Enforced Facts

I don’t need to tell you why the teaching of evolution is important, or at least I shouldn’t need to tell you (in truth, one of the comments I got on one of my Origins of Vertebrates posts on Teen Skepchick makes me think otherwise), and apparently you needn’t tell my government why it’s important either. Finally, something that makes sense coming from Westminister. All free schools, according to The Guardian, ‘will be forced to present evolution as a comprehensive and central tenet of scientific theory’.

This is in a huge part thanks to a number of scientists lobbying for this to be enforced, as ideology has won over evidence in several places around the world where religion is taken way too seriously.

*Cough*America*Cough*

And the theory of evolution, a fundamental pillar of biology and science in general, is not something can simply be dismissed. In science, in fact, there is a method for getting a theory to wane out, and that’s to find a better explanation for the facts it explained with a larger evidence base.

Due to the sheer size of that for biological evolution, you’re going to need to work really bloody hard, but if it’s truly incorrect it can be done.

I for one still plan to study evolutionary biology in my upcoming (hopefully) postgraduate years, so you can give me a call when you’re getting close to overthrowing it and I’ll give it my seal of approval and even help you with the research.

Crap Proven Using Different Crap!

Just to try and show children the level they’re working with when being taught creationism in Louisiana, ACE (advanced christian education) is using the loch ness monster as proof against evolution.

*sigh*

Listen, I don’t need to tell anyone that this is ridiculous, I can see the eyebrows already flying through your various roofs and I don’t mean to make you lose them forever, so before I continue go get a stepladder and get them back.

Are you safely re-eyebrowed? Good, then we can continue.

I would actually argue that if there was sufficient evidence to prove that the loch ness monster did in fact exist, that it wouldn’t be proof against evolution at all. It seems to me that the response of some creationists to evolution is to just point to something they don’t understand and say ‘hey look, can evolution explain that?’ And when you tell them yes, don’t imagine that they’ll be won over.

Because if a plesiosaur did survive into the modern age that would simply be an amazing feat of survival. Sure, if there had been no mutations since the mesozoic era that’d be bloody odd, but without much ancient DNA to compare it to how would we even know that?

I suppose this falls under the banner of trying to prove that dinosaurs lived alongside humans to try and get rid of the major flaw that is a time gap in the diversity of life of over a billion years, but at that point they don’t have a leg to stand on.

It disappoints me that creationism is being taught as science and evolution is not in these cases, obviously. But surely you would think that these ‘educational groups’ would be smart enough to avoid using bullshit to support bullshit.

I mean that would be like using acupuncture to imply that atlantis existed.

Adding Nothing To The Conversation

In my break between making notes about the history of life on earth and considering whether 3PM is too late for breakfast time I thought I’d talk to you guys, I hope you’re not busy, you know those files don’t organise themselves.

There are a couple of things I’d like to be doing this week, primarily writing the story I’ve had to delay because of exams, but instead I am forced to learn about really interesting topics such as the evolution and diversity of animals. Woe is me for having the most interesting topic left until last, damn you justice!

There is very little for me to add to the conversation today I fear, because I’m a little too blown away with the zombie news story to comment on it. I can’t picture a naked guy eating another naked guy’s face without my response being a continuous string of ‘what’s, and there’s also a shitstorm kicking off on the internet regarding JREF president DJ Grothe that I really want to add my side to, but fear that I don’t know enough about the blogosphere’s short but rich history on this to add anything to the discussion.

No doubt you can be pretty sure I stand for the women on this issue, for the reason that they’re right. Sorry angry internet people, but I don’t agree with peoples’ wrong arguments just because we have a dangling piss-sausage in common with each other.

If you really want to hear me talk more however, you can hear me talk about the new Tenacious D album on two separate sites next week. So that’s exciting if you’re a fan of rawk, and album covers that are really unsubtle in their resemblance to giant, beaked cocks.

And I don’t mean the kind with feathers.

You have been warned, and hopefully titillated.

Evolution Makes Me Giddy

As much as I enjoy scrabbling notes about the kidney, the muscles, the heart and (coming up next) the respiratory system, I don’t take a huge interest in biomedical science as far as the remembering the name of every single enzyme involved goes. Something that I would love to go into however, is evolutionary theory, and I hope I’ve talked about this before because it makes me go all warm and fuzzy when I can spend hours on the internet just analysing how different species are related.

Now for some of you that might seem like a boring prospect, but it’s the sort of thing that I could get lost in for days if I didn’t have commitments to university and y’know, going outside.

If any of you share this interest of mine, AronRa’s latest video should tickle your fancy.

It’s half an hour long, so only watch this if you’ve got the time to do so. Perhaps if you’re at work with an assignment that needs to be completed within the next hour.

You’ll have time, and during the last half an hour where you’ll have to do it all you’ll just look like you’re working super hard.

