Harrison Ford vs Ian McKellen

It's hilarious even when you know it's photoshopped.

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Are universities doomed?

This month's issue of The Atlantic has another one of those boring articles on the imminent death of universities (colleges) [The Future of College?].

This time it's a new "university" called MINERVA that's going to kill off all the old-school schools. Minerva is a for-profit university where all the learning takes place in electronic seminars of up to 19 students. Sort of like a Skype conference call only it uses copyrighted software. Students will pay only $28,000 (US) per year for this experience.

There have been articles about the death of universities published every year for as long as I can remember. Almost all of them think that a "university" is just a place where you go to get an undergraduate education. That's because almost all of the potential murderers only experienced university as an undergraduate.

What are they playing?

Apparently the Queen's Guards surprised everyone by playing a new song during the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace on July 15, 2014.

Name that song!



Do you know it?

Here's a hint ... the actual theme is better but it's the thought that counts.

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The top ten cities in the world

The Economist has surveyed cities from all over the world to find the ones that are the most livable (i.e. best places to live). Here's a summary of the criteria described in the report [A Summary of the Liveability Ranking and Overview]

The concept of liveability is simple: it assesses which locations around the world provide the best or the worst living conditions. Assessing liveability has a broad range of uses, from benchmarking perceptions of development levels to assigning hardship allowance as part of expatriate relocation packages. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s liveability rating quantifies the challenges that might be presented to an individual’s lifestyle in any given location, and allows for direct comparison between locations.

Bjørn Østman alerted me to the list by posting a link to this article: The World's Most Livable Cities All Have One Big Thing in Common. What do the top ten cities all have in common?—none of them are in the USA.

Here's the list ....

1. Melbourne, Australia
2. Vienna, Austria
3. Vancouver, Canada
4. Toronto, Canada
5 (tie). Adelaide, Australia
5 (tie). Calgary, Canada
7. Sydney, Australia
8. Helsinki, Finland
9. Perth, Australia
10. Auckland, New Zealand

There's obviously more to "livability" than meets the eye. Some of these places are a lot less interesting than Paris, London, or New York.

I think the ranking also depends very much on how much money you have. I'd need to be offered a hell of a lot more money if I were to consider a move to Calgary, Helsinki, or Perth.¹

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1. I've never been to Perth but it doesn't seem like a place I'd like to live.

IDiots exploring evolution

Modern evolutionary theory is far more advanced than the simple version that's attacked by Intelligent Design Creationists. Neutral Theory, population genetics, and the importance of random genetic drift are just a few of the additions that were incorporated in the 1960s. (That's almost 50 years ago.)

Most IDiots are half-a-century behind in their knowledge of science. They think that random mutations and natural selection are the only way that evolution can occur.¹ That's why they refer to evolution as "Darwinism."

Many of them have heard vague rumors of change, proving that from time to time they do, indeed, take their fingers out of their ears. They've discovered that modern scientists have moved well beyond natural selection as an explanation for every bit of evolution. This makes the IDiots very happy since, to them, it means that evolution is wrong. And if evolution is wrong then gods must exist.

They've even developed a course to explain why Neutral Theory and random genetic drift support the idea that gods must be making bacterial flagella and protein-protein contacts. It looks like a very interesting course ...

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1. A few of them might know differently but they will never admit it in public.

What are students interested in and does it matter?

PZ Myers [Oh, dear] picked up on a tweet from Jeffrey Ros-Ibarra [Tell me botany doesn’t have a recruitment problem]. He posted the result of a survey of 800 first year students.

This shouldn't come as a big surprise to any Sandwalk readers. The question is, what should we do about it?

Most university professors share this bias so they are very comfortable with teaching biochemistry from a strictly animal (mostly human) perspective. When challenged, they point out that students are mostly interested in animals and themselves. They think we should design our courses to accommodate these interests because that's what students want to hear. I call these professors the "caterers."

A minority (that includes me) look upon this data as a challenge. Our goal is to convince students that they should broaden their interests and learn about other species. People like me will emphasize broad principles and concepts that apply to ALL living organisms. We teach comparative biochemistry and talk a lot about evolution. These guys are the "challengers." (They're also the ones with the low student evaluations.)

The easiest way to tell the difference between the two types of professor in introductory biochemistry courses is to see whether they teach photosynthesis or the glyoxylate shunt, and whether they spend as much time on gluconeogenesis (the most ancient pathway) as they do on glycolysis (the derived pathway). It's also informative to observe whether they cover the biosynthesis of amino acids or whether they treat amino acids as food.

It's a really bad sign if they spend any time at all on the difference between "essential" and "nonessential" amino acids.

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The function of IDiots

There aren't very many big questions left to answer. Most ot the great debates have been settled and we're now in a mopping up situation.

One of the few remaining questions concerns the function of IDiots. The Intelligent Design Creationist Movement has been a spectacular failure. The Wedge Document is a joke. They've failed to get creationism into American schools. People are abandoning Christianity. Their books have all been trashed by critics.

