Biology is everything
AC Grayling:
Science is the greatest achievement of human history so far. I say that as a huge admirer of the Renaissance and Renaissance art, music and literature, but the world-transforming power of science and the tremendous insights that we’ve gained show that this is an enterprise, a wonderful collective enterprise, that is a great achievement of humanity.
Watch the video here:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/grayling09/grayling09_index.html
We have a notable firsties first author paper by Megan Dennis in PLoS Genetics.
“Where the Wild Things Are” is a Spike Lee spliff. Here’s the theatrical trailer set to an Arcade Fire song.
The book is short, just a handful of sentences, and has a familiar theme: the power of imagination. What saves it from cliche is the fantastic illustrations. I have a vivid memory of those watercolor and ink monsters warping my own imagination as a child. And as a child, I always blinked. I actually remember it being controversial among parents as too graphic for their impressionable little pups to handle. I say reality is too impressionable, and some fantasies are better for their horns and claws.
I’ve been acused of being too conservative over this, but since Lee’s using the same title in his movie, he ought to tell the same story. Anything less is crass marketing manipulation. As it goes, his success will be determined by an effective translation of this giddy fear to the screen. Do it for the children, Lee.
Fill in the blank
According to the current dogma, _________ form the proper unit of selection.
1. genes
2. individuals
3. groups
4. species
5. ecosystem-levels
———————————————————————————–
Update:
To crib a popular metaphor, species is to ecosystem as cancer cell is to organism. This seems an ironic non-answer packaged for journalists since what we don’t know about metastasis is…significant!
David Joblonski: Species selection may not build horns, but it can determine how many species have horns or how long horns persist.
There are only a few examples of group selection, mostly agricultural, but it may simply be for lack of looking: google Alexandra Penn and biofilm.
David Sloan Wilson makes the loudest case for ecosystem-level selection.
The following is a rejection letter from the hipster literary rag N+1, based out of New York. The initial flavor is economical and thus slightly aloof, with a notable aftertaste of excuse-making, crafted to soothe the ego.
Dear Tony:
Thank you for sending First Responder to n+1. Unfortunately, we will not be able to publish it. As a biannual, n+1 is only able to publish a small number of fiction selections each year. We do appreciate your submission and wish you the best of luck placing your work elsewhere.
Sincerely,
The Editors
I submitted my short story, “First Responder,” in December.
I feel the sudden urge to flaunt my failures and shortcomings on this website in the form of rejection letters from publications and places of employment. It may be indulgent, masochistic, and most probably pointless but so is blogging.
Let’s start off with the most recent. Today I applied via email for a part-time “contract” position at the Musculoskeletal Clinic as a medical writer. The reply broke a record for the speediest rejection thus far (10 minutes). In a way that’s great and efficient, but in another way, I must have been so obviously not the right person for the job, that of a science writer, I wonder what my fancy education in science writing is actually worth–10 minutes of consideration?
Dear gillt,
Thank you for applying to the Medical Writer position. I have reviewed your CV. Unfortunately your profile does not correspond to our criteria as we are looking for someone with extensive clinical experience.
I forgot to mention in my resume that I was a human guinea pig on numerous studies and therefore have clinical experience from the “other side” of the examining table.
Tarantino made a movie about Nazis and WWII. It has Brad Pitt–the pothead from True Romance–”Ryan the temp” from The Office, and Schweiber from Freaks and Geeks hunting Nazis. Revealing Schwieber quote via Freaks and Geeks “I’m Jewish. That’s no cakewalk either. Last year, I was elected school treasurer. I didn’t even run!”
More importantly, why did Tarantino embark down this particular beaten-like-a-dead-horse path? Because we need one more film on WWII and zee Nazis, especially after the two I haven’t seen in 2008? Why apply the trademark Tarantino vortex of verbosity and ultraviolence to an already overwrought and violent genre? Judging from the trailer alone, I think QT has remaked ripped-off Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen with a dash of Kelly’s Heroes. That’s not to say QT is the Shepard Fairey of film. Even at his least Tarantino is no hack.
