All Web 2.0-y. The table confirms my suspicion that Carbon turns into a liquid at 3840 Kelvin. Sweeeet!

Ars Technica’s John Timmer takes The New York Times to task over the ridiculous anti-science propaganda that keeps showing up on it’s editorial pages.

The observation most important, and disturbing, is the following:

Not content with undermining the nature and practice of science, the editorial page has gone on to question the very rationale for science itself. In a truly odd editorial, The Times advanced the claim that science was little more than an act of faith, the faith that the universe is regular and comprehensible. This claim gets so many things wrong it’s hard to know where to start.

Let’s be perfectly clear: creationism threatens not just the theory of Darwinian evolution, but the very concept of scientific discovery. That is because there is so much scientific information that contradicts the possibility of creationism being factually true that all science has to be wrong for creationism to be right.

This is way I take a zero tolerance position with regard to the belief that creationism (and its ilk) should be considered a science. It is dangerous, as it creates a world view that human observation and analysis is universally untrue. In such a world people would be paralyzed in their thought processes.

I’ve said this before: you can believe whatever you want, so long as you understand the difference between science and philosophy. Creationism is philosophy. Evolution is science. If you choose not to reconcile the two that’s your business, but don’t mix them up and start trying to convince people your screwed up ideas are right.

My first thought upon glancing over Rob Brown’s article, “Does fundamentalist religion cause the rejection of evolution? or is it the other way around?”¹, was to talk about it in my Stephan Colbert-esque “I don’t believe in evolution” persona, complete with references to dick-plant, Karin Hutsons, and MacGuyver. Unfortunately, when I dug into the article deeper it became less and less funny to me.

The problem is that I can’t figure out how Brown is using the term “evolution.” That is, I think he’s using the term incorrectly. Now, that’s completely understandable, since almost everyone I’ve ever met who didn’t have a degree in biology seemed to not really have a strong handle on what evolution actually is. My person feeling is that this is because evolution isn’t being explained properly in schools. I don’t think, as Brown posits, that evolution is counter-intuitive. Instead, I’d argue that evolution is actually completely intuitive, and will make perfect sense once I explain it.

Ready?

Evolution is about making more babies.

That’s it. More babies equals evolution. The logic is that if I have more babies than you, and all my kids have more babies than yours do, then eventually the number of copies of my awesome baby-making genes will outnumber your less-baby-making genes.

Evolution is not about making things “better” or more advanced. All it’s about is enabling an organism to have an advantage in spreading it’s DNA. Sometimes that means the organism gets a cool ability, like walking around, or it could be something like switching to a different food source in the environment for which there are fewer competitors, but that might be more difficult to extract energy from (a change that might superficially seem “bad”).

All that matters is that the organism changes in a way that allows it to have more children then that same organism would be able to have without the change.

More babies equals evolution.

OK, so now that we’ve got that understood, what is my problem with Brown’s article? He talks about several “evolution-like” systems, that are anything but.

Wikipedia is related to evolution… how? He explains,

Comparing it to evolution, an edit of Wikipedia might be considered equivalent to a genetic mutation. A mutation, of course, is non-directed…that is, “random.” It could be bad or good, but most of the time it is bad. If we were simply the average of all mutations that predated us, we would be nothing more than a pile of goo. And yet we are not. The reason that Wikipedia is as good as it is (and the reason that living organisms are as sophisticated as they are), is not due to the average quality of the edits (or mutations). Instead, it is due to a much harder to observe process: selection. Some edits survive, while others quickly die. While one can look at the history of a Wikipedia article and see each and every edit, it is much harder to tell how many potential editors looked at an article, subconsciously thought “I doubt I could improve this much,” and chose not to try. Each of these can be considered a “selection event”, and the number of such events vastly outnumbers the actual edits. Selection is the heart of what makes Wikipedia — as well as Darwinian evolution — work.

No! This is not evolution, and it isn’t evolutionary selection. Selection means that there is some natural force at work that gives certain traits an advantage in that environment (so as to produce more babies). In the lab, we commonly do this by using an antibiotic to select for bacteria that are carries resistance to the antibiotic (and usually also carries a gene of interest). In nature, it could be a food source that’s limited.

