Ken Ham.

I guess it's kind of appropriate. You're doing a story about goofy literalist lunatics, and he is one of the biggest. But still, it seems like there ought to be some recognition that one is digging into a dunghill for weird quotes when you pick up the phone and call Answers in Genesis.

"There's a big difference between looking at the origin of the planets, the solar system and the universe and looking at presently how they move and how they are interrelated," Ham said. "The Bible is neither geocentric or heliocentric. It does not give any specific information about the structure of the solar system."

Ham is usually adamant that one must interpret the Bible literally, word by word, but I guess this is a case that shows he's actually one of those cafeteria Christians.

If he's going to bend on this, though, I have to point out that the chapters of Genesis that he relies on for his insistence on a young earth are very brief, contain no detail and vast amounts of ambiguity, and that the Bible is also silent on how species are structured and interrelated. If he insists on using it as a science text to discuss biology, a topic that is not at all emphasized or even properly described in the book, I don't think he can complain at another fringe religious group that decides to use it as an astronomy textbook — they're both doing exactly the same thing.

(Also on FtB)

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Roughly one-third of my 2006 No. 1 New York Times best-seller, "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," is an attack on liberals' creation myth, Darwinian evolution. I presented the arguments of all the luminaries in the field, from the retarded Richard Dawkins to the brilliant Francis Crick, and disputed them.

But apparently liberals didn't want to argue back.

I do, I do! I read Godless — it was appallingly bad, packed full of very poor rants made in complete ignorance of the science. I even challenged Coulter fans to pick out their favorite paragraph for me to dissect…and none stepped forward. Maybe there are no Coulter fans. Or maybe they're smarter than she is.

She's apparently going to do a series of columns exposing the weaknesses of evolution. This week, she holds her banner high for irreducible complexity.

Most devastating for the Darwiniacs were advances in microbiology since Darwin's time, revealing infinitely complex mechanisms requiring hundreds of parts working together at once -- complex cellular structures, DNA, blood-clotting mechanisms, molecules, and the cell's tiny flagellum and cilium.

"Microbiology"?

"Microbiology"?!?!

It wasn't microbiologists who worked out the structure of DNA. She apparently believes microbiology is the field that studies itty-bitty little things. It's so cute to see someone so ignorant sit there and glibly type out such revealing nonsense. I've had students do that — it's a sign that they deserve to fail.

Or how about this?

Thanks to advances in microscopes, thousands of such complex mechanisms have been found since Darwin's day. He had to explain only simple devices, such as beaks and gills. If Darwin were able to come back today and peer through a modern microscope to see the inner workings of a cell, he would instantly abandon his own theory.

Bwahahahaha! How many of you molecular biologists do all your work by peering into a microscope? Oh, look, did you see that Notch molecule bind to Delta? Hey, there goes the cytoplasmic element, activating a transduction cascade! Do you also use your microscope to read off the sequence of nucleotides in the DNA coiled in the nucleus? Such a silly naif.

Aside from the ignorant gaffes, though, here's the rotten heart of her argument.

It is a mathematical impossibility, for example, that all 30 to 40 parts of the cell's flagellum -- forget the 200 parts of the cilium! -- could all arise at once by random mutation. According to most scientists, such an occurrence is considered even less likely than John Edwards marrying Rielle Hunter, the "ground zero" of the impossible.

Nor would each of the 30 to 40 parts individually make an organism more fit to survive and reproduce, which, you will recall, is the lynchpin of the whole contraption.

No one argues that they all arose instantly in a flash in full functioning order. Oh, wait, there are some who do: the creationists. No legitimate biologist is that stupid. Her claim that the individual components can contribute no incremental benefit is nothing but an assertion from a non-biologist with no knowledge of biology; I recommend Ian Musgrave's article on the evolution of the flagellum that describes transitional forms and the combination of components involved, as well as refuting the simplistic notions of what a flagellum does that most creationists have.

Dembski has claimed that, as the eubacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex, he can eliminate explanations based on natural law for the origin of the flagellum. This conclusion is wrong for two reasons: (1) Being IC does not eliminate indirect evolutionary explanations, and flagella can evolve from simpler systems through a series of functional intermediates. Further, (2) eubacterial flagella are not the " outboard motors" that Dembski envisages, but rather organelles that are involved in swimming, gliding motility, attachment, and secretion. They occupy one end of a range of secretion-based motility systems in bacteria of varying complexity, and several existing intermediate stages show how the flagellum could well have arisen by evolution and natural selection.

Coulter has a BA in history and a law degree. She hasn't even done any research on the biology she's critiquing; she only parrots creationist sources. Liberals aren't afraid to argue evolution with her, but instead see her as an unqualified, clueless twit who isn't even capable of addressing the actual substance of an argument.

(Also on FtB)

His latest article is Defeating Darwin in four steps…and I read the title and instantly predicted what his four objections would be before I even looked at the first sentence — I'd apply for Randi's million dollar challenge, except reading the mind of a droning cretin isn't much of a challenge.

You really need to listen to Fischer's awful radio show, just for the schlocky thrill of his sing-songy chant of "First Law, Second Law, Fossils, Genes". It's a high quality, potent emetic.

Here are his four magic arguments:

1. First Law of Thermodynamics. This law (note: not a theory but a scientific law) teaches us that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed. In other words, an honest scientist will tell you that there is nothing in the observable universe that can explain either the origin of energy or matter. By logical extension, then, matter and energy had to come into being by some force outside the universe.

   What this means, then, is that science simply has no explanation for the most basic question that could possibly be asked: why is there something rather than nothing?

   Actually, I didn't guess this one exactly right — I thought he'd say something about abiogenesis, that we don't know how life started. Unfortunately, Fischer was even more idiotic than I thought he'd be: the origin of the universe is a physics problem, and is not a matter explained at all by biological evolution, so this is completely irrelevant.

   This is a common creationist claim, though, that the Big Bang violates the first law of thermodynamics. These gomers don't understand thermodynamics so it's silly for them to rely on it. Ask a physicist; the Big Bang doesn't violate thermodynamics.

   This negative gravitational potential energy exactly cancels out the positive energy of the universe. As Stephen Hawking says in his book A Brief History of Time (quoted by Victor Stenger, Has Science Found God?, p. 148): "In the case of a universe that is approximately uniform in space, one can show that this negative gravitational energy exactly cancels the positive energy represented by the matter. So the total energy of the universe is zero." In other words, it is not the case that something came out of nothing. It is that we have always had zero energy.

2. Second Law of Thermodynamics. This law (note: not a theory but a law) teaches us that in every chemical or heat reaction, there is a loss of energy that never again is available for another heat reaction. This is why things break down if left to themselves, and why scientists tell us that the universe is headed toward a heat death.

   This law teaches us, then, that the universe is headed toward increasing randomness and decay.

   But what does the theory of evolution teach us? The exact opposite, that the universe is headed toward increasing complexity and order. You put up a scientific theory against my scientific law, I'm going to settle for the law every time, thank you very much.

   I knew this one was coming. Again, creationists don't understand thermodynamics at all, and this is a beautiful example. Nothing violates the second law. Every gain in complexity in biology is matched by an even greater increase in entropy. I was once a tiny single cell, and I have increased in complexity and bulk over the years by chowing down on a mountain of high-energy food and turning it into a mountain of low-energy poop. It's the same story with the bigger scale of evolution: it's ultimately been driven by immense masses of hydrogen fusing in the heart of our star. Far more energy was burned by the sun than was harvested and used in all the history of life, so there is no net gain in the energy of the whole system.

3. Fossils. Realize that the fossil record is the only tangible, physical evidence for the theory of evolution that exists. The fossil record is it. There is absolutely nothing else Darwinians have they can show you.

   As Yale University's Carl Dunbar says, "Fossils provide the only historical, documentary evidence that life has evolved from simpler to more and more complex forms."

   But if Darwin's theory is correct, that increasingly complex life forms developed in tiny little incremental and transitional steps, then the fossil record should by littered with an enormous number of transitional fossils.

   Another predictable and stupid claim. We've got lots of transitional fossils. We look in the fossil record, and find entire ecosystems that no longer exist and have changed in radical ways. This is Fischer just sticking his fingers in his ears and shouting "la la la la".

   The quote from Carl Dunbar is revealing. If you're like me, you're asking "who the heck is Carl Dunbar, and why should I care?" This one is a double-whammy against the creationists, though: Carl Dunbar was born in 1891, so once again they're desperately scrambling to find some authority, any authority, to back up their claims. The other problem for the creationists, though, is the quote itself. Read it. Does this actually say there's a problem with the fossil record? No, it does not. Dunbar was a well-known invertebrate paleontologist 50 years ago, who published many papers illustrating the pattern of transitions in the stratigraphic record.

   He's probably be very surprised to hear that creationists now cite his work vaguely and with no comprehension as evidence against evolution. I guarantee you, too, that Fischer knows nothing about Dunbar's work, and only cites him because he found other creationist sites that quote-mined him.

4. Genes. The only mechanism -- don't miss this -- the only mechanism evolutionists have to explain the development of increasingly complex life forms is genetic mutation. Mutations alter DNA, and these alterations can be passed on to descendants.

   The problem: naturally occurring genetic mutations are invariably harmful if not fatal to the organism. Rather than improve an organism's capacity to survive, they invariably weaken it. That's why the phrase we most often use to refer to genetic mutations is "birth defects."

