Imindain - Black Water

Imindain is a great funeral(ish) doom metal band out of the UK. This track, Black Water, is among their best.

Just thought I'd post this to get the word out about such a great band!

"Dr. Dino" should be in jail for more than tax offences.

I came across a quote from Kent Hovind today, taken from a transcript of a radio interview he did. I knew that Kent Hovind was a sleezy, amoral nutjob but I never knew he was this batshit crazy:

"If you read the rules God gave to have a perfect society, they are phenomenal. [...] Whenever somebody commits the following crimes they are to be executed, publicly. And whoever is the offended party gets to throw the first stone [...] There is just the relief when you get to throw the rock at the person who offended you, or harmed you, or raped you, or stole from you, or something. I think Man is designed to need that satisfaction, that relief of taking vengeance. I think that is way God - I think that is the way human nature is. "

Allow me to paraphrase: "It's human nature to extract revenge on people who offend us. God made us this way. It's only natural for us to publically execute people who commit crimes." So much for all this "turn the other cheek" stuff that Christians are supposed to believe in.

Looking a little deeper, I found this site: "Quacky Quotes of Hovind's Ethics". That guy has said some really messed up shit. Take his stance on women having independance:

"This guy comes home from work, "Hi Honey, what's for supper?" "Whatever you're fixing." You know, she just got back from one of those meetings, those femi-nazi meetings. He said, "Honey, the house is kind of a mess, have you been busy today?" She said, "If you don't like it you clean it up." This went on for ten minutes. And finally he said, "How would you like to not see me for a week?" She said, "That would be fine with me." And sure enough on the the seventh day her left eye started to open just a little bit."

If you wife doesn't serve your every whim, then beat her? Disgusting. There are lots of other qoutes on that page, discussing his view on the Middle East ('kill them all and make sure you use bullets dipped in pig's blood so they don't go to heaven'), prison overcrowding ('excute criminals to make more room') and premarital sex ('girl's wouldnt have prematiral sex if they were threatened with death by stoning').

And they call us atheists the immoral, evil ones.

So that explains it!

So THIS is why the dinosaurs went extinct!

"Well theoretically (relating to doctrine) the extinction of the dinosaurs (this may be arguable) happened due to the war that raged between Lucifer (Satan) when he rebelled and the third of the angels he took with him, and God and the angels of Heaven. Since Satan was cast down to earth (and became the God of this earth) he could have easily destroyed the dinosaurs himself, to spite God or for whatever other reasons. Or it could have happened during the war. That's one way of looking at it. It makes sense."

It all makes so much sense now! < /sarcasm >

Christians: Keep your tumors for God!

I've been thinking: are Christians against the idea of having tumors removed? Your first reaction to such a question would probably be "No, why should they be?", but if you put a bit of thought into it, any Christian who is against abortion should also be against having surgery for cancer.

First of all, there are alot of similarities between a developing fetus and a malginant tumor, both morphological and physiological. An embryo at the two, four, or sixteen cell stage or even as far developed as a blastocyst is, to be general, a rapidly dividing mass of cells. Such a description can also be applied to a tumor. In a developing embryo, stem cells divide and continue to divide, much like tumor cells. Here the only difference is that in a tumor, the cellular growth and division is completely uncontrolled, while in an embryo, growth and division is carried out in line with a complex developental program. Fetal cells eventually proliferate into specific cell types with their own specific destinies and limitations on growth and division. Nevertheless, the basic cells from which more specific tissue is derived from - the stem cells - are much like tumor cells in that they divide and divide and can continue to divide without any end in sight. Tumor cells can kind of be thought as stem cells on steroids. The fetus during the first trimester (the period where the vast majority of abortions are performed), then, can be seen as akin to a tumor following a strict script.

I can already anticipate an argument against my analogy that Pro-Lifers are likely to use: "There is a difference between tumors and embryos: Embryos are alive! Life begins at conception remember!". Well, this argument is pretty darn weak. If life begins at conception, if a single fertilized ovum is alive, then why are tumor cells not alive as well? One response might be the difference lies in the potential of a fertilized ovum to produce a new being. But again, this is a weak argument. What about the tumors that are caused by uncontrolled stem cell proliferation? In theory, one can use stem cells to create new tissues of whatever type; it may even be possible to recreate a fully formed being using stem cell technology (though, admittedly, with our current technology and knowledge, this is a bit of speculative fantasy). These tumors came from cells that have that potential. Why, then, do tumors not count as being alive? The answer is, if you consider life to begin at conception, then tumors are alive as well. Removing a tumor is just as much 'murder' as having an abortion.

