Dr. Dino's Son And Population Growth

Bad news from P.Z. Myers today, Eric Hovind (son of tax dodger and creationist Kent Hovind) has picked up where Daddy left off. Eric uses new slick and up to date graphics and web technology to lure in the ignorant masses. He may be using new technology, but he is still using the same old arguments. All of these have been thoroughly debunked and explained ad nauseum. But being a masochist I just had to wonder over to his site and take a peek.

Eric Hovind's website ( http://www.drdino.com/read-article.php?id=137) asks:

How could population levels be minimal for millions of years and then suddenly explode in the last 2,000 years?

Here's the short answer. Actually the world's population didn't really "take off" until the 1950s. The world's population had been on an upward trend from 1750 to 1950 (see the graph below). But because of industrialization and the rise of technology, we were able to dramatically change the quality of life around the globe, thus increasing the world's population.

D

Another Creationist?

Do we have another creationist on the blog? This one is a bit tougher to decifer. This person does pose an interesting question (see below).


Mynym wrote:
..and every fact that has something to do with evolution confirms its truth.Interesting... so what type of biological observation would not confirm "evolution," whatever it may be?

Actually there is a few answers to this but I think I will take HIV for two-hundred Alex.

Berkley University has a website dedicated to understanding evolution. One of their web pages lists in detail how the HIV virus evolves. I will re-post their findings below. You can also see this example in the PBS Evolution series which can be found here. I warn you, it is long but well worth the time.

D

Re-posted from: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/_0_0/medicine_04

HIV: the ultimate evolver

Evolutionary biologists can help uncover clues to new ways to treat or vaccinate against HIV. These clues emerge from the evolutionary origins of the virus, how human populations have evolved under pressure from other deadly pathogens, and how the virus evolves resistance to the drugs we've designed. Controlling the disease may be a matter of controlling the evolution of this constantly adapting virus.

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV, shown here budding from a white blood cell) is one of the fastest evolving entities known. It reproduces sloppily, accumulating lots of mutations when it copies its genetic material. It also reproduces at a lightning-fast rate — a single virus can spawn billions of copies in just one day. To fight HIV, we must understand its evolution within the human body and then ultimately find a way to control its evolution.

Taking an evolutionary perspective on HIV has led scientists to look in three new directions in their search for treatments and vaccines:

• What are the evolutionary origins of HIV?
• Why are some people resistant to HIV?
• How can we control HIV's evolution of resistance to our drugs?

1. What are the evolutionary origins of HIV? HIV, like any evolving entity, has been deeply marked by its history. Scientists studying the evolutionary history of HIV found that it is closely related to other viruses. Those viruses include SIVs (simian immunodeficiency viruses), which infect primates, and the more distantly related FIVs (the feline strains), which infect cats. However, studies of these related viral lineages showed something surprising: primates with SIV and wild cats with FIV don't seem to be harmed by the viruses they carry. If scientists can figure out how non-human primates and wild cats are able to live with these viruses, they may learn how to better treat HIV infections or prevent them altogether. The diagram shows some of the evolutionary history of HIV as we know it today. An ancestral virus (bottom) evolved into strains that infected chimpanzees (SIV). Over time, new strains began to infect humans (HIV).

2. Why are some people resistant to HIV?
HIV is by no means the first plague that human populations have weathered. Many pathogens have deeply affected our evolutionary history. In fact, the human genome is littered with the remnants of our past battles with pathogens — and one of these remnants, a mutation to a gene called CCR5, may lead researchers to a new treatment for HIV.

The mutant CCR5 allele probably began to spread in northern Europe during the past 700 years when the population was ravaged by a plague. (It may have been bubonic plague or some other pathogen; research on this topic continues.) The mutant CCR5 probably made its bearers resistant to the disease, and so its frequency increased.