True Romance, From Dusk Till Dawn, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill and Deathproof were hailed as pumping new life into and redefining their respective genres: Drama, subgenre: romance; Horror, subgenre: creature feature; Crime/Gangster, subgenre: heist/cop; Action, subgenre: kung fu and western; Grindhouse, subgenre: psycho-killer and car chase. Even the widely panned Jackie Brown was still seen as an ultimately failed yet bold reimagining of the crime drama. Perhaps QT has bought into the hype of his own legacy: tarantinorizing every movie genre. Like any good theory, mine should have predictive power. Some movie title suggestions for genres QT will at some point in the future redefine:
Science Fiction: Multiverse Wars
Documentary/Biopic: Lucifer: The Blackest Sheep
Comedy: Rainy Season for Pol Pot
Musical: Tinnitus the Musical
War: Inglorious Basterds
Behold, Inglorious Basterds!
Firsties!
One impression of the NHGRI sponsored seminar: has the once mighty Drosophila become so blase as to not even get a tip of the hat at a genetics seminar? I would expect as much from a bunch of paleontologists or ecologists, but shame on you geneticists. I wouldn’t interpret this as model bashing, because Mus and Danio had bit rolls in a few of the talks. I think the message is that genomics has moved on. We are now at a stage where researchers are becoming intrepid Victorian specimen collectors, chasing down rare and exotic flora and fauna for their private collection. I thought the smartest point made was that now even humans are a model system, or, rather, everything is a model!
Second: Genetic drift got short shrift. Mutation and random fluctuations in the frequencies of alleles or haplotypes seem like a worthwhile topic when discussing Darwin’s legacy. I would have liked to see more on theory incorporated into the discussion. On a related note, one of the speakers stated that negative mutations were the most common form of mutation. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he either mispoke or I misheard him.
David Kingsley talked about skeletal genes. He made the point that changes in regulatory regions rather than coding regions allow for dramatic phenotypic variation, while keeping it confined to specific tissues. For example, the same genes involved in embryonic development in sticklebacks also regulate armor plating and melanin. Mutations in the corresponding genes in mice and humans are often lethal. Sticklebacks are probably not a lab animal: being anadromous I doubt they can breed them in the lab yet, so all the work is done in hotel bathrooms in Alaska.
There was a bit of junk DNA bashing from Elaine Ostrander, but that’s what makes these events fun. I’m sure if Larry Moran was there, he’d show her what snarkyness really is:
Total Essential (so far) 4.5%
Total Junk (so far) 54%
David Haussler was the third of six speakers at the Darwin @ 200 seminar. Since I saw at least one phlogenetic twig during the presentation, I would hope that the arborist would tackle Haussler’s talk.
A quick note though, either one of the two Davids or Ajit Varki speculated that humans as a species may be immunizing ourselves against the tooth and claw logic of natural selection. I’m not suggesting that natural selection is a tautology, but by what means they have reason to suspect that “natural” selective forces are quantitatively decreasing across the species from Bangor to Bangladesh is a mystery to me. I imagine that what is being put forward is a semantic rather than a real argument.
What is it with humans and our existential insecurities? Rapture this global warming that. Apparently, the price of an oversized cortex is a steep one. It means we make movies, Mad Max, Night of the Living Dead, Day After Tomorrow and Idiocracy and write books, Left Behind, The Stand, Oryx and Crake, and The Road , slapping ourselves on the wrist over our transgressions to god and mother Earth: one-size fits all diatribes. Even behind the cheap laughs of Idiocracy and bravado of Mad Max stands akimbo a stern-looking Miss Wormwood telling us to sit-up straight, take notice and recycle, say our prayers, and stop being such greedy little bastards. (Shawn of the Dead being an obvious exception.)
Adding to the pantheon is a movie (The Age of Stupid) due in spring, and a TV series (Remnants) with no release date. If the movie is anything like its trailer below, it’ll be an uninspiring hour and a half of non-sequiturs backdropped against post-production cgi. If the series is anything like its trailer, it’ll be the Office post global pandemic. Though these two genre vehicles have similar subject matter, they are somewhat opposite in their approach to that material.
The Remnants (preview) from John August on Vimeo.
The Age of Stupid: final trailer Feb 2009 from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.
Everyone’s favorite Leech Blog, BdellaNea, discusses a leach-powered storm-stracking system on display at the Great Exhibition at London’s Crystal Palace in 1851. “The device required a leech in each of 12 jars. The glass was to be transparent so that the leeches could “see each other” and so agree amongst themselves as to their prognostication. If any leech climbed up and into the escape tube, its weight would dislodge a piece of whalebone, releasing a hammer that would ring the bell thus announcing the onset of inclement weather.”
