For the sentimental who like stories that make you tear up, CBS News ran a story about a kid named Jason McElwain, an autistic kid who’s the manager of his high school’s basketball team. Think of him as Rudy, only in high school.

The coach put him in for the last four minutes of the last game of the season, and the first shot he took, he air-balled by like six feet. His next shot caught the rim, but didn’t fall. He then proceeded to hit six three pointers. In row. The students in the gym went absolutely nuts.

You can watch the video here on Google Video. (Just one piece of advice — I had to wait and let the video mostly download and then play it, otherwise it played faster than I could download it, and the clip got choppy.)

When you have a blog, if people come to your site by clicking a link somewhere else, it’s possible to see where they came from. These are commonly called referrers, because these links are “referring” someone to you site. I glance at my referrers every now and then just to see if something I write gets a lot of traffic.

Today I noticed some really funny keywords people have typed into Google and then clicked through to my site. I’ve created a link to the post where Google took them. The list includes:

• Bode Miller playboy bunny (I’m currently the number one result on Google for that phrase).
• do nazarene professors teach false doctrine - I’m sure someone thinks so.
• big testicles lots of sperm - now there’s a person who probably left my site in a hurry after not finding porn.
• would the writer of psalm 104 agree with william paley’s idea? - I don’t know, but I hope not.
• collej - I misspelled it as a joke, but apparently someone else used the word in an actual search.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has an interview with Judge Jones, the man who put the smack down on intelligent design in Dover, Pennsylvania.

Jones has been demonized by some supporters of intelligent design. For example, Phyllis Schlafly called him a traitor to the Christian voters that brought him to office (as if a judge’s loyalties should lie with his voters rather than his duty under the law) and the Discovery Institute (the think tank that promotes intelligent design) has repeatedly smeared him.

Anyway, his interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer is the first I’ve seen from him since the trial, and speaks well of his intentions and approach in the case. I’ll quote most of the interview (since it’s brief) and call attention to some especially good parts in bold.

Inquirer: There are a lot of people who are distressed by the ruling, who feel that it seems to be a ruling about the legitimacy of belief.

Jones: A case like this involves an issue that is highly charged and very emotional… . I understand that there is a debate in the United States about where you draw the line, about where the establishment clause comes into play to prohibit certain activities by government, in this case the school board. And there is a subjective element to that line-drawing. All I can say to the critics is that I assiduously tried to find the facts and apply the legal precedents to the facts as I found them… . And indeed, I didn’t know until December 2004 what intelligent design was.

Inquirer: Where did you first learn of it?

Jones: I was driving home from Harrisburg one day in December 2004, and I heard on a radio show that a group of parents had filed suit in this particular case, and that it was in the middle district of Pennsylvania, and of course I wondered, because we have random assignments: Did I get the case? My curiosity thus piqued, I looked at my computer the next morning when I got to my chambers, and I saw the initials “J.E.J.” after Kitzmiller v. Dover, knew that it was assigned to me, read the complaint, and that really - if I’d read about intelligent design before, I don’t recall, and I certainly didn’t understand what the term meant… . People have asked me, “Did you sort of make yourself an expert? Did you read up on things?” and the answer is no, I didn’t… . I tell my jurors, “Don’t read things outside the courtroom. Don’t make yourself an expert. You get everything you need to decide the case inside the courtroom.” We had marvelous presentations in this case, and I got everything I needed during the trial, and before and after the trial, in terms of the submissions, so I certainly have developed a good working knowledge of the issue.

Inquirer: Reading through the opinion, it was hard to evade the impression that you were surprised at the weakness of one side of the case. You used very strong language to characterize the case as a whole and the presentation.

Jones: I’ll answer that question indirectly… . The opinion speaks for itself. There was something I said in the opinion that was grossly misunderstood… . I said that on the issue of whether intelligent design was science, that there wasn’t a judge in the United States in a better position to decide that than I was. [Commentator Phyllis] Schlafly interpreted that as my saying that I am so brilliant and erudite that I could decide that better than anyone else could. What I meant was that no one else had sat through an intensive six weeks of largely scientific testimony, and in addition to the task at hand, which was to decide the case, I wanted the opinion to stand as a primer for people across the country… . I wanted it to stand as a primer so that folks on both sides of the issue could read it, understand the way the debate is framed, see the testimony in support and against the various positions… and what is heartening to me is that it’s now evident that it’s being used in that way… . We did some of the lifting in that trial. To my mind… it would be a dreadful waste of judicial resources, legal resources, taxpayer money… to replicate this trial someplace else. That’s not to say it won’t be, but I suspect it may not be… . And I purposefully allowed the trial to extend and a record to be made… the defendants could never say that they weren’t given the opportunity to present their case. I didn’t cut off anybody’s testimony, I didn’t cut off anybody’s presentation, and I allowed the testimony to be put forth in the ways the parties wanted it to be presented.