In terms of Wikipedia, this isn’t applicable. First, edits aren’t random; they’re deliberate. Second, an edit that is “selected” for does not cause more edits, or inspire another article to be written. Edits that are selected for do not affect the survival of the article, or the survival of Wikipedia as a whole. They just happen and that’s it. The same end result occurs if an edit is deleted (selected against). Articles don’t live and die because of the edits they contain.

More over, Brown writes,

Likewise, when we see glitches in Wikipedia (whether due to vandalism, someone pushing an agenda, or just bad writing), we are seeing the “random” part of the process in action. Again, we generally see that selection kicks in rapidly, and the glitches disappear.

The irony is what Brown is describing is more akin to Intelligent Design. God An editor shapes Man the Wikipedia article in His image to be as accurate as he believes possible. The “selection” agent Brown is talking about is a person, not an objective factor that favors changes that enable the articles to better survive in the environment.

What’s important to note is that evolution is not subjective, while Wikipedia is. You don’t want Wikipedia to evolve, you want it to get better. You want there to be a intelligent thought in deciding what stays and what goes, and you want there to be a clear purpose behind what is kept and what isn’t.

Brown goes on to give another example of an “evolution-like” system: prediction markets. To make this case he touches on the more complicated issue of equilibrium in evolutionary biology. I readily admit that my knowledge in this area is shaky (at best), but I’m pretty sure he’s using this concept incorrectly too. He says,

Evolution, of course, has similar equilibrium-seeking behavior. Imagine an animal that, were its earlobes shaped slightly differently, would be ever so slightly better able to hear the sounds made by potential prey. No matter how long you watch such animals, you would be hard pressed to find an actual situation where that subtle change would mean the difference between life and death. But as long as there is a statistical difference, a suboptimal earlobe is an unstable situation, waiting to be corrected. And, typically it will be, in surprisingly short order. The cumulative effect, of course, is what we see around us in nature: an absolutely breathtaking degree of adaptation in planet Earth’s life forms.

Ummmm… the term equilibrium means a balance of sides. So, I have no idea what the hell Brown is talking about. Where’s the equilibrium I’m supposed to be looking at? Between hunters and prey, big vs. little ears, or what?

The weird thing is that his example of predicted markets is a proper example of equilibrium, only it relates to evolution in no way I can see. Crazy.

He finishes off talking about Netflix, which I think he only put in there to talk about the nifty recommendation scheme he came up with.

I want to make it perfectly clear that I’m not hatin’ on Rob Brown, because, as I said, people tend to not really get what evolution actually is. I know that it took me a ridiculously long time to really get a handle on it myself, and I’m as smart as I am handsome. It really wasn’t until I read Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene² that I got a strong understanding as to what is really driving evolution. Also, the Molecular Biology degree I have kinda helps³.

But, we’re never going to be able to converse properly if we’re not speaking the same language. If Rob Brown believes the term “evolution” means something different than I do then we’re never going to be able to talk about evolution, let alone figure out a way to improve acceptance of evolution, which I believe is a noble goal we both share. I think in large part the divide between the scientific community and the rest of the countries (which we shall designate as “normies”) is the language barrier. Until we make sure the words we’re using mean the same thing to both of us, we’re screwed.

1. I have no idea what is going on with the capitalization of that title.↩
2. I highly recommend this book, which was recommended to me by one of my professors, but, be warned, Dawkins employs a staggering amount of math, especially when dealing with things like equilibrium. Otherwise, I think it’s fairly accessible.↩
3. Though in all fairness I think any moron can get a Molecular Biology degree. Case in point, I got one. ‘Nuff said.↩

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: scientists are fucking nuts. Case in point, James Watson, Nobel laureate for the elucidation of the DNA double helix (which was, you know, kinda important), is going around saying black people are stupid.

Now, sure, this seems really bad and mind numbingly stupid, but you have to realize that Dr. Watson worked with the brilliant Dr. Francis Crick (the discovery of the DNA structure was made by them as a team), and while Watson has done absolutely nothing notable since working with Crick, Crick continued to do remarkable research, particularly with regard to codon usage (necessary for actually making proteins from DNA). To call Crick the reputable one is an understatement; Crick clearly was Watson’s intellectual superior. Also, to my knowledge, Crick wasn’t a racist/sexist/homophobic asshole, so he had that going for him too.

