Sleep is for chelonians

The Eucharist as endosymbiont - a valid scientific hypothesis?

(major sarcasm alert)

There's a big Darwin festival going on this week at Cambridge (the Old World one, hence the "at" instead of "in"). Philosopher of science Daniel "I debunk the kooks so you don't have to" Dennett reports on a controversial Templeton-sponsored session that featured such exciting highlights as "kenotic (a.k.a. self-emptying) theology" and "evolutionary Christology", whatever that may be.

Dennett calls it "wonderfully awful"; here's my favorite bit of his account.

"I had an epiphany at the end of the session, but I kept it to myself: The Eucharist is actually a Recapitulation of the Eukaryotic Revolution. When Christians ingest the Body of Christ, without digesting it, but keep it whole (holistier-than-thou whole), they are re-enacting the miracle of endosymbiosis that paved the way for eventual multi-cellularity. And so, dearly beloved brethren, we can see that by keeping Christ intact in our bodies we are keeping His Power intact in our embodied Minds, or Souls, just the way the first Eukaryote was vouchsafed a double blessing of earthly competence that enabled its descendants to join forces in Higher Organizations. Evolutionary theology. . . . I think I get it! I can do it! It truly is intellectual tennis without a net."

Addendum: This comes as I've just received word (hi Popeye!) of a creationist conference at my alma mater, organized by the local baptist church (we have those in Belgium too? who knew?). Sounds like it was a hoot (complete with baby dinosaurs on Noah's Ark) but I find myself wishing that, in the absence of rigorous intellectual scrutiny, the university's catholicism at least had come out a bit more strongly. Perhaps in the form of a little display of religious intolerance? I mean, seriously, I'm all for freedom of speech -- let them rent out any other public space for all I care -- but I don't think the university should be lending respectability to these nutjobs.

Refreshing undiluted sarcasm

Hat tip to Pharyngula

Bad travel (no biscuit)

I'm usually a very cheerful traveler, but on this latest trip events conspired against my natural bonhomie to make the whole experience lousy and needlessly tiring. Nothing like the frank, unmitigated "disaster" of missing the night's last flight out of China last year, but the kind of seemingly endless string of annoyance and frustrations that makes molehills seem like mountains.

I originally planned to rant and rave about how awful it was, but it's been over a week now, I've had my therapy (oh blonde bubbly goodness, I salute you) and I can now write this up without going into fits of screaming all-caps. A skill that TV host Glenn Beck has yet to master, ESPECIALLY IN HIS NEW BOOK -- stay tuned for a review of his mangling of the message of Thomas Paine's "Common Sense".

More good news

Yay for Facebook! I haven't yet received the official letter, but a friend today sent me a message on Facebook congratulating me for my FNRS fellowship. A quick investigation confirmed that the 2009 June decisions have been posted on the FNRS website, and yup, I'm in. Or, on.

As in, I'm on the gravy train for another 3 (+1 optional pending renewal) years.

Weehee. No worrying about funding for awhile. Free to think science, do science, breathe science.

Starting with hydroponic tomatoes (long story).

I can talk! I can talk!

Title inspired by The Simpsons' version of Planet Of The Apes: The Musical.

Heehee... oh never mind that then.

My point: on Friday I received an email confirming that my request to give a talk at a Big Upcoming Conference has been accepted. I get 15 minutes + 5 (for questions) to talk about my favorite subject to a captive (all but bound and gagged) audience.

This is Great News that make me Very Happy.

Rise of the Farming Machines

Here's another guest post from Dad to keep my innumerable readership entertained while I settle back into my Boston life...

Brussels, June 18th. Today, thousands of tractors of all color and shapes converged to Brussels, capital of Europe. They came from Portugal, Hungary, Germany, Poland and all corners of the European Union, dashing (dashing, really? tractors?) through the highways, wreaking havoc on the daily commute. They are mostly desperate milk producers hit by the drop in sell price they get for their product. They lose money on every liter of the white stuff they sell. Consumers haven't seen anything from the price drop so someone is pocketing the change! Nobody understands it because quotas haven't even been lifted: it is a sheer drop in consumption. Today the demonstrations were peaceful but tonight many of the German fellows planned to stay in the city! Hundreds of tractors are squatting a very large park next to the EC institutions around the Schuman plaza. It was an eerie sight: big sturdy guys in work overalls and heavy boots, truly redneck types with big hands, tanned faces unshaven for a couple of days, young and older men, relatively few women, all huddled in groups around camp fires in the shadow of their big machines. Definitely not the usual crowd of eurocrats generally seen around here!

Happy ending

The day started out rather badly (stay tuned for the full story of everything that could go wrong and did) but it had the right ending: I'm home, so is my luggage, and I'd forgotten how comfortable my high-backed leather chair is, and how big my iMac screen is.

Heaven and a half.

Plus, guess who was really happy to see me: Gus! He even let me pet him! Poor little guy must have been lonely on his own for twelve days... But he looks healthy and active, and he's busily re-exploring every inch of my room in between fits of rolling frantically in his dust bath. Which means that I'll need to vacuum the whole place thoroughly tomorrow.

Now I'm off to bed!

Aaaand it's back to Boston again

Wow, time really went by in a flash (for a change-- NOT).

Great first week, working on plasmid stuff with my favorite Idahoans, then an interesting but somewhat uneven four days of Evolution conference. I did learn a lot of things; among others (on the whole more scientific), that I'm not crazy about large meetings with concurrent sessions. Too little coherence, too much running around and getting frustrated by the scheduling. I have some other gripes but nothing worth blogging about, really (now THAT's a stringent measure of insignificance).

Now it's off to the airport (HOURS ahead of time because the conference organizers screwed up the shuttle bus scheduling) and on for a day of air travel. Yay (not). Hmm. Will sleep for most of it anyway.

ETA in Boston : midnight EST.

Boston Bacterial Meeting tomorrow.

Start brewin' that coffee...

Evolution comes to Idaho

Last year I spent a very enjoyable month at the University of Idaho (in little Moscow, ID) doing some freelance work, helping out on a plasmid sequencing project, that resulted in a publication. Now I'm flying back there for some follow-up work with my collaborators at the Top lab and to attend Evolution 2009, a big meeting on, you guessed it, evolution. It's going to be fun! Eugenie Scott will be giving the first ever Stephen J. Gould Award lecture!

Heh. Looking at the program just now I realized I've never been at a large meeting with concurrent sessions, and I'd better work out a schedule of what talks I want to see beforehand. There's just so much to choose from, this is going to be great for my evolutionary biology culture. I'm expecting a lot of the hardcore computational stuff to fly well over my head, and of course the topics are hugely biased towards eukaryotes (so-called superior lifeforms; snobs, more like), but that's okay, I'm open-minded enough. Some of my best friends have nuclei, you know.

--

Addendum: one announced talk has a title that opens with "The small Tree of Life"... In Pythonesque spirit, I propose that the authors change it to "The Shrubbery of Life". Bonus points for using a herring as a prop during the talk.

DIY crazy

The DIY home improvement fairy has been sprinkling his magic dust over me. This weekend I succumbed to an overwhelming urge to revamp my kitchen floor.

Crappy old cracked yellowish vinyl begone! Behold the cuteness of checkers.

                         

There are more improvements in the works -- stay tuned!