Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
This was taken by the Japanese Hinode satellite. You can see more Hinode pictures here.
As always, click to enlarge.
And I couldn’t resist this one (you can see a ton of varied and cool transit pictures at Totally Cool Pix.com)
And yesterday’s Astronomy Picture of the Day by Chris Hetlage:
This is the squee video for today, but there’s some good biology here, including the fact that the “black panther” is not a distinct species, but simply a color variant of the normally-spotted jaguar (Panthera onca). There are also melanistic (black) variants of the African leopard (Panthera pardus), also called “black panthers.”
Curiously, while the gene for dark color is dominant in jaguars (meaning that only one copy suffices to make the animal black), the melanism allele in leopards is recessive (blackness requires two copies).
The binturong (Arctictis binturong) is a little-known animal, and I remember being entranced the first time I saw one at the zoo. Its nickname, the “bearcat,” fits it perfectly; it looks like the hybrid offpsring of a cat and a bear. It’s a viverrid, which means it belongs in the family with civets and genets (each having several species), but there’s only one species of the binturong. It lives in southeast Asia, and has a diet consisting largely of fruit but supplemented with leaves, eggs, and small rodents.
Wikipedia says that the binturong is one of only two carnivores that sports a prehensile tail. Who will be the first reader to name the other species? There’s no prize here, but try to guess without Googling.
h/t: Michael
Although I was never a huge fan of science fiction, when I was younger I devoured everything I could find by Ray Bradbury, and loved The Martian Chronicles and Farenheit 451. But to be honest, I didn’t even know he was still alive. Now I’m sad to report that he passed away yesterday at the age of 91.
I know many readers are sci-fi fans, and will know a lot more about the man than I (I’m not going to trawl Wikipedia for facts about his life), so feel free to comment below on his influence, or what you liked about his work.
Well, this will be the last post in my lifetime on the transit of Venus in front of the sun. We have a couple of reader photographs of yesterday’s rare astronomical event.
The first comes from reader Pete, who calls our attention to his group of ten photos on his online album.
The photos were taken with Canon EOD 7D using a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens (at 200mm, obviously!) with a 2x teleconverter, yielding an 400mm effective focal length, or about a 13x zoom compared to a “standard” 30mm focal length for that body. I placed a 1000x (10-stop) neutral density filter on the lens, but even so had to use 1/8000s exposure at around f/16 for a reasonable exposure. Focus was manual using the LCD “live view” with 10x magnification to try to get as sharp an image as possible.
Interestingly, for this purpose it was better to use the 7D over my newer and higher resolution EOD 5D Mk III body, because in spite of the higher total pixel count, fewer of the 5D3’s (larger) pixels would cover the image. This is generally true for astronomical subjects: higher pixel density in the sensor is more important that a high pixel count, as long as noise is kept under control.
‘The videos and images displayed here are constructed from several wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light and a portion of the visible spectrum. The red colored sun is the 304 angstrom ultraviolet, the golden colored sun is 171 angstrom, the magenta sun is 1700 angstrom, and the orange sun is filtered visible light. 304 and 171 show the atmosphere of the sun, which does not appear in the visible part of the spectrum.
The PR machine at Rice University in Houston has proudly announced that Elaine Ecklund—a sociologist whose life’s goal is to show two things: 1) science and religion are compatible, and 2) scientists are far more “spiritual” than everyone thinks—has just been given another huge grant from the Templeton Foundation. It’s for 1.08 million dollars.
Note that I said her life’s work is to show stuff rather than (as scientists do) test hypotheses. That’s because Ecklund has repeatedly distorted her own survey data in the service of her (and apparently Templeton’s) mission to harmonize science and religion. To see this odious massaging, just go here, here, here, or here.
From the PR site:
“Much has been written about how science and religion relate to each other, and it will be interesting to see if the generalized media portrayal of science being in conflict with religion is really accurate,” said Dean of Social Sciences Lyn Ragsdale.
I can already tell you what Ecklund will find, for she operates not like a scientist but like a theologian, knowing what her conclusions will be in advance and then twisting the data to fit them. She’ll find that the “generalized media portrayal of science being in conflict with religion” is not accurate. For if it were, all her previous papers showing no conflict would be wrong.
The PR machine grinds on:
Ecklund says ‘This grant will provide a great opportunity for us to conduct cutting-edge research about how these religious groups understand science and provide outreach and translation to individuals who might have some difficulties with some aspects of science.”
Doesn’t that already sound like she knows what the results will be? No conflict!
The renewal of the grant to Ecklund goes to show one thing: if you demonstrate what Templeton wants to hear, you get a permanent seat on their Gravy Train. This is a total waste of a million dollars, for the results are preordained. It’s one case where there’s not very much “science” in “social science.”
