Now I'm Back!

Have been away at Silver Dollar City...So looks like I missed a few things, foiled terrorist attacks, BP oil pipeline problems and all that stuff. At any rate will be catching up and putting some photos online as well. Probably also means a double Poetry Thursday too. So much to bloc and so little time!

So here I was on Thursday enjoying myself and trying on a new hat for school.







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Branson

They're Back!

And I don't mean the Kansas Board of Education,but rather monarch larvae on my milkweed. I only have seen two so far, but for a big striped insect they are pretty hard to spot. This one and a smaller one are in my front garden on butterfly plant. I have some swamp milkweed in the back and while monarchs are visiting the plants, there do not seem to have any larvae.

Notice all the aphids. I wonder if the monarch larvae get a little protein boost.

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Update on Meade KS controversy

Update again from the Lawrence Journal World 8/2/29/06

I don't know if there is more to the Knight's relationship with the rest of the town or not but this quote about the Phelps clan from the article pretty much sums it up:

“It’s just not right,” said Suzan Seybert, a 30-year resident of the southwest Kansas community, as she watched Shirley Phelps-Roper’s children chanting about homosexuals burning in hell. “I think it’s despicable to start to teach your children at such a young age the word ‘hate’. It’s just the worst thing you can do.”

There is an article about the rainbow flag controversy in today's Lawrence Journal World. There are some unsubstantiated charges made in the discussion about the article about the motivation of the B&B owners. Meanwhile, someone apparently decide to cut the flag off. Never mind, the Knight's have plenty more flags. One poster, lakeway_hotel_fraud, who claims to be gay, alleges that the Knights basically engineered this whole thing to attract gay business, and further that he has a partial recording to back his claim up. You can read these yourself and decide.

All I know are the documented comments made by various town's people about the flag and gays additional ones are mentioned in the LJ World article. For instance:

Waitress Vicky Best said...

"It's hard enough to keep your kids on the straight and narrow without outside influences like that,"she complains. "We stay in a small town to stay away from the crap like that that's happening in big cities,"she said, calling homosexuality 'biblically wrong.' "

Is it any wonder that people are leaving much of small town Kansas in droves?

Other links:

My original post

Kansas City Star article with more details

About Meade KS and environs

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Meade

The Big Quote Flap and Armageddon

There is a currently a flap in the noosphere over a Paul Nelson misquote by Karen Armstrong. For those who haven't been following this, many Bloggers including me picked up on Karen Armstrong's article in the Guardian on George Bush's fundamentalist beliefs and how they influence policy and we often picked up on her juicy quote of something allegedly said by Intelligent Design advocate, Paul Nelson.

The problem with this quote was uncovered by Nick Matzke and posted on Panda's Thumb.

This has led to a furious discussion on Intelligent design websites such as Telic thoughts, and the Discovery Institute's Evolution News site. The latter site goes so far as to claim that:

"Today there is another urban myth building up a head of steam, and being helped along by Darwinists, about Discovery Fellow Paul Nelson. Guardian reporter Karen Armstrong reports: 'Great shakings and darkness are descending on Planet Earth,' says the ID philosopher Paul Nelson, 'but they will be overshadowed by even more amazing displays of God's power and light.' And yet this is pure rubbish because Nelson never said anything like this, and it turns out that Armstrong never even interviewed him. Nelson points this out in his letter to the Guardian demanding a correction. "

This flap obscures the bigger point that some people do believe this end of world stuff and this is a big focus of Amstrong's article. She comments:

"American fundamentalists are convinced that the second coming of Christ is at hand; they have developed an end-time scenario of genocidal battles based on a literal reading of Revelation that is absolutely central to their theology."

Clearly this sort of literalist reading of Revelation is common. There is even a rapture index at raptureready.com and here you can find the index's highs and lows for various years:

2003 High 177  2004 High 157 2005 High 161 2006 High 159
2003 Low  133  2004 Low  135 2005 Low  143 2006 Low  151

Record High 182        Record Low 57
24 Sept 01              12 Dec 93    

How many people believe the end is close? That is less certain. An often quoted figure is around 59% of Americans responding to a 2002 CNN Times poll. The closest authoritative source for this datum and other related data is pollingreport.com, a non partisan site that tracks polling data from a number of sources. So let's examine their cited polling data.

