Quite a plethora of interesting studies came down the wire today. Studies included a 2000 year old computer recently discovered and that sitting up straight is bad for your back. Success is linked to genetics, although the authors of the study equate success in general with money. (Considering my heritage, this doesn't bode well for me.) And our DNA may be able to tell us the likelihood that a wife will cheat on her husband. My particularly favorite quote from the last one: In other words, if the man and woman had half the genes in common, the woman would have on average nearly half a lover on the side. Ah, yes. Half a lover. Those were the days.
But today we'll look at the accusation that the NSTA, the National Science Teacher's Association, refused to accept free copies of An Inconvenient Truth because of oil influence. I find this article interesting because just last night, before I'd read the download, I saw Jay Leno joking with Al Gore about this very issue on the NSTA. Secondly, the NSTA has been a very valuable organization, one that I actually consulted last year when looking for guidance as a science teacher. And lastly I find the inverse of such accusations now made against me.
The basic story is the producers of An Inconvenient Truth offered 50,000 free copies to science classrooms around the nation, through the NSTA. If you haven't seen this movie, you should. It is truly one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. It isn't the most well-made, but it lays out the facts neatly and cleanly, in a format more clear than I've ever seen it, so that all can understand what's going on. After watching it many have suggested it should be shown in science classrooms. So for no charge, Gore offered the movie so students could learn about this. He is even doing something unheard of in the film industry- the movie producer is encouraging people to buy the movie and then give it away to a friend, so that as many as possible can view it, though with reduced proceeds for the movie.
The NSTA turned down the offer. They said that they were concerned about political endorsement or encouraging special interests to also request film distribution. And they also said that it would cause risk for certain supporters and make it harder for them to raise funds. One of their supporters is Exxon-Mobil.
The thing is many climatologists have endorsed the movie. There is no longer any scientific disagreement that global warming is occurring, or any real disagreement that it's cause is the Greenhouse Effect via human actions. Even the Pentagon has come out in support of this- not an institution known for it's sterling environmental record. But there is one group that has consistently come out against global warming: the oil industry, lead by Exxon-Mobil. This doesn't bode well for the purity of the NSTA.
It is disappointing to hear about this. Their political or special interest arguments are stronger, but still- there's a difference between politics and issues. Al Gore was once a candidate and politician, but he's not running for anything any more, and not at this time. Unless working to build houses for the poor is a political issue, because Jimmy Carter does it? Politics is the attempt to raise oneself or lower another, to gain influence- but it's about issues. Global Warming is an issue that politicians take a stand on, but it's a serious issue that needs addressing.
But the greater concern is of course the oil influence. Here it appears that the NSTA is taking a political stance, in the true sense of politics- looking for influence and the money that breeds influence. To accept the DVDs would not have been political; to refuse them was.
This has hit home because I have recently been obliquely accused by some of having an agenda when teaching at my old school- specifically supporting evolution and environmentalism. Basically it's been said that I'm making science political. There has been an expressed desire by some at my old school to make sure future biology teachers don't have these biases. I find this ironic since teachers there were repeatedly encouraged to ingrain positive civic values in our students.
I had to leave the position over the issue of teaching evolution as the backbone construct of all biology- what all scientific publications agree with. But of all the moral issues out there, the one that comes closest to the heart of the biologist is naturally environmentalism. We don't get to really discuss social issues like racism or treatment of women or caring for the poor. Those are important, but they just don't easily fit into the scientific curriculum. The environment does. If it ceases to exist, I'm out of a job. I'd be hard pressed to conceive of a biology teacher who wasn't an environmentalist. It'd be like being a vet who hated animals, or a car repairman who insisted that the only way to get around was by bike.
It is personal for me, too. I wouldn't teach this in the classroom because it's religion, and my own beliefs, but my feelings on the environment aren't merely that life is wonderful and amazing, and should continue. It's not simply that I want to continue to have life. It's that I believe God commanded it, in the garden, when he called us, as the very first command, to care for it. The Psalmists repeatedly cry out at the beauty of this creation, to give honor to God. Biology is wonderful because it reveals some of the Creator.
