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Friday, May 10, 2013

Almaleea subumbellata

Jerry Coyne says he will post a picture of a plant if he can find a cute one [A vertebrate]. I decided to help him out by pointing you to the latest Botany Photo of the Day.

This is Almaleea subumbellata, or wiry bushpea, from Tasmania, Australia. You can read all about it at the UBC Botanical Garden website. They have a high resolution photo.

Prettier than cats and they don't pee on your rug or scratch your furniture.


39 comments :

VitaminB said...

Here are a couple more.

Monkey Face Orchid: http://bit.ly/ZOt3nM
Duck Orchid: http://bit.ly/12yvwIu

Alex SL said...

In case somebody wants to see nice plant pictures, posting them is a main reason why I started my own blog. Not daily but usually 2-3 per week.

Pépé said...

I dedicate this flower to Coyne and his atheist followers, like Moran here!

Since, for Darwinists, life is Evolution is Reproduction is Survival is Reproduction is..., I think the phallic symbolism is appropriate.

The Darwinian worldview has the same intellectual smell!

Pépé said...

My humble advice to those who want to provide a link to another site when commenting on this blog.

Why not make the life of readers of this blog more satisfying by providing a link they can click?

Here is how to do this:
Go learn HTML!

This will be the result!

VitaminB said...

Pepe, I take it your comment is directed at me (or at least a result of my post). I am not about to learn HTML for a single post, as pretty and convenient as it can be, but thank you for the advice. Actually, I didn't know that the linked would not automatically be parsed.

Arek Wittbrodt said...

Projection?

Diogenes said...

Here we see the face of the New Anti-atheism. A new anti-atheist cannot look at a pretty flower and just enjoy its beauty, without obsessing over IHASM [I hate atheists sooo much!]

By contrast, consider Ray Comfort's infamous chocolate cake incident, when preacher Comfort posted an image of a chocolate cake on his website-- expecting that angry, bitter atheists would attack a cake, because atheists are so evil, they don't even like chocolate!

Didn't happen-- and Comfort was rather disappointed to find atheists don't attack his cake, so instead later on he just made up a story about atheists attacking his chocolate cake. Never happened, and the atheists who frequent his blog remembered the Cake Incident and called him a liar. He deleted their comments and edited his post to remove evidence of his lie. This and other words of Comfort discussed here.

Diogenes said...

Wordpress, I believe, will automatically insert hyperlinks.

Paypay doesn't know shit about biology, but he can format a hyperlink. Take that, Watson and Crick!

Pépé said...

AW, Freud, like Marx, has been discredited, next to come is Darwin. Like a Great President once said: "You cannot fool all the people all the time", and you can't fool me!

steve oberski said...

Paypay, are you and Dominic some sort of creepy, creotard tag team ?

Diogenes said...

Paypay sez: "AW, Freud, like Marx, has been discredited"

Since you're so certain of the imminent death of evolution, I'll be glad to add you to my blog's list of creationists pronouncing the imminent death of evolution. Most of the creationists who made that prediction grew old, senilely prattling "there are more and more creationist" and are already dead. Please peruse my list, and inform me where you would like me to insert you.

As for the death of Freudianism, the next up is creationism. ID creationism is a substitute for Freud's psychoanalysis. All that jive about "metaphysical presupposions"-- all that is just psychoanalytic theory for people who really hate atheists and want to control other people's gonads.

ID was never a competitor of Darwin's, never even tried-- it's a competitor of Freud's.

Arek Wittbrodt said...

Why so serious, Pépé? I was only making fun of you. (And I made clickable link :P )

Pépé said...

Diogenes: "Since you're so certain of the imminent death of evolution..."

I said Darwin, a.k.a. Darwinism, not evolution. Darwin's explanation of how evolution occurs has been falsified and discredited a long time ago and that has nothing to do with creationists.

Prof. Denis Noble plainly explain this in The Music of Life.

Pépé said...

steve oberski, are you part of some sort of deranged, dar-wino DODO team?

(DODO = Darwin Only Darwin Only)

Pépé said...

Diogenes, I know a lot more than you about biology.

BTW and FYI Crisk's Central Dogma Of Biology has been falsified by epigenetics.

