Posted by jlwile on July 25, 2010
SPAM, a canned meat product and a very annoying form of advertisement.
(Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Spam_with_cans.jpeg)
As anyone who has a blog knows, one of the nuisances associated with blogging is the spammers. They have automated programs that find blogs and then leave “comments” that essentially advertise something. Of course, most bloggers use some sort of anti-spam software to keep the spammers at bay, but no such software is perfect. The software I use, Akismet, is pretty good, but every once in a while, it misidentifies a real comment as spam. Since I don’t want to lose any real comments, I go through the spam folder from time to time.
It’s usually not a big deal. Spams have a pattern to them, so I can usually get through 50 spams in just a few minutes. For example, most of them are short, and they say things like:
yes your portal incomparable ac, (link to the site being advertised)
wow that site class ap, (link to the site being advertised)
whant to say this board class gx, (link to the site being advertised)
wanna say it’s site peerless hs, (link to the site being advertised)
Well, yesterday I was going through my spam folder and saw something that didn’t fit the pattern. Here’s what it said:
HELP! I’m currently being held prisoner by the Russian mafia (link) and being forced to post spam comments on blogs and forums! If you don’t approve this they will kill me. (link) They’re coming back now. Please send help!
HELP! (link)
I think spammers are probably the lowest form of life, or at least they are giving politicians a good run for that position. Nevertheless, I think I could come to like the spammer who thought up that one!
Posted by jlwile on June 22, 2010
If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you probably recognize the name “Norwegian Shooter.” He is a regular commenter, and even though he relies on character assassination, distraction, and quoting out of context, his comments were entertaining. I don’t know of anyone else who has so clearly demonstrated the irrationality of the atheist point of view.
Unfortunately, because he refused to observe a basic request from me regarding his comportment (most likely as a result of his frustration at being demonstrated wrong time and time again), he has been banned from commenting on this blog.
Posted by jlwile on June 20, 2010
I was reading PZ Myers’s blog today, and I found out that he has been nominated for several blog awards. One of those awards is for the Best Religion Blog, and he seems a bit confused about that. He says:
I’ve been nominated for what?
OK, what is this thing? I’ve been nominated for Best Blog About Stuff, which is OK, but then…Best Celebrity Blogger? Somebody has a very slack definition of “celebrity”. Then there’s Best Religion Blogger — this is an atheist blog…
I am not sure why PZ is confused. He seems to think that his blog shouldn’t be characterized as a “religious” blog because he happens to be an atheist. This, of course, is nonsense. While I know some atheists who are not religious, PZ is most certainly a very, very religious man. Thus, I am not surprised that he has been nominated for the honor of Best Religion Blogger.
BUT WAIT…THERE IS MORE! Read on »
Posted by jlwile on May 25, 2010
I want to discuss more about Dr. Peter Borger’s excellent posts at Creation Ministries International’s website, because I really think he is onto something. As anyone who is remotely familiar with young-earth creationism knows, God designed specific kinds of organisms. Those organisms were created with the ability to adapt to changing environments, so the organisms we see today are those that descended from the various created kinds. The scientific pursuit dedicated to determining exactly what kinds of organisms were made and how the organisms we see today are related to those created kinds of organisms is called baraminology. This word comes from the Hebrew words bara, which means “created,” and min, which means “kind.”
So how did God give these created kinds the ability to adapt to changing conditions? According to Dr. Borger, He gave them baranomes, which are:
pluripotent, undifferentiated genomes with an intrinsic ability for rapid adaptation and speciation. Baranomes are genomes that contained an excess of genes and variation-inducing genetic elements, and the law of natural preservation shaped individual populations of genomes according to what part of the baranome was used in a particular environment.
In other words, the genome of each created organism was full of many genes, some of which the organism didn’t even need. These “excess genes,” as well as changes produced by the built-in elements that promote genetic change, were then acted on by natural selection (which he calls “natural preservation”) to produce the various organisms that we see today. In the article I linked above, Dr. Borger produces some powerful evidence to support this idea.
BUT WAIT…THERE IS MORE! Read on »
Posted by jlwile on May 22, 2010
The original reconstruction of Neanderthal Man (left) and a more realistic reconstruction of a Neanderthal child (right). Both images are in the public domain.
It’s not a really new story, but I was interviewed by an internet radio show about the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome1 and its comparison to present-day people, so I decided I would blog about it as well.