Environmentalism is the ethic of trying to preserve the environment- the ecosystem. I want to help keep it around so we can discover new medicines. I want to make sure the food web continues so we can survive as a species. I want to enjoy studying it. I want to help preserve it because God made it. But most of all, I want to keep it around because it is worship, to study it, and see the unique ways God put it together, the myriad evolutionary interlocking paths in the ecology revealed to us. It is a way to glorify God.
But I wouldn't teach all that. I separate my personal views from the classroom, from science, and responsible ethics. A student needs to learn how biology happens. I would hope they develop an ethic to care for the planet. How they arrive at that ethic is their own concern.
As teachers we walk a find road. We don't want to unduly influence, and we certainly don't want to teach religion. And yet civic values are also taught in school- indeed, it is often the primary medium. It might be an ethic of sharing in preschool, or learning to not cheat in junior high- but it's taught. And make no mistake- those are values- ones that many culture, most cultures, agree to, but not all. How we come to those values being positive varies among individuals and cultures.
We all have an agenda. Every moment of our lives, we walk with agendas and beliefs. What is in contention at my old school, or with the NSTA, is rather the nature of the agenda: which agenda is positive, and which is negative; which should science support, and which should it deny. The issue before me and the NSTA is the agenda of the environment. Is it the natural stance when teaching about biology to support the environment, and work to preserve it, and encourage that preservation ethic in the students. A biology teacher, or association like the NSTA, is at fault when they do not pursue these ethics.
I've shared a number of practical and more ethereal reasons why this ethic is important. Global Warming in particular is going to have disastrous effects on our people, increasing extinction, raising water levels, increasing storms, killing thousands of people, and leading to hundreds of thousands of refugees (in the most conservative of estimates). I could go on, and others have. This is the single greatest environmental catastrophe we have ever faced as a species- greater than those comparatively slow-moving ice ages that came and went. And therefore it is the single greatest application of the importance of teaching an environmental ethic.
But let me leave you with one final example of why it should be taught. Shortly after coming into office, George Bush met with "an unnamed expert", and decided to withdraw from the Kyoto Accords. It is rumored that this same expert is the one he met with in 2005, one Michael Crichton, who wrote a fictional piece called State of Fear, which suggests that Global Warming is false, but that the effects are being caused by a mass conspiracy of scientists. The only problem is that Michael Crichton has then repeatedly publicly said he believes much of this. And Bush stated he was much in agreement with Crichton's views. This, from an administration that has one of the worst environmental records in history, is close friends with Big Oil, and has done nothing to try to stop Global Warming. What might the world be like if Michael Crichton, or George Bush, had learned more science, or developed more of an environmental ethic, when they were in high school?
You better believe I have an agenda.
Thursday, 30 November 2006
Saturday, 25 November 2006
Race Is
Pot is bad for you, and good for you. In doses smaller than a joint, it's bad; in large doses good- but all pot degrades into smaller doses. They're working on the first quantum computers. We may be able to make hearts from one stem cell from a baby. Molecules provide an anchor for memories. Black holes spin really fast. And the article for today's musings: race seems to be based on DNA .
Geneticists have found that humans can vary as much as 12% in their genetic code, putting paid to the notion that we are 99.9% identical. That idea of mass similarity seems to have no scientific merit, as attractive as it is. About 12% of our DNA varies in the number of copies it has- and this tends to correspond with the ethnic group self-identification of individuals. Basically there are genetic differences between those of European, African, and Asian descent. And this isn't a crack-pot study- it's the third study recently to indicate massive differences by race.
How does this work, considering recent studies have indicated that we are 97% the same as chimpanzees and 99.5% the same as Neanderthals? How then can we as humans be 12% different? As I understand it, our DNA between one human and another is still much more similar than between us and another species or subspecies. We still have a much smaller genetic diversity than most species, indicating perhaps a historical bottleneck. However, up to 12% of our DNA varies- and this corresponds to traditional racial classifications. It's been long known that there are differences in certain points, such as the African-American heightened tendency towards sickle-cell anemia. But this is the first study to quantify the difference to such a great degree.