Now you have to ask yourself just one simple question. Is this the activist “Darwinist” judge, who entered the case with an axe to grind and a point to prove, as we’ve been told by some? Or was this a man who’d never heard of intelligent design before and who should have been the perfect candidate to convince if there was indeed anything scientific involved with its arguments?

Oh, that wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Discovery Institute and their ilk is music to the ears.

I think a lot of us have a strong sense of justice. And that’s just one of the reasons we enjoy the Olympics so much. Summer or winter, we love watching men and women who’ve worked so hard and dedicated their lives to pursuing the sport they’re passionate about. It’s only fair when we they win. Sure, we root for our country over others, but sometimes stories of other country’s athletes, and the difficulties they’ve faced, even make us cheer against our own countrymen. The person who works the hardest deserves it, and that’s justice, we feel.

Bode Miller

Well, on the opposite side of the coin, justice has also been served in the performance of Bode Miller.

To use the vernacular of my day, he has completely sucked in these winter games. And he deserves to!

Take a look at this story in Newsweek. I got this close to using that picture in this post. It really says it all. Throwing the bird, beer in one hand, next to a Playboy bunny. Way to represent the USA, chump.

The best part of the article is Bode’s quote:

For me the ideal Olympics would be to go in with all that pressure, all that attention and have performances that are literally tear-jerking, that make people put their heads down because they’re embarrassed at how emotional they’re getting, that make people want to try sports, talk to their kids, call their f—ing ex-wives—and come away with no medals. I think that would be epic. That would be the perfect thing.

Yes Bode. You’ve made me emotional allright. I’d like to choke you to death…

I and countless others aren’t mad at him for not medaling. In fact, if there’s anything I agree with Bode about, it’s that medaling and winning aren’t the definition of success.

But to take the talent you have and throw it all away because you’re lazy is worse than sad. It’s a travesty. It’s slapping every person who’s ever worked hard for something in the face.

You’re a disgrace. And though I’m sure I’m not the first American to say it, you’re the last person I want representing my country in front of the world.

You got what you deserved. You didn’t just fail to medal, you failed to inspire anyone. Four years from now, no one will even remember your name.

You got justice.

The prevailing view of mammalian evolution is that with the extinction of the dinosaurs, the doors were opened for mammals to greatly diversify and fill a number of ecological niches. While this trend may hold true, new findings will likely reshape our thinking on some of the details. For example, recent finds of predatory mammals from the Cretaceous (just before dinosaurs went extinct) of small predatory mammals (one even has a dinosaur remains in it’s stomach) give evidence that mammals were diversifying before the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Castorocauda lutrasimilis

A new find from the Jurassic (which preceeds the Cretaceous) tells of an early aquatic mammal that was probably most similar to our modern platypus.

This mammal had a beaver-like tail, with webbed feet and seal like teeth, and it offers further evidence that mammals were diversifying earlier than we thought. It also provides the earliest evidence for fur in mammals.

This is what I find so exciting about evolution and biology. There’s always more to learn, and new evidence comes to light to challenge our understanding.

You can bet that two things will happen because of this new find. Young earth creationists will point to it as proof that the fossil record doesn’t show evolution, while intelligent design advocates will use the flawed logic of “if biologists can’t even get the evolution of beaver-like mammals right, how do we know they’re right about anything…” Both are regrettable and dishonest.

When Einstien realized there were problems with our theories of gravity, he worked to provide new understandings. He didn’t suggest the apple doesn’t fall from the tree. In the same way, Jurassic beaver like mammals don’t overthrow our theory of evolution, rather they overthrow our theory that mammals remained small and “undiverse” until the extinction of the dinosaurs. And while we evolutionary biologists can be a persnickety group, we also build our theories on the evidence around us. Sometimes that evidence causes us to change our understanding. This is a good and healthy thing, not to mention the very essence of science.

I was worried that I wouldn’t have anything to share this week. The Bruce wasn’t inspiring me to grab the camera. That is, until my wife tied a white ribbon left over from Valetine’s day around him. And then Bruce was running around the apartment, trying to “escape” from the ribbon. I love how cats do that…

And not just any teeth. Crocodile teeth.

Here’s an interesting article on a mutation that scientists have uncovered, where a chicken embryo grows teeth. The mutations are fatal. The embryo dies in the egg, but some live as long as 18 days.

What’s most interesting about this is that the teeth are shaped like crocodile teeth. What the authors hypothesis is that during the evolution of birds, the genes for teeth weren’t thrown away, rather they were supressed so that they no longer expressed themselves.

