The good, the bad and the excruciating…

The good:

I was able to make through my 34th birthday without gaining any new scars or having to spend the night in the local drunk tank.  I had a small, small get together with a few couple of friends and it was pretty nice.  However, the best birthday present was earlier that day when I took the wife to the clinic – yep, looks like I’m gonna finally be a daddy.  We should find out next next week how far she is and get a better idea of when the baby will be due.  Looks like I’m gonna convert the office into a nursery now!

The bad:

With unexpected events comes unexpected expenses, between my dental situation (see below) and having to buy new tires and a rim for the car along with all the other regular bills, money is gonna be tight for the next two and a half weeks…fun, fun.

The excruciating:

I had the pleasure of having a cavity start burrowing its way through the nerve in one of my molars.  This had led me to have a multi-stage root canal and crowning of the tooth.  In the words of the dentist, “yeah, that’s an angry looking one”.  I get to go back for more drilling and chair grabbing excitement in a couple of weeks…such fun, I hate having bad teeth.

Anyhow, maybe I’ll update again soon.

Who needs silly evidence?

Who indeed?  We can’t let things such as empirical data sway us from our deeply held beliefs we arrived at for illogical reasons can we? Never.  So what can we do?  Well, how about we make up our own distorted version of theories we don’t like and attack that? Yeah, make a strawman!  The public won’t know the difference!  Then we’ll claim intellectual victory and push our opposing views upon others relentlessly!

Sound familiar?  It should.  This happens all the time especially in a country with a large amount of scientific illiteracy.  I’ve seen it all too often and I’ve seen it have devastating consequences.  Most often I see it in relation to evolution where someone dislikes the theory most often because it is viewed as opposing their religious affinities.  It is therefore attacked time and time again…BUT…it’s not the actual theory they are attacking.  Nope.  They are attacking a distorted version they have constructed.  This is a common tactic employed by creationists, intelligent design proponents and other general anti-evolution groups and individuals.  It is an logical fallacy known as the strawman.  Unfortunately this tactic works too well in some cases and sways people in their opinion on the matter.  Some groups go further and attempt to dress up their alternative ideas as science when, in fact, it is not – such is the case with intelligent design (ID) and “scientific” creationism.

So, this is nothing new man, why are you posting about this?  Well, I was recently invited by a woman to sign a petition on her website to re-categorize evolutuion as a “hypothesis” instead of a “theory”.  The website maintained by this woman who boasts a BA in sociology/anthropology and her “MA in progress”.  If I wished to be as conceited I too can boast a bachelor of science and an MA “in progress” – does this really mean much?  Not really, it’s mostly just bragging.  She also is apparently working upon a “book” called “Obituary – Evolution 1859-2009″.  From the three chapters she has posted, there was little science to support her claims and an entire chapter dedicated to ridiculing important figures in the shaping of the theory such as Charles Darwin, Stephen J. Gould and T. G. Dobzhansky.  As with many anti-evolutionary sites it is all flair and no substance – reminiscent of tabloid magazines and political propaganda.  Her treatise reads like an 8th grader’s essay – full of personal opinion, unsupported claims, full of fallacious arguments et cetera.

However, the most striking portion is the great disdain (as well as disdain for Mozilla’s Firefox browser apparently) she has for those in opposition to her position – “liberals” and “evolutionists” which she proceeds to mock shamelessly.  Such action is nothing more than a self-soothing exercise and reinforcement of those deeply held beliefs, no matter how silly they are.

In the past I would have embarked on a journey attempting to correct this incorrect information, to aid the person in seeing where they went wrong.  I have since learned that this is a futile effort.  No matter what route you utilize, it will be met with savage opposition – reactance and dissonance will do their job and do them well in these instances.  This is not only seen in evolution opponents but also in other oppositions groups such as holocaust deniers, HIV deniers, vaccination opponents (Jenny McCarthy is a good example) and many other people and groups.  Could it be a personality quirk?  A psychological pathology?  I cannot say for sure, the research in this area is lacking and it would be interesting to see the results of an in depth analysis of the people who populate these groups.  However, I’m sure many common traits will be found such as conservative political ideas, deeply religious and tending to be a extremely outspoken especially in their opinion.  I cannot say for sure as this is just from casual observation.  Anyone is more than welcome to test those observations and see if they hold up – let me know what ya find!

