From commenter Otangelo Grasso, some thoughts:  The irreducible process of phototransduction, 11 cis retinal synthesis, and the visual cycle, essential for vertebrate vision http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1638-origin-of-phototransduction-the-visual-cycle-photoreceptors-and-retina#5753 William Bialek: More Perfect Than We Imagined – March 23, 2013 Excerpt: photoreceptor cells that carpet the retinal tissue of the eye and respond to light, are not just good or great or phabulous at their job. They are not merely exceptionally impressive by the standards of biology, with whatever slop and wiggle room the animate category implies. Photoreceptors operate at the outermost boundary allowed by the laws of physics, which means they are as good as they can be, period. Each one is designed to detect and respond to single photons of light — the Read More ›

From Toni Airaksinen at Campus Reform: “On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White,” Gutierrez argued. Gutierrez also worries that algebra and geometry perpetuate privilege, fretting that “curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans.” Math also helps actively perpetuate white privilege too, since the way our economy places a premium on math skills gives math a form of “unearned privilege” for math professors, who are disproportionately white. … Further, she also worries that evaluations of math skills can Read More ›

Because it’s stuffed with unexamined evidence. From Christopher Kemp at New Scientist: As he read the beetle’s yellowed, handwritten label, he realised the specimen had been collected in 1832 in Argentina by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle. Somehow it had never been described. It was stored away unnamed, then disappeared into the museum’s vast beetle collection. Finally, after 180 years in limbo, Chatzimanolis gave it a name: Darwinilus sedarisi, in honour of Darwin and the writer David Sedaris, whose audiobooks he listened to while writing the description in his office at the University of Tennessee. Yes, this reads like a novel (film option?) but it isn’t. The rediscovery of Darwin’s long-lost beetle was a remarkable stroke of Read More ›

From Hossain Derakhshan at Wired: Wikipedia has never been as wealthy or well-organized. American liberals, worried that Trump’s rise threatened the country’s foundational Enlightenment ideals, kicked in a significant flow of funds that has stabilized the nonprofit’s balance sheet. That happy news masks a more concerning problem—a flattening growth rate in the number of contributors to the website. It is another troubling sign of a general trend around the world: The very idea of knowledge itself is in danger. … Now the challenge is to save Wikipedia and its promise of a free and open collection of all human knowledge amid the conquest of new and old television—how to collect and preserve knowledge when nobody cares to know. Television has Read More ›

Mazur is an American journalist who has been covering the antics of the Darwinian establishment for most of a decade. As she tells it at HuffPost: I was initially invited to attend the Dutch event as an independent journalist by one of its organizers—-University of Amsterdam computational biologist Jaap Kaandorp—-during an interview we did a couple of weeks ago about his research on corals. However, after I made all necessary travel arrangements, Kaandorp—-who thinks natural selection “is still kind of a major event in the evolution of organisms”—-emailed saying Konrad Lorentz Institute protested my attendance and that my invitation was cancelled. Furthermore, KLI had so poisoned the waters, that Kaandorp asked me not to run the interview we did. More. The Read More ›

Abstract: Transposable Elements are biologically important components of eukaryote genomes. In particular, non-LTR retrotransposons (N-LTRrs) extensively shaped the human genome throughout evolution. In this study, we compared retrotransposon insertions differentially present in the genomes of Anatomically Modern Humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans and Chimpanzees, in order to assess the possible impact of retrotransposition in the differentiation of the human lineage. Briefly, we first identified species-specific N-LTRrs and established their distribution in present day human populations. These analyses shortlisted a group of N-LTRr insertions that were found exclusively in Anatomically Modern Humans. Notably, these insertions targeted genes more frequently than randomly expected and are associated with an increase in the number of transcriptional/splicing variants of those genes they inserted in. The analysis of Read More ›

From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News & Views: We reported here the other day that distinguished German paleontologist Günter Bechly was erased by Wikipedia. The editors, claiming it had nothing to do with his having come out for intelligent design, explained that they decided he wasn’t “notable” enough. Now along comes another ID proponent, Walter Bradley of Baylor University. Dr. Bradley is of interest to us as a Fellow with the Center for Science & Culture and as co-author of a pioneering book that helped to set the course of the future ID movement, The Mystery of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories (1984). But apart from that, he also has an extremely impressive history of research, publishing, teaching, and related Read More ›

