Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Likes Tim Hortons Coffee!

The mayor of Toronto is an alcoholic, a drug user (cocaine), and many other things that make him unsuitable to hold any political office. The city of Toronto is trying really hard to get him to resign or take a leave of absence but there's not much they can do if he refuses to act in an honorable and responsible manner.

It's really hard to find anything likeable about the man but I did notice that he likes Tim Hortons coffee. Look at what's in his hand as he walks down Danforth Street in drunken stupor! He can't be all bad, can he?

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Baldness Is not a Disease. It Does not Need to Be "Cured"

A recent article in New Scientist made me annoyed. The title in the print edition is Cure for Baldness Finally Cuts It. It starts off with ...

We may be a hair's breadth away from a cure for baldness.

Baldness is not a disease so it doesn't need to be cured.¹ Gray hair is also not a disease and neither are the wrinkles that appear on your face as you get older.

You may choose to disguise baldness with hair transplants or paint your white hairs to make it look like you don't have them. You can even inject botox to hide wrinkles. If you do this, the only disease you have is vanity. And stupidity, for letting the cosmetic industry trick you into feeling guilty about a perfectly natural phenomenon.

I'm never going to let my tax money pay for your vanity "cure." Don't even ask if it should be covered by our public health insurance.

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1. Don't quibble. You know that what I'm talking about is the normal kind of baldness in men that develops as you get older.

David Evans Says, "Teach What the Vast Majority of Scientists Affirm as Settled Science"

The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) is responsible for The Adaptation Assessment Probe that I criticized last week. It's a remarkably poor question on adaptation—expecially considering that it was designed by teachers.

David Evans¹ is the Executive Director of NSTA and he has written about the recent attempts to insert creationism into textbooks in Texas [In Texas, Standing Up for Science]. He says one very good thing in these two paragraphs.

There are many ways that humans come to know, experience, understand and appreciate the world in which we live. Consider, for example, the different realms of religion, science and art. We can all appreciate the beauty of a sunset without understanding that its beauty comes from the energy of a thermonuclear reaction and the refraction of its light in the atmosphere. Likewise, understanding the scientific processes of the sunset does not prevent one from capturing its beauty on canvas or making a spiritual connection.

There are countless differing opinions about how best to educate our children, but presenting non-scientific or religious ideas in science class or in science textbooks is simply wrong and blurs the line about what is and what is not science. This will only confuse and mislead students and does nothing to improve the quality of science education and everything to weaken it. Decisions about what counts as science should not be a popularity contest. No matter how many people object, public schools must teach what the vast majority of scientists affirm as settled science.

I like the way he expresses the idea that we "must teach what the vast majority of scientists affirm as settled science." This avoids getting into definitions about what counts as science. It avoids the "methodological naturalism" trap. Well done!

The next paragraph isn't quite as good. It could have been a lot better. All he had to do was leave out the little phrase that I underline and enclose in brackets. It would not change the meaning but it would properly reflect "what the vast majority of scientists accept as settled science."

Texas students deserve the best science education possible, as do students everywhere. This means teaching them sound science, including evolution [by natural selection] as a major unifying concept in science. It is firmly established as one of the most important and robust principles in science, and is the best and most complete scientific explanation we have for how life on Earth has changed and continues to change. Furthermore, the very foundation of science is grounded in, and based upon, evidence. Classrooms will use the textbooks Texas adopts for years (the last science textbook adoption was a decade ago). Compromising the integrity of science for a whole generation of students to satisfy a few vocal ideologues is simply not acceptable.

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1. From the website: "Evans holds a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Rhode Island and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania. He studied for his teaching certification at Villanova University."

Monday's Molecule #222

Last week's molecule was D-serine. (Not L-serine.) The winner is undergraduate Zhimeng Yu [Monday's Molecule #221].

I was reminded of this week's molecule by a discussion we are having in an evolution forum and by a comment from a student who took a MOOC on genetics. Does it depict something that should be taught in every introductory genetics course? Is it something that should be discussed in an evolution course? You need to name the structure formed by the blue, gray, and black strands. It has a specific name.

Email your answer to me at: Monday's Molecule #222. I'll hold off posting your answers for at least 24 hours. The first one with the correct answer wins. I will only post the names of people with mostly correct answers to avoid embarrassment. The winner will be treated to a free lunch.

There could be two winners. If the first correct answer isn't from an undergraduate student then I'll select a second winner from those undergraduates who post the correct answer. You will need to identify yourself as an undergraduate in order to win. (Put "undergraduate" at the bottom of your email message.)

Mechanisms of Evolution – Philipp Dettmer (2013)

This is a video that's specifically designed to teach the mechanisms (plural) of evolution. It's produced by Philipp Dettmer who, as near as I can tell, is an expert on video presentations but not on evolution. A perfect example of style trumping substance.