This leads to another argument, though. Someone could easily make the claim that tumors are different still because they are dangerous and directly threaten lives. To those who wish to make such an argument, I should point you in the direction of ectopic pregnancies. An ectopic pregnancy is one where the developing fetus becomes implanted in tissue other than that of the wall of the uterus, often in the fallopian tubes. Such cases are very dangerous and unless the fetus is aborted, can be fatal. Pregnancies, like tumors, can threaten the life of a mother. Not all pregnancies, of course, are ectopic, but neither are all tumors dangerous; some are benign rather than malignant. So if it is ok to remove a tumor because it is life threatening, then why is it not ok to abort a fetus if it is life threatening? Many pro-life groups have such a staunch anti-abortion stance that they object to such life saving procedures. They claim that it's part of "God's plan" if the mother dies during childbirth. Then why is it not part of "God's plan" when someone gets cancer? Shouldn't they be against having tumors removed for fear of messing with his divine scheme?

Maybe I'm way off the mark here with my analogy between the developing fetus and tumors. I'd like to hear a good argument against it though, so if anyone has something to say, just leave a comment.

Frankly, I'm not surprised.

By now you've all heard about the nutjob who shot and killed two people at a Unitarian Universalist church in Tennessee. It's a absolute tragedy. Of course, the religious right deny that he was one of theirs; instead I've been reading quotes similar to this:

The gunman was not affiliated with the church. I suspect he has no idea about what a Unitarian church is....but just wanted to kill "Christians." The larger lesson here is that the world is becoming increasingly hostile to the church. Our church gets death threats all the time.....

Again, espousing the persecution-complex that is so common in Christians. I don't blame them for wanting to distance themselves from a psychotic killer, but it really disgusts me that they so readily turn such a tragedy into an excuse to cry about "intolerance" towards Christians.

I wonder what they have to say now that it's been confirmed that the killer wasn't targeting Christians. He knew very well what a Unitarian church is. From the Associated Press:

A four-page letter found in Adkisson's SUV indicated he picked the church for the attack because, the Knoxville police chief said, "he hated the liberal movement" of the congregation....Adkisson "stated that he had targeted the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country," investigator Steve Still wrote.

The only people being targeted here were "liberals". This sicko slaughtered people in front of little children simply because they differed from his own world view. And what worries me is that he isnt the only religous wingnut that thinks liberals are scum and should be killed. Fortunately, he's one of the very few that would act upon those thoughts but the point remains the same. There is no persecution of Christians in the Western world. THEY are the ones doing the persecuting, the fighting, the killing.

Biotech gets in on the viral marketing goodness.

Viral marketing has been a big trend in marketing in the last few years. It seems every company has made a viral video of some sort to attract potential customers. Often, these videos dont give any selling points or information about what products are being sold; rather they kinda make you go "WTF?". I guess the point is simply to bring attention to the company and the product.

It would seem that biotechnology companies are getting in on the trend as well. Below are some such videos from some well known biotech companies.

The first is "The PCR Song" by "Scientists for Better PCR", a group made up by Biorad to parody those 1980's songs like "We are the World", sung by a whole slew of celebreties/artists. This is probably the best known biotech viral video, and for a good reason: it's pretty darn catchy.


Eppendorf recently tried their hand at viral marketing and came out with a boy-band parody called "It's called EpMotion", for their EpMotion automated pipetting system.


Next comes one from Applied Biosystems. This one is kinda strange in that it starts off as a pretty regular, boring commercial for their thermal cyclers, but then breaks down and busts a move:


Invitrogen has really gotten into viral marketing, with a whole series of ads featuring Scotts Angus and Dougal:




Heres one aimed at the chemists and pharmaceutical companies for Agilent's mass specs:


I'm on the look out for more!

God: Not a fan of that thermodynamics stuff.

Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy has a nice post about how plate tectonics proves to be a major problem for creationists. I suggest you go read it since he can explain it alot better than I can. Here's the rundown, though, for those of you who like clicking as few links as possible:

Plate techtonics is a well known process (although, to be honest, it's really only been widely accepted since the 1960s). We know about it because we can directly observe it happening. We can also determine the actual rate of continental drift: it's a very very slow one (an inch or so a year). Based on geologic data that suggests the orientation of the plates in the past, we know that it has taken the plates millions of years to get where they are today. The problem for creationists lies with heat. As with most (all?) geologic processes, the movement of tectonic plates around the Earth releases heat. Since the plates move slowly, not alot of heat is given off by this process. However, Creationists claim that the Earth is a mere 6000 years old; what's more is that they explain away plate tectonics by claiming God made the plates move really really fast after the flood to get to their current positions. However, such an incredibly rapid motion would, accoring to the National Centre for Science Education, release enough heat to boil away the oceans and completely melt the Earth's crust!

Of course, I can already anticipate some wacky creationist counters to this. They would probably point out that God would just raise the boiling/melting points of the Earth and its oceans. The heat, then, wouldnt cause a problem. Well, except that raising the boiling/melting point means raising the environmental pressure (Pressue and temperature are both intimately entwined. 'Boiling point', for instance, is defined as the "temperature at which the vapor pressure of the liquid equals the environmental pressure surrounding the liquid"). In order to prevent catostrophic environmental changes from happening from the release of that much heat, the environmental pressure would have to such incredible levels that living creatures would find it very difficult to continue living. The only way to get around this would be for God to change the very laws of thermodynamics. And all for only a period of 40 days so the world could appear to be older than it actually is. That God guy - not a fan of thermodynamics.

Bluebirds of the Mesozoic

One of the most enigmatic aspects of dinosaurs are their colour. Aside from what we've gathered from only a handfull of fragments of fossilized skin, anything about the colouration or patterning of dinosaurs and ancient birds is really unknown. Artists go to great lengths to illustrate "realistic" pictures of ancient creatures, but they simply are just an artist's rendition, something pulled from the imagination. However, it's possible that taking an "educated guess" about the plumage of ancient birds might become as extinct as the creatures themselves.

An article published in the most recent issue of Biology Letters by Vinther et. al details a new discovery regarding the colouration of fosilized feathers (Vinther et al. Biology Letters 10.1098/rsbl.2008.0302). The article discusses a known fossil of a feather from the Crato
Formation in Brazil (Figure 1a in the article). The reason the fossil is impressive is twofold: firstly, it is very well perserved and shows amazing detail, including the barbs and barbules. Secondly, and more importently, it shows a striking banding pattern. Previous studies on the fossil showed the black bands to be made mainly of tiny carbon structures (Davis and Briggs, 1995). This is hardly a surprise, because fossil feathers are usually composed mainly of carbon. Use of scanning electron microscopes (SEM) showed the structues to be oblong bodies about 2 microns across. These were thought to simply be fossilized feather-degrading bactera from our very distant past.

Vinther et. al. took another look at this fossil. They took a wing from a Red-winged Blackbird , ground it up, froze it and then compared SEM images of the feather to the fossilized bacteria. What they discovered was that the bacteria weren't bacteria at all! Instead, they showed an incredible similarity to eumelanosomes, the structures in feathers that give them dark pigmentation. The authors concluded that this was no mere similarity; the structures are ancient eumelanosomes! This would mean that the dark bands on the feathers were actually dark-pigmented bands on the living specimen. The lighter parts of the feathers showed none of these structures, and would then mean that they were lighter (if not white) bands on the original feather. This makes much more sense than the original bacteria hypothesis; after all, why would bacteria only perserve in the dark areas of the fossil and not the light ones? It is more likely that, since eumelanin (the pigment-prodicing chemical in melanosomes) is resistant to degredation to chemicals, the black feathers themselves are more resistant to bacterial decay than white feathers. All this means that, by examining fossilized feathers for eumelanosomes, we can determine what the patterning of ancient birds looked like!