This leads me to conclude that Watson was probably just Crick’s sidekick, like the fictional Watson in the Sherlock Holmes yarns, or Robin, Batman’s faithful ward/boyfriend. Surely, years of being someone else’s butt-monkey would take its toll on even the most unracist of people, and in that context Watson’s idiotic comments make sense. In Watson’s case, he’s funneling all his frustration and jealousy of Crick into attacking blacks. Danny Glover’s sidekick Mel Gibson hated the Jews. I heard Robin hated Hondurans.

The point is we shouldn’t revile James Watson for his ridiculous comments which reflect poorly on all scientists; we should honor his bravery for being that other guy standing next to someone who actually matters. Also for being a has-been. That takes a lot of courage too. So, I say leave Watson be. Once he’s dead and gone no one will want to remember the stupid and disgusting racist/sexist/homophobic bullshit he says, but we will never forget the wonderful contribution of Crick and that other guy to the world of science.

Found by coverage by kottke, who posts about a bafflingly huge range of subjects including, but not limited to, spelling mistakes, the mechanics of pasta sauce, baseball, search engine optimization, taxi-related graphic design, stupidity, Reaganomics, pictures of breakfasts, <a href=”http://www.kottke.org/remainder/07/10/14289.html’>rampant in-fighting amongst bad stand-up comics, evil dentistry, stripper ovulation, and, of course, racist scientists. That is to say, his is a delightful blog.

[Update: Yes, I misspelled the word "Nobel" a couple of times (since corrected). I blame that mistake on my being in the process of learning how to type using the Dvorak keyboard layout, which has turned out to be brutally difficult to do, and has majorly decreased my typing ability. Also, I'm an idiot.]

The winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine were announced today, with the winners being those that developed gene knockouts, which are integral in biological research.

That’s interesting in itself, but what jumped out at me in The New York Times article on this is the personal story of Dr. Mario Capecchi.

When he decided to leave Harvard because members of the department did not get along and did not recruit sufficient younger scientists, Dr. Capecchi chose to go to Utah in 1973. Colleagues told him, he said, that he was “nuts” to leave Harvard’s Ivy League splendor. But Dr. Capecchi said Dr. Watson told him he could do good science anywhere. Dr. Capecchi said the main advantage was that he could work on long-term projects more easily in Utah than at Harvard where there was a push to get results quickly. Dr. Capecchi said that when he re-applied to the N.I.H. in 1984 for the grant it had rejected in 1980, he was told, “We are glad you didn’t follow our advice.”

Those three paragraphs refer to three of the biggest problems existing in the field of biological research:

1. A wide-spread lack of support for younger scientists.
2. A wide-spread push for immediately applicable (marketable?) results.
3. Insane granting policies at the NIH, most likely the result of ridiculously poor funding by the government.

Also, Harvard is full of douchebags, put that’s not specific to the science departments.

Overall, the article is a great read, partly because Capecchi’s life is facinating, but also kinda because of the science.

A Brief Note on The Times

Astute (anal?) readers might have noticed that The Times wrote “N.I.H.” and I wrote “NIH” (without periods). Technically, I’m right, as the NIH itself doesn’t use periods. The Times, however, has a set policy to always use periods in abbreviations, regardless of their necessity, which I think is stupid. Quite frankly, I think periods in abbreviations are always stupid, and I officially denounce them (periods in abbreviations, not The Times). Oooooooo… burn!

As many of you know I previously debunked the theory of evolution via the existence of dick-plant. Apparently, this irrefutable proof of an Intelligent Designer named God has not been sufficient to turn back the tide of “scientists” and their so called “logical” and “rational thought” and “not stupidity.” Pity.

Fortunately, there are those that have taken up the mantle of not only proving evolution to be a lie, but also proving that evolution leads to increased crime, murder, immorality, prostitution, drug use, rape, and gingivitis. These heroes are the winners of the Answers in Genesis “Research Challenge Contest for 2007″.