What it doesn't indicate: that one group is superior to another, or that genetics are the big deal. As the study mentions, wolves and dogs are almost completely genetically the same, but they act and look far different. Culture and gene expression both play a role in differences.
And yet, this should come as no suprise. It is standard evolutionary fare: a population breeding separately with another population will start to build up genetic differences. Indeed, this is how we are able to determine that the Austrailian Aboriginals isolated themselves from the rest of the species long ago, 30,000 years ago- the oldest isolation split we know of. The longer a group is isolated, the more different one would expect the genes to be, leading eventually to a speciation event.
Perhaps there's something here to celebrate. And to learn. We are different, yet equal. It's hard to grasp. But it's what we find in the Garden. Eve is created as a help-meet, equal to Adam. And yet she is far, far different. God calls the most different, male and female, to learn to love each other. Love is not easy, and it's not supposed to be. It's harder especially to love those that are different. It's far easier to love myself, or at the very least, my clone. I think that's a big reason why God calls us to love a woman- to learn to love the different.
And now we see how this opportunity is present in groups of people as well. Not only are they different culturally, but also biologically. Yet just like men and women, no group is inferior or should be subservient to another. We are suddenly impressed with the huge realization that "those other people" are really different. And equal to me, both spiritually and hopefully in the world of human affairs. It's no longer a matter of my group being better, or pretending that we are all the same in a giant melting pot. I now have to learn what true love is- loving the different. I now have the opportunity to struggle through that to reach true love.
Perhaps one day there will be discovered that there are certain genetic tendencies that make one group better than another in certain areas- stronger legs or some such. But probably at that point we will have reached the future state that everyone is predicting- through interbreeding we are all dark-skinned, with those recessive traits of blond hair and blue eyes nearly bred out of existence. It's through the process of loving the different that I discover my basic similarity to them.
Geneticists have found that humans can vary as much as 12% in their genetic code, putting paid to the notion that we are 99.9% identical. That idea of mass similarity seems to have no scientific merit, as attractive as it is. About 12% of our DNA varies in the number of copies it has- and this tends to correspond with the ethnic group self-identification of individuals. Basically there are genetic differences between those of European, African, and Asian descent. And this isn't a crack-pot study- it's the third study recently to indicate massive differences by race.
How does this work, considering recent studies have indicated that we are 97% the same as chimpanzees and 99.5% the same as Neanderthals? How then can we as humans be 12% different? As I understand it, our DNA between one human and another is still much more similar than between us and another species or subspecies. We still have a much smaller genetic diversity than most species, indicating perhaps a historical bottleneck. However, up to 12% of our DNA varies- and this corresponds to traditional racial classifications. It's been long known that there are differences in certain points, such as the African-American heightened tendency towards sickle-cell anemia. But this is the first study to quantify the difference to such a great degree.
What it doesn't indicate: that one group is superior to another, or that genetics are the big deal. As the study mentions, wolves and dogs are almost completely genetically the same, but they act and look far different. Culture and gene expression both play a role in differences.
And yet, this should come as no suprise. It is standard evolutionary fare: a population breeding separately with another population will start to build up genetic differences. Indeed, this is how we are able to determine that the Austrailian Aboriginals isolated themselves from the rest of the species long ago, 30,000 years ago- the oldest isolation split we know of. The longer a group is isolated, the more different one would expect the genes to be, leading eventually to a speciation event.
Perhaps there's something here to celebrate. And to learn. We are different, yet equal. It's hard to grasp. But it's what we find in the Garden. Eve is created as a help-meet, equal to Adam. And yet she is far, far different. God calls the most different, male and female, to learn to love each other. Love is not easy, and it's not supposed to be. It's harder especially to love those that are different. It's far easier to love myself, or at the very least, my clone. I think that's a big reason why God calls us to love a woman- to learn to love the different.