Live Birth in the Devonian?

You don’t say…a vertebrate which gave live birth?  Yep.  In a paper published in the May 29th issue of the journal Nature, Long et al. (2009) detail the amazing discovery of a fossil fish with a rare ossification of a intra-uterine embryo which was connected by an umbilical cord.  No joke.  If I remember correctly, this would be the oldest instance of live birth in a vertebrate organism!  An amazing find indeed but you don’t see that making headlines or any creationist screaming about how this discovery is bunk do ya?  Nope.  Why not?  No one has mentioned any relation of this discovery to humans that’s why.  Or if it was mentioned as a huge support for evolution then, of course, as if by some form of idiot-magic there’d probably be an article about it on AiG by some psycho tossing letters behind his name and claiming expertise while disregarding basic biology we learned in grade school.  All well, that’s my mini-rant for the day.

In any event, this is a very significant find for paleontology and you should check out the article if you can!

A “thank you” and thoughts about vestiges of an old world…

I’m sitting here in the Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston as I await my flight to Sacrmamento for the Memorial Day weekend.  I have a 3 hour lay-over and figured now would be a great time to update my blog which I have apparently neglected of late.  Well, you get a two for one with this blog.

First I’d like to take this time to acknowledge those in our military – not the politicians who create conflicts nor the legislators which declare wars but those men and women who swore to protect their country – Soldiers, Airmen, my fellow Sailors and Marines.  For those who have served and those who still serve, for those who gave years of their life or more to keep our nation free and especially for those who paid the ultimate price for us all, I give you an honest and heartfelt “Thank You”

- Former Petty Officer 3rd Class Overby, USN

Secondly I’d like to take a minute to comment on the persisting vestiges of an old world I still see pervading the headlines in papers and on the internet.  First is the ridiculous exorcisms performed by priests in Congo on children accused of witchcraft:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-05-20-childwitch_N.htm

This is actually the most fertile ground in which to plant religion – a poor, starving, desperate population in a third world country who turn to constructs such as religion to find solace from their harsh reality.  However, with this comes the suspense of logic, reason and independent thought and blind submission to authority (Stanley Milgram could have worked on this for decades).  And what is at the root of this?  Apparently just plain greed:

Pastor Tshombe charged Julie Moseka $50 to exorcise her emaciated daughter, Noella, 8. The average annual salary in Congo is $100.

Sad…very sad.  However, this religion has a history of such practices but most of which are now rejected by modern versions – even so, many fundamentalist populations continue these practices and defer to the old world way of doing things.  But this sort of fundamentalist mindset is only in underdeveloped countries right?  Wrong.  From exorcisms to rabid creationism itching to enter into public schools – it’s all here too.

Recent headlines detailed a paper published in PLoS One about a probable common ancestor between prosimians (such as lemurs) and simians (gibbons, great apes – including humans) that lived during the Eocene epoch.  The specimen named “Ida”.  However, I think much of the fire surrounding this specimen is due to 1) the overuse of the term “missing link” and 2) people’s understanding of what it means in paleontology to be considered a “missing link”.  There is no doubt that some amout of sensationalism is found with the revealing of this specimen – okay, fine.  It has been hailed as a missing link far back in primate history – okay, no problem again.  It is people who think this is “THE” missing link – even though the idea of some single specimen being completely lacking and being a definitive bridge-gap for humans and non-human primates is simply the product of ignorance.  Of course the primate specimen ancestry is far from being complete and may never be however, what we do have is an impressive array of ancestors in our evolutionary lineage going back million and millions of years.

Here I feel I must clarify.  Many people, still, contest the relationship of humans to non-human primates (our closest relatives being Pygmy chimps) as well as rejecting the idea of human ancestors that were not “fully human” or “fully ape” – again,  a product of ignorance.  From australapithecines to H. heidelbergensis which gave rise to our immediate ancestors H. sapiens idaltu and our close cousin species H. neanderthalensis – there is no shortage of direct and parallel human ancestors.  This specimen is just another brick in a constantly under construction wall of history.  This specimen just may be one which fills in a gap between two other known bricks – does that analogy work for ya? Eh, probably not because even that analogy is too inaccurate (species and their inter-relationships with other species over time are not some easily sectioned, discrete packets of organisms – it’s much more complicated than visualizing a wall or the often thought of chain or succession line, yet when attempting to simplify much accuracy is lost).