If you’d like a summary of the accomplishments of the winners I’ll refer you to Zeno’s excellent coverage of the winning essays. Instead I want to take a moment to praise the brilliance of the grand prize winner, the young Karin Hutson, who’s essay titled “Evolution of Ethics: How the biology class undermines Morality 101″ has earned her a $50,000 scholarship to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. There she will learn about how ridiculously awesome Jesus is, how stupid Evolutionists are, and hopefully how to correctly spell the name “Karen.”

I marvel at the analytic prowess Karin shows in her essay. Karin shows insight into the issues surrounding the evolution lie and has concluded how best to properly attack it. She writes of her failed attempt to brainwash share God’s love with a fellow student,

Soon after that frustrating encounter, Answers in Genesis published Evolution Exposed. The book not only offered answers for my friend but it also taught me that the origins debate is not solved through facts alone.

Indeed, if facts alone could solve the origins debate then there wouldn’t be an origins debate. Sure, yeah, that’s because Creationists don’t actually have any facts to use, but luckily in place of facts they can use self-righteousness and unquestionable personal moral authority.

Ever since the Scopes Trail, one of the strongest arguments against Darwin’s theory has been evolution’s failure to uphold morality.

So true. The Scopes Trial in 1925, in which the a high school biology teacher was arrested for daring to poison young children with the hate that is evolution, instigated widespread moral decay. Nothing good has happened to the world since then. Granted, civil rights was sorta good. Equal rights for woman wasn’t too shabby either. An increased general public concern for the welfare people and animals was probably for the better too. Also, Medicare was a plus. That whole New Deal thing. Defeating the Nazis. Sesame Street. Fall of Apartheid. Ending Communism. Jefferson Airplane. My birth.

Karin continues her illumination by pointing to how, really, this is all just a matter of different strokes for different folks. She writes,

Creationists examine fossils and point back thousands of years to the worldwide flood explained in the Bible, while evolutionists look at the same fossils and point back millions of years.

Indeed, and since neither side has any facts or rational data, such as say carbon dating, to back up their claims we must naturally assume that Evolutionists are wrong and Creationists are right. Naturally.

Finally, Karin hammers home the point of how ridiculously unmoral evolution is.

But if evolution is true, why fool ourselves with moral restrictions? Rather we should live our evolutionary life to its full emptiness.

Just follow Karin’s amazing logic: The fact that evolutionary theory says nothing about things like morality or justice or current affairs means that evolution thinks those things don’t exists. Therefore if you believe in evolution you must also believe those things don’t exist. Therefore, evolution is wrong. Holy shit! No, I mean that literally. It’s like God is shitting in my hand. It all makes sense now.

The genius of Karin’s argument is that she never deals with those pesky “facts” that, you know, totally support modern evolutionary theory. Instead she blames evolution for everything that’s wrong in the world. This is awesome. How can you counter that? You can’t, because evolutionary theory has nothing to do with morality. It’s powerless to stop such a line of attack. It is absolutely clear that Karin deserved to win the grand prize.

If you still convinced that evolution isn’t real I leave you with one final notion to consider: You should most certainly want evolution to not be real. Why? Karin is going to grow up to (most likely) have a litter of little Karins that she will teach about science just as she has been taught, which will in turn grow up to have their own litter of sub-Karins which they shall teach, and so on and so forth. If evolution actually happens, then eventually the world will be full of Karins. Just think about that.

*** I found out about this whole ridiculous affair due to the excellent blogging of Christopher O’Brien of Northstate Science, who keeps abreast of these sorts of things. Personally, I have no idea how he can stomach reading about, blogging about, and exposing crap like this, but I’m nevertheless glad that someone is. ***

The science crowd has spent the last hundred years ramming their stupid monkey-based theories down the throats of honest Americans. Thankfully, a great and wise movement has given rise in recent years with the goal of shedding light on the true origin of Man, and that movement is called Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design teaches us that rather than the world arising from chaos and random chance that it was in actually carefully and deliberately designed by a higher power, which is obviously the Christian God, and therefore completely and totally negates all this “evolution” nonsense.