And now we see how this opportunity is present in groups of people as well. Not only are they different culturally, but also biologically. Yet just like men and women, no group is inferior or should be subservient to another. We are suddenly impressed with the huge realization that "those other people" are really different. And equal to me, both spiritually and hopefully in the world of human affairs. It's no longer a matter of my group being better, or pretending that we are all the same in a giant melting pot. I now have to learn what true love is- loving the different. I now have the opportunity to struggle through that to reach true love.
Perhaps one day there will be discovered that there are certain genetic tendencies that make one group better than another in certain areas- stronger legs or some such. But probably at that point we will have reached the future state that everyone is predicting- through interbreeding we are all dark-skinned, with those recessive traits of blond hair and blue eyes nearly bred out of existence. It's through the process of loving the different that I discover my basic similarity to them.
Saturday, 18 November 2006
Who's Your Daddy?
Today's World Science revelations included Spider Monkeys having developed a natural perfume based on leaves (naturally used most often by the males); dark energy has been around for a long time and is causing the universe to expand at an increasingly fast rate; red wine is good; and new subatomic particles. I'll be focusing on the sequencing of Neanderthal DNA.
This is pretty cool stuff. Based on a Neanderthal thigh bone they have found a genetic similarity between us and them of 99.5%, although in many places they are more similar to chimpanzees than us. (By comparison humans and chimpanzees differ by 96%, and rats from mice by ten times that amount.) The DNA shows that the last time we had a common ancestor was 706,000 years ago, and that our DNA hasn't mixed for the last 330,000 years. (The last time chimps and us had a common ancestor was 6 million years ago.)
We, Homo sapiens, arrived in Europe between 40,000-50,000 years ago. Neanderthals disappeared completely between 33,000-24,000 years ago. And ever since then scientists have wondered why.
There's been two primary hypothesis. Firstly that we killed them off. This makes us somehow better adapted to the climate. We didn't necessarily have to kill them off through warfare- it could have been that we simply outcompeted them for space and food, though some studies indicate signs of violence on Neanderthal bones. Perhaps the change in climate at the time was one that Neanderthals were pre-conditioned to not be as adaptive to, but our Cro-Magnon ancestors were. If this is the case, then they are a separate species at the end, with no mixing between us, and should be called Homo neanderthalis.
The other option is that they disappeared through sex. Or rather, that they are still with us. We interbred with them to such an extent that their genes merged with us, and traces of Neanderthals still remain in modern humans. In which case they would be a subspecies, and properly called Homo sapiens neanderthalis. Of course, this wouldn't exclude the possibility of Homo sapiens sapiens (us) killing off large portions of them as well. And in either scenario, we once were of the same stock- the species concept is somewhat arbitrary, as it is always in a state of evolving flux. We can only say that if an animal can't, or doesn't, interbreed with another animal, it is of a different species. (Higher taxa are determined in a far more general manner, losing even this minimal definitiveness.)
This study indicates that the killing option was more likely. If the last time our genes were the same was 330,000 years ago, this was a long time after we diverged as modern humans, 130,000 years ago. Therefore we weren't around to interbreed with the Neanderthals at the time our DNA indicates similarities. However, other recent studies of the DNA of the very same bones indicate great similarites between the two lines, indicating continued sexual activity between the two groups.
The data is therefore still indeterminative at this point. However, the earlier study indicating sex between the two parties used a method that some say results in incomplete results mixed with intrusive DNA. This same analysis suggests that the difference between human and Neanderthal DNA will show to be less than that between the highly diverse African human populations. I'm personally rooting for the sex option, and I still have hope that it becomes the final conclusion. Probably a big part of this is my natural liberal bias- "Make love, not war" and all. Just a much more romantic notion to think that they disappeared that way, rather than us committing, however inadvertedly, the first and greatest mass genocide of our species. It doesn't help that the ones possibly committing this were my European ancestors.
But there are other reasons to hope for this. We know that Neanderthals had tools, cared for their injured, made art, abstract thinking, and probably buried their dead. This means something pretty far advanced. And however one determines the presence of the soul, life after death seems to be a big part of that, as it indicates the presence of a belief in the afterlife, and therefore some sort of religious belief.
