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 Dr. Lenski is awesome!
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Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26022 Posts

Posted - 06/24/2008 :  14:46:01  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I knew about Dr. Lenski's E. coli experiments demonstrating a new and beneficial mutation in the lab over the course of 20 years, but it seems that Phyllis Schlafly's son Andy (who created the horrid "Conservapedia") has been demanding Dr. Lenski's data and otherwise making an ass of himself. PZ offers the story in bits, but the whole thing can be read in full at RationalWiki. Dr. Lenski's second response is a wonderful pwnage of little Andy, in front of God and everybody, and includes such gems as this:
It is my impression that you seem to think we have only paper and electronic records of having seen some unusual E. coli. If we made serious errors or misrepresentations, you would surely like to find them in those records. If we did not, then – as some of your acolytes have suggested – you might assert that our records are themselves untrustworthy because, well, because you said so, I guess. But perhaps because you did not bother even to read our paper, or perhaps because you aren't very bright, you seem not to understand that we have the actual, living bacteria that exhibit the properties reported in our paper, including both the ancestral strain used to start this long-term experiment and its evolved citrate-using descendants. In other words, it's not that we claim to have glimpsed "a unicorn in the garden" – we have a whole population of them living in my lab! [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unicorn_in_the_Garden ] And lest you accuse me further of fraud, I do not literally mean that we have unicorns in the lab. Rather, I am making a literary allusion. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allusion ]
Just amazing stuff, coming from a top-notch scientist and educator.

All Andy has in reply, so far, seems to be a whining two sentences about Dr. Lenski's "attitude."

- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too.

Simon
SFN Regular

USA
1992 Posts

Posted - 06/24/2008 :  15:51:30   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Simon a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Yeah... the smurf-bag contacted Dr Lenski saying in substance: 'I did not bother to read your actual article but I want to prove that you and your colleague are lying, help me'.

Strangely enough, it did not fly to well.


Well; at least this incident pointed me toward an article I missed but that seem interesting.
I am going to download it right now and share it around.

Science is so much fun!

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard

USA
4907 Posts

Posted - 06/24/2008 :  15:53:46   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send Ricky an AOL message Send Ricky a Private Message  Reply with Quote
And he works for MSU! (where I'll be attending grad school)

Truly a thorough and well written response, though I'm not sure Schlafly is worth the time.

Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.
- Isaac Asimov
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Paulos23
Skeptic Friend

USA
446 Posts

Posted - 06/24/2008 :  15:54:44   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Paulos23's Homepage Send Paulos23 a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Cheers for Dr. Lenski! His reply to Schlafly is an inspiration to skeptics everywhere.

You can go wrong by being too skeptical as readily as by being too trusting. -- Robert A. Heinlein

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -- Aldous Huxley
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Simon
SFN Regular

USA
1992 Posts

Posted - 06/24/2008 :  16:14:48   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Simon a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Ricky

And he works for MSU! (where I'll be attending grad school)

Truly a thorough and well written response, though I'm not sure Schlafly is worth the time.


Congrats then.

I am attending my own grad school at another MSU myself and in microbiology no less.

Bacteria are awesome! And probably smarter than this Schlafly fellow.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996
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Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26022 Posts

Posted - 06/24/2008 :  16:24:36   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Simon

Bacteria are awesome! And probably smarter than this Schlafly fellow.
At least the bacteria have the capability to evolve.

- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too.
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filthy
SFN Die Hard

USA
14408 Posts

Posted - 06/24/2008 :  16:49:43   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send filthy a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Dave W.

Originally posted by Simon

Bacteria are awesome! And probably smarter than this Schlafly fellow.
At least the bacteria have the capability to evolve.
Yeh, but Schlafly's a better example of conservative, scientific literacy, which evolves not at all.

I don't have the background to understand all of Dr. Lenski's data, but even I can get the gist of it, and it's pretty remarkable.

I occasionally drop by and browse Conservapedia. It's highly amusing and should be looked at as a great testimonal to dead-pan comedy.





"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)

"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres


"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude

Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,

and Crypto-Communist!

Edited by - filthy on 06/24/2008 18:29:38
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Dude
SFN Die Hard

USA
6891 Posts

Posted - 06/24/2008 :  22:30:12   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Dude a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Nice!


Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson

"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin

Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth
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tomk80
SFN Regular

Netherlands
1278 Posts

Posted - 06/25/2008 :  00:59:03   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit tomk80's Homepage Send tomk80 a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by filthy

Originally posted by Dave W.

Originally posted by Simon

Bacteria are awesome! And probably smarter than this Schlafly fellow.
At least the bacteria have the capability to evolve.
Yeh, but Schlafly's a better example of conservative, scientific literacy, which evolves not at all.

I don't have the background to understand all of Dr. Lenski's data, but even I can get the gist of it, and it's pretty remarkable.

I occasionally drop by and browse Conservapedia. It's highly amusing and should be looked at as a great testimonal to dead-pan comedy.






Indeed. The discussions on the Lenski article on it are pure comedy gold.

Tom

`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll-
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the_ignored
SFN Addict

2562 Posts

Posted - 06/25/2008 :  02:01:42   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send the_ignored a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Here are the discussions.