   Bryan Fischer is completely wrong here: he's stating as a fact that mutations are invariably deleterious, and this is simply not true. Most are neutral. Some are advantageous, and all it takes is one counterexample to show that his absolutist statements are wrong. I'd say he's lying, but I know what a lot of people would say: "he's not literally lying, he's just ignorant". But this is something we need a better word for: he's stating as a certainty a false 'fact', acting as an authority in a field he actually knows nothing about, and is intentionally promoting a counterfactual to advance an ideology. He's a disinformation agent, sowing propaganda: it's worse than lying.

That's enough inanity. I'm done. I really hope, though, that someday someone comes up to me chanting "First Law, Second Law, Fossils, Genes" just like Bryan Fischer so I can kick their dumb ass.

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(via Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand)

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The JREF's Million Dollar Challenge Director, Banachek, also featured in the episode, said, "We're issuing a challenge to these fakers: for once, show that you can get this supposedly supernatural knowledge without cheating. If one of you can demonstrate your 'psychic' abilities on randomly chosen strangers—not celebrities—under mutually-agreed conditions, without relying on known cold-reading techniques such as fishing around with vague questions, and without just using Google—we will donate our million dollars to you or to the charity of your choice."

You know Van Praagh and DuBois will never, ever risk exposure of their profitable scams by subjecting themselves to tests.

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I was tearing into her quite regularly for a while there after that book came out. She was such an easy target.

But no matter. I'm acutely envious of Carl Zimmer, who Coulter regards as a giant flatulent raccoon. Man, I would love to have that on my résumé. Alas, Coulter has no idea who I am, so I'm not going to get that recognition.

By the way, the Coulter challenge is still open, and has been for five years. All anyone has to do is pick one paragraph, any paragraph, from her evolution chapters in Godless, and post it with a defense of its accuracy. That shouldn't be so hard, should it? She wrote this whole book, I'm letting you pick the very best, most solid, strongest argument against evolution from it and present it here to stump us all. It's strange that no one has managed to do that in all this time.

(By the way, as is usual whenever I mention Coulter, there will be petty people who will sneer at her appearance or make ugly remarks about her sexuality. Do not do that. I will cut you.)

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A few people have received email from CBS admitting that they've removed the nonsense.

Dr. Sher has asked me to respond to your recent e-mail regarding our What's Your Type? new donor recruitment program. I understand that you have also sent an e-mail communicating your concerns to www.whatsyourtype@blood.ca and that others from our organization have provided you with specific details in response. I can confirm that the content you object to has been removed from our web site. The marketing materials for this program are being revised.

Thanks again for sharing your views with us.

Ian Mumford
Chief Operating Officer
Canadian Blood Services

Good for them. Science FTW!

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Evolution is a simple fact. We can choose to remain ignorant of it, we can stick our fingers in our ears and refuse to think about it, we can even rail against it and shout and scream that it is not allowed to be true. But facts are facts, and will not go away just because we don't like them. We don't get to vote for our preferred method of having come into existence as a species, any more than we can choose to have been delivered by stork rather than conceived and born in the usual way.

Candidates who stick their fingers in their ears and reject reality simply don't deserve to hold office.

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If you're anything like me, you'd go to experts and ask, "Is there good evidence that this really works? Is it a subject we should pursue in greater depth?"

Not the Royal Society of New Zealand, though. No, forget all that business of whether TCM actually works, or even does harm: instead, they hired a consultant psychologist who interviewed 30 people and asked them whether they'd used TCM. Their conclusion:

The Society recommends that TCM should become a registered profession and that registered practitioners should be clinically well qualified.

It apparently doesn't matter whether it works or not, and the fact that it can cause harm was actually used to support endorsing it in a fine piece of topsy-turvy logic.

There is the potential of harm from the practice of TCM. Apart from the risks already outlined in the proposal document, clients consulting TCM practitioners are at risk of delayed diagnosis and treatment of their conditions, which can carry significant consequences. It is possible that an occult fracture is missed in a client consulting a TCM practitioner for foot pain, or early meningococcal disease overlooked in a client with fevers and general malaise.

Regulation of TCM will ensure that all TCM practitioners are aware of the limitation of their service, and to know when to refer clients to another health service if necessary. Improper practice of TCM, such as tuina (massage therapy) and tei-da (practice of bone-setting), has been shown to induce physical damage (e.g. joint dislocation, spindle damage, deep tissue/muscle damage) to the patients and some herbal medicine may also not be suitable for pregnant women. It will therefore be important to ensure that registered TCM practitioners are responsible and clinically well qualified.

I have decided that chewing broken glass is a cure for cancer. It is irrelevant whether it actually does so; it does cause severe bleeding and oral and throat damage, though, so I'm moving to New Zealand, where that will be cause to officially recognize and register my practice, so that the state can better protect my patients from harm.

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Well, guess which students earn the highest grades? It's future teachers. According to a new study by Cory Koedel published by the American Enterprise Institute:

Students who take education classes at universities receive significantly higher grades than students who take classes in every other academic discipline. The higher grades cannot be explained by observable differences in student quality between education majors and other students, nor can they be explained by the fact that education classes are typically smaller than classes in other academic departments.

This is despite the fact that education majors have the lowest high school grades and standardized test scores of all college students.

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I'm promoting a comment from David Marjanovic:

Rick, you have the well-known cache problem. Refresh. If that doesn't help, try Shift+F5 or Ctrl+F5. If that still doesn't work, burrow through the menu of your browser and look for how to clear your cache.

There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office. What is unusual about today's Republican party (I disavow the ridiculous 'GOP' nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered 'grand') is this: In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today's Republican Party 'in spite of' is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.

Any other organization -- a big corporation, say, or a university, or a learned society - -when seeking a new leader, will go to immense trouble over the choice. The CVs of candidates and their portfolios of relevant experience are meticulously scrutinized, their publications are read by a learned committee, references are taken up and scrupulously discussed, the candidates are subjected to rigorous interviews and vetting procedures. Mistakes are still made, but not through lack of serious effort.

The population of the United States is more than 300 million and it includes some of the best and brightest that the human species has to offer, probably more so than any other country in the world. There is surely something wrong with a system for choosing a leader when, given a pool of such talent and a process that occupies more than a year and consumes billions of dollars, what rises to the top of the heap is George W Bush. Or when the likes of Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin can be mentioned as even remote possibilities.

A politician's attitude to evolution is perhaps not directly important in itself. It can have unfortunate consequences on education and science policy but, compared to Perry's and the Tea Party's pronouncements on other topics such as economics, taxation, history and sexual politics, their ignorance of evolutionary science might be overlooked. Except that a politician's attitude to evolution, however peripheral it might seem, is a surprisingly apposite litmus test of more general inadequacy. This is because unlike, say, string theory where scientific opinion is genuinely divided, there is about the fact of evolution no doubt at all. Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well. Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable. It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. Thanks to Darwin, we now understand why we are here and why we are the way we are. You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today.

Darwin's idea is arguably the most powerful ever to occur to a human mind. The power of a scientific theory may be measured as a ratio: the number of facts that it explains divided by the number of assumptions it needs to postulate in order to do the explaining. A theory that assumes most of what it is trying to explain is a bad theory. That is why the creationist or 'intelligent design' theory is such a rotten theory.

What any theory of life needs to explain is functional complexity. Complexity can be measured as statistical improbability, and living things are statistically improbable in a very particular direction: the direction of functional efficiency. The body of a bird is not just a prodigiously complicated machine, with its trillions of cells - each one in itself a marvel of miniaturized complexity - all conspiring together to make muscle or bone, kidney or brain. Its interlocking parts also conspire to make it good for something - in the case of most birds, good for flying. An aero-engineer is struck dumb with admiration for the bird as flying machine: its feathered flight-surfaces and ailerons sensitively adjusted in real time by the on-board computer which is the brain; the breast muscles, which are the engines, the ligaments, tendons and lightweight bony struts all exactly suited to the task. And the whole machine is immensely improbable in the sense that, if you randomly shook up the parts over and over again, never in a million years would they fall into the right shape to fly like a swallow, soar like a vulture, or ride the oceanic up-draughts like a wandering albatross. Any theory of life has to explain how the laws of physics can give rise to a complex flying machine like a bird or a bat or a pterosaur, a complex swimming machine like a tarpon or a dolphin, a complex burrowing machine like a mole, a complex climbing machine like a monkey, or a complex thinking machine like a person.

Darwin explained all of this with one brilliantly simple idea - natural selection, driving gradual evolution over immensities of geological time. His is a good theory because of the huge ratio of what it explains (all the complexity of life) divided by what it needs to assume (simply the nonrandom survival of hereditary information through many generations). The rival theory to explain the functional complexity of life - creationism - is about as bad a theory as has ever been proposed. What it postulates (an intelligent designer) is even more complex, even more statistically improbable than what it explains. In fact it is such a bad theory it doesn't deserve to be called a theory at all, and it certainly doesn't deserve to be taught alongside evolution in science classes.

The simplicity of Darwin's idea, then, is a virtue for three reasons. First, and most important, it is the signature of its immense power as a theory, when compared with the mass of disparate facts that it explains - everything about life including our own existence. Second, it makes it easy for children to understand (in addition to the obvious virtue of being true!), which means that it could be taught in the early years of school. And finally, it makes it extremely beautiful, one of the most beautiful ideas anyone ever had as well as arguably the most powerful. To die in ignorance of its elegance, and power to explain our own existence, is a tragic loss, comparable to dying without ever having experienced great music, great literature, or a beautiful sunset.