How many errors can you spot?

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They're Firing Cannons Across the Street!

Today is November 11th and the cannons started blasting at 11am in Queen's Park just across the street from the building where my office is located. It's a day when we should remember the horrors of war and the waste of lives, both civilian and military. It's a day when we should resolve never to let army generals run the world. It's a day to reflect on the many times that we failed to keep the peace and the terrible cost of those mistakes.

So how do we celebrate peace and remember the evils of armies, guns, and bombs? In Toronto we do it by a public display of soldiers dressed in their finest uniforms bedecked with medals. And the army brings its cannons. It's all very glorious.

I long for the day when we don't even have an army and all the cannons are rusting in some junk heap. That will be the day when we have truly learned about the evils of war and the purpose of November 11th.

I agree with PZ Myers when he asks Who deserves honor?

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I'm Related to a Philosopher! Edwin Proctor Robins (1872-1899)

I'm been filing and organizing my mother's genealogical data and I came across a list of people buried in various Prince Edward Island (Canada) cemeteries. One of the tombstones in the Lower Bedeque United Church Cemetery says, "In Memory Of / Edwin Proctor Robins, / Born At / Central Bedeque / July 2, 1872. / Died at / Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y. / April 19 1899. / Mors Janua Vitae [Death is the gate of [everlasting] life]" [Edwin Proctor Robins].

This was intriguing. I know I am related to all the Robins (Robbins) descendents from Prince Edward Island but I'd never heard of Edwin Proctor Robins. His great-grandfather, Robert Robbins, is a United Empire Loyalist who came to PEI from New Jersey when the American Revolution ended. Edwin Proctor Robins and I are fourth cousins, three times removed. Why did he die at Cornell University?

I still don't know how he died and why he was so young (26 years old) but I did find a book he published on Some Problems of Lotze's Theory of Knowledge. I think the book was first published in 1900—a year after he died. Sounds like Edwin Proctor Robins might have been an epistemologist. Does anyone know anything about my relative or about Lotz's Theory of Knowledge?

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Evolution: A Course for Educators: Week One

I'm taking a MOOC! It's called Evolution: A Course for Educators. The principle instructors are Joel Cracraft and David Randle of the American Museum of Natural History in New York (USA).

Welcome to Evolution: A Course for Educators! We’re excited to have almost 13,000 students enrolled in the course and look forward to spending the next four weeks together as we learn about the Tree of Life, natural selection, the history of life, and human evolution, as well as how to incorporate an exploration of these issues into your classrooms.

You can earn a "Verified Certificate" by paying $29.00.

Science Journal Blows It Again

This week's issue of Science contains three separate papers analyzing transcription factor binding sites and chromatin modification sites in the genomes of different individuals. If most of these sites are spurious sites that just happen to contain a consensus sequence, then you would expect a lot of variability since the sites are mostly in junk DNA where the sequences make no difference. That's what all three papers found but, of course, they interpret this to mean that the regulatory sites must be responsible for the variation between individuals.

The papers were summarized in the form of a "press release" called a "Perspective." The complete citation is ...

Furey, T.S. and Sethupathy, P. (2013) Genetics Driving Epigenetics. Science 342:705-706. [doi: 10.1126/science.1246755]

These authors are affiliated with several departments at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill but, most significantly, they are part of the Carolina Center for Genome Sciences. This strongly suggests that they know something about genomes.

Why Humanists Should Be Vegans

I am not a humanist and I'm not a vegan. Sarah Moglia explains why I don't subscribe to either of those two beliefs. I first saw this on Skepchick: Why Vegan Values are Humanist Values.

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Alfred Russel Wallace (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913)

Alfred Russel Wallace died¹ on this day in 1913. That's exactly one hundred years ago.

Jerry Coyne has posted a guest article by Andrew Berry that should be required reading for everyone who admires Wallace but wonders why he didn't get much credit for natural selection [A guest post for Wallace Day].

The IDiots over on Evolution News & Views (sic) have, of course, an entirely different version of the truth [Counter the History Deniers: Get Out the Word on Alfred Russel Wallace; We've Got the Resources You Need]. Here's what David Klinghoffer has to say about historical truth.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the death of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), co-discoverer with Charles Darwin of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

If you follow us at all at ENV you'll already know that the scientific and scholarly communities have done a terrible disservice to Wallace's legacy by airbrushing out the fact that he broke with Darwin over what University of Alabama science historian Michael Flannery calls "intelligent evolution." That is, Wallace's steadily more certain and detailed view that an "overruling intelligence" guided the evolutionary process. He anticipated major elements of the modern theory of intelligent design. Oh, the irony! It burns! It burns!

Well, the massive effort by scientists, journalists, bloggers and others to defend Darwinian theory often proceeds by such airbrushing. You can fight back and counter the censors by passing along the historical truth to friends, students, and teachers, online and in person.