>From: enuffenuff@fastmail.fm
(excerpt follows):
> I'm looking to teach these two bastards a lesson they'll never forget.
> Personal visit by mates of mine. No violence, just a wee little chat.
>
> **** has also committed more crimes than you can count with his
> incitement of hatred against a religion. That law came in about 2007
> much to ****'s ignorance. That is fact and his writing will become well
> know as well as him becoming a publicly known icon of hatred.
>
> Good luck with that fuckwit. And Reynold, fucking run, and don't stop.
> Disappear would be best as it was you who dared to attack me on my
> illness knowing nothing of the cause. You disgust me and you are top of
> the list boy. Again, no violence. Just regular reminders of who's there
> and visits to see you are behaving. Nothing scary in reality. But I'd
> still disappear if I was you.

What brought that on? this. Original posting here.

Another example of this guy's lunacy here.
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HalfMooner
Dingaling

Philippines
15831 Posts

Posted - 06/25/2008 :  02:16:59   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send HalfMooner a Private Message  Reply with Quote
That was so much fun. Lenski utterly demolished Shlafly, but that tard turd is probably certainly too dumb to notice. If he had any brains, he would use his usual Hermann Goering editorial style, and delete any mention that the incident ever happened from Conservapedia.


Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive.
Edited by - HalfMooner on 06/25/2008 02:21:42
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filthy
SFN Die Hard

USA
14408 Posts

Posted - 06/25/2008 :  03:34:02   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send filthy a Private Message  Reply with Quote
My instincts tell me that Lenski shouldn't have given this dolt any credence whatsoever. As soon as finding out that Andy has the scientifc credentials of Hovind and the journalistic ones of Limbaugh, he, Dr. Lensky, should have flat-out told him, Schlafly's whelp, to go piss in his hat, or a more polite equivelent thereof. That's probably what I'd have done, less much of the polite.

And I'd have been wrong. How much better it is to have the little toad creep out from under his rotting log and trill ferciously as he gets politely rogered off into realms of the (yet further) discredited! And the real beauty of it is that the good doctor got to tell his story and present his case to folks who wouldn't normally look for it, all at Andy's expense.




"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)

"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres


"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude

Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,

and Crypto-Communist!

Edited by - filthy on 06/25/2008 03:59:00
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tomk80
SFN Regular

Netherlands
1278 Posts

Posted - 06/25/2008 :  04:23:46   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit tomk80's Homepage Send tomk80 a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Uncommonly dense now also needed to chime in. And DaveScot has a new buzzword it seems: "chance worshippers".

Tom

`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll-
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist

USA
4955 Posts

Posted - 06/25/2008 :  04:45:27   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Cuneiformist a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by the_ignored

Here are the discussions.
Holy crap-- this "Aschlafly" guy is a complete asshole. I'm just stunned at the exchange he had with some of his followers about asking Lenski to release his data:
If you supported public scrutiny of the data, then you would send Lenski an email requesting it. That you have not, and will not, speaks volumes about your view.--Aschlafly 16:40, 15 June 2008 (EDT)

...to me, it says that I'm not a biologist, and doubt I could fairly evaluate it if I received it. I know the degree of training it has required for me to achieve my present position, and I lack the hubris to think I could exercise equivalent powers of discrimination in a field so unrelated to my own. I'm not faulting you - maybe you have a degree in biochemistry, for all I know! But I know that I am not capable of fairly evaluating in context the raw data of biological experiments. My view is not a multi-book set: there's only one volume to it, and it's humility and appreciation of the credentials of the qualified.--Tom Moorefiat justitia ruat coelum 17:19, 15 June 2008 (EDT)

As I said, TomMoore, you apparently don't support "public scrutiny" of the data. Your own expertise is obviously irrelevant.--Aschlafly 19:17, 15 June 2008 (EDT)
So "Tom Moore" is spot on (as Lenski showed in his letter), and Aschlafly simply cannot see it--- and worse, he handles it all in the most obnoxious manner.

What a jerk!
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard

3192 Posts

Posted - 06/25/2008 :  05:04:54   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send BigPapaSmurf a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Simon, I find your use of the term Smurf-bag most offensive. The NAABCP will be hearing about this!


Hint the B is for blue.


OT: Can any of you grammar police out there can help me? Would it be inproper to say 'a euphemism' because 'an euphemism' just sounds strange.

"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History

"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist

USA
4955 Posts

Posted - 06/25/2008 :  06:08:55   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Cuneiformist a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by BigPapaSmurf
OT: Can any of you grammar police out there can help me? Would it be inproper to say 'a euphemism' because 'an euphemism' just sounds strange.
I think "a euphamism" is OK. It's not the spelling that counts, but rather whether the initial phoneme is a vowel or consonant. So in "euphamism" the initial phoneme is really "palatal approximate" and so a consonant. Likewise, even though the word "hour" begins with the letter h, it is pronounced with an initial vowel, and not the fricative that the grapheme h usually represents. So no one says (or should say) "a hour" but rather "an hour".
Edited by - Cuneiformist on 06/25/2008 06:09:39
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