Yet, these “scientists” that make up the entirety of the academic community have rejected this sensible and obvious assertion. These “scholars” are unable to see the obvious design of the world around us. These “doctors” are full of shit. Just this morning I went to the grocery store to buy some orange juice and Twizzlers and I discovered something that proves, without a doubt, that there must be an Intelligent Designer, and that therefore evolution is a lie.

Witness God’s unquestionable glory:

You see what that is? It’s a plant that looks like a penis. Now you look me in the eyes and tell me God didn’t do that on purpose? I dare you. “Scientists” would have us believe evolution and natural selection gave rise to this amazing plant, but what in nature would select for a plant with a dong? I mean, that’s just crazy.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s pretty gay of God to put a dick on a plant. Well, yes, that’s true. Recall that God at first was perfectly happy with just one man — Adam — running around naked in his Garden of Eden. It was only after Adam complained that God gave him a woman. Also, God created musical theater, which is as we all know is hella gay. So clearly, the queerness of God is unquestionable. As unquestionable as Intelligent Design.

So remember, kids, the next time one of these evolutionists tries to convince you that the Universe evolved over billions of years due to atomic interactions you tell them about the dick-plant. That will shut them up right quick.

On September 12, 2006 Justin Timberlake selflessly endeavored to return sexy to America. A daunting task for anyone to accomplish, to be sure, but one that Mr. Timberlake handled with the poise and grace that you would expect from a guy who was doing Cameron Diaz at the time. However, in all the excitement surrounding the triumphant return of sexy, many overlooked the obvious question: how much sexy was Justin Timberlake bringing back to us? This paper answers that question by use of dubious science, which is the best kind of science that isn’t marine biology (those assholes get paid to swim with dolphins and seals and shit). <br/>

One must begin by examining how the amount of sexy has changed in the people around one’s self. To do so I use the Hefner-Nordenheimler equation of sexy determination: X = (b * t)/(1 – (F – Fd)), where X is sexy, t is time, b is the number of beers I have to drink before I give up trying to get with the hot girl I just met at Eric’s party and instead end up moving on to her slightly more chunky friend who’s a sure thing but won’t stop talking about how great her new manager at Banana Republic is, and F – Fd is how many of my friends are around to see this happen minus the number of them that are drunk and therefore unlikely to remember what you did (commonly referred to in literature as the Embarrassment Factor). Before Justin brought sexy back X was approprimately 6. Today, X = 5; a net gain of 1 sexy unit. <br/>

It should be noted that the equation above is only meant for heterosexuals. There’s a gay version of the equation above that uses mojitos instead of beer, and you have to factor in the amount of surface area covered by body glitter. Dong size might play a part in that too or something. Suffice it to say it’s beyond the scope of this research paper. <br/>

Next, we must look at the increase in personal sexiness. Granted, in my case I was nearly maxed out of sexy juice before, but in the name of science I must continue. For this, we can use the quadratic sexy equation to determine how much more sexy we are today than before. That equation has been deduced empirically in a paper published by Haling, et al, and is as follows: X = (T0 * (1/(y – m + 8v)) – (T1 * ( (y-m) / (y + m) / 4)), where 4 is not a real number.

It is a needlessly complicated equation, and I have it on good authority Haling was drunk at the time of deduction, so instead I’m going to use the Nima equation of sexiness: X = the number of single mothers that hit on me at Red Lobster. You don’t even need a calculator to figure it out. The data is shown to the right, and it pretty much speaks for itself. <br/>

Taken as a whole, the data indicates that sexy has increased a monumental 36 units. That is the single largest increase in global sexiness since Antonio Banderas waxed his chest. Using the previously established estimates for sexy, we can see that Justin Timberlake has increased sexy a whooping 3600%. <br/>

However, there is a final issue that needs to be addressed. Namely, where did sexy go in the first place? This is a deeply metaphysical question that probably no one but Justin Timberlake can answer. However, using Newtonian physics we can try and determine the distance sexy has had to travel, which can help inform as to its previous whereabouts. Using this equation I found on Wikipedia, , we can determine the distance sexy has traveled. Plugging in numbers, the answer I get is approximately 6 feet. So basically, sexy was on the other side of the couch. Interesting.