I said I’d tell you when it was published – and it’s been published! Somewhat surprisingly, I was asked by my friend Khalil to write up my thoughts on the whole ENCODE project/junk DNA/the-human-genome-is-80%-functional fiasco for the Student Voices blog, but from the perspective of what intelligent design proponents were taking from it all. If you’ve been following pro-ID blogs Evolution News and Views and Uncommon Descent lately, there’s been little end to the victorious proclamations – because, as we all know, the more functional the genome is, [...]
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It’s now officially a holiday period for me (for some curious reason my university is giving everyone a two-week mid-semester break – but no one’s complaining), but I’m still busy as hell with multiple projects, including coursework, the YAS relaunch, the podcast and just generally trying not to go insane. So! Here are some more interesting/relevant things I’ve stumbled across in the past few days. Standford University has a free, online writing course through Coursera called “Writing in the Sciences” starting on the 24th of September! It’s free! [...] » Continue reading “Open up my spine and plug me in again” As my patience for the Discovery Institute is at an all-time low, it’s heartening to see someone completely eviscerate their arguments. I mean, it happens all the time, but it’s particularly satisfying right now. Carl Zimmer, well-known science writer, has been battling with DI fellow David Klinghoffer over the past few days over the evidence for a chromosome fusion event sometime in the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens that resulted in our chromosome 2, internal telomeres, double centromeric sequences and all. I say battling, but it’s been more [...] » Continue reading “An epic end to the Zimmer/Klinghoffer chromosome fusion saga” Auckland University of Technology PhD candidate Paul McBride has admirably published a 6-part review of the Discovery Institute’s latest self-published book, Science and Human Origins, which I previously drew your attention to for – yes – trying to argue that the human race could have originated from a literal Adam and Eve. It’s well worth reading in its entirety, but for those without the time or the patience for bad science, the bottom line is: I have been left wondering why the Discovery Institute, or intelligent design advocates in general, or [...] The Pseudo Scientists – Episode 48 In this episode of The Pseudo Scientists, the official podcast of the Young Australian Skeptics, Elliot, Richard, Belinda and I discuss the transit of Venus, electrical avalanche discharges and the intelligent design themes in “Prometheus” (spoiler free) and other sci-fi films. And like Jason last week, Elliot has some (slightly less sad) news… This week’s “Houston, We Have A Problem” clip is ID proponent Jay Richards not being entirely persuasive about design detection. [...] Regular readers of this blog may know of “Will”, a frequent commenter on my posts about evolutionary biology and intelligent design who seems to disagree with absolutely everything I say. Some would, and have, called him a troll – I’m a little more lenient in my descriptions, but I usually restrain from responding to him too much, given that his comments are often filled with semi-decipherable appeals to “natural genetic engineering” and consciousness in bacteria and other organisms. In short, I really don’t have time to wade through the murky [...] » Continue reading “Am I an evolutionary ideologue?” There are so many great webcomics out there that every time I mention another I feel as though I should have already brought your attention to it. Scenes From A Multiverse is no exception. It’s clever, funny, and due to its sci-fi nature, often touches on areas in science and related topics. Of course, this means that intelligent design was bound to come up sooner or later. Click on the image to see the full comic! Hat-tip to my good friend [...] » Continue reading “Tabletop Transitional – An irreducibly complex pile of monkeys” |
Homologous Legs is the personal blog of Jack Scanlan, an Australian science communicator and biology student. Topics of interest here include the intelligent design/evolution "war", biology, philosophy, religion, music, and mostly coherent thoughts from a scattered brain. 
 
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