Pollingreport's summary of religious related polls gives reports the 59% data in context:

"As you may know, the last book of the New Testament, called the Book of Revelation, contains passages which some people say predict how the world will end. Do you think the events described in the Book of Revelation will occur at some point in the future or don't you think so?"
	Yes, will		59	77	83
	Don't think so		33	15	13
	Not sure		8	8	4

This is an isolated data point, but consider this poll in Pollingreport's religion polling page from a 1999 Newsweek poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates:

						.
"Now, regarding your own religious beliefs: Do you believe that the world will end, as the Bible predicts, in a battle at Armageddon between Jesus and the Antichrist?"
		ALL Adults	ALL Christians	Evangelical Protestants	Other Protestants	Catholics
		%	%	%	%	%
	Yes	40	45	71	28	18
	No	42	39	18	54	57
	Don't know	18	16	11	18	25
						.
	Asked of those who believe in biblical prophecy about Armageddon: "Do you believe the Antichrist is on Earth now?"
		%
	Yes	47
	No	31
	Don't know	22

So if you take belief in Biblical Armageddon AND belief that the Antichrist is on Earth now as serious belief in the immediacy of the Armageddon, then between 17 and 18% of Americans make up the hard core believers in Biblical Armageddon.

This may seem a small number relative to other strange beliefs that Americans have but certainly Armstrong's larger concern about the role of these sorts of beliefs in shaping Administration policy needs to be addressed. What are we for instance to make of this claim by Joel Rosenberg cited in Media Matters:

"I've been invited to the White House, Capitol Hill. Members of Congress, Israelis, Arab leaders all want to understand the Middle East through the lens of biblical prophecies. I'm writing these novels that keep seeming to come true. But we're seeing Bible prophecy, bit by bit, unfold in the Middle East right now."

After all we do know religious beliefs do influence how people view and react to the world around them. So in these dangerous times, do we really want to trust foreign policy to people who believe not only in literal interpretation of the Bible, but also believe that the end is nigh? It is not clear what the President really believes, but given the dangers present today, especially in the Middle East, maybe we ought to know about not only the President but where other government leaders fall in the spectrum of belief about Amageddon.

Other links and comments:

Bill Moyers:
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/38/8664

Bill Moyers is clearly concerned about the effects religion on administration policy:

"We're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half of the members of Congress are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th Congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian-right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Whip Roy Blunt. The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian Coalition was Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia, who before his recent retirement quoted from the biblical Book of Amos on the Senate floor: "The days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land." He seemed to relish the thought."

Media Metters:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200607270001

Two balanced summaries of what is known about George Bush's religious beliefs and his alleged belief in God's plan for America and his Presidency.

Beliefnet:
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/121/story_12112_1.html

Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24634-2004Sep15?language=printer

Another good summary with a very different twist: namely that in spite of his religious beliefs George Bush's actions on the international front have furthered the cause of secularism.

Slate
http://www.slate.com/id/2109377/

So you have your pick in terms of the President's beliefs and how they shape is actions.

Joel Roseberg's web site says it all:
http://www.joelrosenberg.com/

As for Paul Nelson...maybe the Armstrong flap is cosmic payback for a an alleged little distortion of his own.

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Mendel's Garden # 4 Call for submissions!

Almost forgot!

Mendel's Garden is hosted this month at Inoculated Mind. So if you have , or find, interesting genetics articles you want to share, hop on over the Garden's home page or the carnival submission link. Remember ya don't have to be a genetics geek to submit something! The deadline for submissions is August 5th.