There are many reasons to vote against Rick Perry. His fatuous stance on the teaching of evolution in schools is perhaps not the first reason that springs to mind. But maybe it is the most telling litmus test of the other reasons, and it seems to apply not just to him but, lamentably, to all the likely contenders for the Republican nomination. The 'evolution question' deserves a prominent place in the list of questions put to candidates in interviews and public debates during the course of the coming election.

That Dawkins took to clearly stating exactly what was wrong with these bad anti-science candidates doesn't sit well with some people. Jamie Vernon at the Intersection (of course) thinks his opinion piece was an ineffective violation of all that the mush-brained accommodationists hold dear.

In one short paragraph, Dr. Dawkins has violated nearly everything we have come to know about effective science communication. I cannot, for the life of me, understand how Dr. Dawkins believes hurling insults, like "uneducated fools" and "ignoramus," can advance his position. How far do you think readers of the opposite mind continued into this article?

Oh, man. These clowns always practice industrial grade irony. If describing Perry in unflattering terms in the first paragraph is a barrier, what is the fact that Vernon called Dawkins a "crotchety old man" in the freakin' title of his post? I don't mind if the softies want to try their supposedly subtler, more psychologically informed tactics on the opposition, but somehow they never do — Vernon doesn't do anything to persuade Perry, and doesn't even suggest alternatives — and instead they always resort to hectoring activists who do speak their mind. It's impossible to avoid the conclusion that all they want is passivity and silence, and that they just love wallowing in hypocrisy.

So get out there, Mr Vernon. What are you doing to inform people of the disastrous ignorance of Rick Perry? What are you doing to oppose his candidacy? Are you even willing to state that he's unfit for office, and why? Don't you think evolution-denial is a very good marker for science illiteracy?

This is precisely what infuriates me. We have a functional moron running for the presidency, and a small crop of presumably pro-science people are busily trying to shush the opposition up so they can work their clever psycho-mojo and gently enlighten Perry by…I don't know, wiggling their fingers, thinking happy thoughts, or maybe they're going to use The Force.

Perry is a disastrously bad candidate (as is Bachmann). Call me a radical, but maybe it's a good idea for the opposition to oppose them, openly, and with thorough, rational explanations? And if the candidate is an ignoramus, as Perry clearly is, SAY IT.

And then Vernon perpetrates this nonsense:

The problem is that the Governor, and many like him, subscribe to a type of thinking that embraces hierarchical authoritarianism. People who participate in this form of thinking are not satisfied with the uncertainty that comes from evolutionary science. They need black and white answers…answers that the existing science cannot provide.

Let's see. Perry is an authoritarian who is unpersuaded by science. Isn't this sufficient to convince Vernon that he must be opposed?

And then, basically what he's saying here is that evolution is uncertain. It is not. Evolution is an established fact; Dawkins, no doubt intentionally, chose to make that the focus of the title of his piece, "Attention Governor Perry: Evolution is a fact". There is no uncertainty here. The community of scientists has spoken, and has said repeatedly, in black and white terms, and with near-unanimity that evolution happened.

Vernon is claiming that Dawkins is all wrong because Perry is looking for clarity. But clarity — clarity supported by evidence — is exactly what Dawkins offers. Vernon is full of crap.

What Dawkins does, as do many of us on the side the accommodationists hate, is provide sharp, clear, strong positions. What Dawkins does in that op-ed is play the role of Joseph Welch, confronting wicked folly and stating his position lucidly and with acid contempt for the forces of ignorance and deception.

You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

If Jamie Vernon had been writing in 1954, he would no doubt have castigated Welch for his harshness, and suggested some compromise…perhaps a few more hearings, helpfully exposing a few more Communists, perhaps asking for a little more respect for the distinguished senator from Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy. Unfortunately for Mr Vernon, history now regards the apologists and the silent as accomplices to a dark period in American government, and the people who spoke up in opposition as the heroes.

(Also on FtB)

I'm a microscopist — I look at micrographs all the time, and one of the things I always mentally do is place the size of things in context. And I was looking at the micrographs of these fossils, and what jumped out at me is how large they are. They're not impossibly large, they're just well out of the range I expect for prokaryotes.

Most prokaryotes have diameters in the range of 1-10µm, while typical eukaryotes are about 10 times that size. There are exceptions: Thiomargarita gets up to 500µm across, so like I say, there's nothing impossible about these cells, it's just that the micrographs show lots of cells with 10-30µm diameters. And the authors come right out and report that:

The size range is also typical of such assemblages, with small spheres and ellipsoids 5-25 µm in diameter, rare examples (<10) of larger cellular envelopes up to 80 µm in diameter, and tubes 7-20 µm across (see ref. 24).

How odd. When I poke into the nervous system of an embryonic insect or fish, those are the sizes of cells I often see (well, except there aren't many tubes of that size!). When I poke into a culture or embryo contaminated with bacteria, they're much, much smaller. So maybe paleoarchaean bacteria tended to be larger? And they do cite a source for that size range of prokaryotes…

Then here's a new problem: the source cited, ref. 24, is the Schopf paper, the older paper that claimed to have found ancient bacterial fossils, a claim that has since been discredited! Uh-oh. What they're calling "typical of such assemblages" is a data set that's widely considered artifactual now. Furthermore, that's a simplified version of what Schopf said — he actually broke the sizes down into categories, and the range was more like 1-30 µm.

• Very small solitary, paired or clustered rods (ca 0.75 µm broad, ca 1.5 µm long), inferred to be prokaryotic (bacterial) unicells: one unit (ca 2600 Myr old), one morphotype.
• Small, solitary, paired or clustered coccoids (average diameter ca 3 µm, range ca 2-5 µm), inferred to be prokaryotic (bacterial, perhaps cyanobacterial) unicells: three units (range 3320-2600 Myr old), three morphotypes.
• Large solitary or colonial coccoids (average diameter ca 13 µm, range ca 5-23 µm), inferred to be prokaryotic (bacterial, perhaps cyanobacterial) unicells: three units (range 3388-2560 Myr old), four morphotypes.
• Narrow unbranched sinuous filaments (average diameter ca 1.25 µm, range ca 0.2-3 µm), with or without discernable septations, inferred to be prokaryotic (bacterial, perhaps cyanobacterial) cellular trichomes and/or trichome-encompassing sheaths: 10 units (range 3496-2560 Myr old), 17 morphotypes.
• Broad unbranched septate filaments (average diameter ca 8 µm, range ca 2-19.5 µm), inferred to be prokaryotic (perhaps cyanobacterial) cellular trichomes: four units (range 3496-2723 Myr old), 10 morphotypes.
• Broad unbranched tubular or partially flattened cylinders (average diameter ca 13 µm, range ca 3-28 µm), inferred to be prokaryotic (perhaps cyanobacterial) trichome-encompassing sheaths: five units (range 3496-2516 Myr old), five morphotypes (e.g. figures 3a-e and 4l).

So Schopf was reporting larger cells in his older samples, and now Wacey et al. are describing what look like very large cells to me in their 3.4 billion year old rocks. I'm not a microbiologist so I could be way off on this, but…isn't this just a little bit strange? Maybe there are some micro people out there who can reassure me that this isn't a surprising result.

Wacey D, Kilburn MR, Saudners M, Cliff J, and Brasier MD (2011) Microfossils of sulphur-metabolizing cells in 3.4-billion-year-old rocks of Western Australia. Nature Geoscience Published online Aug. 21, 20110 [doi:10.1038/ngeo1238]

(Also on FtB)

The Community College of Rhode Island [CCRI] has proudly announced that this fall, a "reiki master" will be holding a seminar on "crystal and mineral healing" at the college. This, we're told, is

…a type of alternative therapy that involves laying crystals or gemstones on the body. Each student will experience a crystal therapy session and get a really good idea about how it changes your energy and rebalances you.

This instructor at CCRI also does "Cranio Sacral Therapy," and uses such advanced quackery as "Bio Magnets," "Light Life Tools," "Dowsing," and "Pendulums" She assures students that she is also a teacher and practitioner of many other alternative healing methods, and says that crystals have their own "intrinsic energy," and will "interact with points on the body's energy field, known as chakras, to promote balance and well-being." "Each crystal has its own properties and attributes when laid on the body with a specific chakra," she says. This collection of talents puts her well up in the tree with the top woo-woos, but she's teaching at CCRI.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Colleges all over the place are peddling this nonense, and you can tell how administrators are thinking: it's not about providing a good education, it's all about what the students will pay for…and if they'll pay for cheap, meaningless crap, so much the better for short-term profitability. Oh, and long-term damage to the school's reputation? Let the next chancellor or president or board worry about that.

So someone wrote to the Community College of Rhode Island, and Richard H. Coren, Director of Marketing, Communications and Publications replied.

Let that sink in. A complaint was made about the garbage content of courses at the college, and the Director of Marketing wrote back. Marketing. Damme. Let me tell you, when the academic revolution comes, it's the marketing drones who have the temerity to pontificate on curriculum and content who are going to get shoveled into the "B" Ark first.