No one is claiming that this specimen is a direct ancestor of humans – even though many opponents of anything even vaguely evolutionary have claimed.  And just as with any specimen which is even remotely linked to humans – the opponents start their silly, educationally devoid rants and accuse the scientists and this imaginary scientific mafia of “evolutionists” of creating fabrications, making sensational claims and lying to the public all to apparently perpetuate Darwin’s “unfounded” idea of evolution by natural selection…it’s quite mind-numbing.  I don’t see anyone attacking gravitational theories….hmmm….I suppose physics is a “no-touch” zone for them.

I’d wager that if the relationship to humans was not a factor in this specimen’s discovery and analysis that there wouldn’t be quite such publicity.  Some significant finds in paleontology have been made the last coupl of years including specimens linking snakes and other lizards, large sea predators (about the size of a medium blue whale), and new specimens of feathered dinosaurs – hardly anything about those in popular media, if anything at all.  I don’t see these same people jumping up and down and making the same claims about these discoveries…why?  Because it doesn’t directly involve humans or claims about our ancestry implying that we are nothing more than highly intelligent, mostly hairless great apes.  Is it any surprise that nearly ALL of thes opponents are aligned with or affiliated with some religious social group (Christian protestants, Catholics, Islam, Hindu et al.)…not really.  Last I checked, religious texts were not very replete with scientific knowledge even though many claim the contrary.  But this isn’t necessarily the majority of these groups – of course not.  The most vocal are usually fundamentalist sections of these religions which are viewed as extreme by their own religious peers.  Unfortunately, it’s the loud and crazy ones that often make the headlines or get interviews or their blogs read online.

The rest of us can admire this find for what it is and do our best to learn from its discovery and the further knowledge it can provide.

Structural Brain Abnormalities in Bipolar I Disorder

It has been established that there are mental disorders which are connected with known structural abnormalities of the brain such as schizophrenia.  These abnormalities I speak of are not simply at the molecular level but the ones I refer to are to the gross anatomical structure of the brain itself.

For example, in schizophrenics, we find atrophy of the cortex in specific areas of the brain such as enlarged ventricles which hold cerebral-spinal fluid (CRF) but also the atrophy of gray matter itself (Nicola et al., 2007).  Many studies have found similar results and many utilizing various brain scan technology as well as physical examination of brains post mortem.

However, a recent paper published in Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has found similar results in not gray but white matter atrophy in those suffering from bipolar disorder as well.  White matter can be thought of as the “insulated” axons of neurons whereas the gray matter is composed of the cell bodies of those neurons.  The specific areas of the abnormalities were the orbital frontal and subgenual white matter which makes sense as these places are linked to the affectivity and impulsivity problems seen in the disorder (Kafantaris et al., 2009).

So now we have substantial evidence that the disorder formerly known as manic depression has specific biological pathology connected with it and may lead to better medication with more specific molecular targeting and affinity to combat the disorder.

References:

Kafantaris, V., Kingsley, P., Ardekani, B., Saito, E., Lencz, T., Lim, K. et al. (2009). Lower orbital frontal white matter integrity in adolescents with bipolar I disorder.  Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 48(1), 79-86.

Andreone, N., Tansella, M., Cerini, R., Rambaldelli, G., Versace, A., Marrella, G. et al. (2007). Cerebral atrophy and white matter disruption in schizophrenia.  European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 257(1), 3-11.

Xmas…a time of ignorance of history…

It never ceases to amaze me each and every time I hear the same phrase out of someone’s mouth about this time of the year.  At some point, someone always feels the need to remind anyone around them that we must, “remember, this time of the year is for and all about Jesus!”.  And everyone around them just shakes their head in agreement.  I’m not sure if they actually agree or if it’s just to agree with the person so they’ll go away.  Yet this is saddening in some ways.  Now I have no problem with Christians celebrating the birth of their savior even though it’s most likely the wrong time of the year.  I don’t mind Christmas.  But to see or hear someone pronounce this time of the year to be ALL about their savior and then criticize those who have different celebrations this time of the year….that is ridiculous.

