyptic doom from aliens in flying saucers. It’s perfect for the Discovery Institute!

Reviews of bad movies can be more fun than the movies themselves

Gary Farber has been collecting reviews of 300, the new movie about the Spartans at Thermopylae, and they certainly are amusing — I haven’t seen the movie, but I suspect my opinion of it will be close to Howard Waldrop’s and Lawrence Person’s. I saw the trailer, and while the cartoonish style is to be expected given the source, the lack of historicity and indulgence in fantasy grates terribly. At least the kitsch is generating interesting reactions.

Finney vs. Seivers

Raymond Finney, MD of Tennessee wants to ask a bunch of pompous questions of his state board of education (“Is the Universe and all that is within it, including human beings, created through purposeful, intelligent design by a Supreme Being, that is a Creator?” etc., etc., etc.). Although I’m getting my fill of arrogant doctors lately, I really don’t have any problem with a stuffed shirt in the state senate asking questions, and now we learn that neither will the Tennessee courts—it’s not unconstitutional. As long as there is no penalty if the education commissioner doesn’t answer, or answers in a way Finney doesn’t like, it’s not an issue.

And of course, I’ve already written up the answers for the commissioner, helpful guy that I am. A simple “NO” will handle it.

Finney has admitted his actual goal now, though, and I do think that this ought to be smacked down hard.

Finney, a Maryville Republican, said he wants the department to say there’s no scientific proof for the theory of evolution and to let schools teach creationism or intelligent design.

That is a fundamental misconception, and one I wish we could somehow hammer into these gomers’ heads. There is no scientific proof of anything…proof isn’t something scientists deal with at all. It’s an inappropriate demand in several ways.

  • It singles out evolution, but as I said, there is no scientific proof of anything. Why not question cell theory or electromagnetism?
  • If Finney is going to demand “proof”, where’s the proof for creationism or intelligent design? He’s awfully inconsistent.
  • The word Finney is actually looking for is not “proof”, but “evidence“. Evidence is what we look for in science classes. There is evidence for evolution; there is none for creationism or intelligent design. Case closed.

Finney is a kind of standard issue pretentious creationist boob, and he’s said what his kind always say … a load of codswallop. The real test here, and what I’ll be very interested to see, is Education Commissioner Lana Seivers’ response. This is where a competent and no-nonsense educator should simply cut through the crap and put Finney in his place. Or she can be a dithering political creature and betray the educational goals of the teachers and students of her state by sucking up to the grandstanding pol. I don’t know a thing about her, so we’ll have to see how she emerges from this little test of character.