Coyne is not an engineer. He’s sort of a glorified fruitfly farmer. He doesn’t have engineering insights and it shows. He’s also one of the most militant ideologues out there ( protesting the appointment of Francis Collins MD,PhD as head of NIH because Collins was a Christian). Jerry Coyne argues the human eyes is poorly Read More…
Author: scordova
Engineer/Investment Professional
Gordon Davisson’s Talk Origins Post of the Month (October 2000)
I’m not aware of any policy restriction on providing links to TalkOrigins at UD. I’ve linked to TalkOrigins a lot since I’ve criticized it so much in the past. In this case, I actually concur with one of Gordon Davisson’s essays there, and I think it rightly earned Post of the Month 14 years ago Read More…
Shannon Information, Entropy, Uncertainty in Thermodynamics and ID
This essay is intended to give a short overview of textbook understanding of Shannon Information, Entropy, Uncertainty in thermodynamics and Intelligent Design. Technical corrections are welcome. The phrases “Shannon Information”, “Shannon Uncertainty”, “Shannon Entropy” are all the same. The most familiar every day usage of the notion of Shannon Information is in the world of Read More…
BA77’s Off Topic Thread, Volume 5 — Aerobatic Ballet, what ID has done for me, Cyd Charisse, Tango jealousy, Butterfly
This is a thread for UD commenters to speak their mind. Please keep it civil. Off topic #1 If I could be a ballet dancer, I’d be this man: [youtube VQKfvwoKc6w] Off topic #2 It’s no secret I’m rather chummy with agnostics, atheists, free-thinkers and academics, and even some of the less reputable elements of Read More…
Jerry’s Question — Crash Course in Base Pairs and Complementary Strands
Our longtime commenter Jerry several months ago asked a question about DNA (regarding complementary strands). I presume he got an answer by now. At the time, I wanted to respond to his question with this video, but I just never got around to it! But the video would still be incredibly valuable to all our Read More…
Rube Goldberg Complexity Increase in Thermodynamically Closed Systems
A thermodynamically closed system that is far from equilibrium can increase the amount of physical design provided it is either front loaded or has an intelligent agent (like a human) within it. A simple example: A human on a large nuclear powered space ship can write software and compose music or many other designs. The Read More…
Cocktails! Small number of “genes”, but large number of protein isoforms
A good number of proteomic researchers believe there are millions of protein isoforms. A protein isoform is a slight variation of a basic protein. I’m not averse to thinking there are only a limited number of “genes” that govern a basic number of limited protein classes, but that there are millions or billions of protein Read More…
Vodka! Speculating on purposes of untranslated RNA transcripts
In eukaryotic organisms and especially humans, large amounts of the DNA are transcribed into RNAs that never end up getting translated into proteins. This has led some to argue human DNA is mostly junk. I speculate otherwise. The supposed junk DNA that transcribes to supposed junk RNA is not junk at all. I recently discovered Read More…
ID’s grand quest, the search for steganography in biology
Courtesy Wikipedia’s entry on steganography, this photo has an encrypted photo within it: The hidden image is revealed by removing all but the two least significant bits of each color component and a subsequent normalization. The hidden image is shown below. Steganography Finally, we come to the research theme that I find most intriguing. Steganography, Read More…
80 megabytes seems too small to specify a human
Dan Graur and Larry Moran argue that most of the human genome of 3.2 giga base pairs is junk. I will appeal to engineering intuition and say these guys are awfully premature in their pronouncements since their estimates would imply that a mere 80 megabytes would be enough specify not only an adult human but Read More…
Linguistics of biological systems
We’re honored to have Piotr as part of the UD discussions. Though I most certainly disagree with his views about biological evolution, I salute his devotion to the important discipline of linguistics. I would like to acknowledge and promote his blog http://langevo.blogspot.com/. One of my current research interests is in the linguistics of DNA and Read More…
Question about languages (for Piotr)
Piotr is a professor of linguistics. I was curious to hear his view on the phylogeny of human languages. It is clear many human languages evolve and split off into dialects and maybe form their own new language from a common ancestor language. However, I’m of the opinion despite some language phylogeny, there is not Read More…
Inessential does not mean non-functional! Gene guns, transposons, some polyploids, programmed apoptosis, etc.
Strictly speaking gene guns are inessential for living organisms, but does being inessential for life make this tool of genetic engineering non-functional? If there are tools for innovation and exploration, they might not be essential, but does that mean they are non-functional? Of course not! In like manner transposons and some forms of polyploidy might Read More…
Too much of something can be a good thing for ID
One reason I’ve hammered the 500 fair coin illustration and the law of large numbers is that it illustrates how to use the binomial distribution to reject chance as a mechanism. In certain contexts, the law of large numbers is much easier to use than the more generalized design detection methods discussed here. When looking Read More…
No universal Transition-Transversion mutation bias
Occasionally evolutionary biology tries to inform chemical theories, but given the shaky foundation of certain evolutionary claims, maybe this isn’t a good idea. Years ago, in a debate, an evolutionist said something to the effect, “Sal you’re clueless, transition mutations happen 10 times more frequently than transversion mutations.” I’m sorry now I took that evolutionist’s Read More…