Quiz 2. (Directions, and rationale, can be found in a previous post.) Ready?Which organism has the larger genome? This one? Or this one? 1 2 3Which of these organisms displays the greatest "degree of advancement"? Which would require the most "information" to build and maintain? What predictions would design theorists such as William Dembski and Hugh Ross offer us in this exercise?Think, people.
That's Tom de Kay, editor of the Home & Garden section of the New York Times. Last week Thursday, that section ran a story, "A Refugee from Gangland," describing the life of Margaret B. Jones, the author of a just-released "heart-wrenching memoir" set in gangland L.A. The Times piece is fascinating, and the memoir probably is too. One little problem: the memoir has just been revealed to be a fraud.
Can you tell which of the authors quoted above won a Pulitzer? Heh.Back to the big lie about "junk DNA" as told by anti-evolution propagandists. The first theme in this cesspool of creationist folk science, as I described in the first installment of this series on "junk DNA", is this: that "junk DNA" is functional and therefore that evolutionary claims regarding its origin are mistaken.
Several weeks ago, I started this series on "junk DNA" by noting that the shoddy nature of anti-evolution folk science is rarely more clearly displayed than in discussions of genomic and genetic findings that are aptly explained by common descent.
In another post in this ongoing series, we looked at creationist distortions of the nature of research into non-coding DNA, or "junk DNA." There I mention how creationists of all stripes are quite fond of the claim that "Darwinist" assumptions led to the labeling of all non-coding DNA as non-functional, and thereby to the neglect of research in the field for three decades.
This week's theme is, um, "fun with biology." Seemed apropos after all the bickering I did this week. Which I'll mention as well.1. So I assume you saw that Craig Venter's outfit produced the first "synthetic genome" recently. All this means is that they synthesized a very long piece of DNA, and included within it all the components known to be necessary for bacterial life.
Junk DNA is still a-happening. Ryan Gregory's blog Genomicron is the place to learn about it. He's especially adept at driving trucks through the gaps in ID claims about non-coding DNA. My gestating posts on the subject [sigh] will focus more on Reasons To Believe.
"Junk DNA" is a very popular subject among anti-evolution commentators.
One of the most common refrains of anti-evolutionists is the claim that evolutionary mechanisms can only degrade what has already come to be. All together now: "No new information!" It's a sad little mantra, an almost religious pronouncement that is made even more annoying by its religious underpinnings, hidden or overt. But it's a good question: how do new genes come about?
UPDATE: answers posted at the end.Which of these plant specimens doesn't belong? (Images will be properly credited in a forthcoming article which will explain why they're so interesting.)The images are all the same magnification, but have been colorized so that the color won't give you any clues. Focus on the structure of each specimen, and pick one that doesn't belong with the others. (Insert Sesame Street reference here.) 1234Want a hint?