But it gets even better. Melanosomes don't just give a dark, black pigmentation. Melanosomes of different shapes, arrangements and distributions confer different colours like red, black, or brown. Other types of melanosomes, like Phaeomelanosomes, can give other colours like yellow, though the authors caution that it is unknown if these melanosomes preserve the same as eumelanosomes. But, if they do, this would suggest that not only can we determine the patterning of ancient birds but also their colouration! This could potentially extend to determining the colouration of feathered dinosaurs as well. Also, it has implications in understaning the behaviour and ecology of these ancient creatures. As the authors state, birds have the ability to see a broad range of colours; this is one good reason why birds have evolved elabourate and colourful plumages. Thus, knowing the plumages of ancient birds and dinosaurs could give us some insight into the way they lived (assuming, of course, that colour vision didn't evolve after birds had sufficently diverged into their modern-day descendants). Perhaps the illustrations we see in books, magazines and on TV will soon be alot more accurate!

Sleezy tactics by Alberta Right To Life

Two weekends ago, Jessica and I took a trip to Red Rock Coulee, a "natural area" (note: not national/provincial park, though there was a park attached to the "natural area") in southern Alberta, about 30 minutes southwest of Medicine Hat. Our reason for travelling was twofold; we wanted to take a mini-vacation for the weekend and she wanted to get some insects for her collection from an ecosystem unlike that of Edmonton. Red Rock Coulee was situtated near some badlands so it seemed like an ideal place to go.

On the way from our hotel in Medicine Hat to Red Rock Coulee, we passed by a trailer displaying a big advertisment by the Alberta Right To Life Group, seen below:

If you can't read it, it says "Abortion kills BABIES and hurts women!!", underneath which is a phone number (1-800-665-0570). The opposite side of the trailer declared "1 in 3 babies is killed by abortion!!", complete with a really crappy cartoon of two babies and one 'ghost' baby.

Wondering where they got their statistics, and to contest how abortion hurts women and "kills babies", Jessica called the phone number, expecting to get a small-town Pro-Life group. She didn't.

The lady who answered was an operator for the Canadian Crisis Pregnancy Hotline, out of Winnipeg. After talking things over with her, we found out that the Crisis Pregnancy Hotline has nothing to do Alberta Right To Life (or any anti-abortion groups), and had no idea that the group was using their phone number on anti-abortion propaganda. The hotline takes a neutral stand on the issue, being neither Pro-Life nor Pro-Choice (although, if you think about it, taking no stance on the issue is basically akin to letting people make their own decisions on abortion, which is what being Pro-Choice is all about).

This makes me wonder why Alberta Right To Life would put the number on their advertisment. One reason, which I think is likely, is that the sign is there to stir up an anti-abortion fever in small town Alberta. Residents would call the number thinking they will have a chance to vent their disgust to like-minded people at Alberta Right To Life, only to get connected to the Pregnancy Crisis Hotline and proceed to give them a tongue lashing about how they are evil, sinful baby killers for giving out information and help to women considering abortions.

Of course, this is just speculation on my part. There's no way to know for sure short of contacting the group themselves. I took a look on their website for contact info but couldn't find one for the Medicine Hat branch (the ones most likely to be behind the sign). I also found that the group has another website, Abortionbreastcancer.ca, that claims abortion is the major cause of breast cancer in women, and that there is a big cover-up conspiracy by doctors to supress this info (more on this bullshit in a later blog post...)

But the sign leads me to think that the group is sleezy for three reasons. First, they dont say where they got any of their statistics. The statistics we found on abortion rates didn't match theirs at all. Without any reference to where the stats came from, how are people going to determine whether or not the group is truthful or lying through their teeth? Most people will take the numbers as truth without even thinking to look them up, but they wouldnt be able to do it even if they wanted to. Secondly, the use of the Pregnancy Crisis Hotline's number (and without stating what the number is for) is sleezy. I doubt doing so is illegal, since the number is freely available to the public, but who knows how many people have called it thinking they are going to get Alberta Right To Life and end up yelling at some poor soul in Winnepeg? And third, the sign spreads blatent lies about abortion (how is it "killing babies" or "hurting women"? Again, no references). I don't know how a group goes about putting up signs like that. I dont think it's legal if it's on public ground (because the group has an obvious religous impetus). Perhaps it's private land? I'm not familiar enough with the Medicine Hat area to know. I'll keep searching for a contact for the Medicine Hat branch so I an question them about it...

Answers in Genesis tries to play with the big boys, fails epically.

