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Melville on Science vs. Creation Myth

Michael White — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 12:47:51 +0000

Melville on Science vs. Creation Myth

From Melville's under-appreciated Mardi:

On a quest for his missing love Yillah, an AWOL sailor pretending to be a demi-god travels the (imaginary) Mardi chain of Polynesian islands via canoe fleet, in the company of fellow demi-god King Media and his entourage. After viewing some fossils, the group's resident philosopher, Babbalanja is asked how the islands were created. A scientific explanation being unsatisfactory to the group, Babbalanja presents an alternate hypothesis:

Media said:—"Babbalanja, you love all mysteries; here's a fitting theme. You have given us the history of the rock; can your sapience tell the origin of all the isles? how Mardi came to be?"

Michael White Mon, 02/14/2011 - 07:47

Categories

Humor

Non-coding DNA Function... Surprising?

Michael White — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 16:51:12 +0000

Non-coding DNA Function... Surprising?

The existence of functional, non-protein-coding DNA is all too frequently portrayed as a great surprise uncovered by genome sequencing projects, both in large media outlets and in scientific publications that should have better quality control in place.

Eric Lander, writing a Human Genome Project 10th anniversary retrospective in Nature, explains the real surprise about non-coding DNA that was revealed by big omics projects.

Michael White Thu, 02/10/2011 - 11:51

Categories

Genetics & Molecular Biology

Yep, This Should Get You Fired

Michael White — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 12:41:25 +0000

Yep, This Should Get You Fired

An Ohio 8th-grade creationist science teacher with a habit of branding crosses on his students' arms has been fired, after a long and tedious process and a lawsuit that cost the school district some big bucks.The referee who evaluated the case for termination nicely summed up in one sentence (PDF) exactly what you can't do when you're a public school science teacher: ...He persisted in his attempts to make eighth grade science what he thought it should be - an examination of accepted scientific curriculum with the discerning eye of Christian Doctrine.

Michael White Fri, 01/14/2011 - 07:41

Categories

Science Education & Policy

No, There Are No Alien Bar Codes In Our Genomes

Michael White — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 13:23:08 +0000

No, There Are No Alien Bar Codes In Our Genomes

Even for a physicist, this is bad: Larry Moran, in preparation for the appropriate dose of ridicule that this situation deserves, quotes physicist and pop-science author Paul Davies:

Another physical object with enormous longevity is DNA. Our bodies contain some genes that have remained little changed in 100 million years. An alien expedition to Earth might have used biotechnology to assist with mineral processing, agriculture or environmental projects. If they modified the genomes of some terrestrial organisms for this purpose, or created their own micro-organisms from scratch, the legacy of this tampering might endure to this day, hidden in the biological record.

Michael White Wed, 01/12/2011 - 08:23

Categories

Evolution

Politics Matters...

Michael White — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 15:18:52 +0000

Politics Matters...

... as depressing as that may be to hear. Some friends recently described their December trip to India, the first time they've visited in years. India's economy is on fire, unleashing some tremendous pent-up economic demand. What was striking, my friends related, was how strongly India's economic development is geared toward the future, towards not only catching up with wealthier, more developed nations, but also towards anticipating and meeting economic challenges that loom in the future. This is in stark contrast to the US, which seems, at best, focused on defending the status quo.

Michael White Tue, 01/11/2011 - 10:18

Categories

Science & Society

Scientific Method In Decline?

Michael White — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:03:00 +0000

Scientific Method In Decline?

Jonah Lehrer in The New Yorker about the slipperiness of the scientific method:"The Truth Wears Off: Is There Something Wrong With The Scientific Method?"The test of replicability, as it’s known, is the foundation of modern research. Replicability is how the community enforces itself. It’s a safeguard for the creep of subjectivity. Most of the time, scientists know what results they want, and that can influence the results they get. The premise of replicability is that the scientific community can correct for these flaws.

Michael White Wed, 12/29/2010 - 09:03

Categories

Science & Society

Airport Body Scanner Won't Give You Cancer

Michael White — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 10:50:54 +0000

Airport Body Scanner Won't Give You Cancer

With the big holidays just around the corner, thousands of folks are about to get their first taste of the TSA's new virtual strip search machines - X-ray body scanners. Privacy issues may be the main concern for most people, but the safety of these things has some people worried.

Michael White Fri, 11/19/2010 - 05:50

Categories

Public Health

Apocalypse 1955: Growing Up Telepathic

Michael White — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:26:59 +0000

Apocalypse 1955: Growing Up Telepathic

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”The much-revered writers of the Golden Age of science fiction can be quite rough around the edges, even downright embarrassing on occasion. The writing is hurried, the plots of plot-driven books are disturbingly inconsistent, and the characters are primarily stock types and authorial mouthpieces. To top it off, many of these novels are ambitious, earnestly offered as novels of big ideas. These ideas are usually sympathetic (tolerance, freedom, racial equality, escape from religious tyranny), but generally reduced to platitudes expressed in long, somnolent sermons by the your standard pointy-headed philosopher-scientist.

Michael White Fri, 11/12/2010 - 10:26

Categories

Science & Society

Science Is Not Baseball - Almost Everyone's A Winner, Sort Of

Michael White — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 17:45:47 +0000

Science Is Not Baseball - Almost Everyone's A Winner, Sort Of

I like Nicholas Wade, and think that his latest NY Times piece on basic research is worth reading. However, I take issue with his overly simplistic characterization of how research works:Basic research, the attempt to understand the fundamental principles of science, is so risky, in fact, that only the federal government is willing to keep pouring money into it. It is a venture that produces far fewer hits than misses....

Michael White Mon, 11/08/2010 - 12:45

Categories

Science & Society

Why stick with QWERTY when the keyboard is virtual?

Michael White — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 08:44:55 +0000

Why stick with QWERTY when the keyboard is virtual?

With virtual keyboards so common, it's should be easy for alternative, more efficient keyboard layouts to make headway, since, as we've all heard, the default QWERTY layout was designed to slow typists down. So why aren't more devices (or at least the iPhone) giving you options, like the Dvorak layout? From the Hartford Advocate:

If you consider all of the ways that technology has changed, even in the past four or five years, it seems strange that the majority of us continue to use something as outmoded and inefficiently designed as the QWERTY keyboard.

Michael White Wed, 10/27/2010 - 04:44

Categories

Technology