Laughs for a biology nerd

My inner Bennett Cerf:

[Via Pharyngula]

These will

keep you groaning all day.

A fellow accidentally ingested some alpha-L-glucose and discovered that he had no ill effects. Apparently he was ambidextrose.

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A bloke walks into a pub, and asks for a pint of Adenosinetriphosphate. The barman says “That’ll be 80p (ATP) please!”

(note 100p = £1, and ATP is short for Adenosinetriphosphate, but you already knew that.)

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Some genetic researchers were studying Acinonyx jubatus to find out why he had a high abnormal sperm count. They gave a group of these animals a histocompatibility (tissue-type) test.

“This is singular,” observed one to the other. “Every one of these cats gave the same answers.”

“Aw,” drawled the other, “they’re all a bunch of cheetahs.

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Did you hear about the biologist who had twins? She baptized one and kept the other as a control.

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Many of these will require explanations for laypeople. And as anyone knows, having to explain a joke renders it unfunny.

But I laughed out loud at several of these. And, the last one should be enjoyable to anyone, at least if they remember novelty songs.

Technorati Tags: General, Science

That explains that

More Discovery Institute bulldung on the way to my door:
[Via Pharyngula]

Supposedly, the Next Big Thing in the Intelligent Design creationism movement is Stephen Meyer’s new book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). Meyer is wandering about the country, peddling absurd op-eds and flogging his book in bad talks. Here’s a good summary of one of his presentations in Seattle:

To sum up, Meyer’s argument is as follows:

(1) According to Bill Gates, DNA is like a computer program.
(2) Because I am unfamiliar with the field known as genetic programming, every computer program I’ve ever heard of has had a developer.
(3) Charles Darwin once used the principle of Inference To The Best Explanation.
(4) Even though Darwin was a wicked, wicked man, I’m going to use that same principle to refute him. It will be, you know, irony.
(5) I say that intelligent design is the best explanation for the computer-program-like-ness of DNA.
(6) Therefore, by Darwin’s own reasoning, intelligent design must be true.
(7) Please buy my book.

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So the answer to my question ‘Why are they even given a soapbox?‘ has been answered. He has a book coming out. The op-ed was more an attempt to market his book than to actually explain anything.

So when did op-eds become marketing tools? Did I miss some big change in the medium? Does anyone who has a book coming out get one or is this guy’s publisher owned by the same corporation that owns the Boston Globe?

These sorts of incestuous interactions is one reason I see for the loss in readership for news media. They are no longer interested in doing much of anything but cater to the lowest denominator (i.e. Michael Jackson, birther conspiracies, etc.) While this has always been a part, there was usually something for the non-lowest denominators. Maybe a good columnist or an op-ed that could really educate, rather than cater.

Now it seems that we only really see partisan pundits geared to divide or op-eds designed to sell books. That may have worked in the old days when there was little choice but now, these attempts will result in having only the lowest denominators still reading a newspaper.

Others will find their informative commentators elsewhere on the web. I no longer need to buy a paper in order to read great words written by rational people thinking deeply about a topic. I know, that seldom happened before but it did often enough to make a paper worthwhile.

Now, even the best sports reporting by a paper can be found in the blogs written by the sports reporters, not in the paper. I read about the Seattle Sounders online at the Seattle Times because the news and comments inform me more than a newspaper ever did.

Technorati Tags: Science

Why looking different can be good

by Dr. Rosemary Gillespie, UC Berkeley.

Looking different ‘helps animals to survive’:
[Via Eureka! Science News - Popular science news]

In the animal kingdom, everything is not as it seems. Individuals of the same species can look very different from each other – what biologists term ‘polymorphism.’

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This is a pretty interesting topic. Some animals have a genetic tendency to look vastly different from one another. This can really be seen with coloration.

Now, why would it be selective for a species to come in a wide variety of colors? It turns out that it is predator’s fault. Using computer models, the researchers showed that one postulated reason, apostatic predation, was part of the reason. Here, the predator keeps a visual picture of its prey. So, if an animal does not look like prey, the predator will not east it.

But this did not explain everything. The other reason shown by the researchers showed that dietary wariness was also important. Here, a predator will not eat a ‘new’ species it has not seen before because it might be sickened. So, by looking very different, the prey can escape being eaten while the predator looks for something it KNOWS is edible.

The new research suggests that a modest level of predator dietary wariness can, on its own, lead to the maintenance of large numbers distinct prey forms within a single species.

Pretty cool. It is like a biological countermeasure to prevent being eaten. I wonder if it would ever be important for human use?

And if you want to take an extraordinary and well-written journey through their research, and see how Legos enter into the story, read this nice story put together by the Understanding Evolution team. The picture above is from the site.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Science