Anyway, so Mr Coren, snake-buggering Director of Marketing to Morons, replies:

Students told us they wanted to further their knowledge of alternative healing methods, and the course was designed to introduce students to the practice of crystal and mineral healing. By offering the class, the college and its noncredit arm, CWCE, do not endorse the practice as science; we are simply responding to demand in the community for personal development courses such as this.

It's not alternative "healing". It's not "personal development". It's lies and bullshit. And seriously, there's a point beyond which what students want doesn't matter. My students wish there wasn't a calculus and statistics requirement for a degree in biology; tough. Some students might want a credit for watching a five-minute video on youtube; no way. We're supposed to have standards, and an education is supposed to mean something.

But no, we've got marketing directors who see a fast buck in selling out academic integrity.

Let's not blame only short-sighted bean-counters at the college level, though. Here's what we have to look forward to: pernicious effects of NCLB, a program which neglects science and encourages mindless teaching-to-the-test, has devastated science education.

It is time to acknowledge that there has been an unprecedented and precipitous decline in science teaching and learning as a consequence of the focus and implementation of No Child Left Behind. We do not need any more commissions or studies to tell us what is strikingly evident -- children of the NCLB era, who entered Kindergarten in 2003 and had little or no science education for the next seven years, are not going to do well in science in middle school or beyond. We are losing an entire generation to science illiteracy.

We're already beginning to see the consequences.

In 2009, PISA found that 15-year-old U.S. students ranked 17th of 34 developed countries in science and 25th of 34 in math. The same study revealed that the U.S. has among the most unequal performance in the world, with achievement levels highly dependent on socio-economic status. Low-income and minority communities are especially hard-hit by lack of access to high-quality science resources. The results from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress drive home the severity of the problem - only 18 percent of New York City's 4th graders and 13 percent of 8th graders performed at or above the proficient level in science.

Over the next six years, as "Generation NCLB" goes through high school, we can expect banner headlines about further drops in science learning and fewer students taking advanced level courses in biology, chemistry, and physics. That will be a precursor to the hue-and-cry from colleges, four years later, about the need for more remedial science and the falling number of American students majoring in sciences of all types, and then a renewed clamor from employers who need appropriately educated workers but cannot find them.

Maybe Mr Coren and my university's Center for Spirituality and Healing are being foresighted and wise. They're cultivating the perfect curriculum for a generation of students who lack critical thinking skills, who know nothing about science, and just want to be pandered to with pseudoscience for the gullible.

(Also on FtB)

(via National Geographic)

(Also on FtB)

Tomorrow, the new semester begins — once again, I've got an 8am course to teach on developmental neurobiology.

The madness begins.

But at least this year I've got a new tie!

(Also on FtB)

(via National Geographic)

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Coyne mentions one journalist who claims that new discoveries in epigenetics would "make Darwin swoon," which is a bizarre standard. Darwin knew next-to-nothing about genetics — he had his own weird version of Lamarckian inheritance — and wasn't even equipped to imagine molecular biology, so yes, just about anything in this field would dazzle him. My freshman introductory biology course would blow Charles Darwin away — he'd have to struggle to keep up with the products of American public education.

(Also on FtB)

What initially drew me to DC's site was his article on quackery in retreat: the University of Westminster has discarded some of their previous offerings in naturopathy. There is still a fair amount of junk in their curriculum, but there's hope that those are waning too.

I needed that bit of solace, because my university's official listserve sent me a wonderful offer earlier this week.

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction
As part of our ongoing commitment to provide quality, integrated wellness programs, the University of Minnesota's Center for Spirituality & Healing is pleased to offer a telephone-based version of the highly successful Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program (tMBSR). The tMBSR begins with an in-person, all-day workshop. The next six sessions are conducted via a web-based conference call. The tMBSR concludes with an in-person, all-day, mostly silent retreat. tMBSR will teach participants how to intentionally cope with pain, illness, and the stress of modern life. Participants will learn mindfulness meditation skills, and build upon their own personal strengths to offset the adverse effects of stress by responding more effectively.

The program cost of $385 (*$350 for UPlan members) includes: • Guided instruction in mindfulness mediation practices • Web-based group discussions • Gentle stretching & yoga • Daily "homework" to improve skills • Individual, tailored instruction & support • Hand-outs, CDs & Yoga DVD • All-day workshop and all-day retreat. *UPlan Members: The tMBSR program reimbursement is available to employees who are covered by the UPlan Medical Program. You must participate in both all-day events and 4 of the 6 conference calls to qualify to be reimbursed $200.00 of the registration fees.

All-Day Workshop & Retreat
September 17th, 2011, 9:00 am to 4:30 pm in Oyate
November 19th, 2011, 9:00 to 4:30 pm in Oyate

Oh, man. Our bogus magic medicine place, the Center for Spirituality and Healing, is sponsoring this garbage — oh, wait, "sponsoring"? No, milking the faculty. They want to charge us individually $385 for a day of "mindful meditation", for which the university may give us partial reimbursement…which just means they've found a way to fleece the suckers and also to get our university to endorse it.

I was cranky. I fired back on the listserve.

I am stunned that the university is subsidizing this bunkum and quackery from the Center for Spirituality and Healing. I shouldn't be surprised; after all, the university has this New Age crapfest called the CSH in the first place.

And then, of course, I was bombarded with rotten vegetables. People were upset: I was hurtful! I was contemptuous! How dare I question the university's efforts to help us deal with stress? One person sent me this claim that Linehan's Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) fixes a long laundry list of ailments, from anxiety to fibromyalgia to chronic pain, and that it caused "increased immune system functioning", one of those common buzz phrases that the quacks often use. So I wrote back, for the last time.

I've read some of these studies, and am unimpressed. Most of them assess subjective phenomena ("chronic pain" is notoriously amenable to suggestion, for instance), involve very small subject numbers and small effects, and often seize upon random phenomena as significant -- one study found that retention in their program was far greater than in the controls, for instance; their DBT program was offered for free to participants, while the control was paid psychotherapy. Surprise!

I think a university sponsored program to help employees deal with stress is a great idea. However, real programs that are effective are built upon evidence-based medicine, not the frivolous and fuzzy nonsense that we get from the Center for Spirituality and Healing. When our institution endorses "mindful meditation", a procedure that is pretty much indistinguishable from the placebo response, they are literally doing the very least they can do for us.

Mindful meditation may be relatively innocuous fluff, but where do we draw the line? The CSH also endorses reiki, reflexology, aromatherapy, craniosacral therapy, traditional chinese medicine, and unbelievably, "healing touch" -- this is tantamount to peddling magic. Here's an example of how the CSH describes the mechanism behind 'healing touch.'

Healing Touch blends the energetic techniques of a number of practices, both ancient and contemporary. It is based on the belief that human beings are composed of fields of energy that are in constant interaction with self, others, and the environment (also see the section on Theories and Principles for more information). The Healing Touch practitioner realigns the energy flow, which reactivates the patient's mind/body/spirit connection in order to eliminate blockages to self-healing.

The goal of Healing Touch is to restore harmony to the energy system so that the patient is in an optimal state for healing to occur. In other words, the goals are to accelerate the recipient's own healing process and to facilitate healing at all levels of the body, mind, and spirit.

Healing Touch integrates easily with other modalities a practitioner may already be using. These modalities may include conventional medical practice in hospitals, clinics and in home care, or other body-mind oriented therapies such as massage, guided imagery, music therapy, acupressure, biofeedback, and psychotherapy.

This is pure gobbledygook. None of this makes sense. None of this has been demonstrated empirically: it can't be, because it's all made up.

None of these 'therapies' work. Every time they've been tested using objective, clinical outcomes, they've been found to be completely ineffectual. Our university is selling us New Age snake oil, and I'm deeply embarrassed to see the credulity and the wastefulness demonstrated by an institution that ought to be dedicated to rigor and reason. Can we please use our health care dollars a little more wisely?

Man, I hate the center for spirituality and healing. I'm ashamed and embarrassed every time I get ads from that place — they are trading on the educational and scientific integrity of our institution of higher learning to make money for quacks and to elevate witch doctors and shamans to the status of medical professionals. I'm hurtful? I think frauds selling overpriced stress-reduction magic to our faculty and staff is what really hurts.

No, I'm not signing up for the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction classes. Just their existence has increased my stress, and it's not worth $385 to show up and watch my blood pressure skyrocket.

(Also on FtB)

And ever since that day it has been my dream to grow up and become a Sphecius wasp, a cold, brutal killer capable of rending my enemies into shattered fragments with heedless indifference, inspiring terror in all who behold me. Until now. A new species of wasp has been discovered in the fierce jungles of Indonesia.

Behold the dreaded killer of Sulawesi.

The male measures about two-and-a-half-inches long, Kimsey said. "Its jaws are so large that they wrap up either side of the head when closed. When the jaws are open they are actually longer than the male's front legs. I don't know how it can walk."

Its jaws are longer than its legs. Awesome. I'm in love.

(via Bug Girl)

(Also on FtB)

Unfortunately, Williams is far behind in the polls, and isn't expected to succeed in his bid.

Or rather, fortunately. My brain would melt into a puddle that flowed out my ears if I lived in a country where the crazy social conservatives were the pro-science party, while the social progressives were all NewAgey dingleberries who promoted bad science. It sort of saves my sanity that the Republicans tend to be so unremittingly evil on all fronts that the sickly performance of the Democrats doesn't cause me any major dilemmas. Just constant despair.