In some parts of Europe today, up to 20% of the population carry at least one copy of the protective allele. However, the populations of Asia and Africa were not exposed to the same epidemics; very few Asians and Africans now carry the allele (see map above). Thus, CCR5 is fairly common in northern Europe but its frequency diminishes as one moves south, and the mutation is rare in the rest of the world.

We now know that the mutant CCR5 allele has an unexpected side effect: it confers resistance to HIV. Scientists hope that studying this by-product of past selection will help them develop new treatments for the HIV epidemic ravaging human populations today.

3. How can we control HIV's evolution of resistance to our drugs?
HIV evolves so quickly that it evolves right out from under our treatments. When a patient begins taking an HIV drug, the drug keeps many of the viruses from reproducing, but some survive because they happen to have a certain level of resistance. Because of HIV's speedy evolution, it responds to selection pressures quickly: viruses that happen to survive the drug are favored, and resistant virus strains evolve within the patient, sometimes in just a few weeks. However, basic evolutionary theory points out a way that this evolution of resistant viral strains can be delayed. Patients are prescribed "drug cocktails" — several different HIV drugs taken together.

When taking any single drug, it is fairly likely that some mutant virus in the patient might happen to be resistant, survive the onslaught, and spawn a resistant lineage.

But the probability that the patient hosts a mutant virus that happens to be resistant to several different drugs at the same time is much lower. Although multiple-drug-resistant HIV strains do eventually evolve, drug cocktails delay their evolution.

An evolutionary trade-off
If a patient is already infected with a drug-resistant HIV strain, basic evolutionary theory has also pointed out a way to make the drug useful again. Studies of the evolution of resistance often show that you don't get something for nothing. Specifically, it "costs" a pest or pathogen to be resistant to a pesticide or drug. If you place resistant and non-resistant organisms in head-to-head competition in the absence of the pesticide or drug, the non-resistant organisms generally win.

Consider a patient who takes a particular drug and winds up with viruses resistant to the drug. If the patient stops taking the drug for a while, evolutionary theory predicts that her viral load will evolve back towards a non-resistant strain. If she then takes very strong doses of the drug, it may be able to halt the replication of those non-resistant viruses and reduce her viral load to very low levels.

This therapy has shown early, promising results — it may not eliminate HIV, but it could keep patients' virus loads low for a long time, slowing progression of the disease.

Ultimately, understanding the evolutionary history of HIV and its pattern of evolutionary change may help us control this disease.

True Blood Season 2

Any True Blood fans here? If you are then you will like this. Below is a clip from the next season of True Blood. I can't wait to sink my teeth into the new season.....yes it was a horrendous pun but delicious none the less.

D

Made it On Jerry Coyne

I am stoked that my blog has made mention on Jerry Coyne's blog. I must give credit where credit is due (and I think that I have). All of the responders at Richarddawkins.net deserve all of the credit for answering Christina. If you haven't been to the Richard Dawkins forums then you have to check it out right now! But really they did all of the hard work and came up with the answers. Also, I did pick up the Jerry Coyne quote from Phil Plait's website. I thought it was such a wonderful quote that I had to duplicate it here. I had never read a more complete yet succinct quote about evolution and the truth of it before. It is a truly wonderful quote. All the thanks really goes to Jerry Coyne for writing a great piece about evolution in the first place. Go buy his book "Why Evolution Is True". Thank you all for your insights and your love of communicating science. The credit is all yours.

D

Christina, Christina, Christina......

I just got my first creationist (at least that is what I am assuming she believes) here on Skeptic Dave! She left a comment on my post about Jerry Coyne's new book, "Why Evolution Is True". She brings up some interesting ideas/questions that I think need addressing here. I hope she stops back to see the answers.

Christina wrote:

"total BUNK! There are PLENTY of instances of mammals, invertebrates and insects mixed in the same layer of rocks. In one case, an entire tree was found UPSIDE DOWN through layered strata. So... did it just somehow stay upright for "billions" of years while rock slowly accumulated around it? Highly improbable. We also still have NO IDEA how something in between a wing and a leg is somehow better than a plain ol leg. It isn't better unless it's ALL there, and evolution tells us that it can't all be there at once. When you go to look at something determined to see evidence to support your claim, that's not scientific inductive reasoning anymore. That's deductive. And that's what most of today's scientists set out to do. They want to "prove" what they already deeply, desperately believe."