One wonders why they're still around. They must be thinking the same thing because David Klinghoffer has put up a recent post on this very issue [You're Welcome: Darwinists Should Thank Us for Quality Control, Fact-Checking]. It turns out that the function of IDiots is to keep real scientists honest by finding flaws in their reasoning and errors of fact.

Casey [Luskin] points out that in any marketplace—whether vendors are promoting consumer products or ideas about evolution—competition improves the products and the service. The absence of competition almost always results in shoddy products and poor consumer service, as anyone who has visited a socialist country can tell you. Darwin advocates should be thanking us.

Of course the flipside to all this is that for every orthodox evolutionist who is made more judicious and truthful in what he argues, there's probably another who prevaricates about the meaning of scientific data, because "What will the creationists say?"

Still, on the whole, they and everyone else who cares about getting at the truth in science ought to be glad we're here.

Who knew?

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Tim Hortons is seduced by the dark side

I'm not a fan of dark coffee but this is a cute commercial video.

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Michael Behe's final thoughts on the edge of evolution

We've been having an interesting discussion about chloroquine resistance and the Edge of Evolution. It began last month when Michael Behe started bragging that his "prediction" had been confirmed by a recent paper [A Key Inference of The Edge of Evolution Has Now Been Experimentally Confirmed]. It didn't take long for Casey Luskin to jump on the bandwagon [So, Michael Behe Was Right After All; What Will the Critics Say Now?]. Luskin demanded an apology from Behe;s critics.

It turns out that Behe and Luskin are wrong and the recent results published by Summers et al. (2014) actually refute most of Micheal Behe's calculations. PZ Myers pointed out that Behe's critics were mostly¹ right when they criticized the original calculations in The Edge of Evolution [Quote-mined by Casey Luskin!].

Payback for burning Toronto

From British embassy apologizes for cheeky tweet commemorating White House burning.

... in what some considered a cheeky jab, the Washington wing of the British embassy came under fire from some unimpressed Americans for its commemoration tweet. On Aug. 24, 1814, British troops invaded Washington, D.C., setting the White House on fire during the War of 1812. The attack was in response to an American attack on the city of York (present-day Toronto).

The tweet featured a photo of a sheet cake adorned with a miniature White House with the respective countries' flags on each side.

"Only sparklers this time," the embassy wrote to cap off the tweet.

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Banning the views of those who disagree with you

The blogosphere is excited about a petition that's being presented to the Scottish Parliament on behalf of the Scottish Secular Society. A chemist, and Nobel Laureate, Sir Harold Kroto, has backed the petition [Nobel prize winner backs Scottish Secular Society petition to exclude creationism in Scottish schools].

Here's what it says ....

Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to issue official guidance to bar the presentation in Scottish publicly funded schools of separate creation and of Young Earth doctrines as viable alternatives to the established science of evolution, common descent, and deep time.

I would never, ever, sign such a petition. I think it's a bad idea for politicians to get involved in the specifics of what should and should not be taught in publicly funded schools. You can see what happens in the USA when you give them that right.

If the teaching of Young Earth Creationism is creeping into Scottish schools then it's time to show students why it is wrong and why science can refute it. Banning it will only make it seem like a genuine threat that can't be confronted by teachers and education.

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Is philosophy a waste of time?

John Wilkins tries to show that philosophy is not a waste of time. He describes philosophers who are anti-realists and wonders whether genes actually exist.

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Intelligent Design is Stupid: Neil deGrasse Tyson

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Another stupid "prediction" by Intelligent Design Creationists

The IDiots are claiming to have "predicted" something that's been known for thirty years.

Let's start by reviewing some basic facts about codons.

Look at the standard genetic code (right). Notice that for some amino acids there are several codons. For example, There are four different codons for alanine (A): GCT (GCU), GCC, GCA, and GCG. These are called "synonymous" codons.

A lot of mutations in coding regions will change one codon into another without changing the amino acid encoded by the mRNA. These are presumably neutral mutations, since they occur frequently in populations and in comparisons between species. What this means is that it mostly doesn't matter which codons are being used.

David Klinghoffer recognizes the problems with authorities and quote mining

We all know the drill by now. Intelligent design Creationists attempt to discredit evolution and science by pointing out what they see as flaws in basic theory. They also spend a considerable amount of time attempting to discredit individual scientists using guilt by association or direct character assaults.

One of their favorite tricks is to lift quotations out of context and present them in a way that makes it look like famous scientists are supporting Intelligent Design Creationism—or, at least, supporting the idea that evolution is flawed.

The tactic is so widespread and despicable that it led to formation of The Quote Mine Project
Or, Lies, Damned Lies and Quote Mines. That project ran out of steam about eight years ago because the authors just couldn't keep up with all the misinformation coming out of books, lectures, and articles from leading members of the Discovery Institute.

Stephen Meyer is a expert at this. Here are a couple of examples from his book Darwin's Doubt (2013).