Another thing that’s interesting to note is that we’ve believed birds evolved from the same group as crocodiles for a long time. While the general public may not know it, crocodiles have much more in common with birds than with your average lizard. They have crops and gizzards, three-chambered hearts, build nests, vocalize to their young.

Isn’t it just a little bit interesting that when chickens grow teeth, they end up looking just like those in a crocodile…

For a more in-depth discussion, see Pharyngula’s post on the subject.

What if all science was attacked like evolutionary biology? What if conspiracy theories and charges of coverups were more common place?

Pym van Meur over at the Panda’s Thumb, explores this issue by examing the controversy on why ice is slippery.

A little known secret is quickly growing into a worldwide scandal of unimaginable size and intensity: scientists do not know why ice is slippery. I am sure that many among you remember the textbook explanation that the pressure of the ice skate melts the ice and the skate slides on the water which then freezes. But now, the dedicated reporters of the New York Times have uncovered the scandal which is growing into what some claim to be the Waterloo for the Melting Ice Theory (MIT).

Seems that Philip Johnson gave a talk at Knox College in Galesburg, IL last weekend, and the local paper included a writeup. There were a number of things that jumped out at me — one inparticular that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“When Darwin published ‘Origin of Species’ in 1859,” Johnson said, “there was no proof of natural selection.”

He said common examples of evolution, such as selective breeding in livestock, are not good proof of Darwin’s theory.

“Domestic animal breeding is really an example of intelligent design,” he said, because it requires an intelligent being to select which animals breed.

This might be the most obviously wrong argument I’ve ever heard from someone in the intelligent design community. Does Johnson really think that animals in the wild mate randomly? There are literally hundreds, probably thousands, of papers in the scientific literature that refute this claim. What we’re doing with animal domestication is greatly speeding up the process. We’re using the reality of evolution to domesticate animals. And Darwin’s big idea was that if we can create the amount of diversity we see in domesticated dogs for example, what could nature do over millions of years? We have time and again verified that mating is not random.

Let’s put it another way, as a hypothetical thought experiment. Would anyone argue that if wolves (the ancestor of modern dogs) were to breed selectively themselves, making the same decisions that humans made for them, that we couldn’t end up with chihuahuas and great danes? The principle is the same. Who cares if the breeding is because humans very carefully control who mates or if the dogs themselves were to “choose” the same way we would have. The result would be evolution.

It is a certainty that animals do not breed randomly. They choose who they mate with, and depending on the species, they do it based on widely different characteristics. Johnson claiming that “domestic animal breeding is really an example of intelligent design” is like someone claiming that Louis Pasteur’s experiments supported the theory of spontaneous generation (life from nothing).

And the faithful eat it up. No thinking, no questioning. It’s gotta be true if God’s real.

Turns out, not everyone there found his arguments too convincing.

But Don Blaheta, a computer science professor at Knox, said the lecture showed him that Johnson does not have a solid understanding of probabilities and Johnson’s argument is “developed from a misunderstanding of statistics.”

[…]

Others, like Liz Soehngen, a first year Knox student, weren’t convinced by Johnson’s claims.

“(Johnson) is playing in a ballpark, but won’t play by the rules,” she said, arguing that the lecture lacked scientific citations or retestable proof of his claims.

And she complained that much of what he said later in the presentation was a repetition of his earlier arguments.

And here’s the part where I must use a little restraint…

But The Rev. Lee Johnson, an organizer of the event, explained that the reason the 65-year-old former law professor seemed to ramble is that two serious strokes in 2002 left him without the ability to recognize how much time has lapsed when he is talking. He now speaks with the assistance of a moderator to guide the conversation.

I’m not after cheap jokes about the unfortunate suffering from a stroke.

But I promise that the stroke doesn’t have anything to do with Liz’s observations above. The reason all intelligent design supporters, especially those leading the movement, repeat themselves is that they have nothing more to say. Intelligent design is built on negative attacks to evolution. There’s no positive contribution towards science. No new ideas, no predictions. It’s not science, and it really is that simple.

I certainly don’t mind critical thinking about our theories. That’s what grad school is. We read papers and sit around and argue with each other if someone’s claims are justified from the data. And we try to look out for bad methods on getting that data. I’m a rookie… I don’t claim supreme knowledge. But if someone’s going to claim that a foundation of science is wrong, they’d better have something to back it up, not just a bunch of hollow gripes and transparent arguments about domestic animals.

I just thought I’d briefly mention, I upgraded Ocellated to the new version of WordPress last night. This also involved upgrading some of the plugins (code that extends functionality) that I use.

The only reason I tell you this is because I want to know if you encounter something that doesn’t work. It’s always a possibly with major changes like this.