Even more so, Neanderthal brain cases were larger than our own. They were also larger in body, and their brains were structured differently than ours- but there is the possibility that they were actually smarter. Solid evidence indeed that a bigger brain is not necessarily a selective advantage. I'd hate to lose out on all of that brain, culture, and heritage, wasted away, without a memory or a presence. Better to hope, however indefinite the evidence is at the moment, that there is a bit of Neanderthal in me, and you. Better to take the opportunity to glory in the compliment of intelligence, the next time somebody calls you a Neanderthal.
This is pretty cool stuff. Based on a Neanderthal thigh bone they have found a genetic similarity between us and them of 99.5%, although in many places they are more similar to chimpanzees than us. (By comparison humans and chimpanzees differ by 96%, and rats from mice by ten times that amount.) The DNA shows that the last time we had a common ancestor was 706,000 years ago, and that our DNA hasn't mixed for the last 330,000 years. (The last time chimps and us had a common ancestor was 6 million years ago.)
We, Homo sapiens, arrived in Europe between 40,000-50,000 years ago. Neanderthals disappeared completely between 33,000-24,000 years ago. And ever since then scientists have wondered why.
There's been two primary hypothesis. Firstly that we killed them off. This makes us somehow better adapted to the climate. We didn't necessarily have to kill them off through warfare- it could have been that we simply outcompeted them for space and food, though some studies indicate signs of violence on Neanderthal bones. Perhaps the change in climate at the time was one that Neanderthals were pre-conditioned to not be as adaptive to, but our Cro-Magnon ancestors were. If this is the case, then they are a separate species at the end, with no mixing between us, and should be called Homo neanderthalis.
The other option is that they disappeared through sex. Or rather, that they are still with us. We interbred with them to such an extent that their genes merged with us, and traces of Neanderthals still remain in modern humans. In which case they would be a subspecies, and properly called Homo sapiens neanderthalis. Of course, this wouldn't exclude the possibility of Homo sapiens sapiens (us) killing off large portions of them as well. And in either scenario, we once were of the same stock- the species concept is somewhat arbitrary, as it is always in a state of evolving flux. We can only say that if an animal can't, or doesn't, interbreed with another animal, it is of a different species. (Higher taxa are determined in a far more general manner, losing even this minimal definitiveness.)
This study indicates that the killing option was more likely. If the last time our genes were the same was 330,000 years ago, this was a long time after we diverged as modern humans, 130,000 years ago. Therefore we weren't around to interbreed with the Neanderthals at the time our DNA indicates similarities. However, other recent studies of the DNA of the very same bones indicate great similarites between the two lines, indicating continued sexual activity between the two groups.
The data is therefore still indeterminative at this point. However, the earlier study indicating sex between the two parties used a method that some say results in incomplete results mixed with intrusive DNA. This same analysis suggests that the difference between human and Neanderthal DNA will show to be less than that between the highly diverse African human populations. I'm personally rooting for the sex option, and I still have hope that it becomes the final conclusion. Probably a big part of this is my natural liberal bias- "Make love, not war" and all. Just a much more romantic notion to think that they disappeared that way, rather than us committing, however inadvertedly, the first and greatest mass genocide of our species. It doesn't help that the ones possibly committing this were my European ancestors.
But there are other reasons to hope for this. We know that Neanderthals had tools, cared for their injured, made art, abstract thinking, and probably buried their dead. This means something pretty far advanced. And however one determines the presence of the soul, life after death seems to be a big part of that, as it indicates the presence of a belief in the afterlife, and therefore some sort of religious belief.
Even more so, Neanderthal brain cases were larger than our own. They were also larger in body, and their brains were structured differently than ours- but there is the possibility that they were actually smarter. Solid evidence indeed that a bigger brain is not necessarily a selective advantage. I'd hate to lose out on all of that brain, culture, and heritage, wasted away, without a memory or a presence. Better to hope, however indefinite the evidence is at the moment, that there is a bit of Neanderthal in me, and you. Better to take the opportunity to glory in the compliment of intelligence, the next time somebody calls you a Neanderthal.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)