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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 06/30/2008 : 16:40:01 [Permalink]
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Better late than never: Semi-technicalLenski and the adaptive acrobatics of E. coli
by Dr. Georgia Purdom, AiG–U.S.June 30, 2008
Jerry Coyne, evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, thinks that Richard Lenski's recently published research on citrate utilization by Escherichia coli1 is just that—“another poke in the eye for anti-evolutionists.”2 He goes on to say, “The thing I like most is it says you can get these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events. That's just what creationists say can't happen.”2 I agree that creationists say that cannot happen; however, Lenski's research does not show that it did! Instead Lenski's research is another “feather in the cap” for creationists and further demolishes evolutionary ideas that complex traits can arise by random mutations.
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 On the other hand, better not at all than on time for this tripe.
I think I'm beginning to see a new definition of "creationist." It is one who is highly creative in the art of telling convincing lies within limited parameters.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Maverick
Skeptic Friend
Sweden
385 Posts |
Posted - 07/02/2008 : 05:14:08 [Permalink]
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| "Chance worshippers"? Really? Once again they want scientific theories to be in the same category as religious beliefs. Evolution is a religion, they say. Kent Hovind claimed that time is our (atheists and they who understands anything about science) god, since we need billions of years for evolution to work. And now we're chance worshippers...? I wonder when they will finally understand that not all of us are in need of irrational, unsupported god beliefs like they are, and that science is not a faith. |
"Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy." -- Carl Sagan |
| Edited by - Maverick on 07/02/2008 05:15:08 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
Posted - 07/04/2008 : 08:47:16 [Permalink]
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| Thanks to PZ, I've learned that Schlafly seems to want to legally strongarm Dr. Lenski into disclosing that which Dr. Lenski has already disclosed and which Schlafly won't read. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 07/04/2008 : 14:40:42 [Permalink]
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Spectrophotometry analysis. It is actually a very common method to calculate the density of a bacterial culture.
But it would just about double of triple the amount of work time required every day and increase the risks of contamination with no bearing on the actual experiment.
As for the contaminations; one could probably argue that it is relevant for the experiment, as the citrate operons could arrive in the genome of one of these contaminant organisms and then be assimilated into the genome of the E. coli by transformation.
However, sequencing of the mutants should allow to show that it is not the case, though, by showing the uninterrupted line of mutations as well as allowing to compare the GC ratios. |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 09/14/2008 : 02:07:19 [Permalink]
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Keep on a'diggin', Andy. You'll find the bottom of that hole if you just keep diggin'.
Yeesh!
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
 Posted - 09/14/2008 : 10:39:26 [Permalink]
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The Schlafly guy is just creepy. In the discussion pages, he goes on about shit like "one additional beauty of the truth is that it remains the truth no how much some deny it. PNAS can deny its errors all it likes, but that doesn't change the fact they are errors."
So even though he's been told by people who know more than he does about the subject, he refuses to accept that he's mistaken.
What's really terrifying is that these crazy theocratically-minded people are out there and in great numbers. And they vote. And they have like-minded people in positions of wealth and power.
What the fuck happened?? |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 09/14/2008 : 11:28:16 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Cuneiformist
What's really terrifying is that these crazy theocratically-minded people are out there and in great numbers. And they vote. And they have like-minded people in positions of wealth and power.
What the fuck happened??
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The cynical pandering for their votes by the Republican party, who need them to win an election, happened. What started with promises by the Republicans to get votes has become so much a part of the party that the RR and other social conservatives are now considered their base.
Moderate Republicans say "well, we are not a one issue party" as a way to rationalize the fundamental change in their party platform favoring theocratic government that has been building for decades now. (Plutocracy is a hard sell.) They sold whatever integrity they had to the RR for votes and now they are stuck with them.
And that in turn has emboldened the theocrats to push for more and more.
We are in big trouble, and it may take a revolution to get us out of what the framers saw as the greatest threat to freedom.
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Randy
SFN Regular
USA
1990 Posts |
 Posted - 09/14/2008 : 12:06:44 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Cuneiformist
What the fuck happened??
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You can thank Karl Rove for instrumenting the (shrub) fundamentalist political uprising; along with a country-sized bag full of lazy thinkers (sheeple) going for it. |
"We are all connected; to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, to the rest of the universe atomically."
"So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?"
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson |
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Dr. Lenski is awesome!