So let's get to it! With a little help from my friends at Richarddawkins.net, there are answers to all of Christina's assertions.

Roaring Atheist responds with:

I will tackle the 'tree' one, since the other is without proper backing, and i'd need to know what exactly this person means by it to explain it. :D


Polystrate trees were not a problem to explain in the 19th century, and are still not a problem now. John William Dawson described a classic Carboniferous-age locality at Joggins, Nova Scotia, where there are upright giant lycopod trees up to a few metres tall preserved mainly in river-deposited sandstones. These trees have extensive root systems with rootlets that penetrate into the underlying sediment, which is either a coal seam (i.e. compressed plant material), or an intensely-rooted sandstone or mudstone (i.e. a soil horizon). Dawson considered and rejected anything but an in situ formation for these fossils, and his interpretation is closely similar to current interpretations of sediments deposited on river floodplains. An interesting feature of these examples is the presence of vertebrate fossils (mostly small reptiles) within the infilling of the stumps.

Courtesy of JustATheory:


1) The condition of the fossil tells much about its method of deposition and burial.

Most polystrate fossil plants are only several metres in height and represent only the lower portion of the tree - this is consistent with a period of rapid burial followed by slow deposition of sediment but extremely hard to justify in terms of a catastrophic flood uprooting whole trees and depositing them elsewhere.

Similarly, it is not uncommon to find polystrate tree fossils with intact root structures. Again, this is incosistent with the flood hypothesis but can easily be explained by subsidence and/or rapid deposition.

2) The soil underlying such polystrate fossils is readily identifiable as being a paleosol. Simply (and from a non-geologist standpoin), paleosols are formed by long weathering of soils exposed to the air followed by rapid deposition of soil.

Paleosols have a different chemical composition to the modern soils overlaying them. In the case of the Joggins fossils in Nova Scotia and those of Yellowstone National Park it is readily apparent that polystrate fossils are deeply rooted in such paleosols which is, again, inconsistent with flood deposition.

3) Polystrate fossils are found in many parts of the world but are not all found at one level in the geologic column. This is inconsistent with the hypothesis that a catastophe was responsible for the formation of these features.

Christina said, "We also still have NO IDEA how something in between a wing and a leg is somehow better than a plain ol leg."

The following picture should be self explanatory:


(thanks to Lucid Flight)

And Spacetime Inhabitant had this to add:

Since mammals, invertebrates and insects (which are also invertebrates), co-exist, then it would be no surprise if they are found in same layer. I have never heard the tree claim - seems like something the person (or their source) simply made up. The person's claim about scientists confuses how scientists work with how creationists and other biblicists operate. It is the religious believers who have a desperate deep belief. Real scientists love to get Nobel prizes, and a surefire way to win one of these is actually to show that a current scientific orthodoxy is incorrect or there is a superior, more complete explanation.

I just want to thank all of those at the Richard Dawkins forums and Christina for stopping by.

D

Moms Talk About Vaccines

Teabaggers

No this isn't about porn........I wish. Porn aside, let me know what you think after watching this video.

D

Muse

Another Muse song that I am currently hooked on.

D

Band: Muse

Song: Starlight

Great Quote About Evolution

The following quote is taken from Jerry Coyne's new book, "Why Evolution Is True".

"Every day, hundreds of observations and experiments pour into the hopper of the scientific literature… and every fact that has something to do with evolution confirms its truth. Every fossil that we find, every DNA molecule that we sequence, every organ system that we dissect supports the idea that species evolved from common ancestors. Despite innumerable possible explanations that could prove evolution untrue, we don’t have a single one. We don’t find mammals in Precambrian rocks, humans in the same layers as dinosaurs, or any other fossils out of evolutionary order. DNA sequencing supports the evolutionary relationships of species originally deduced from the fossil record. And, as natural selection predicts, we find no species with adaptations that benefit only a different species. We do find dead genes and vestigial organs, incomprehensible under the idea of special creation. Despite a million chances to be wrong, evolution always comes up right. That is as close as we can get to a scientific fact."

