it comes in pints?

Shannon is a "he", laddy.

You're kidding. [red face]

Well, for what it's worth up until a few months ago I had assumed the same thing. There but for the grace of God, and a certain amount of laziness, go I.

Well, in my defense, I've only heard of one other male Shannon, at least that I can ever remember.

I used to have a colleague named Shannon, who was married to a Shannon. We called them the He-Shannon and the She-Shannon.

And now you know why "evolution," "Darwin," "creationism," and "intelligent design" have never appeared on my blog. I get over 1,000 spam comments every day as it is; I don't need trolls.

Prof, please, please, please tell me they're Australian philosophy professors!

Some more fun on the ID debate

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117981021.html?categoryId=2526&cs=1

In making the "documentary", they used "Michael Moore style tactics".

Again, you want to teach ID in some sort of philosophy class, I got no problem with it. But not in biology.

What kind of class should they talk about the primordial soup in, KG?

And who takes philosophy in high school?

I think they could talk about the primordial soup in biology, I remember hearing somewhere that they were close to recreating it in a lab environment.

If not philosophy, then in social science, as part of a debate on political issues, the role of religion and science, etc.

KG, that "documentary" saddens me. I like Ben Stein.

Laura, it's appropriate to teach the "primordial soup" material in biology class AFTER standard evolution with, of course, the caveat that it is not as well established (for obvious reasons). I consider it appropriate because we have very good knowledge about the likely conditions on a newly formed Earth from other disciplines, and it is currently the best explanation for how the world got from a sterile planet to one with life.

I strongly agree that it should not be taught as "truth", but it is appropriate with the right qualifications on how it was developed.

More late, I hope.

Is this what you're talking about? It's interesting but they're still guessing - it looks to me like they're defining the success of whether they've reproduced the primordial soup by whether they get amino acids or not, which is bad science.

[Well dammit, f*ck me to pieces. I had typed like three paragraphs and just killed it without posting. Try again.]

It's not bad science, they set out to demonstrate that it is possible, given the revised primordial conditions that invalidated the 1953 experiment. Amino acids are necessary for life (as we know it) and they seem to be able to be formed under what is thought to be the conditions of the primeval Earth.

It sounds, from that article, that they were trying to disprove Fred Hoyle's pet thesis that the Earth must have been seeded from space. Sounds like they did that. I've never much liked Hoyle's ideas about this; I consider it (at this stage of knowledge) to be largely useless. The precursor molecules had to form somewhere, somehow, and it's much simpler to just work with the idea that it was on Earth.

If and when it is demonstrated that "seeding" actually happened, or that without it Earth most likely could not have developed life, then it will be useful.

On the other hand,I think it has been demonstrated that such molecules do exist in space. That part certainly doesn't hurt Hoyle's ideas, but again, it's generally better to work with the simpler explanations that remain consistent with current knowledge.

And I know that this is the wrong thread, but typing on a damned laptop can FTFO.

At my hypothetical private school, both creationist and evolutionist theories would be taught - in philosophy class.

American. And Marketing and Accounting (He-Shannon and She-Shannon, respectively).

This is what I'm talking about.

"When Miller repeated the experiment using the correct combo in 1983, the brown broth failed to materialize. Instead, the mix created a colorless brew, containing few amino acids. It seemed to refute a long-cherished icon of evolution—and creationists quickly seized on it as supposed evidence of evolution's wobbly foundations.

"But Bada's repeat of the experiment—armed with a new insight—seems likely to turn the tables once again.

"Bada discovered that the reactions were producing chemicals called nitrites, which destroy amino acids as quickly as they form. They were also turning the water acidic—which prevents amino acids from forming. Yet primitive Earth would have contained iron and carbonate minerals that neutralized nitrites and acids. So Bada added chemicals to the experiment to duplicate these functions. When he reran it, he still got the same watery liquid as Miller did in 1983, but this time it was chock-full of amino acids. Bada presented his results this week at the American Chemical Society annual meeting in Chicago."

Why didn't he have iron and carbonate minerals in there to begin with? What other chemicals did he conscientiously add because they were present in primitive earth? It does look to me like the chemicals he had were cherry-picked to get the result he wanted.

This part: "creationists quickly seized on it as supposed evidence of evolution's wobbly foundations." irks me too. Evolution starts from life. It has nothing at all to do with the beginning of life. Amino acids are not life, anyway.

So one could say that creationists are dumbasses when they think evolution has anything to do with the primordial soup, EXCEPT that the article itself seems to accept that the primordial soup is one of evolution's foundations.

The bait-and-switch use of the word "evolution" is a real obstacle in getting this controversy ironed out. I suspect too many people don't want it ironed out, to be honest. I learned in my genetics class in college that "evolution" means "a change in gene frequency over time". Nobody really has a problem with this. Nobody thinks that when you eat corn-on-the-cob you're eating the same thing the Native Americans ate when they found maize on this continent. But "evolution" has become a code word that both sides use for all kinds of things, which is why "do you believe in evolution" is a trick question. If you say you do, one side thinks you are denying God. If you say you don't, trying to keep the one side from thinking you are denying God, the other side thinks you think everything you see sprung into existence exactly as you see it now. Which is why if I were a Republican presidential candidate I would have made the questioner define "evolution" before I would have answered that question.