And what pervades it?  Ignorance of course.  I have had people ask me why I exchange gifts with my family if I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus or Yahweh.  I’ve found it is easier, through trial and error, to simply state that I like getting and giving gifts and my family celebrates it rather than to explain how their Christmas is an amalgamation of traditions from previous celebrations, it is a syncretic holiday.  Everything from the mistletoe kissing, decorating the tree, exchange of gifts, the yule log and other traditions are NOT Christian in nature nor did they have anything to do with Jesus or his birth.  These traditions are old pagan traditions (using pagan in the Christian sense, meaning anything other than Christianity in all it’s 31,000 flavors) and existed before Christianity.  The winter solstice celebrations go back thousands of years and the Romans celebrated Saturnalia with the gigantic feast on the solstice and exchanged gifts along with a reversal of the caste system (slaves could demand service and the master’s would serve the feast – although this was more for show and tradition than an actual day of reversal).

So, next time someone is complaining about other celebrations and how Jesus is most important, you can always tell them that their celebration would amount to nothing if all the traditions taken from other celebrations were removed.

Another little tidbit of ignorance is the complaints about the shortened “Xmas” instead of the full “Christmas”.  People claim that it’s insulting, blah, blah, blah….  These people obviously don’t know what the “X” is or that it is derived from the Chi-Rho abbreviation for “Christ” which was utilized by Constantine I.  I’ve always wondered why people would so vehemently defend aspects of a religion they don’t actually know that much about.  Although it probably has more to do with social indoctrination than it does a reasoned decision.

At any rate, the association of the celebrations with an particular religion have deteriorated and the holiday has become more secular with a consumerist focus.  So much so that I ran across a sign in Old Navy which sums the modern view of this time of the year up best:

Wild World of Stupid – ID/Creationism Texas-style

Recently Ken Mercer (a member of the Texas State Board of Education) wrote an op-ed piece in the San Antonio Express News about his take on the evolution “controversy”.  His article makes the same tired arguments that many evolution opponents before him have pushed time and time again.

The controversial “macro” evolution was commonly understood as those major changes that could occur if one species jumped to another. For example, have you ever seen a dog-cat, or a cat-rat? The most famous example of macroevolution is the Darwinian “man from an ancestral primate.”

Mercer plays the chimera-creature card. Anyone having taken an introductory biology course can see why this argument oozes ignorance.  No Ken, no one will see a “dog-cat” or a “cat-rat” and the theory doesn’t propose such creatures will be created.  Mercer has seemed to confuse evolutionary change (specifically macroevolution – simply evolution above the species level) with some fantastical hybridization idea.  It is akin to the “chimp giving birth to a human” claim – both are equally ridiculous.  The idea of “transitional” species is observed in the fossil record – just Google the incredible Tiktaalik rosea specimen as it relates to the transition from sea to land.  This argument is the same one used for decades by creationists and still are – for exmaple, Ray Comfort’s silly arguments.

Realizing the weakness in macroevolution, Darwinists changed the meaning. Whatever their new definition, where is the evidence for one species changing to another?

Macroevolution seems to be the big issue especially as it relates to human evolution.  What Mercer doesn’t seem to understand is that speciation (macroevolution) is well documented in the scientific literature and there is no objection among the scientific community whether or not this process occurs.  This is documented in the fossil record, in genetic studies and in the lab – but I’m sure Ken was aware of this right?  Of course not.  The meaning of macroevolution hasn’t changed.  It has always been considered evolution above the species level with the speciation event being the critical point.

The article continues to ramble on with other silly and old creationist arguments.  The sad part is that Ken Mercer has a hand in deciding what our children here in Texas should learn and how it is taught.  Some of you may be saying, “so what if they teach the ‘weaknesses’?  Well, the weaknesses they speak of are not weaknesses at all in that they are misplaced critiques against evolution.  The arguments they make are against a very distorted version of the theory – they have built a massive strawman argument and want to feed this fallacious pseudoscience to our children.

So, some of you still may say, “well, what’s the harm?”.  The harm is that our children will be massively (even more so than they are now) underprepared when entering into college.  They will enter with an intellectual handicap and find out what they have learned is all wrong.  People like Ken Mercer are poising our youth’s minds with their ideological driven pseudoscience and it should not be tolerated.  Teachers, parents, students and administrators need to step up and let it be known that they will not stand for this kind of intellectual assassination.

Ken has the right to believe what he wishes and he is free to reject the theory of evolution if he personally wants to, that’s his right.  However, it is not his right to impose his ideals upon the children of this fine state.  To confuse our children with these baseless and ignorance-ladened arguments is not only wrong it is damaging to our children, our state and to the future of this wonderful nation.