(Also on FtB)

I just checked, and the FtB site has accumulated about 2100 spam hits which none of you have seen, but which were automatically intercepted by the software (you aren't missing much: somebody really wants to sell you shoes, lots of shoes). Markuze was hitting me on email and twitter for more than that, and the thing was, those all got past the filters I've got in place. So one obsessed crazy man with minimal technical skill and nothing but persistence outperforms all the spambots out there, at least on the scale of individuals, if not in breadth of attack.

Spammers might want to think about that. Instead of writing a new generation of software to circumvent our filters, maybe they should recruit social misfits with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and write software that amplifies their efforts. You can blame me if they take my advice.

(Also on FtB)

(via nykida.net)

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But poor Ron Paul. He only gets a brief mention, and it's to say that he thinks the evolution debate is irrelevant. Au contraire! He fits in perfectly with the other Republican candidates. Watch him declare that evolution is just "a theory" and he doesn't accept it.

Darn that lamestream media — they just can't treat Ron Paul fairly. Come out and admit it, he's a perfectly representative member of the Nutbag Party.

(Also on FtB)

1. Type A: So, you're an A. You already know that having type A blood suggests that you are reliable, a team player and may benefit from a vegetarian diet*. Did you also know that anthropologists believe that type A blood originated in Asia or the middle east between 25,000 and 15,000 BC?

2. Type B: So, you're a B. You already know that having type B blood suggests that you are independent, a self-starter and may benefit from a wholesome well-balanced diet*. Did you also know that anthropologists believe that type B blood appeared between 15,000 and 10,000 BC in the Himalayas?

3. Type AB: So, you're an AB. You already know that having type AB blood suggests that you are organized, friendly and may enjoy a vegetarian or wholesome well-balanced diet*. Did you also know that anthropologists believe that type AB blood did not originate until 900-1000 years ago and came into existence when eastern Mongolian invaders overran the last of European civilization?

4. Type O: So, you're an O. You already know that having type O blood suggests that you might be competitive, goal oriented and a real meat eater*. Did you also know that anthropologists believe that type O is the oldest and most common blood type, originating in Southern Africa?

Notice the personality descriptions are vague and always positive: this is classic woo technique. Forget your blood type, just read the descriptions, and if you're willing to go along, they'll always fit you. This is the same trick astrologers use, formulating anemic, non-specific 'predictions' that the gullible reader can retrofit to their own situation.

But the claims about the origins of these blood types are simply lies! They aren't even consistent: how can you claim A and B arose over 10,000 years ago, but that the heterozygote AB never occurred until 1000 years ago? Since the ABO blood types are present in other apes, like chimpanzees, it's obvious that claims of recent origin are bogus. Also, as Larry points out, type O is the null allele — it's caused by a non-functional transferase enzyme. It's pretty damned unlikely that it is the oldest type.

The Canadian site does list their sources: they include a weird Japanese blood type cult and a pop diet book from a naturopathic quack. So here's an organization that offers important medical services, and they are peddling woo of the rankest, stupidest kind. I know that blood from morons is just as good as blood from geniuses, but really…why would you want to miseducate your clients?

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And I guess he did that anyway, going into a career that any dumbass can do, Texas governor.

No wonder he can prate about disbelieving evolution: he's got negligible biology in his education, and he barely passed what little he took.

(Also on FtB)

"It's got some gaps in it," Perry continues, "but in Texas we teach both creationism and evolution..."

"Ask him why he doesn't believe in science," the mother interjects off camera.

Putting both hands on the outside of the boy's shoulders, Perry, not acknowledging the mother says, "...because I figured you're smart enough to figure out which one is right."

On global warming to a local science teacher, he said, "We teach the straight out facts in Texas in our schools. You'll have to pick those up in our classbooks."

Perry is the guy who has appointed three creationists in a row to head the Texas Board of Education. He's a scientific know-nothing who wants to control science education. He's pretty much looney-tunes, and he's one of the leading Republican candidates for president.

(Also on FtB)

Creationism and 'intelligent design' are not scientific theories, but they are portrayed as scientific theories by some religious fundamentalists who attempt to have their views promoted in publicly-funded schools. At the same time, an understanding of evolution is central to understanding all aspects of biology. Currently, the study of evolution does not feature explicitly in the National Curriculum until year 10 (ages 14-15). Free Schools and Academies are not obliged to teach the National Curriculum and so are under no obligation to teach about evolution at all. We petition the Government to make clear that creationism and 'intelligent design' are not scientific theories and to prevent them from being taught as such in publicly-funded schools, including in 'faith' schools, religious Academies and religious Free Schools. At the same time, we want the Government to make the teaching of evolution in mandatory in all publicly-funded schools, at both primary and secondary level.

Yeah, I can get behind that.

(Also on FtB)

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Here's a letter that was sent out to all teachers at a Texas high school, gently reminding them of what they must do — either pass students or give them an incomplete — so that the football team doesn't suffer.

Teachers, please remember that we have over 1500 students involved in extracurricular activities who work very hard to have academic success as well as compete or stay connected to the school through their commitment to their organization or team. These students strive to do the right things and have adult coaches or sponsors who support you by working with any student who is not meeting your standards for conduct or academic success. The eligibility status of these students is very important to them, their parents, and to this campus. Please review six weeks grades of 68 and 69 to ensure that those grades accurately reflect student effort, test/assignment reliability and accuracy, and objectivity that can be explained. Please also remember that any student who you are going to allow to make up work or do additional work should be given an "I" instead of an assigned numerical grade.

From the UIL Side By Side Rules:

Q: Can a student's grade be changed for eligibility?

After a failing grade has been recorded, the situations in which a student's grade may be changed to passing and eligibility status restored are only as follows:
(a) an examination of course graded issued by a classroom teacher is final and may not be changed unless the grade is arbitrary, erroneous, or not consistent with school district grading policy as determined by the board of trustees. The board's decision may not be appealed. (This is also known as teacher or calculation error.)
(b) Extra credit work or work (including re-test) turned in after the grading period or evaluation has ended may not be considered when determining a student's eligibility for extracurricular activities except in the case of an "incomplete" grade.

Thank you for your support.

Why are they telling the teachers that they have students active in sports? We all know this. We shouldn't care. The job of a teacher is to make sure the students understand the material, and if their afternoon head-butting practice interferes with learning, students shouldn't expect special exemptions. Why are they telling the teachers to make sure that "grades accurately reflect student effort, test/assignment reliability and accuracy"? We all do that, too, and not just for the student athletes. An accurate assessment of a student who doesn't do the classwork should be FAIL.

I love how the administration blithely informs teachers that they should give incompletes to students so they can make up the work they should have done during the term later. That is not right. That is expecting teachers to put in extra work beyond the grading period, to help out the boneheads with extra time and instruction…but I suspect there is no talk of extra pay for teachers who do that.

Hey, I have this brilliant, amazing, completely non-intuitive idea: how about if our schools emphasized academics, not sports, and that extra-curricular activities were regarded as an optional side-issue, completely orthogonal to the goals of the school?

(Also on FtB)

Anyway, if you clear your cache (don't ask me how), you get to see the latest content. I'm hoping someone here can say what we can do to make this a more permanent fix.

(Also on FtB)

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(Click for larger image)
(A) Photograph and (B) interpretive drawing of LACM 129639, as mounted. Adult elements are light brown, embryonic material is dark brown, and reconstructed bones are white. lc indicates left coracoid; lf, left femur; lh, left humerus; li, left ischium; lp, left pubis; rc, right coracoid; rf, right femur; rh, right humerus; ri, right ischium; and rp, right pubis.

The unique aspect of this specimen is that it's the only pregnant plesiosaur found; the fore and hind limbs bracket a jumble of bones from a juvenile or embryonic Polycotylus. It's thought to actually be a fetal plesiosaur, rather than an overstuffed cannibal plesiosaur, because 1) the smaller skeleton is still partially articulated, and it's large enough that it is unlikely it could have been swallowed whole, 2) the two sets are of the same distinctive species, 3) the juvenile is incompletely ossified and doesn't resemble a post-partum animal, 4) the bones aren't chewed, etched by acids, or accompanied by gastroliths. I think we can now confidently say that plesiosaurs were viviparous, which is what everyone expected.

There are other surprising details. The fetus is huge relative to the parent, and there's only one — so plesiosaurs had small brood sizes and invested heavily in their offspring.

(Click for larger image)
Reconstructions of female P. latippinus and newborn young. Gastralia were present in both animals but have been omitted for clarity.

The authors speculate beyond this a bit, but it's all reasonable speculation. That degree of parental investment in fetal development makes it likely that there would have been extended maternal care after birth, and rather more tenuously, that they may also have lived in larger social groups. The authors suggest that their lifestyle may have resembled that of modern social marine mammals — picture a pod of dolphins, only long-necked and lizardy.

O'Keefe FR, Chiappe LM (2011) Viviparity and K-Selected Life History in a Mesozoic Marine Plesiosaur (Reptilia, Sauropterygia) Science 333 (6044): 870-873.

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Also, this comic bugs me a little bit: I'm flying off to give a talk in which I argue that the hallmark of human evolution isn't brutality and conquest, but cooperation.

