Until Orac sent me a link, I had no idea there was a Zapatopi weblog—it’s going onto the blogroll right now.
It’s the only weblog out there that I know of that has an octopus as a contributor. Or a Sasquatch.
Sometimes creationists say things like, “Evolution doesn’t explain the origins of life!” The common reply is that that’s the domain of abiogenesis, not evolution, with the implied suggestion that the creationist should go away and quit bugging us.
That’s a cop-out.
I’m going to be somewhat heretical, and suggest that abiogenesis as the study of chemical evolution is a natural subset of evolutionary theory, and that we should own up to it. It’s natural processes all the way back, baby, no miracles required. Life is chemistry, vitalism has evaporated and is one with phlogiston, and scientists legitimately and respectably study physical processes that were the potential instigators of life. Someday we’re going to be able to create living cells from scratch, and those mechanisms will be taken for granted afterwards, just as Wöhler’s synthesis of urea is nowadays.
What prompts this assertion of uncompromising naturalism is a reminder from two publications. Natural History has published a nice review of The Origins of Life, and The Scientist has an article on the work to create a synthetic cell, Is This Life?. They’re both good, light summaries that don’t stint on pointing out the problems in these fields—but the main point is that there has been great progress as well, and that these are productive lines of inquiry.
Daniel Dennett has this new book out, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), and I don’t know that I want to read it. It was just reviewed by Michael Shermer in Science, and my general feeling was an uncomfortable vibration, liking some of what they said, but feeling at the same time that it was a tossup whether Shermer or Dennett is more annoying. Shermer has a tendency to be conciliatory towards religious babble, while Dennett has this overwhelming adaptationist bias that makes me cranky.
I’ve put a chunk of the review below the fold, let me know what you think.
Everyone sing their birthday wishes to Red State Rabble, who is also optimistically looking forward to an uprising by the moderates of Kansas in the coming year.
Why not me? My father’s side of the family was part Dutch, and my daughter’s name, Skatje, is apparently a term of endearment over there, so I am eminently qualified.
Oh, well. They’d probably all misspell my name with an extra “j”, anyway.
My small town isn’t as bad as this, I’m happy to say.
“Where would the condoms be?” I asked with total sincerity and seriousness—I am an adult after all.
“We don’t have condoms.”
“You’re a pharmacy without condoms?”
“Well,” she scoffs, “that’s not exactly the kind of behavior we want to promote now, is it?”
I got a couple more requests to drum up interest in up-and-coming carnivals.
The Dharma Bums are hosting the next I and the Bird carnival, so if invertebrates aren’t your bag, but highly derived tetrapods with elaborate keratinaceous external insulating coats are, send them a link.
If even that isn’t sufficiently narrow in scope for you, how about bipedal primates? How about bipedal primates with very specific, advanced cultural views? The Carnival of the Liberals is looking for submissions now, too.
Hey…and if you written something about those spineless Democrats, send the link to both Neural Gourmet and the Circus of the Spineless! (This really is the week for getting double-duty out of your links.)
A survey of British beliefs about the origin and development of life had the following results:
Or how about this result? Here’s what the people in the land of David Attenborough would like to see taught in school:
Depressing, isn’t it? I’ve got some Guinness in the refrigerator, maybe I should just knock off work early and go home and start drinking.
Chris has reservations about their methodology—but I don’t know. The fact that almost a quarter of the people admit to being creationists is damning in and of itself. Meanwhile, John thinks 30-40% “isn’t a large group opposing teaching evolution”. That makes me wonder if he’s been raiding my refrigerator and all my beer will be gone when I get home.
Then I read that 73% of American teenagers “engaged in at least one type of psychic or witchcraft-related activity”, and I just want to throw up my hands and give up. I’m going to need something stronger than beer.
Isn’t it about time to admit that the strategies of the past, such as being deferential to the nonsense of religion or letting the kooks who dominate discourse off the hook because pointing out their fallacies would be rude, aren’t working? I predict that there will be much finger-pointing at Dawkins and tut-tutting about all those militant members of the high church of evolutionism being to blame, and that there will be further insistence on molly-coddling lunacy to make those willing believers in creationism more comfortable.
Here’s a nifty video (mpg) of an octopus confronting an ROV working off Vancouver Island. The poor thing was just trying to crush and eat an interloper (or perhaps disassemble it for spare parts to use in its high-tech scheme to take over the world), and the ROV operator uses its thrusters to fling debris at it and drive it away.
It’s quite a battle, and the octopus holds on for a surprisingly long time in the face of an extremely obnoxious machine.