One of the things that is often used to laugh at how silly Creationists and, more specifically, Intelligent Design, is, is that it makes no predictions, no testable hypotheses, and porponents lack published papers in scientific journals. Some time ago, Answers in Genesis tried to address these criticisms by starting their own journal (Sorry, AiG, but it doesnt count when you need to start your own journal to publish your own papers, and the peer-review process only works when people outside of your own little group review your science). Nevertheless, we all still chuckled because their papers were non-technical drivel with faulty reasoning and laughable conclusions. Now, the folks over at AiG have tried to remedy this by attempting real 'semi-technial' research. In their article, they compare the fitness of an antibiotic resistant strain of Serratia marcescens to a suseptible strain, in an attempt to discredit evolution of antibiotic resistance (and thus, micro- and macroevolution). But, as the folks over at The Panda's Thumb point out, they fail majorly.

The first problem with their research is breaking one of the golden rules of research: if you are examining a particular variable, everything else needs to remain constant. For example, if you are trying to determine if regular or supreme gasoline gives you a better fuel mileage, you have to compare the two types in the same car, or at least the same model of car. You cant put regular in a Civic, put supreme in a Prius and then declare that supreme is better because the Prius goes further. There is no way to determine if the difference was caused by the gasoline itself of if other factors that differ between the two cars were the cause. You'd have to do the experiment in the same (type of) car. Everything except the variable you are testing needs to remain the same. The same thing goes with working with bacteria. If you are going to compare two strains - one resistant to Ampicilin, the other not - then both strains need to be genetically identical sans the resistance gene. This is one of the most basic, common sense rules about research. Its also the first rule that Answers in Genesis breaks in their 'research'. They compared an S. marcescens Amp resistant strain (it's never explicitly stated where they obtained it, but they allude to Dr. Robert Williams at the Texas Medical Center who has aparently kept the strain going) to a "wild type" that they, get this, isolated from a random sample of pond water. They have no way (short of sequencing the entire genome of each strain) if both strains are genetically identical. One is resistant to ampicilin, the other isnt. But is that the only difference? Most likely not. How can they conclude with any certainty that any fitness difference between the two were because of the resistance gene? They can't. It's as simple as that. They cannot make such a conclusion because they used grossly improper research technique; their findings are absolutely worthless.

The second big problem with their research is that they dont understand what the heck "fitness" means. They define fitness as as ‘growth rate and colony “robustness” in minimal media’ (What the heck is a "robust" colony? That's a pretty subjective qualifier). Unfirtunatley, because of their lousy techniques mentioned above, they can't tell if a smaller colony is less fit (by their definition) because of the resistance gene or some other factor they did not controll. Not only that but the figure they use to describe the growth curves has no error bars, so you cannot tell how accurate their numbers are and whether or not the difference between the two strains is statistically significant (it likely isn't). They then go on to conclude that the resistant strain is "less fit" than the wild type. This makes little sense, considering 92% of Serratia marcescens infections in hospitals are antibiotic restistant (which they state in their own paper). If such strains were less fit then why are they more common than the wild type strain? Because hospitals use antibiotics and the resistance provides a reproductive (fitness) advantage. But because they use a lousy definitation of fitness, they conclude that resistant strains are less fit.

The third big problem is that they dont seem to know the difference between "compete" and "compare". What they did in their paper was compare the two strains. They plated one on minimal media and counted the colonies. Then they plated the second on minimal media and counted the colonies. They compared the numbers, etc. Nevertheless, they constantly refer to the bacteria "competing". There is a big difference. Let's imagine we have two cages, each with a mouse. You feed Mouse A ten pieces of cheese, and it eats all of them. You feed Mouse B ten pieces of cheese, and it eats all of them. Comparitively, both mouse seem the same. But put both mice together and feed them some cheese, and mouse A eats 90% of it, while mouse B only gets 10% of it. This is because Mouse A outcompetes Mouse B. This is not what AiG did. They compared the two strains. They didn't make them compete. So how could they conclude that the non-resistant strain of Serratia marcescens outcompetes the resistant strain? They can't.

And even if all this was forgiven, if they had used proper technique, they had made the strains compete, used a proper definition of fitness....their conclusions are still wrong. If they had bothered to look, this exact experiment had been done before (properly), and the authors concluded the exact opposite of what AiG found.

Nice try, Answers in Genesis, but you're not cut out for this kind of thing. Leave the research to the people who know how to do it. Leave the science to the scientists.