But I’m sure Ecklund and Rice are very grateful for the one million dollars, which could save the lives of countless African children.
h/t: Mark
Reader Sigmund is an indefatigable follower of things BioLogos, and, examining founder Francis Collins’s views before he started that organization, came across some interesting video. He’s even boosted the audio to make it easier to hear.
Below is Sigmund’s take on Francis Collins’s response to the encounter between a straight creationist (the now-familar surgeon Ben Carson) and two evolutionists: Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennett. I don’t think you’ll be pleased with the response of the present director of our National Institutes of Health.
_________
Was BioLogos doomed even before it started?
by Sigmund
What happens when the Director of the Human Genome project hears creationist claims that he can easily counter using genetic sequence data? Well, exactly that scenario occurred six years ago in a recorded debate between Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Francis Collins and Ben Carson (the creationist surgeon recently featured in WEIT). The recording has been on YouTube for a few years but the sound quality was terrible.
In the light of recent posts about both Collins and Carson, I thought it might be worthwhile to boost the audio and revisit this debate, which occurred in Beverly Hills in 2006, a year before Collins founded BioLogos.
The debate is useful for one reason: Collins’ response to the evolution denialism coming from Carson shows why BioLogos was doomed from the outset.
In the following seven-minute clip from the debate, it’s clear that Dawkins apparently hadn’t realized that Carson was a creationist and appears shocked when Carson says he doesn’t accept evolution.
I’ve transcribed the section after Carson tried to use, as evidence for a creator God, the dubious claim that we have consciousness and other animals don’t:
Dawkins: Well, I would like to ask Dr Carson then at what point in the evolutionary divergence between the common ancestor of us and chimpanzees or us and rhesus monkeys, did this human faculty arise, and why do you need to postulate, given that, presumably, you believe in evolution, how do you reconcile the fact of evolution, because it is a fact, with the separation that you seem to be wanting.
Carson: Well thank you for asking that question because, in fact, I don’t believe in evolution, so that…
Dawkins: (sounding shocked!) Ahh, so Dr Collins and you can have a discussion about that.
Carson then launches into a standard creationist trope about an alien coming to a future Earth and finding a Volkswagen and a Rolls Royce and, because the Rolls Royce is more complicated than the Volkswagen, asserts that evolutionary theory would have us believe it evolved from the Volkswagen. Carson finishes his point with the following lines:
Carson: Darwin himself, as you know, said that we would eventually have a mechanism, we would be sophisticated enough, geologically, to show, completely, the lineage from an amoeba to a man. He said it would probably take fifty to a hundred years. Well it’s been a hundred and fifty years. We still haven’t found it. I suspect , maybe one day you will. When you do find it I will be all ears.
Unfortunately, Dan Dennett, the next to speak, misses the opportunity to send the question directly over to Collins – who, at this time was head of the Human Genome Project and hence probably one of the most appropriate individuals on the entire planet to tackle Carson’s challenge using the evidence from the genome project.
Astoundingly, when Collins does get a chance to speak, about a minute and a half later, he completely avoids Carson’s creationist claims and instead immediately resorts to accusing Dennett and Dawkins of “scientism” (defined by Collins as “the error of applying in a vigorous scientific way, arguments about faith”).
Remember, despite claiming that his faith is compatible with science, Collins, wanting to have his communion wafer and eat it too, sees a problem with examining arguments about faith” in a vigorous scientific way”. As Dennett has said before, this is tennis without the net.
In other words, even before BioLogos was founded, Collin’s response to a fellow believer who espouses creationism is not to correct him on the science but rather to attack those who make valid points about the evolution of aspects of humanity (in this case consciousness and human morality), accusing them of the crime of “scientism”. We can see now, in hindsight, that BioLogos was never about promoting good science. It was about defending religion, if need be by attacking science and addressing methodological naturalism with accusations of ‘scientism’.
The entire debate is in five sections: here, here, here, here and here.
Reader Charles sent a picture of an snub-nosed cat with a weird name:
I have a kitteh to share. He’s actually not “my” cat, he is my son’s cat. I understand that this is a common phenomenon: parents receiving hand-me-up pets. Anyway, I am certainly Leroy-Jenkins’ legal guardian. Leroy is only about two years old; earlier this year he had a weight loss episode and lost about 1/3 of his weight. The vet was mystified. He was quite skinny for about three months, then suddenly he began to gain weight and is now thriving again. Here is a picture of Leroy Jenkins (attached), the incredible shape changing kitteh.
Since the next occurrence of this phenomenon will be in 2117, unless there are fantastic medical advances and you’re very young, this will be your only chance to see this.
In about 10 minutes from now (ca 6 p.m. EST in the US), the transit of Venus across the sun will begin as seen from the observatory at Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The webcast, though, has already started (there are commentaries and interviews), so go here—and have fun.
Here’s a screenshot as the planet moves into the Sun at upper right:
A closer view from the Mount Wilson Observatory in California:
