a christmas carol

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Each Christmas I try to reread Dickens' A Christmas Carol, to let flow the spirit of the season. Harder and harder each year, as I get busier and busier. I really need a dollop of idleness to let joy sink in.
Anyway, in my view Dickens is the greatest writer of the English speaking world, and I just finished one of his more powerful passages, from Stave Three (the Ghost of Christmas Present):

'Spirit,' said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, 'tell me if Tiny Tim will live.'
'I see a vacant seat,' replied the Ghost,' in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.'
'No, no,' said Scrooge. 'Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared.'
'If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,' returned the Ghost, 'will find him here. What then. If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.'
Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.
'Man,' said the Ghost, 'if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust.'
Scrooge bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and trembling cast his eyes upon the ground.

Wallace in National Geographic Magazine

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I was pleased to see the current National geographic features an essay by David Quammen on Alfred Russel Wallace, the (relatively)unsung hero of evolutionary theory.  Alfred_Russel_Wallace_1862_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_15997 A young man of modest means pursuing his interest in natural history and finding a path to the origin of species independent of Darwin.  His paper spurred Darwin to publish his long incubating treatise on natural selection, and changed the world.

Wallace — National Geographic Magazine:
That man was Alfred Russel Wallace, a young English naturalist who did fieldwork throughout the Malay Archipelago in the late 1850s and early '60s. What you won't see on Ternate is any grand plaque or statue commemorating Wallace's place in scientific history or the fact that, from this little island, on March 9, 1858, he sent off a highly consequential letter, aboard a Dutch mail steamer headed westward. The letter was addressed to Mr. Charles Darwin. Along with it Wallace enclosed a brief paper titled "On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type." It was the product of two nights' hasty scribbling, which followed a moment's epiphany during a fever, which in turn followed more than ten years of speculation and careful research. What the paper described was a theory of evolution (though not under that name) by natural selection (not using that phrase) remarkably similar to the theory that Darwin himself, then an eminent naturalist of rather conventional reputation, had developed but hadn't yet published.

3-legged cows absent in fossil record – Darwin weeps

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Via Pharyngula this has got to be one of the stupidest frickin’ things I have read in awhile:

Link: Pat Sullivan Blog: Evolution: What should life look like?.

Why would macro evolution somehow take primordial soup and create thru random means this amazingly diverse world we observe and then STOP?  I suppose it can be argued it is because of the massive amount of time and the last 5,000 years is just a nit in time.  But that seems irrelevant to me.  Regardless of where we are on the spectrum of time, there ought to be massive numbers of obvious, incomplete transitional forms for us to observe.   e,g, cows with 3 legs and a partial 4th still in the process of evolving. Multiply that across tens of millions of species.  The amount of macro evolution we should be observing ought to be massive.  And yet there essentially is nothing.

Yes, this fellow is claiming that evolutionary theory, if true, would predict a 3 legged cow as a precursor to a 4 legged cow.  This genius doesn’t even follow his own logic to a natural conclusion i.e. that our current 4 legged cows are just steps on the way to an even more complete 5-legged version.  What a maroon.

Update: Evolution in Action! Take that Sullivan!

5legged_cow

Super Bugs from Outer Space

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Kangkodos_3
Salmonella exposed to space travel come back nastier.
  National Geographic:


When the bacteria—which had been safely isolated from the space crew—returned to Earth, scientists injected them into mice.


They found the space-faring bacteria caused death quicker and more often than Earth-restricted organisms.


The findings are concerning for future astronauts who will embark on
longer space missions farther away from Earth-based medical help,
experts say.

Genetic Transformations

Cheryl Nickerson is an associate professor of microbiology at
Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute and lead author of the
study….

…When the bacteria returned to Earth, genetic sequencing showed that 167 genes and 73 proteins had been altered.

One protein, called Hfq, helped control more than a third of the
altered genes. Hfq regulates RNA—the code of bacterial life—during
stressful events. When activated, the protein previously had been shown
to strengthen several types of pathogens.


An technique called scanning electron microscopy also showed some Salmonella were starting to form biofilms, a protective slime layer.


OCosmic_raysn Earth, biofilms can grow on ship hulls and clog pipes, costing
industry billions of dollars. Biofilms also worsen some diseases and
reduce the effectiveness of many antibiotics.

Could it be….the cosmic rays?!