Jack Gohn of the Maryland Daily Record sees the light about Intelligent Design.

Turns out some of the things I thought were open issues really weren’t, most notably the extent to which ID was passable science. ID, in case you’ve tuned in late, is the theory that we can best account for “irreducible complexities” that appear in the course of evolution by inferring the activity of an intelligent designer, most likely God. Irreducible complexity would exist when an organism manifested a combination of features which seemed too complicated to have arisen simultaneously as mere products of random mutation.

As the Kitzmiller trial revealed, however, there were only three “exhibits” in this theory, the flagellum (a feature of cell biology), a “clotting sequence” in certain animals, and the immune system. And for each of them, the evidence at trial showed that science does after all have plausible explanations of how they arose from ordinary random mutation. Their complexity was not irreducible after all. Moreover, there is no peer-reviewed scientific literature supporting the ID theory. So at least for now, ID is bad science. There simply isn’t enough substance there yet for it to be recommended for serious consideration by any science teacher.

Where Kitzmiller left me unconvinced was the finding that ID isn’t science at all — as opposed to merely being bad science, which I now think it must be.

This is the persistent problem when people start digging into the ID literature--there isn't any.

A statement from the Association for Science Education on Intelligent Design.

Did Neandertals and modern humans interbreed? Maybe or maybe not say Jeffrey Wall and Sung Kim, who argue in PLoS Genetics that two prominent studies involving Neandertal nuclear DNA are flawed. Their online article is available here. The abstract states, in no uncertain terms:

Two recently published papers describe nuclear DNA sequences that were obtained from the same Neanderthal fossil. Our reanalyses of the data from these studies show that they are not consistent with each other and point to serious problems with the data quality in one of the studies, possibly due to modern human DNA contaminants and/or a high rate of sequencing errors.

If your data is flawed, it doesn't matter how good your study is.

A finding on a hox gene pushes common ancestry back even further. According to the story in Foxnews:

"[Zerina] Johanson and her colleagues found that the genes involved in creating the Australian lungfish's fins made proteins in a nearly identical pattern as in tetrapods by acting on the small fin bones but not the rest of the limb.

"Because of the similarities, we can say that fish fins have similar structures to tetrapod digits, [and that] tetrapod digits are no longer unique to the group," Johanson told LiveScience.

Further evidence of evolution in the works.

According to a new Science study, there was no interbreeding between Neandertals and early modern humans.

The findings are based on a new DNA study, which involved Italian, Spanish and German scientists, who examined fossilised bones found in the northern Italian mountains near Verona and a cave in Asturia, Spain.

I'll believe it when I see it. The Science article is not out yet, but I will check on it when it does come out.

There will be a creation/evolution debate in Dothan, Alabama on November 29 at the Dothan Opera House, as reported in the Christian News Wire.

Sadly, Ming is dead.

Well, this is certainly a different take on evolution. According to an article in the Daily mail:

The human race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist.

100,000 years into the future, sexual selection could mean that two distinct breeds of human will have developed. The alarming prediction comes from evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry from the London School of Economics, who says that the human race will have reached its physical peak by the year 3000.

Similarities to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine did not go unnoticed by the Daily Mail writer, who waxes at length about it. Funny, the recent version of the film with Guy Pearce got panned, but I rather enjoyed it. Curry, himself, is part of the Evolutionary Moral Psychology Group, which, based on their web page, looks like sociobiology on steroids.

As B.C. would say: " A quahog is a quahog is a quahog!!!" Ming the quahog is over 400 years old. Or as Shel Silverstein put it:

"You may leave the Clam on the ocean floor
It's all the same to the Clam.
For a hundred thousand years or more,
It's all the same to the Clam.
You may bury him deep in mud or muck,
Or carry him round to bring you luck.
Or use him for a hockey puck.
It's all the same to the Clam.

You may call him Frank or Jim or Nell
It's all the same to the Clam.
Or make an ashtray from his shell.
It's all the same to the clam.
You may take him riding on a train
or leave him sitting in the rain.
You'll never hear the Clam complain.
It's all the same to the Clam.

Yes the world may stop or the world may spin
It's all the same to the Clam.
And the sky may come a fallin' in
It's all the same to the Clam.
And man may sing his endless songs,
of wronging rights and righting wrongs.
The Clam just sets - and gets along.
It's all the same to the Clam."

The Guardian's Steve Jones extols the virtue of comparative skeletal anatomy to show the beauty of natural selection.

At least some Neandertals had red hair. According to the story:

An analysis of the DNA revealed that the ancient hominids carried a mutation in the MC1R gene that codes for a protein involved in the production of melanin -- a substance that gives skin its color and also protects skin against ultraviolet light.

In modern humans, primarily of European descent, mutations in the MC1R gene are thought to be responsible for red hair and pale skin by dampening the activity of the protein.

This lends credence to the idea that skin and hair color variations are older than modern humans, which makes sense.

Josh Rosenau ruminates on Panglossian creationism. In some senses, the modern ID movement is "argument from personal incredulity"-driven. Without saying as much, Rosenau suggests this weakness.

According to a widely circulated story, a new study on Saint Bernards casts doubt on creationism. The story notes:

Biologists at The University of Manchester say that changes to the shape of the breed’s head over the years can only be explained through evolution and natural selection.

The team, led by Dr Chris Klingenberg in the Faculty of Life Sciences, examined the skulls of 47 St Bernards spanning 120 years, from modern examples to those of dogs dating back to the time when the breed standard was first defined.

They go on to note:

“Creationism is the belief that all living organisms were created according to Genesis in six days by ‘intelligent design’ and rejects the scientific theories of natural selection and evolution.

“But this research once again demonstrates how selection – whether natural or, in this case, artificially influenced by man – is the fundamental driving force behind the evolution of life on the planet.”

Here's the problem: This is microevolution. The vast majority of creationists do not doubt or argue against microevolution. They are perfectly content with changes within "kinds." Those changes could span a thousand years and it wouldn't matter. So the title of the story is erroneous.

Mrs. Ples gets a makeover--an extreme makeover!

More on the story from the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Florida has new evolution standards for the classroom, according to a story in the Bradenton Herald. This is the paragraph of the story that will raise the most stink:

Proposed standards for seventh-graders, for example, would require that students should be able to "recognize and describe that fossil evidence is consistent with the idea that human beings evolved from earlier species."

Most creationists can handle little bits of evolution here and there, but there will be howling about this one.

A local push for hominid status for Orrorin tugenensis as well as a run-down on its discovery.

Happy Birthday to Us!

Today the world turns 6 011 years old, according to the Ussher/Lightfoot chronology. Sing happy birthday at least once today.

Vitter yanks the money.

There is now a concerted effort to ask that the funding for the Louisiana Family Forum be yanked. It is quite possible that had the Forum not make its viewpoint on evolution public, this would have gone unnoticed.