Life, But Not As We Know It?

This is a cool story I was intending to cover in my good news/bad news segment but I really wanted to talk about it, so sorry that I couldn’t wait, but I assure you I will find something equally cool to talk about on Monday.

Take a look here for the original article if you want to hear a professional journalist covering this, seeing as I will probably leave out something very important completely by accident.

Cutting to the chase, researchers have recently been working on variations on DNA and RNA structure and observing whether or not these variations could undergo the same complex processes that have led to the great diversity of life we see today.

You may remember the story a year or two ago about bacteria that could incorporate arsenic into their DNA to replace the phosphorous in their sugar/phosphate backbone. Well, whether that story deserved the credit it got or not, this goes even deeper into the molecular processes of the key to our genetics.

In fact, by retaining the coding system of nitrogenous bases (adenine, guanine, thymine/uracil, cytosine) and replacing the sugars used in the DNA backbone to create XNA, or xeno-nucleic acid; scientists found that this molecule could indeed undergo its own processes of replication, and on a larger scale, evolution.

Could this mean that life could be more common in the universe than we suspect? Surely, the ability of these molecules to form in other structures than they have on earth increases the possibilities? Perhaps.

What I would like to see personally, is how many other molecules the base pair system could work with.

If there are many more amino acids, or even better, other molecules that could code in similar enough ways to produce the effects we see in life, then, more than ever, it would be arrogant to declare ourselves the chosen people, to assume we are alone in the universe.

Kittenfest 2012

I had a recent complaint about the lack of kittens in my recent posts, and while I don’t appreciate the fact that this defers from my writing and that every single kitten video and picture on the internet has already been seen by everyone and their mother… well, I thought I had better make it up to you all.

But what could I possibly do to fix the kitten count on this blog? I’m not about to just post a load of videos of kittens or my girlfriend will call me lazy.

Let’s start on some safe ground should we? Something you’ve all definitely seen before, just so we know where we stand.

Let me then ignore the atomic kitten videos that come up when you search for kitten and just say that I’m glad that group split up.

Although knowing that left space for one direction, the wanted and rizzle kicks makes me want to throw up until atomic kitten get back together.

But enough about terrible bands.

You know, when I look up the evolution of a species I get caught up in the intricacies and can’t look away, hence why I just spent twenty minutes looking up the evolution of cats and then bears. This is what happens when I try to provide some actual, useful information on cats.

*sigh*

Okay, if you’re interested, here’s the cat family tree, notice the dog-like carnivores buggering off quite fast because there’s not enough room for them on the diagram.

Let it be known that caniforms are generally more awesome because it includes wolves, bears, seals, walruses and weasels.

What have you got there feliforms? Some cats and a hyena?

Bitch please.

Because oversized pictures aren’t intrusive at all!

Now, I will admit here that I thought cougars belonged to the panthera genus, along with tigers, leopards, lions and jaguars, but I was wrong. They exist in a separate genus.

Something I did know however, was that cheetahs belong to a separate genus, with the distinction of having non-retractable claws.

That, and being horribly inbred, sorry cheetahs but I can’t ignore that since you went through that population bottleneck you’ve been getting very friendly with your sisters.

Don’t look at me like that, there was a choice, what about getting captured and taken to a zoo? I’m sure you and that captive cheetah share barely any recessive genes!

Alright, enough with the nerd talk and on with the kittens.

The Ark In… Kentucky?

Now what I’d like to discuss today can be explained pretty simply in the following video, let me shove it in your face and then tell you where I stand on the issue, given that by the time you work out what this is about, you can be pretty certain where I stand on this issue, an issue pretty hot in America and Turkey, but not really a problem outside fundamentalist groups in the rest of the western world. Take a look.

Now, I always have a lot to say about where the money from military budgets etc. could be going to, mars missions for example, would arguably be a much better use of our time than murdering people in the other side of the world for issues that you could probably debate whether they hold any worth or not.

But there is really no question about this one, truly, to cut an education budget is a terrible thing in itself when the American education system is already presenting huge flaws, flaws that budgets should be given priority to fix, but to cut education and spend millions of dollars on a theme park that actively discourages intellectual thought in favour of promoting probably the least believable story in the Bible as truth.

I went to a Catholic school and never met anyone who thought that Noah’s ark was literally true, it’s pretty well-understood to be a metaphor of sorts throughout Christianity, or so I always like to think until I stumble across these stories and that little part of my brain that hopes that no-one’s really intellectually lazy enough to endorse this breaks in half and declares my lack of faith in humanity.

If anything, it would make sense to scrap this theme park idea and shift the gears, perhaps give more money to education if the state of Kentucky’s net intelligence is so low that this seems like a good idea, perhaps they should reconsider the middle finger they’re sticking up at the youths among them who have a right to learn and take a look at themselves and how selfish they’re being trying to preserve this stagnated myth of the ark when there are hundreds of great ideas that the children they are also in charge of educating cannot learn because of these new cutbacks.

