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Comment Re:Still doing that? (Score 1) 631

by kyriosdelis (#33020216) Attached to: Superheroes vs. the Westboro Baptist Church

His arguments are laughably bad when he strays outside the area he knows (evolutionary biology) and into a region he knows nothing about (theology).

You, sir, need to read The Courtier's Reply :

I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor's boots, nor does he give a moment's consideration to Bellini's masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor's Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor's raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion; Dawkins cavalierly dismisses them all. He even laughs at the highly popular and most persuasive arguments of his fellow countryman, Lord D. T. Mawkscribbler, who famously pointed out that the Emperor would not wear common cotton, nor uncomfortable polyester, but must, I say must, wear undergarments of the finest silk.

Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity.

Personally, I suspect that perhaps the Emperor might not be fully clothed — how else to explain the apparent sloth of the staff at the palace laundry — but, well, everyone else does seem to go on about his clothes, and this Dawkins fellow is such a rude upstart who lacks the wit of my elegant circumlocutions, that, while unable to deal with the substance of his accusations, I should at least chide him for his very bad form.

Until Dawkins has trained in the shops of Paris and Milan, until he has learned to tell the difference between a ruffled flounce and a puffy pantaloon, we should all pretend he has not spoken out against the Emperor's taste. His training in biology may give him the ability to recognize dangling genitalia when he sees it, but it has not taught him the proper appreciation of Imaginary Fabrics.
Image

OH Senate Passes Bill Banning Human-Animal Hybrids 197

Posted by samzenpus from the no-centaurs-allowed dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The sci-fi movie Splice seems to have scared the Ohio's State Senator Steve Buehrer. The Ohio Senate has passed Sen. Buehrer's bill banning 'the creation, transportation, or receipt of a human-animal hybrid, the transfer of a nonhuman embryo into a human womb, and the transfer of a human embryo into a nonhuman womb.' So much for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."
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Happy Towel Day 122

Posted by samzenpus from the wringing-out-the-wit dept.
An anonymous reader writes "While Douglas Adams continues his attempt to set a new record for the longest extended lunch break, geeks all over the universe pay tribute to the beloved author by celebrating the tenth edition of Towel Day. Towel Day is more alive than ever. This year Richard Dawkins, one of Adams' best friends, has tweeted a Towel Day reminder to his numerous followers. The CERN Bulletin has published an article on Towel Day. There has been TV coverage and there will be a radio interview. The Military Republic of the Deltan Imperium, a newly formed micronation, has recognized Towel Day as an official holiday. In Hungary several hundreds of hitchhiker fans want to have a picnic together in a park. And there's a concert, a free downloadable nerdrap album, a free game being released, the list goes on and on."
Canada

Cheap Cancer Drug Finally Tested In Humans 363

Posted by timothy from the good-enough-for-the-likes-of-you dept.
John Bayko writes "Mentioned on Slashdot a couple of years ago, the drug dichloroacetate (DCA) has finally finished its first clinical trial against brain tumors in humans. Drug companies weren't willing to test a drug they could not patent, so money was raised in the community through donations, auctions, and finally government support, but the study was still limited to five patients. It showed extremely positive results in four of them. This episode raises the question of what happens to all the money donated to Canadian and other cancer societies, and especially the billions spent buying merchandise with little pink ribbons on it, if not to actual cancer research like this."
Biotech

Crowdsourcing HIV Research 52

Posted by timothy from the work-backwards-to-zero dept.
biolgeek writes "In recent years, HIV has been managed with a collection of therapies. However, the virus will likely evolve around these drugs, making it crucially important to get a better understanding of the virus itself. An important step in understanding the virus is to get a handle on its genetic blueprint. William Dampier of Drexler University is taking a novel approach to this research by crowdsourcing his problem. He is hosting a bioinformatics competition, which requires contestants to find markers in the HIV sequence that predict a change in the severity of the infection (as measured by viral load). So far the best entry comes from Fontanelles, an HIV research group, which has been able to predict a change in viral load with 66% accuracy."

Comment Old News... (Score 5, Informative) 454

by kyriosdelis (#30763988) Attached to: Human Males Evolve At a Faster Pace Than Females
This has been known for a long time. It is called "male driven evolution". This happens because in humans (and most animals) the cells producing sperms divide about 6 times more than the egg cells. And guess what: studies in a human gene that has a homologue in both X and Y chromosomes, showed that (you guessed it) the Y homologue changes about 6 times faster than the X one.
Did I say old news? 1947 old:
“The primordial oocytes are mostly if not all formed at birth, whereas spermatogonia go on dividing throughout the sexual life of a male. So if mutation is due to faulty copying of genes at a nuclear division, we might expect it to be commoner in males than females.”
“ we should expect higher mutability in the male to be a general property of human and perhaps other vertebrate genes.”
J. B. S. Haldane. 1947. The mutation rate of the gene for haemophilia and its segregation ratios in males and females. Ann. Eugen. 13:262-271.

Submission + - "Creationist intro" Origin of Species distributed (livingwaters.com)

Submitted by kyriosdelis
kyriosdelis writes: On November 18th, creationist Ray Comfort had an edition of Darwin's Origin of Species with a 54-page creationist foreword, distributed to more than 50 major university campuses across the US (original list here:http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/18717#comment-267224). The intro itself has been described as "a hopeless mess of long-ago-refuted creationist arguments, teeming with misinformation about the science of evolution, populated by legions of strawmen, and exhibiting what can be charitably described as muddled thinking."
The giveaway was originally scheduled for the 19th, but it was rushed to the 18th, to prevent the scheduled organized reaction by each campus' freethinkers. Fellow slashdotters from these universities with an interest in evolution, are encouraged to seek people with no biology background that got any of the books, and help them get their facts straight.
Power

Submission + - Big Bang Could Be Recreated Inside A Metamaterial (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by
KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: "Metamaterials are substances with a permittivity and permeability that has been manipulated in a way that allows fine control over the behaviour of light. They have famously been used to create an invisibility cloak that hide objects from view (see, for example, here or here). Now one physicist in the US has calculated how they could be used for a much more profound demonstration: to reproduce the behaviour of light in various kinds of spacetimes, in particular a (2+2) spacetime (which means having two dimensions of space and two of time). His method is to show that there is formal mathematical analogy between the way metamaterials and spacetimes effect light. He goes on to show how a phase transition in a (2+2) spacetime leads to the creation of a (2+1) spacetime filled with photons, an event that is analogous to the Big Bang."

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