It's April 1st and PZ Myers tells us that Pharyngula had 2,296,911 visits last month [What are all you people doing here?]. Sandwalk had 107,747 visits or less than 5% of the number that visited Pharyngula.
Michael Behe (1952 - ) wins the Nobel Prize in Biochemistry for his amazing work on complex biological systems, especially the concept of irreducible complexity. 
The presentation speech highlights the importance of this work.The development of protein features, such as protein-protein binding sites, that require the participation of multiple amino acid residues is a profound, fundamental problem that has stumped the evolutionary biology community until the present day (and continues to do so, as I explain below). It is a fundamental problem because all proteins exert their effects by physically binding to something else, such as a small metabolite or DNA or other protein, and require multiple residues to do so. The problem is especially acute for protein-protein interactions, since most proteins in the cell are now known to act as teams of a half-dozen or more, rather than individually. Yet if one can’t explain how specific protein-protein interactions developed, then it is delusional to claim that we can explain how anything that depends on them developed, such as the molecular machinery of the cell. It’s like saying “we understand perfectly well how a car could evolve; we just don’t know how the pieces could get fit together.” If such a basic requirement for putting together complex systems is not understood, nothing is understood. Keep this in mind the next time you hear a blithe Darwinian tale about the undirected evolution of the cilium or bacterial flagellum.
Posted on April 1st, 2009.
The images of the Nobel Prize medals are registered trademarks of the Nobel Foundation (© The Nobel Foundation). They are used here, with permission, for educational purposes only.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how to get my textbook online without asking everyone involved to work for free. It's not an easy problem.So, while I like storming the establishment with pitchforks and torches as much as anyone, when I picked up Opening Up Education (or rather, when I downloaded the PDF to my Kindle), I was looking for pragmatism, not utopianism. After 500 pages of “the silos we all know about in higher education are under assault in the new world,” the “hated textbook publishers,” the “epistemological hegemony of higher education,” and the “noble philosophy” of making everything free—“traitors” and “patriots” and “communists,” oh my!—my hopes were beaten down. Many of the 30 essays in this collection are more manifesto than explanation, and many of the 38 authors are writing more for their fellow revolutionary comrades than for us.Life is never as simple as the Web 2.0 fans make out. Somebody is going to have to do a lot of work before the quality of a website matches what's in the best introductory textbooks. And it's extremely naive to think that all that work is just going to be given away for free.
Sean does an excellent job of bursting the bubble.“Remix,” “collective wisdom,” “Web 2.0”—many of these essays ride a bubble of popular digital punditry enthusiastically but too uncritically. Many technologists today are infected with an idea that “community is king,” that high-quality content will rain down freely merely because we connect digital communities openly. This confuses ways of sharing ideas with ways of creating ideas. It is a kind of magical thinking that has much in common with the cargo cults that cut landing strips in the jungle and carved radios from sticks in hope that more sophisticated beings would parachute technological artifacts down upon them. With all respect to the passionate and pioneering initiatives described in this collection, building landing strips to receive open educational content will not be enough. More attention must be paid to the fact that someone still needs to spend time painstakingly developing artful ways to make difficult concepts understandable—to teach!—and that it will take even more time (thus money) to render these hard-won ideas using multimedia web technology compared with writing textbooks. Success hinges on the adoption of open licensing by the professionals who make digital educational resources, and on finding ways to finance their work.I have some ideas. I'd like to put my book on the web so that everyone can read it but nobody can download it or print out the figures and text. If you need a printed version you can sign on to the server and print out a chapter for $3. The pages would come with your name and email address printed in the header and footer—or perhaps as a watermark. The idea is to make the material available at minimal cost to an individual user while inhibiting the distribution of photocopies.
[Photo Credit: Nature]
[Hat Tip: Jonathan Eisen at The Tree of Life]
I don't think that religious indoctrination is always an example of child abuse. However, there are other ways that count as clear examples of abuse [Taliban blocks UN polio treatment in Pakistan].Militants had reportedly agreed to allow the [polio] vaccination program to take place as part of the peace agreements.
However, the militants had reneged on their word and despite assiduous efforts made by the increasingly irrelevant local administration, no vaccinations have taken place.