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Geek alert! Molecular analogy

Most biology students are somewhat familiar with the concepts of homology and analogy in biology. Sandra Porter over at Discovering Biology in a Digital World has unearthed a really cool (no pun intended) example of analogous proteins-that is proteins that have the same function but differ wildly in structure. Check out her analysis of various anti freeze proteins.

This is an interesting analysis because often times intelligent design people treat proteins and protein design space as essentially one design for one function. Thus, if natural selection is some sort of search procedure then it is impossible time wise for natural selection to converge on a working protein related to a particular function. See for instance Dembski's paper on searching large design spaces. But what Sandra's analysis reminds us of is that protein design space isn't really all that sparse; radically different designs can have the same function.

Other links:

In case you have forgotten what homology and analogy are all about:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/search/topicbrowse2.php?topic_id=55

A more technical look about phylogenetic reasoning and concepts of homology and analogy:
http://stripe.colorado.edu/~am/Homo&Para.html

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How High the Moon

how high the moon we are
above the clouds, above the dreams
swinging around the night
how mute she is

how white she is
by the sun
how like a white pleated skirt
twirling round and round

how black she is
in the cape of the sky
like those twisting roads
and rhymin' signs

with counter point of ticking tires
on Route 7 going south to Lenox
and Bill and Laura's roadside stand
where this is the song

among the yellow lamps
and big spot shining on the name
in block letters on the roof proclaiming
this the Quarry with rickety stools

and varnished counter with holes in the wood
I thought were just for my ice cream cone
and Glen Miller blasting from the megaphone
clung to by June bugs and moths

the music with that swing
when people didn't think about how
high the moon was and there were halls
everywhere with real bands

that swung low to earth
so we could grab the moon by her skirt
bring her right down to eye level
and us out of our seats at Bill and Laura's

among the stars and I look her in the eye
and belly up to her how high we are
the moon and I
to do that swing.

This is my entry for this week's Poetry Thursday. Music has a great influence on my poetry and for this I reached way back to some childhood memories. During the late 50's early 60's my parents used to take us to a roadside stand owned by good friends of theirs, Bill and Laura Murphy. The stand was where I described it on Route 7 going south from Pittsfield MA. Their place was open air and pretty much as I descibe it, complete with bug lamps and june bugs. They played lots of swing and big band, probably not Ella Fitzgerald at least I don't recall them playing her, but the song just fits the feelings of that place:

"Somewhere theres music
How faint the tune
Somewhere theres heaven
How high the moon
There is no moon above
When love is far away too
Till it comes true
That you love me as I love you"

The moon shoot was taken with my camera using a tripod and zoom lens. It was taken partly with this submission in mind but also as a check to see if I had my manual focus adjusted for my eyes, as well as to mess around with night shots.

There is some science here, of course, the stanza beginning "how black she is" accurately describes the idea that the surface of the moon is really quite dark and only appears bright because of the intensity of the sun's reflection contrasted against the night sky. If you don't believe me take a look at the moon rocks someday, and you will see that many of them are quite dark, basalts for instance.

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Kansas Board of Education Evolves again..Maybe

Good news for education moderates last night. It looks like the balance of power in the Kansas Board of Education has shifted with the election of candidates opposing the current science standards. In particular, not only has moderate Janet Waugh kept her seat, but Connie Norris who is infamous for her religiously conservative stances on any number of issues from evolution to immigrants, has apparently been defeated by a moderate Republican.

But it looks like John Bacon and Ken Willard are still in the race. This could leave the conservatives with 3 seats (Stave Abrams was not up for election). About the Bacon race, is that he seems to have won merely because the opposition was split between two moderates. Presumably moderate attention will shift to getting Bacon out.

This time the moderates were slightly better organized and given the small voter turn out, primary results are very sensitive to small changes in motivation of one subgroup or another.
As Steve Case notes in the Kansas City Star today:

"“One of the things that really bothers me is that people don'’t vote," he said. "Especially in primaries. Because people with an agenda do vote, and they win."

What a sad state of affairs, only it is one that is nationwide, not restricted to Kansas.

Other links:

Election Results

Kansas City Star

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