The Making of the Fittest

I’ve just read a good book about genetics. The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution by Sean B. Carroll. There is much food for thought in this book. One reviewer called it “A Primer of Evolutionary Theory for Beginners”, and this is accurate. One doesn’t need to know chemistry or physics to follow his reasoning, because he teaches the most necessary pieces.

Basically, this book examines what has turned up in studying the genomes of various species over the last couple of decades, as well as tracing genes from generation to generation in the same family line. It starts with a simple introduction to what DNA is, how it works, and how we know this. Then it gradually leads one to understand how genes transform from one generation to the next, and how this leads to speciation.

Basically, ever-present radiation, random chemistry, and aggressive biology cause frequent single-letter changes in DNA. Also RNA copy-and-paste errors regularly drop or duplicate entire gene sequences. After this see Darwin for how some mutations are explicitly preserved, some are inevitably removed, and most simply languish in or become fossil genes because there is no preference one way or the other. Carroll covers all this in many examples.

Carroll presents the simple probability and large numbers theory to illustrate the surprising speed at which populations can change, and then shows functioning (or no longer functioning) genes that have in fact visibly changed populations so rapidly.

This book gives plenty …

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Manger Arbitration

It's that time of year again, when we gear up for the rewards (or disappointments) promised in our celebrations of the Yule Season. Christmas Time! Days of saccharine movies, maudlin songs, a hope for fluffy white snowfall that is somehow miraculously easy to drive through and falls only on grassy…

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Is America a Christian Nation?

Any fundamentalist will tell you that our nation was founded as a Christian nation by Christians and for Christians. Their carefully crafted surveys show that a massive majority of Americans say that they are Christian, and therefore approve the fundamentalist platform.

Let’s look at some of their potent evidence. I pulled this fact from a Christian political activist site, ObjectiveMinistries.org

“Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord [i.e. Jesus Christ] one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In Witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names…”

– Article VII, US Constitution

Yeah. I’m sure that our Deist founders inserted the phrase “Year of our lord” to enforce Christian doctrine. This was simply a declaration of what calendar they were using (as opposed to the Chinese or Hebrew calendars). But then, this site also is currently pushing “Roy Moore for Alabama Governor — Taking America Back For The Lord One State At A Time!”

Apparently the word “Objective” in their URL refers to its meaning as “Target” rather than “unbiased”. I got to this site while looking for the obvious parody site, LandoverBaptist.org. Anyone with the sense of a 10 year old would recognize that it is a pointed parody, yet the ObjectiveMinitries site has labeled it as hate-speech and misleading, and is running a campaign to get it shut down.

I suggest …

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The Devil In Memphis

I received the following from a friend of mine, who sent it to his local paper as well. I’ve asked his permission to post it here, in its entirety. It concerns an issue which, while we may hope represents an unfortunate part of our history long outgrown, still rears its…

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Does the universe has a “purpose”? Say what?

The Templeton Foundation is promulgating a set of short essays by twelve prominent thinkers and writers.  I’ve recently noticed these essays in several magazines.  Templeton asked the following question to its panel: “Does the Universe Have a Purpose?”   The answers ranged from “yes” to “not sure” to “unlikely” to “no.”  …

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