“It’s a US tool to cut the population of the Muslims. It is against Islam that you take a medicine before the disease”, said, Muslim Khan, Swat’s Taliban spokesman, speaking by telephone.
[Photo Credit: daylife/Reuters: "A man holds his twins as he waits for them to receive polio vaccines in the southern province of Kandahar September 21, 2007. Afghan health officials said on Friday they had brokered a deal with Taliban leaders to allow the immunization of children against polio in rebel-held areas in a rare sign of cooperation between the warring sides."]
[Hat Tip: RichardDawkins.net]
The techniques for detecting DNA and RNA are extremely sensitive. This sensitivity often leads to misinterpretations because it become difficult to separate signal from noise. The idea that 90% of our genome may be transcribed into functional RNA, for example, may be due to the sensitivity of an assay that can easily detect tiny amounts of accidental transcription.
President Obama wants to sacrifice more American in Afghanistan and Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is suggesting that this might be something that Canada should support. This is in spite of the fact that there are times when he seems to know the right answer to the question; Can We Win in Afghanistan?.Hamid Karzai has been accused of trying to win votes in Afghanistan's presidential election by backing a law the UN says legalises rape within marriage and bans wives from stepping outside their homes without their husbands' permission.
The Afghan president signed the law earlier this month, despite condemnation by human rights activists and some MPs that it flouts the constitution's equal rights provisions.
The final document has not been published, but the law is believed to contain articles that rule women cannot leave the house without their husbands' permission, that they can only seek work, education or visit the doctor with their husbands' permission, and that they cannot refuse their husband sex.
1. Yes, they had electron microscopes back in those days!
2. You can also buy diamond knives but that's a lot less fun.
If you have a YouTube account, follow these instructions.
To complain to youtube follow this link;
http://www.google.com/support/youtube...
Scroll to the very bottom and click on "new issue"
Select "suspended account" from the options and express your opinion.
The mediafire link is;
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=4d...
UPDATE: I was astonished to learn that some readers don't know who James Randi is or what the James Randi educational foundation is all about.The James Randi Educational Foundation is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1996. Its aim is to promote critical thinking by reaching out to the public and media with reliable information about paranormal and supernatural ideas so widespread in our society today.The current President of the foundation is Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy.
The Foundation's goals include:
* Creating a new generation of critical thinkers through lively classroom demonstrations and by reaching out to the next generation in the form of scholarships and awards.
* Demonstrating to the public and the media, through educational seminars, the consequences of accepting paranormal and supernatural claims without questioning.
* Supporting and conducting research into paranormal claims through well-designed experiments utilizing "the scientific method" and by publishing the findings in the JREF official newsletter, Swift, and other periodicals. Also providing reliable information on paranormal and pseudoscientific claims by maintaining a comprehensive library of books, videos, journals, and archival resources open to the public.
* Assisting those who are being attacked as a result of their investigations and criticism of people who make paranormal claims, by maintaining a legal defense fund available to assist these individuals.
To raise public awareness of these issues, the Foundation offers a $1,000,000 prize to any person or persons who can demonstrate any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability of any kind under mutually agreed upon scientific conditions. This prize money is held in a special account which cannot be accessed for any purpose other than the awarding of the prize.
Located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the Foundation is funded through member contributions, grants, sales of books and videos, seminars, and conferences.
Identify this molecule and explain why it is useful. You must supply the common name and the formal IUPAC name. 
The bad news is that Matt Nisbet has published some guidelines for proper framing. You won't be surprised to learn that Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers are engaging in "unethical" framing [The Ethics of Framing Science: Four Guiding Principles]. You will be surprised to learn that fellow framer Chris Mooney is also unethical.[Photo Credit: Andy Warhol, DeVorzon Gallery]
[Hat Tip: Friendly Atheist]
The Oklahoma legislature is trying to intimidate the University of Oklahoma for inviting Richard Dawkins to speak last month. The Tulsa World publishes an article today that covers both sides of the controversy. After reading that article, the only logical conclusion is that free speech in Oklahoma is being threatened by elected politicians [Dispute evolves on OU speech by scientist].
[Hat Tip: RichardDawkins.net]