Pale Blue Dot

Carl Sagan, you are missed. Thank you for passing on the candle so that we may see in the dark.

D

NOM = The Lose

I briefly mentioned the group NOM here about a week ago. They are another group of right-wing religious folks who think what other people do in their bedrooms is of concern. And it's more than a concern actually. NOM is under the impression that soon the world will be taken over by the intergalactic homosexual overlords, and the doom is eminent.

So in a true act of masochism I decided to read a NOM blog post. I regret this decision......my head is about to explode. Check out their most recent post below and see if you can recognize the GIANT GAPING HOLE in their reasoning. Here is a clue, African Americans were being (Blank) against and this became the reason for the civil rights movement (it wasn't the only reason but...).

D

Reposted from: http://nomblog.com/?p=49#comments

. . . The lawsuits have resulted from states and communities that have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. Those laws have created a clash between the right to be free from discrimination and the right to freedom of religion, religious groups said, with faith losing. They point to what they say are ominous recent examples:

– A Christian photographer was forced by the New Mexico Civil Rights Commission to pay $6,637 in attorney’s costs after she refused to photograph a gay couple’s commitment ceremony.

– A psychologist in Georgia was fired after she declined for religious reasons to counsel a lesbian about her relationship.

– Christian fertility doctors in California who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian patient were barred by the state Supreme Court from invoking their religious beliefs in refusing treatment.

– A Christian student group was not recognized at a University of California law school because it denies membership to anyone practicing sex outside of traditional marriage.

“It really is all about religious liberty for us,” said Scott Hoffman, chief administrative officer of a New Jersey Methodist group, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, which lost a property tax exemption after it declined to allow its beachside pavilion to be used for a same-sex union ceremony. “The protection to not be forced to do something that is against deeply held religious principles.”

The Easter Challenge

This in a way is kind of like an Easter egg hunt. So take part if you like, if not, have a wonderful holiday anyway. You will need a bible, it can be any translation (KJV, NIV, and so on). You will also need a few sheets of paper and a writing utensil. After you have all of your supplies and you are in settled into a comfy chair, open up your bible to the gospels. I suggest starting with Matthew (it will be the first you come across) and work from there till you get through Acts. I want you to read through the Crucifixion to the Resurrection. This where you will need your pen and paper. Write down some if not all the details of each gospel side by side on your paper (or write them down in a way that makes it easy for you to compare them). What do you find?

D

Muscle Museum

I Love this song and the band is pretty darn good, check 'em out!

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The Song: Muscle Museum

The Band: Muse

Quiet Rage: The Standford Prison Experiment

A great lesson on why ethics are important in research (there are many other lessons to learn from this as well...)

D

Satan Lend Me A Dollar

Here is my crack at some incredibly bad poetry.....but I had to get it out because of the first two lines. They stuck in my head and I needed to do something with them.

d

My mother has the best cocaine,
She free bases with her dead boyfriend,
When she hides behind the vale,
Everything is tragic,
When she hides behind the vale,
She needs no one,
My mother has the best lines,
She is trying them on me again,
When she hides behind the vale,
Everything is tragic,
When she hides behind the vale,
She needs no one.

Hitchens Takes On Four.....

Hitchens just destroys these guys. One against four....Hitchens=the win.

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Jon Stewart Telling It As It Is

Republicans are more paranoid than Stephen King on crack! (Thank you Lewis Black)

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The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Baracknophobia - Obey
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Gay Marriage....Here We Go Again

Check out these well meaning but ill informed ignorant folks. They even have a video, so rot your brain for a minute if you dare!

D

Jesus Saves!