(F**k, I hope I won't have to educate commenters of this blog!)

Nullifidian said...

I said Darwin, a.k.a. Darwinism, not evolution.

In that case, that's like predicting the imminent extinction of the trilobites. Evolution solely as Darwin conceived it was over the instant Mendelian genetics was merged with evolutionary theory to form the Modern Synthesis. Not only did it contain a hereditary mechanism he had no idea about, but it also had an evolutionary mechanism — genetic drift — that he had never conceived.

So now that you've slew the already slain, what's you're next target? Caloric theory? The luminiferous aether? Miasma theory? N-Rays?

Nullifidian said...

BTW and FYI Crisk's Central Dogma Of Biology has been falsified by epigenetics.

You're really going to try that line on this blog?

Look, Ma! HTML markup!

Diogenes said...

Paypay, since you know "a lot more" than I about biology, you must surely:

1. cite a reference in the peer-reviewed literature defining "The Central Dogma Of Biology"

1. cite a reference in the peer-reviewed literature presenting evidence which the authors claim disproves "The Central Dogma Of Biology"

steve oberski said...

@Nullifidian

Paypay has latched onto epigenetic Lamarckism as the death knell for evolutionary biology.

Nullifidian said...

steve oberski:
Paypay has latched onto epigenetic Lamarckism as the death knell for evolutionary biology.

And he wants to claim that it is Darwin who is refuted by this? The man who scattered references to the "inherited effects of use and disuse" all throughout his book?

[insert Picard facepalm macro here]

Anonymous said...

Shit Pépé, if you can't get your names right, why do you claim that you know more biology than Diogenes? Who is Crisk? What is that central dogma of biology? How does epigenetics exactly falsify such dogma? Why should we care?

Fuck I hope we won't have to educate you. Nah, I doubt that you're educable. (Oh I see that Nullif is already trying to educate you. We will see how pointless that will be.)

Diogenes said...

DNA is methylated at certain nucleotides? Darwin is finished!

Diogenes said...

NegEnt sez: Who is Crisk?

Guy who invented Crisco.

Diogenes said...

Paypay says: "Crisk's Central Dogma Of Biology has been falsified by epigenetics."

You mean DNA is methylated at certain base pairs!? Crisk is finished!

Him and his partner Wesson. Those two are no use for anything but deep frying, and we all know that's not good for you.

To think those punters in Sweden gave a Nobel to those dummies Wesson and Crisk when they could've given it to Paypay who must know much more biology than they do, and is probably lower in cholesterol too.

Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussen said...

Time to add PéPé to the list of people who think they get biology but don't, yet are confident enough in their own abilities to think they can come to a place like this and debate the details.

Andregross: Failure to understand proteinfolding.
Andregross: Failure to understand neutral mutations
Andregross: Failure to understand cancer
Andregross: Failure to understand mutation-rates
Andyboerger: Failure to understand the tree of life references he gave
Pepe: Failure to understand the central dogma.
Pepe: Failure to understand epigenetics.
Pepe: Failure to understand Lamarckism.
Dominic: Failure to understand all of the above, and everthing else ever discussed on this blog related to biology.
All ID-proponents that ever visited this blog: Failure to understand drift, stochastic processes and the evidence for junk DNA.

And this is just what I can remember off the top of my head from the last couple of months.

andyboerger said...

"Andyboerger: Failure to understand the tree of life references he gave"

????
Refresh my memory on that one, please.
I don't recall giving any tree of life references. Liked the movie, though.

Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussen said...

Forgotten eh? Well, it was awhile ago, don't remember the exact topic that spawned the discussion. In any case, you gave a reference to the tree of life project, apparenlty under the misapprehension that it said common descent could not be resolved because of "missing data" or something to that effect. It was around the same time Andregross hilariously tried to insinuate all mutations cause cancer.

andyboerger said...

I don't recall this at all. I'm not even sure what the 'tree of life project' is, to tell you the truth.
Maybe I was drunk.

Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussen said...

Hey, I went back and looked for it and turns out I mistook you for Andregross. My apologies.

Here's the post in question.

Looking back over that thread, I could make an even longer list on Luther Flint's misapprehensions alone, and John Witton's would probably take 3 entire blog-posts.

andyboerger said...

well, there's me, Andre, and now Andyjones. We probably run together into one deluded mass sometimes.