Mutations Are Sexy

Don’t mind me, I’m just going to ramble on about science for a couple of hundred words, if it serves no purpose other than to refresh my memory of topics I’m likely to be tested on later on in my course then that’s at least something I’ve gained by shoving a combination of facts and musings in your collective faces.

So let’s carry on from where I was last time… the X-men thing…

On the subject once again of mutations, it’s relevant to note that the time scale for these things is pretty extraordinary.

In fact there are measures our body takes to minimise the mutations we undergo, and within asexual processes this is pretty much the golden standard. Whereas in organisms undergoing sexual reproduction the desired goal is increased variation within a species, mashing together (for lack of a better term) a combination of genes with independent mutations and characteristics.

If an organism needs to adapt quickly, say, in a hostile environment, this is a far better process to use to increase the chances that advantageous mutations will arise and therefore the populations will survive the hostile environment and pass their genes onto the next generation.

In vertebrates however, it would seem that sexual reproduction is more favourable due to longer generation times.

Say there’s about 20 years between each new generation.

Within each twenty year cycle mutations will arise that may be transferred onto the next generation.

However, generation times for say, bacteria are very short, hence why you can look at your week old chocolate mousse and see that from an invisible few microorganisms a population has grown to the point where you can actually see the colony as a visible feature.

Now I’m sure that example may not have served those of you who are eating very well, but I don’t cater to the needs of everyone.

The X-Gene

So I suppose I should come back to one of those sci-fi assertions that were so kindly gifted to me a few days ago. Today I think I’ll take a crack at: mutations can be good.

Which, I have to say, is… true.

They can be good, they’re usually indifferent but they can be good.

However, case and point of showing bad mutations (no matter how silly and exaggerated the X-men theory of genetics appears to be), in the original run of Ultimate X-men (I forget which issue it was but I think it falls somewhere in the New Mutants story arc where beast gets flattened by a sentinel at the end) there is a comic where a young boy wakes up with his mutant powers active, finds no-one in the house, heads to school and realises that he’s releasing a poisonous gas that kills every living thing around him.

Now that’s a shitty power.

This story gets resolved as you would imagine, pretty harshly.

Wolverine finds this boy in the mountains, having been sent their by Nick Fury and lets him know that it wasn’t his fault, that he just drew the short straw before promptly euthanising him with his claws.

Now, you might say, that’s pretty dark.

Well, if you propose that single mutations can make enough of a phylogenetic impact to cause you to grow a whole set of wings, this is the other end of the spectrum.

But in reality, thankfully, it’s very unlikely that this would ever happen.

Mutations are incremental and usually result in no change, in fact, if all mutations were a positive step then evolution would be whirring away a lot faster than we have observed, that is, if the organisms involved are always subject to evolutionary pressures that they would benefit from a leg up over.

More on this another time.

Where Does It Fit In?

So I know I’m not really entitled to comment on this issue due to my bias, as stated previously, I am pretty much the worst person to answer the question of if creationism gives Christianity a bad name.

And something I forgot to really lie down here is the point where it becomes something ridiculous as opposed to the points where it could still be considered reasonable to place God in the timeline of the universe.

For example, let me lay down right here that a belief that God created the multiverse/universe makes sense in a standpoint of finding where your faith fits in. It’s possible that something set off the big bang and it’s okay to hypothesise that your God made that initial spark in the fire of creation.

Wouldn’t that essentially be what a creator would have to do given that the evidence so far points towards a big bang?

Again, moving down the scale, believing that God created life is not harmful either. So far we have a hypothesis or two about how life began but nothing that’s as widely supported by the evidence as say, evolution. Certainly you wouldn’t be doing an intellectual disservice by teaching your children that this is how you believe life was created.

Given that not many parents talk about hydrothermal vents and primordial soup to their children you could argue that at least they’re thinking about these questions, questions that are truly fundamental to our understanding of how we got here.

However, denying evolution doesn’t earn you much besides keeping with a literalist view of the Bible, and if you are going to take it literally there are a lot of other things that come along with that.

But you can be a good Christian without taking it literally, you’re allowed to decide which parts you believe in, belief after all is subjective and you should let no-one tell you how to believe, including me, but when you’re denying the vast array of fossils and biochemical markers you’re not making a choice in regards to belief, you’re choosing to ignore something that’s already there.

It does not make you less clever, or less anything to think that however, and don’t let people tell you otherwise, people fall into traps, I’ll be the first to admit I’ve done things that are even less reasonable in the past.

But it’s not going to do you any favours by missing out on understanding this brilliant story of the diversification of species.

So in a way you’re missing out, the natural history museum’s open to the public however, go take a look if you want to catch up on it.