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The property tax agreement means the Ark Encounter would pay 25 percent of the local taxes due on 800 acres of property where the $150 million theme park will be built. Mayor Rick Skinner says the reduced property taxes will generate far more revenue than unoccupied land.

Well, with that logic, we all ought to get tax cuts on our homes to just slightly more than the valuation of an undeveloped lot.

Besides, we've been hearing all these glorious promises from Answers in Genesis about how they're going to be raking in big bucks and getting amazing attendance and creating all these wonderful jobs for Kentucky — but at the same time they go begging for special privileges like a bunch of desperate paupers.

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Also, I worked my way through college as an undergraduate technician. Even with my lowly status, I really did see all the undergrads/grads/postdocs as spoiled children who were there only to screw up my lab and my precious experimental animals. Especially when they'd leave a pile of gore and blood and dead animal parts scattered all over the surgery, and expected me to clean it all up.

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(via National Geographic)

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You know what? This is wrong. I shouldn't have to do this. Over the years — I've been getting these threats from Markuze since 1993 — it's gradually grown from an occasional deranged message on usenet to part of my daily routine, where I'm dealing with hundreds of ranty messages every day from one disturbed individual in Montreal, Canada. And I'm not even his sole target: he has a hate-on for Shermer, Randi, and Dawkins, and this is all he does with his life: he sits in his bedroom in his parent's house and sends out shrill, incoherent messages to the world, all day long.

I have reported him to the police. I have seen these complaints climb the ladder from the local department, to the FBI, to the RCMP, to the Montreal City Police, where they promptly fizzle out. The police don't care. The word I've gotten back is that they aren't going to do a thing until he snaps and starts killing people. A little late, don't you think?

As a target for over almost twenty years, I've been watching this guy escalate — his hate messages have gotten crazier, more vicious, and more frequent. He's a psychological cripple who wastes his life in this "project" to howl stupidly at the world; he's on a clear trajectory of more and more demands for people to recognize him, and he's not going to ever get any respect from anyone.

I am not a psychologist, but anyone who writes those disconnected rambling death threats, and does nothing else all day long, is mentally disturbed. Something is wrong in his head. I'm not the only one to notice.

The only people who don't seem to notice are the Montreal city police.

If you're on Twitter, one thing you can do is, when you receive one of his spam messages, retweet it, but delete all the names on it (because I don't need more!) and add one: @SPVM. Give the Montreal police a sample of the noise coming out of their city that we're drowning in.

There is now a petition demanding that the Montreal city police take his threats seriously. Sign it, please. I want at least ten thousand names from around the world on it.

I don't have any confidence at all in them: they've had this deranged man making death threats on their watch for over a decade, and have done nothing. I don't think the petition will do a thing.

What I want is a public record of the criminal neglect of that police department, so that when Markuze does have his little psychotic break and harms someone, probably some innocent, they won't be able to deny that they were warned, that there was a world-wide outcry, that hordes of people thousands of miles away could see all this coming, and the incompetents in Montreal sat on their hands and did nothing.

(Also on FtB)

This is a small piece of a larger — much larger — photo of a Vancouver street crowd. Go to the original image, though, which allows you zoom in and in and in — you'll be able to see the faces in surprising detail of each of the little dots.

The Vancouver Canucks Fan Zone along Georgia St. for Game 7 of the 2011 Stanley Cup Final was captured at 5:46 pm on June 15, 2011. It is made up of 216 photos (12 across by 18 down) stitched together, taken over a 15-minute span, and is not supposed to represent a single moment in time. The final hi-res file is 69,394 X 30,420 pixels or 2,110 megapixels.

I've stared at it for hours, though, and still haven't managed to find Waldo.

(Also on FtB)

The findings are stark: Women earn less at all degree levels, even when they work as much as men. On average, women who work full-time, full-year earn 25 percent less than men, even at similar education levels. At all levels of educational attainment, African Americans and Latinos earn less than Whites.

I have to thank Carl Zimmer for bringing that to my attention — when he isn't writing about parasites and viruses, he also dabbles in other heartwarming subjects, like this.

(Also on FtB)

(via Offshore Fishing Videos and TONMO)

(Also on FtB. Maybe. If the damned thing is working for you yet)

(via National Geographic)

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This is a ranking system, and I have mostly a hyper-competitive American audience, so you all want to know whether you win or not, right? You want the data that shows that the US is #1! And here it is, the one result that shows us at the top of the ladder, our average health care as a function of GDP.

Look at that: we don't just win, we win big, leaving our closest competitor, Germany, in the dust. We spend 125% of the money Germany does per person. Does it feel good, America? We are tossing bigger buckets of money into health care than anyone else.

But now for the number that really matters, the GDPHE ratio. How many lives are we saving with all that money? Here's the answer. Look at the last column, which is the ratio of money spent to lives saved.

Oops. We're…#17. We're almost the worst — thanks, Portugal and Switzerland, for neglecting the medical needs of your citizenry more than we do.

Our health care is miserably inefficient, and we pour extravagant sums of cash into it, but you might ask whether it works at all. And the answer is a bit of good news, yes, it does. This study also compared death rates over time and came to the conclusion that, in the US, more than half a million people are alive today who would not have been with the medical care we offered 25 years ago. Medicine in the US is good, it's just far more economically wasteful than it ought to be.

I'm still thinking I ought to retire to Ireland.

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(via Skepchick.)

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Also note that I actually have a t-shirt with his face on it.

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The existence of a significant flux of antiprotons confined to Earth's magnetosphere has been considered in several theoretical works. These antiparticles are produced in nuclear interactions of energetic cosmic rays with the terrestrial atmosphere and accumulate in the geomagnetic field at altitudes of several hundred kilometers. A contribution from the decay of albedo antineutrons has been hypothesized in analogy to proton production by neutron decay, which constitutes the main source of trapped protons at energies above some tens of MeV. This Letter reports the discovery of an antiproton radiation belt around the Earth. The trapped antiproton energy spectrum in the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) region has been measured by the PAMELA experiment for the kinetic energy range 60-750 MeV. A measurement of the atmospheric sub-cutoff antiproton spectrum outside the radiation belts is also reported. PAMELA data show that the magnetospheric antiproton flux in the SAA exceeds the cosmic-ray antiproton flux by three orders of magnitude at the present solar minimum, and exceeds the sub-cutoff antiproton flux outside radiation belts by four orders of magnitude, constituting the most abundant source of antiprotons near the Earth.

I had to laugh my cynical, evil laugh at the BBC report on this discovery, though.

The team says a small number of antiprotons lie between the Van Allen belts of trapped "normal" matter.

The researchers say there may be enough to implement a scheme using antimatter to fuel future spacecraft.

Bwahahahahaha! Space travel? Foolish, optimistic journalists. You know the first use of these things, once the means to harvest and maintain them is found, will be anti-matter bombs.

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Another cute feature: look in the medial longitudinal fissure. You see the homunculus's toes, and right down there, located beyond the toes, is where the genital sensory area is located. Poke at that with an electrode and…we're talking happy time at the Mad Scientists' convention. But notice, though, that in the diagram of the homunculus, the poor creature's genitals are drawn, and they're male. It's a bit sexist, don't you think?

This bias has now been corrected.

a team led by Lars Michels at University Children's Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, used functional magnetic resonance imaging to confirm that the position of the clitoris on the homunculus was in approximately the same position as the penis in men. Barry Komisaruk at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, and his colleagues have now used the same method to map the position of the clitoris, vagina and cervix on the sensory cortex as women stimulated themselves.

I read these things, and I think to myself that I really went into the wrong research field. Oh, well.

They also discovered something else.

Komisaruk also checked what happened when women's nipples were stimulated, and was surprised to find that in addition to the chest area of the cortex lighting up, the genital area was also activated. "When I tell my male neuroscientist colleagues about this, they say: 'Wow, that's an exception to the classical homunculus,'" he says. "But when I tell the women they say: 'Well, yeah?'" It may help explain why a lot of women claim that nipple stimulation is erotic, he adds.

Now, as a true nerd and as a typical male who has always been mystified by the female sexual response, I feel a deep craving to plumb the mysteries with my own personal fMRI scanner. It'll also be a research project that will go over well at the next Mad Scientists' convention.

(Also on FtB)

The midgut forms as a simple linear tube of circular cross-section running down the midline of the embryo, and grows at a greater rate than the surrounding tissue, eventually becoming significantly longer than the trunk. As the size of the developing mid- and hindgut exceeds the capacity of the embryonic body cavity, a primary loop is forced ventrally into the umbilicus (in mammals) or yolk stalk (in birds). This loop first rotates anticlockwise by 90° and then by another 180° during the subsequent retraction into the body cavity. Eventually, the rostral half of the loop forms the midgut (small intestine) and the caudal half forms the upper half of the hindgut (the ascending colon).

The chirality of this gut rotation is directed by left-right asymmetries in cellular architecture that arise within the dorsal mesentery, an initially thick and short structure along the dorsal-ventral axis through which the gut tube is attached to the abdominal wall. This leads the mesentery to tilt the gut tube leftwards with a resulting anticlockwise corkscrewing of the gut as it herniates. However, the gut rotation is insufficient to pack the entire small intestine into the body cavity, and additional loops are formed as the intestine bends and twists even as it elongates. Once the gut attains its final form, which is highly stereotypical in a given species, the loops retract into the body cavity. During further growth of the juvenile, no additional loops are formed, as they are tacked down by fascia, which restrict movement and additional morphogenesis without inhibiting globally uniform growth.

