In recent weeks, we have seen repeated attempts to suggest that Mathematics is essentially a mind game we make up as an aspect of culture. There has been a very strong resistance to the idea that there are intelligible manifestations of structure and quantity embedded in the fabric of the world (and indeed in that of any possible world). And when test cases have been put on the table, they have been consistently brushed aside as cases where our mathematical modelling has been applied; that is it’s all in our heads. So, it is appropriate to put on the table a test case that is quite literally in our heads, hearing and particularly how the cochlea works. Video: We see Read More ›

In American Association for the Advancement of Science’s magazine, Science,  we read, In the grand scheme of evolution, mutations serve only to break structures and degrade functions, Behe argues. He allows that mutation and natural selection can explain species- and genus-level diversification, but only through the degradation of genes. Something else, he insists, is required for meaningful innovation. Here, Behe invokes a “purposeful design” by an “intelligent agent.” There are indeed many examples of loss-of-function mutations that are advantageous, but Behe is selective in his examples. He dedicates the better part of chapter 7 to discussing a 65,000-generation Escherichia coli experiment, emphasizing the many mutations that arose that degraded function—an expected mode of adaptation to a simple laboratory environment, by the Read More ›

In a current thread on the morality or otherwise on the Pagan practice of infanticide, frequent, objecting commenter BB gives us a summary of a common prejudice of our time: BB, 69: ” The fact that we no longer blindly accept discrimination based on the justification of freedom of conscience or freedom of religion is a good thing. Freedom of conscience and freedom of religion were historically used as justification for many acts of discrimination, including the subjugation of women and the ban on interracial marriage. How can we be certain that some of the discriminations now justified using freedom of conscience and freedom of religion are not equally unjustifiable? ” [emphases added] The presumption of discrimination and implication that Read More ›

It is amusing to watch WJM hoist a materialist with his own petard. All that follows is WJM: Brother Brian, So, if you could, you’d force others to live by your preference – let’s call it the non-oppression of women. Your position is that it is your subjective preference as to how people should behave, and attach no “absolute” value to that preference, and that there is no “absolute truth” as to how people should behave or treat others. From your perspective, then, the oppressors in your example are also forcing others to live by their preference, even though they mistakenly believe that their preference is an absolute truth. So, again from your perspective (correct me if I’m wrong), both Read More ›

Becoming from Aeon Video on Vimeo. Watch a single cell become a complete organism in six pulsing minutes of timelapse. A film by Jan van Ijken More about the life form portrayed.

The Y chromosome has been notoriously difficult to sequence due to repetitive elements. Junk, right? Now, researchers from the University of Rochester have found a way to sequence a large portion of the Y chromosome in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster—the most that the Y chromosome has been assembled in fruit flies. The research, published in the journal GENETICS, provides new insights into the processes that shape the Y chromosome, “and adds to the evidence that, far from a genetic wasteland, Y chromosomes are highly dynamic and have mechanisms to acquire and maintain genes,” says Amanda Larracuente, an assistant professor of biology at Rochester. Using sequence data generated by new technology that reads long strands of individual DNA molecules, Chang Read More ›

Get a load of this story, as Bartlett tells it: In a previous article, I noted that Bitcoin’s security features actually work against the users, rather than for them. The “anonymizing” features don’t actually make you anonymous unless you are already a super-geek. And the fact that transactions can’t be overridden by a third party actually winds up benefitting the criminals more than the users. This week, it has been reported that there is a Bitcoin exchange with $190 million dollars worth of assets which are no longer accessible by the users. What happened? Were they misspent? Misinvested? Laundered? Stolen? Nope. None of the above. In some ways, it’s worse than that: Gerald Cotton, founder of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, Read More ›