From Allen Downey at Scientific American: Since 1990, the fraction of Americans with no religious affiliation has nearly tripled, from about 8 percent to 22 percent. Over the next 20 years, this trend will accelerate: by 2020, there will be more of these “Nones” than Catholics, and by 2035, they will outnumber Protestants. More. As Pew notes (2016), however, it’s partly a matter of labelling: Indeed, our Religious Landscape Study finds a clear generational pattern: Young people who are not particularly religious seem to be much more comfortable identifying as “nones” than are older people who display a similar level of religious observance. Nearly eight-in-ten Millennials with low levels of religious commitment describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in Read More ›

Whodathunkit? From Yasmin Tayag at Inverse: Those long-held racist assumptions based on skin color have been scientifically proven wrong, according to a groundbreaking new study in the journal Science published on Thursday. With their observations, the team of geneticists led by the University of Pennsylvania’s Sarah Tishkoff, Ph.D., tear down that notion by discrediting the idea that race has any biological roots. (The paper is titled “Loci associated with skin pigmentation identified in African populations.”) The researchers identified the genes linked to the diversity of human skin color and when and where those genes emerged. More. That the light-skin genes originated in Africa is useful to know. But it’s worth keeping in mind that racism only came to seem “scientific” Read More ›

The piece is notable for apparent incoherence on the subject: From philosopher Joseph Laporte at Big Questions Online: As we learn from Augustine’s Confessions, he felt the crushing burden of his vices and of his own helplessness to lift himself without God’s grace. That fits with many people’s experience. Besides, it’s Christian orthodoxy: without grace, there is no action toward spiritual flourishing. Here it’s helpful to invoke freedom-for-excellence. Without God’s help, we lack freedom-for-excellence, freedom to be virtuous. In my insecurity, I go shopping for clothes; later I look in my closet with buyer’s remorse. Or, I’m late again and ask myself what went wrong with my time management. Or, my memory of adolescence is no longer fresh, so I Read More ›

Our new word for the weekend. From Ross Pomeroy at RealClearScience: Most thinkers, including famed astrophysicist Carl Sagan, agree that mathematics could serve as the foundation for our discussions. With that in mind, British scientist Lancelot Thomas Hogben rafted a language system called Astraglossa. Communicated over radio signals, short pulses called “dashes” would represent numbers, and longer batteries of pulses called “flashes” would represent mathematical symbols like addition or subtraction. Once the basics of arithmetic are established between our species, Hogben imagined moving the discussion on to astronomy, a hobby we would obviously both have in common. After all, two aliens species talking about space would probably be like two Earthlings talking about the weather. But maybe not. What if Read More ›

According to those who have been resuscitated from clinical death. From Fox News: The evidence reportedly suggests a surge of brain activity immediately after a near-death experience. “What tends to happen is that people who’ve had these very profound experiences may come back positively transformed — they become more altruistic, more engaged with helping others. They find a new meaning to life having had an encounter with death,” Parnia said. “But there isn’t like a sudden magical enhancement of their memories,” he added. “That’s just Hollywood jazz.” More. The best evidence for near-death experiences is, in fact, the changed priorities of those who have them. But then, pop culture acknowledges that no one on their deathbed ever wishes they’d spent Read More ›

Sources See also: Philip Cunningham’s critique of methodological naturalism

From philosopher Emily Thomas at The Conversation: Is there space between the stars? The relationist Leibniz argued that space is the spatial relations between things. Australia is “south of” Singapore. The tree is “three meters left of” the bush. Sean Spicer is “behind” the bush. That means space would not exist independently of the things it connects. For Leibniz, if nothing existed, there couldn’t be any spatial relations. If our universe were destroyed, space would not exist. In contrast, the absolutist Clarke argued that space is a sort of substance that is everywhere. Space is a giant container, containing all the things in the universe: stars, planets, us. Space allows us to make sense of how things move from one Read More ›

From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News & Views: Günter Bechly is a distinguished paleontologist, specializing in fossil dragonflies, exquisitely preserved in amber for tens of millions of years. After revealing his support for the theory of intelligent design, he was pushed out as a curator at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany. He subsequently joined Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture as a Senior Fellow. Now we learn that our colleague has suffered another act of censorship: he has been erased from Wikipedia, ostensibly for not being “notable” enough. Funny, no one had ever heard much about Gunter Bechly before then. At Evolution News, we have documented a range of instances of censorship and intimidation. Rarely, Read More ›