That is just plain awesome. Now I want to open up a zebrafish and look at the curling of its intestines, or better yet, peer into a larva and see if there are any predictable rules of formation. Oh, jeez, I want to look inside my own belly, although that would be a kind of self-defeating experiment.

Morphology of loops in the chick gut. a, Chick gut at embryonic day 5 (E5), E8, E12 and E16 shows stereotypical looping pattern. b, Proliferation in the E5 (left) and E12 (right) gut tubes (blue) and mesentery (red). Each blue bar represents the average number of phospho-H3-positive cells per unit surface in 40 (E5) or 50 (E12) 10-mm sections. Each red bar represents the average number of phospho-H3-positive cells per unit surface over six 10-mm sections (E5) or in specific regions demarcated by vasculature along the mesentery (E12). The inset images of the chick guts align the proliferation data with the locations of loops (all measurements were made in three or more chick samples). Ant., anterior; post., posterior. Error bars, s.d. c, The gut and mesentery before and after surgical separation at E14 show that the mesentery shrinks while the gut tube straightens out almost completely. d, The E12 chick gut under normal development with the mesentery (left) and after in ovo surgical separation of the mesentery at E4 (right). The gut and mesentery repair their attachment, leading to some regions of normal looping (green). However, a portion of the gut lacks normal loops as a result of disrupting the gut-mesentery interaction over the time these loops would otherwise have developed.

So how do species-specific coiling patterns emerge? A naive expectation might be that there are specific genes associated with the process that selectively impose bends at specific locations along the length of the intestine — that there is genetically determined spatial information along the tube that defines how it should coil. This is not the case. Instead, the reproducible pattern of coiling is an emergent property of some general parameters of the tissues.

You do need to know some very elementary anatomy to know what's going on here. The gut begins embryonically as a simple, straight tube, fixed at both ends at the mouth and anus. Initially, the gut is the same length as the body, and is suspended from the back of the body cavity by a continuous sheet of tissue, the mesentery, that is also the same length as the gut. But then what happens is that the gut elongates, while the mesentery grows much more slowly. This difference in growth rates means that the gut is under compression along its length, restrained by the mesenteries, which causes it to periodically buckle.

One way to test the role of the mesentery is to remove it. If you carefully cut it away from the gut, as is shown in (c) and (d) of the figure above, it straightens out — in a fully relaxed state, without the compression of the mesenteries, the gut is straight and linear. You can do partial cuts, too, and wherever a stretch of gut is released from the mesentery constraint, it uncoils.

Take it another step. Is this how generic tubes and sheets interact? The authors took a rubber tube of length L_t, and a rubber sheet of length L_m, where L_m is less than L_t. They stretched the rubber sheet to length L_t, stitched it to the rubber tube, and then let it go. Voila, it spontaneously coiled into a configuration (b) that closely resembles the chicken gut (c).

Rubber simulacrum of gut looping morphogenesis. a, To construct the rubber model of looping, a thin rubber sheet (mesentery) was stretched uniformly along its length and then stitched to a straight, unstretched rubber tube (gut) along its boundary; the differential strain mimics the differential growth of the two tissues. The system was then allowed to relax, free of any external forces. b, On relaxation, the composite rubber model deformed into a structure very similar to the chick gut (here the thickness of the sheet is 1.3 mm and its Young's modulus is 1.3 MPa, and the radius of the tube is 4.8 mm, its thickness is 2.4 mm and its Young's modulus is 1.1 MPa. c, Chick gut at E12. The superior mesenteric artery has been cut out (but not the mesentery), allowing the gut to be displayed aligned without altering its loop pattern.

This is qualitatively convincing — they do look very similar, and at this point I'm willing to believe that mechanical forces are sufficient to explain the coiling pattern. The authors take another step, though: they bring out the math and get all quantitative. This is a reasonable idea; from the model above, it does look like the shape is reducible to a small number of parameters, so it's a manageable problem. So brace yourself: a little math coming right up.

We now quantify the simple physical picture for looping sketched above to derive expressions for the size of a loop, characterized by the contour length, λ, and mean radius of curvature, R, of a single period. The geometry of the growing gut is characterized by the gut's inner and outer radii, r_i and r_o, which are much smaller than its increasing length, whereas that of the mesentery is described by its homogeneous thickness, h, which is much smaller than its other two dimensions. Because the gut tube and mesentery relax to nearly straight, flat states once they are surgically separated, we can model the gut as a one-dimensional elastic filament growing relative to a thin two-dimensional elastic sheet (the mesentery). As the gut length becomes longer than the perimeter of the mesentery to which it is attached, there is a differential strain, ε, that compresses the tube axially while extending the periphery of the sheet. When the growth strain is larger than a critical value, ε_* the straight tube buckles, taking on a wavy shape of characteristic amplitude A and period λ>A. At the onset of buckling, the extensional strain energy of the sheet per wave- length of the pattern is U_m∝E_mε²hλ², where E_m is the Young's modulus of the mesentery sheet. The bending energy of the tube per wavelength is U_t∝E_tI_tκ²λ, where κ ∝ A/λ² is the tube curvature, I_t ∝ r_o⁴-r_i⁴ is the moment of inertia of the tube and E_t is the Young's modulus of the tube. Using the condition that the in-plane strain in the sheet is ε_* ∝ A/λ and minimizing the sum of the two energies with respect to λ then yields a scaling law for the wavelength of the loop:

Did you get all that? If not, don't worry about it. What it all means is that we can measure general properties of gut tissues, plug the parameters into these formulas, and ask a computer to predict what the gut should look like in a numerical simulation. And it works!

Predictions for loop shape, size and number at three stages in chick gut development. a, Comparisons of the chick gut at E16 (top) with its simulated counterpart (bottom). b, Scaled loop contour length, λ/r_o, plotted versus the equivalently scaled expression from equation (3) for the chick gut (black squares), the rubber model (green triangles) and numerical simulations (blue circles). The results are consistent with the scaling law in equation (1). c, Scaled loop radius, R/r_o, plotted versus the equivalently scaled expression from equation (4) for the chick gut, the rubber model, and numerical simulations (symbols are as in b). The results are consistent with the scaling law in equation (2). Error bars, s.d.

At this point, you should be saying enough — that's more than enough awesome to convince you that they've determined the rules that shape the gut. But no, they go further: all the above work is in chickens, so they reach out and start disemboweling other species, and ask if their formulas work to describe their gut coiling, too. Would you be surprised to learn that it does?

Comparative predictions for looping parameters across species. a, Gut looping patterns in the chick, quail, finch and mouse (to scale) show qualitative similarities in the shape of the loops, although the size and number of loops vary substantially. b, Comparison of the scaled loop contour length, λ/r_o, with the equivalently scaled expression from equation (3) shows that our results are consistent with the scaling law in equation (1) across species. Black symbols are for the animals shown in a, other symbols are the same as in Fig. 4b. c, Comparison of the scaled loop radius, R/r_o, with the equivalently scaled expression from equation (4) shows that our results are consistent with the scaling law in equation (2) across species (symbols are as in b). In b and c, points are reported for chick at E8, E12 and E16; quail at E12 and E15; finch at E10 and E13; and mouse at E14.5 and E16.5. Error bars, s.d.

What makes this a beautiful result is that it's a perfect illustration of the principles D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson laid out in his book, On Growth and Form (and even the title of the paper is a nod to that classic of developmental biology). Sometimes, simple mathematical rules govern the patterns we see in developing systems, whether it's the Fibonacci spirals we see in the head of a sunflower or the coils of a nautilus shell, or tangled loops of our intestines. The form is not laid out in tightly-coded, case-by-case specification in the genome, but by the genetic definition of only a few parameters, in this case the relative rates of growth of two adherent tissues and the compression they impose on an elongating tube, from which a lovely arrangement flowers elegantly.

Savin T, Kurpios NA, Shyer AE, Florescu P, Liang H, Mahadevan L, Tabin CJ (2011) On the growth and form of the gut. Nature 476:57-63.

(Also on FtB)

Now molluscs, on the other hand — if we had them as pets, we'd be putting hormones in their food to induce more frequent balletic copulations. We'd want a pair elegantly and silently writhing in a corner of the living room all the time, and we'd applaud in wonder and stroke them when they were done, murmuring "Beautiful boy/girl, lovely boy/girl, well done."

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• Sted: Asylet, Grønland 28 [kart]
• Tid: Fra kl. 18 og utover
• Facebook-event

Paul Z. Myers er en amerikansk biolog som jobber ved University of Minnesota Morris, og forsker på zebrafisk innen området evolusjonær utviklingsbiologi. Mest kjent er han for sin populære blogg Pharyngula, hvor han blant annet kommer med harsk kritikk mot intelligent design og kreasjonistmiljøet generelt. Kort sagt er han en aktivist innen den amerikanske kreasjonisme-/evolusjons-debatten. I august er PZ i Oslo i forbindelse med World Humanist Congress 2011, og tar i den forbindelse selvsagt turen innom puben for å slå av en prat med Oslo-skeptikerne!

Skeptikertreffene er uformelle, sosiale treff for skeptikere i Oslo-området. De er ment som en mulighet til å diskutere skepsis, vitenskap og alt mulig annet med likesinnede, og bli kjent med andre skeptikere. Man trenger ikke å være medlem av foreningen Skepsis.