The first thing to discuss is how they sequenced the genome of something that no longer exists. In this case, they used three Neanderthal fossil fragments found in the Vindija cave in Croatia. Fossils (especially those belonging to genus Homo) are rare and very valuable, and this process required the destruction of the fossils, so the three fragments were chosen carefully. They were all fragments that contained very little anatomical information, so anything lost due to the destruction of the fossils was minimal. Based on some pretty good reasoning, it was concluded that the fossil fragments came from three different women, two of which may be relatives. According to scientifically irresponsible dating techniques, these fragments are supposedly around 40 thousand years old.
When they looked at the DNA in the samples they prepared from the bones, they found that between 95 and 99 percent of the DNA came from organisms other than Neanderthals, like bacteria that colonized the fossil. In other words, only 1-5 percent of the DNA found was DNA of interest. How did they get rid of the other 95-99 percent so they could focus on Neanderthal DNA? They used restriction enzymes that tend to cut only bacterial DNA.
So even though this is a remarkable achievement, there are a lot of potential errors in the derived genome sequence. After all, any time the “signal” you are looking at is 20-99 times weaker than the “noise,” it will be hard to determine exactly what the signal is. Keeping in mind these potential errors, what was learned? In short, it was learned that creationists have been right about Neanderthals all along.
BUT WAIT…THERE IS MORE! Read on »
Posted by jlwile on May 12, 2010
I just got back from a great fishing trip with one of my favorite people in the world. Here is a picture of the catch:
The Catch
The fish look a lot prettier right after they have been caught. Here is an example of what a fresh mahi-mahi (Coryphaena hippurus) looks like:
The ship's mate holding a fresh catch
Posted by jlwile on April 30, 2010
If anyone is interested, opening night for Cabaret was last night (Thursday, 4/29). It really went well. The audience was really into it. They laughed at all the right spots and rewarded us with lots of enthusiastic applause.
The local newspaper came to review it a few days earlier, and the review was very positive.
Posted by jlwile on April 28, 2010
You might have noticed that my blogging frequency has declined a bit. That’s because I am in a play, Cabaret, that is getting ready to open this weekend. It’s being performed at Anderson’s Mainstage Theater in Anderson, IN. Shows are at 7:30 PM on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (4/29-5/1) this week and then Friday and Saturday (5/7,8) next week.
In case you are interested, I play Ernst Ludwig, a Nazi. I befriend the leading man in the show, Clifford Bradshaw, and no one knows I am a Nazi at first. I have to be fun and likeable (a stretch for me) so that when you finally see that I am a Nazi and will ruin everyone’s life, you are kind of surprised.
I am working with a very talented group of people. The person who plays the Emcee (Lot Turner) is playing his character in a much more “gritty” way than most interpretations I have seen, and the person playing Clifford Bradshaw (Cameron Vale) has a great singing voice. To me, however, the real standout is the young lady playing Sally Bowles, the female lead. Her name is Tiffany Taylor, and her interpretation of the character is truly unique. Her Sally is carefree, daring, and talented (as she must be), but there is a sophistication in her Sally that I have never seen in any production of Cabaret. The two people playing the older romantic parts, Herr Schultz (Bill Malone) and Fraulein Schneider (Nita Arnold), are simply adorable on stage. They play “two old people in love” in the cutest way I have ever seen. The closest thing I have to a love interest is Fraulein Kost, who is a prostitute. The actress who portrays her, Connie Rich, has the best German accent of all of us, and she plays her part spot on. She has a WONDERFUL singing voice, but unfortunately she has only one short song, and it is partly spoiled by me singing along with her.
The set is minimalist, which I don’t like, and the show suffers from some of the typical problems associated with community theater productions. However, it has been a lot of fun. If you are in the area, it is worth the $10 price of admission.
Posted by jlwile on April 5, 2010
If you visited this site on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, you probably either saw nothing but a directory structure or a blank page. That’s because the server that hosts this blog was subjected to a denial of service attack. In the end, the hosting company had to move everything to another server and, of course, that took time. We’re back up now, however, so I can continue to annoy those who don’t like science!
Posted by jlwile on February 21, 2010
The trip to Milford Sound was amazing, but it was a really full day. So our next day was just a quiet, relaxing day. Kathleen went into town, and I went fishing on the lake. I actually caught a nice rainbow trout.
I got one!