Pépé said...

Diogenes: cite a reference in the peer-reviewed literature presenting evidence which the authors claim disproves "The Central Dogma Of Biology"

Does the Central Dogma Still Holds

...Thus, there is non-negligible flow of information from proteins to the genome in modern cells, in a direct violation of the Central Dogma of molecular biology...

Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussen said...

And as pointed out by one of the referees, this statement hinges on how exactly one defines the central dogma. Even in the main text, Koonin concedes there is no such thing as reverse translation.

True, if it's defined simply to mean "non-neglible flow of information" back to the genome, then the central dogma was never true to begin with. It only really makes sense from the standpoint of the impossibility of reverse translation (into the original coding sequence). While reverse translation is concievable, there'd still be no mechanism by which the original coding could be restored from protein sequence alone.

Anonymous said...

There's no central dogma of biology.

Pépé said...

This is typical Darwinian sleight of hand.

When new discoveries threaten to score a goal against Darwinism, Darwinists move the goal post.

1) This has happen to random mutations that are all but random.

2) This has happen to "junk" DNA that is anything but "junk".

3) This has happen to the Central Dogma that has been falsified.

When will you guys face the facts and start doing real science?

Don't ask me for peer reviewed papers link. Do your own research, the Internet exists for that!

Anonymous said...

Pépé,

It would help if instead of you placing the goal posts by creating straw-men (or instead of believing the straw men built by other creationists), you paid attention to what evolution really is about. Start by realizing that evolution is not "Darwinism."

1. What the hell are you talking about? Please explain carefully what this is, and what is it that you mean by moving goal posts about such a thing. Example, be clear about what falsifies random mutations, and how that makes evolution false too. Now, if you truly meant "Darwinism," rather than evolution, then you could not be more wrong. Darwin did not know anything about mutations, let alone random ones.
2. Again, if you meant Darwinism you could not be more wrong. Most scientists that I know rejected the idea of abundant junk DNA because they thought that natural selection would get rid of such thing. So, no-junk DNA would favour "Darwinism." But evolution could not care one way or another. Evolution happens. whether positive and negative selection dominate or not is another story.
3. Which central dogma is this and what does it's status have to do with evolution?

Please explain carefully. You seem quite ignorant about what you are attacking, but let's see. This is your opportunity to be clear and finally show us your mastery on these issues.

Pépé said...

"Please explain carefully..."

I refuse to spoon feed you. Get your own education...

Anonymous said...

Nah, what you refuse to do is get your own education. You know that if you start trying to explain, then you would have to be careful about what you say, therefore you would have to study. But that entails the risk of learning yourself how deeply wrong you are Pépé, and you really don't want to know that. I am not surprised that you are so afraid to confront your own ignorance. You prefer to keep people guessing what the hell you might talking about because you really do not know what you're talking about. I knew so Pépé. Your "points" are so plagued with misunderstandings that it would be a miracle if you could put two correct ideas together.

Diogenes said...

Well, at least Pepe cited an actual article! Give him credit for that.

Alas, the article doesn't show that SEQUENCE information goes backward from protein into DNA. Sure there's "information" transfer in some kind of very vague sense in which proteins can *affect* DNA.

It's like saying I kicked a rock, therefore I transfereed "information" to the rock. True in a vague sense, but not in the specific sense of sequence information encoded with a discrete code.

The Central Dogma never said that proteins were unable to affect DNA. So to overthrow the hypothesis, you have to replace the hypothesis with a different, dumber hypothesis and give it the same name.

Paradigm shaft.

Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussen said...

@Pépé

This very same "sleight of hand" takes place in the discussion section of the paper you cited for fucks sake. One has to wonder how much of a "sleight of hand" it is when it's openly conceded in the main paper text that there can be multiple ways to view the central dogma.

Even further, the reviewers of the paper take up the same point.

The creationist worldview is pure black-and-white. There are no nuances or hard questions, it's all goddidit and he did it THIS WAY or no way at all. How utterly void.

Oh by the way, junk DNA is still junk, and mutations are still random. Your ability to make counterfactual blind assertions is just that, blind assertions opposite to the facts.