...

It's time everyone agreed to be honest about Wallace -- about the important historical truth that one of the two men to first spell out the modern theory of evolution came to reject that theory as an adequate explanation of life's development, in favor of proto-intelligent design. Toward that end, please join us in refuting the history deniers.

You just can't make this stuff up. Every time you think that the IDiots can't get any worse, along comes one of them to show you that you were being far too optimistic.

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1. I refuse to use the stupid phrase "passed away."

The Adaptation Assessment Probe

I'm taking a MOOC on evolution that's designed for educators [Evolution: A Course for Educators]. One of the things that was covered in the first lecture was a test on "adpatation" taken from a book called "Uncovering Student Ideas in Science, Volume 4: 25 New Formative Assessment Probes. The book is published by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA).

Let's take the test ...

Adaptation

Three friends were arguing about what would happen if a population of rabbits from a warm, southern climate were moved to a cold, northern climate.¹ This is what they said:

Bernie: "I think all of the rabbits will try to adapt to the change."

Leo: "I think most of the rabbits will try to adapt to the change."

Phoebe: "I think few or none of the rabbits will try to adapt to the change."

Which person do you most agree with and why? Explain your ideas about adaptation.

I agree with Bernie. I think all the rabbits will try to adapt to the colder weather by finding warmer, more cozy, burrows and by cutting down on their activity during the cold nights. I think they will adapt by eating more. If hair growth is related to temperature, as it is in some mammals, then the rabbits will adapt by growing thicker coats.

Let's see how I did.

Oops! That's not the "right" answer. The correct answer is what Phoebe said. Here's what they say on the website ...

The best answer is Phoebe's: "I think few or none of the rabbits will try to adapt to the change." The key word here is try. Biological adaptation involves genetic variation that allows some individuals to survive a particular change, such as a change in the environment, better than others.

I didn't read the question carefully. I didn't notice that what they were asking about was not just "adaptation" but "adaptation by natural selection." Silly me.

We turned our clocks back one hour last weekend and I'm still adapting adjusting to the change.

If this is the kind of nonsense that the National Science Teachers Association thinks is important then it's no wonder that evolution education is in trouble.

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1. Not a good test for Australian students! :-)

Test Your Scientific Skepticism

I once posted a series of articles on Roundup® (glyphosate) explaining how it works and how one makes Roundup®-Ready genetically modified plants.

• How Roundup® Works
• Roundup Ready® Transgenic Plants
• The Molecular Basis of Roundup® Resistance
• Glyphosate-resistant Weeds
• Roundup® Is Safe

A reader has alerted me to a paper published last Spring that purports to show the dangers of glyphosate. This paper has gone viral—as you might have guessed. It led to an interview with the lead author, Anthony Samsel, on Moms Across America [Part 1 Samsel on Glyphosate and Autism, Asthma, COPD, Diabetes and more]. Here's part of what blogger Zen Honeycutt has to say about this paper ...

Stop Using the Term "Noncoding DNA:" It Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means

Axel Visel is a member of the ENCODE Consortium. He is a Staff Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California (USA). Axel Visel is responsible, in part, for the publicity fiasco of September 2012 where the entire ENCODE Consortium gave the impression that most of our genome is functional.

He is also the senior author on a paper I blogged about last week—the one where some journalists made a big deal about junk DNA when there was nothing in the paper about junk DNA [How to Turn a Simple Paper into a Scientific Breakthrough: Mention Junk DNA].

Dan Graur contacted him by email to see if he had any comment about this misrepresentation of his published work and he defended the journalist. Here's the email response from Axel Visel to Dan Gaur.

The Carnival of Evolution #65: Horror Host Edition

The latest issue of Carnival of Evolution is hosted by PZ Myers, a developmental biologist with an interest in evolution (among other things). He's a professor at the University of Minnesota in Morris. PZ blogs at Pharyngula. Perhaps you've heard of it?

Read: The Carnival of Evolution #65: Horror Host Edition.

I prepared for the Carnival of Evolution late at night over the last several days, bracketing the Halloween holiday, and coupled them with my traditional custom of watching horror movies. It wasn’t a good match. The evolutionary stories were far more frightening!

There are several dozen contributions and some of them are very scary.

If you want to host a Carnival of Evolution please contact Bjørn Østman. Bjørn is always looking for someone to host the Carnival of Evolution. He would prefer someone who has not hosted before but repeat hosts are more than welcome right now! Bjørn is threatening to name YOU as host even if you don't volunteer! Contact him at the Carnival of Evolution blog. You can send articles directly to him or you can submit your articles at Carnival of Evolution although you now have to register to post a submission. Please alert Bjørn or the upcoming host if you see an article that should be included in next month's. You don't have to be the author to nominate a post.

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