Denne gangen samles vi nok en gang på Asylet, i bakgården dersom det er fint vær. Hvis du ikke har vært med før, så se etter bordskiltet vårt med logoen på, eller spør i baren.

I do not know what that means. If I'm now committed to doing burlesque in Norwegian, let me know soon. When I was a wee little kid, I could recite the Lord's Prayer in Norwegian, but I think I've forgotten it all now.

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Scientists had also implicitly assumed that the X chromosomes in all women were identical.

We had? When?

The first comprehensive study of gene activity in the X chromosome of women reveals an unexpected level of variation among individual females. This extensive variation means there is not ONE human genome, but TWO - Male and Female.

This does not follow. There's also individual variation in chromosome 7, and every other chromosome in the genome. Allelic and expression variation do not make for calling every variant a different genome.

Chromosomes are the set of genetic instructions that guide the creation of an organism. Every human embryo begins with two X chromosomes, but in order to be a male, one of the X chromosomes turns into a Y chromosome.

Wait, how? Could this happen even now? Watch out ladies: if you watch too much football, one of your X chromosomes might turn into a Y.

Depending on the gene, having two active copies can matter very little or very much. When genes on the second X chromosome that escape inactivation are expressed, this can create a stronger overall concentration of particular genes.

That started out just fine, and then degenerated into gobbledygook.

Have you figured it out? You're probably thinking it's some wacky creationist journal, because they are always written by people who don't understand science and get the facts all wrong.

But no: it's from Health & Wellness magazine, written by Angela Hoover. The editor of the magazine.

The title of the magazine is a clue. What the heck is "wellness", and how is it different from "health"?

(Also on FtB)

But good news! A brand new dedicated server is being installed tonight as well! There will be a brief transition in which all commenting will be shut down, and then the existing content will be whisked out of the old, clunky server and transferred to the swift and gleaming hard drives of a brand new machine. Then there will be a period of confusion as a new IP address must propagate out over the network, but within hours for some lucky few and a day or two for others, we'll be back in action, and hopefully not the limpy wimpy kind of action we've been getting lately.

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(via Aquaviews)

(Also on FtB)

This is some new awful short video from Answers in Genesis. It's slick and fast and just babbles rapid-fire lies at the viewer — don't stop, don't think, you might catch on to the nonsense!

It makes precisely two discrete claims that it claims disprove evolution. All you have to do is watch this video and yay, you're done, you can forget that science stuff and move on to loving Jesus. Here are the arguments:

1. There is no known observable process by which new genetic information can be added to an organism's genetic code.

   Except mutations and gene transfer, of course. Oh, hey, they forgot those! That does sort of scuttle their whole point. I'm afraid we do know of observable processes that add measurable, quantitative genetic information to an organism (not to its code, though: that's stupid. Whoever created this thing is one of those common ignoramuses who can't tell the difference between a genome and a genetic code). Geneticists have seen this happen: look at copy number variants in humans, for instance, and geneticists have seen novel mutants in flies in which a segment of the genome is duplicated; parents don't have it, progeny does. We also have evidence from gene families. We have five α globin genes and six β globin genes (some of which are dead pseudogenes), for instance, and they're clearly derived by duplication and divergence.

   So sorry, guys, this one is simply a lie. I'd be happy to be confronted by a creationist peddling this bit of misinformation, since it is so patently bogus.

2. Life has never been observed to come from non-life.

   Ooh, better. This claim is literally true and not a flat-out lie. It's also irrelevant. One of the things you'll discover as you get deeper and deeper into biology is that it's chemistry all the way down. There are no vital agents working away inside a cell, adding intelligent guidance: it's all stoichiometry and reaction kinetics and thermodynamics. In a sense, all life is built of non-life and denying it is like seeing the Lego Millennium Falcon and arguing that it couldn't possibly be made of little tiny plastic bricks. Yeah, it is.

   But it's true that we haven't seen life re-evolving from simple chemicals now, and there's a good reason for that: this planet is now crawling with life everywhere, and life's building blocks that form nowadays don't last long — they're lunch. We also have only rudimentary ideas of what prebiotic chemicals were reacting in ancient seas, so we can't even simulate early chemistry in an organism-free test tube, yet. Scientists are busily tinkering, though, and we do have protocols that spontaneously produced complex organic chemicals from inorganic sources, we just haven't found the formula for a chemical replicator yet.

   But it's an irrelevant objection, anyway. Nobody has shown me god conjuring people out of mud, either. Creationists have their own problem of demonstrating origins, and they aren't even trying to puzzle it out — goddidit, they're done.

The conclusion is, of course, to claim that they have now disproven evolution (they haven't), and therefore…Jesus. Faulty premises and ludicrous leaps of logic make this one a pathetic foray into addressing evolution. It's slick, though — maybe they should have used a picture of a greased pig as their header image.

(Also on FtB)

Everything will be moved to a sniny new server by this weekend, though, which should fix things. I hope.

(Last edition of TET; Current totals: 12,856 entries with 1,460,095 comments.)

By popular request, The Endless Thread is now on Freethoughtblogs!

(via National Geographic, which has a whole gallery of orchids)

Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen have rightly become national heroes in Norway after they rescued 40 fleeing teens from the massacre on Utoya Island. Using their boat, they made multiple trips into the waters around Utoya where Anders Breivik was murdering 69 people and ferried as many as they could to safety. Bullet holes later discovered in their boat indicate Breivik fired upon them.

Kelly Kohls, who was elected in Springboro on a platform of fiscal responsibility two years ago, requested last week the district's curriculum director look into ways of providing "supplemental" instruction dealing with creationism. Fellow member, Scott Anderson, who was elected with Kohls when the district was struggling financially, supports his colleague's idea.

"Creationism is a significant part of the history of this country," Kohls said. "It is an absolutely valid theory and to omit it means we are omitting part of the history of this country."

That's not true. It is neither a significant part of our history nor is it a valid "theory" — it doesn't even deserve the label of theory, since it doesn't integrate a large number of scientific hypotheses and observations. It doesn't even deserve to be called a hypothesis, since it's made in direct contradiction to the evidence. It might best be called a myth, nothing more.

One other fine piece of hypocrisy: she and many Teabaggers are getting elected on promises of fiscal conservativism. Clearly, they didn't mean it: peddling creationism in the public schools means they're going down the Dover path, and we all saw how much that cost the school district. This should be seen as a ploy to destroy public education.

Also, how's this for irony? Kohls filed for bankruptcy. They own a house valued at $450,000 (in Ohio? What kind of mansion did they splurge on?), on which they owe… $829,000. Yeah, she's a smart money manager.

Pharyngula is known for its vibrant community of commenters, and May was no exception. The May Mollies have been tabulated and the winner is <drum roll>

Audley Z. Darkheart!

Audley is hereby inducted in the distinguished Order of the Molly. Virtual champagne all around!

As you are celebrating with the new inductee, be sure to leave the names of your June Molly nominations and the reasons for their selection in the comments.

Hang on a moment…we can't be accumulating votes in two threads! Comments are closed here. Leave your votes at the new site.

I notice who's doing the interview: Libertarians. Screw 'em.

What I think of Paul Begley and his explanation cannot be adequately expressed in words so I'm not even going to try to write them. Use your imagination.

Here's the scientific explanation. Contrast the two.

A drought has left the OC Fisher Reservoir in San Angelo State Park in West Texas almost entirely dry. The water that is left is stagnant, full of dead fish -- and a deep, opaque red.

The color has some apocalypse believers suggesting that OC Fisher is an early sign of the end of the world, but Texas Parks and Wildlife Inland Fisheries officials say the bloody look is the result of Chromatiaceae bacteria, which thrive in oxygen-deprived water.

Thanks very much!

He also tersely answers a few questions online.

Q: First, we wonder if you could comment on why you are tackling the existence of God question?

A: I think Science can explain the Universe without the need for God.

Q. What problems you are working on now, and what do you see as the big questions in theoretical physics?

A: I'm working on the question, why is there something rather than nothing, why are the laws of physics what they are.

If that last bit has you curious, here's a teaser:

Essentially on "Is There A Creator?," Hawking notes that on the sub-atomic scale, particles are seen in experiments to appear from nowhere. And since the Big Bang started out smaller than an atom, similarly the universe likely "popped into existence without violating the known laws of Nature," he says. Nothing created the universe, so in his view there was no need for a creator. That is his explanation for "why there is something rather than nothing."

But here's the kicker: the Catholic church, as always, doesn't see the problem. The two bad guys are gone now, but the government wants to dig deeper — I think 26 dead children is adequate cause — but the church says no further inquiries are necessary.

But Bishop Connors on Tuesday said not even revelations from Detective Sergeant Kevin Carson that 26 young men had killed themselves after being abused by priests and brothers in Ballarat convinced him that more would be learnt from an inquiry.

"I think we've learnt a lot of things about what is appropriate behaviour and what's not appropriate behaviour," Bishop Connors said.

That's become typical Catholic behavior. A priest brings a young boy into his office, and rapes him repeatedly until he loses consciousness, and later the traumatized child kills himself. When confronted by the police, he says, 'Oh, officer, I didn't know that was wrong! I'll be much nicer in the future. Thank you and goodbye!'

There's not much hope for Catholicism if learning that tyrannizing and raping and driving kids to their death is new knowledge for them.