There are those who will not let this pass unchallenged.  The Texas Freedom Network is actively against the kind of moves that Mercer is proposing and for standing up for solid science he labels them an “ultra-liberal adovacy group” (he must have gotten that from Conservapedia).

It looks like Texas is in the running for the next battleground between ID/Creationism and evolution.  How many times must this mental filth be dispatched before the populace becomes enlightened?  Sadly, it may not be within our lifetimes.  If anyone needs a good education it’s clearly Ken Mercer.

Wide World of Stupid – HIV/AIDS Deniers

This is a post from my old “Squidworld” blog which I thought I should transfer here for your reading enjoyment:

HIV/AIDS deniers. Yes, they exist. And guess who their good celebrity buddies are? None other than Dave Grohl’s Foo Fighters. I shit you not my friends. Look at their causes on their website and you’ll see they support the group Alive and Well which is a group founded my their insane leader Christine Maggiore. Maggiore’s own idiocy contributed to the death of her 3 year old daughter which she transferred HIV to through her pregnancy and refusal to take any antiretroviral medication.Take a look at their website. It looks like any other organization’s website with articles about HIV and references, nice and neat little graphics, some graphs…unfortunately this is probably just enough to sway your average Joe. Not everyone in the populace has a substantial enough biology background let alone a decent knowledge of virology or of HIV to critically analyze their claims. Sadly, most people are also too apathetic or lazy to check their information or even care at all. You have it all, distortion of information, pseudoscience, bad science, citation of references that don’t even support their contentions…hmmm, who does that sound like? You got it, those wacky creationists.

The journal Science has a few articles rebutting the silly claims of the HIV deniers which shouldn’t even have to exist. The vast collection of scientific knowledge about this virus since the 1980’s speaks for itself. A PubMed search for “HIV” brings back nearly 215,000 entries.

In recent news, a new medication developed by Pfizer has been approved by the FDA. It is a CCR5 inhibitor – the a co-receptor protein the HIV virus utilizes to gain entry into cells (along with the CD4 receptor and sometimes the CXCR4 receptor). In 2001 a study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which found that a particular variant known as the CCR5-Delta-32 (a 32 base pair deletion variant) confirmed a homozygous carrier with effective resistance to HIV infection. Studies of the medication have found success and in preclinical and clinical trials in reducing the patient’s levels of the virus.

What do the deniers offer those suffering with HIV? Nothing but propaganda, misinformation and outright lies. These people have utilized their ignorance to affect the lives of others and thereby endangering them. Please, please, whatever you do think before you accept the kinda of crap people like Maggiore and her ilk spew out. Learn about the virus for yourself and how it causes AIDS. If that seems too much of an undertaking, ask a physician or biologist to explain it to you. Don’t do like so many and simply align yourself with a group because of some ridiculous reason such as they like similar things to you or their website is flashy or something equally dumb. People’s lives are at stake in this instance. This is not like the loony creationists claiming the earth is less than 10,000 years old – because of the idiocy of these people and their groups, people will not get the medical attention they need and will needlessly die. In my mind that is evil.

Peer into one’s mind…

…is no longer a metaphorical term nor is it simply science fiction.

So, what is this?  It’s visualizations of specific images from a brain – yes, images taken from a brain.  Paricipant’s looked at the images and were scanned utilizing an fMRI and the computer was able to construct the blood flow of the brain into specific images.  The technique was performed by researchers at Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories and their results are published in the latest issue of the journal Neuron.  The hopes are to refine the technology and process so that more elaborate images can be created from brain data and we really can see into peoples’ minds.

Solid Science Has Arrived!

Of course, if you’ve read much of anything I’ve posted on this and previous blogs, you’ll most likely understand that I have a great love of science.  Well, now I’ve transformed that into a new messageboard called SolidScience.  The name is a play on words so to speak as it hints at the board being dedicated to solid, evidence-based inquiry (although I do have a pseudo-science section) as well as a play on my long-time internet handle “solidsquid”.

So, if you’re interested in discussing scientific topics, please stop by.  I hope the site will grow and in the future to create a larger site with more features and areas to visit  and trying to keep it a very interactive community as well.  We’ll see, I hope it flourishes.