Evolutionary biologist Michael Lynch thinks human evolution is going to start working against us, and will lead to a devastating decline in our health.. We have gotten too good at compensating for all the little mutations that would get weeded out without modern medicine.

Richard Dawkins has a new evolution article up at New Statesman, Accidents of Life. I always enjoy his retina riffs:

Historical accidents of this sort are rife, contrasting with the illusion of good design to provide some of our most convincing evidence that evolution happened. Sometimes the legacy of history goes beyond arbitrary accidents, and spills over into downright poor design. The vertebrate retina is installed backwards, facing away from the light, which perforce has to pass through a carpet of nerves on their way to the “blind spot” where they dive through the retina, bound for the brain. In spite of this we see tolerably well, because natural selection is good at cleaning up after its bodges. But an engineer who produced such a travesty of design would be fired instantly. The retina is a legacy of remote history.

An oldie but new to me. Ben Fry created a fantastic animated visualization, The Preservation of Favoured Traces, showing how The Origin of Species changed with each edition. Watch it unfold, mouse over sections to read (which the zoomed-in view color-coded as well). (via flowingdata)

A dozen chimpanzees, not known for being still or quiet, watch in silence as a dead (heart attack) “prominent figure” from their group is wheeled away:

Dr. Marc Bekoff, of the University of Colorado, says:

That animals and humans share many traits including emotions is merely an extension of Charles Darwin’s accepted ideas about evolutionary continuity, that the differences between species are differences in degree rather than differences in kind. The seemingly natural human urge to impart emotions on to animals, far from obscuring the “true” nature of animals, may actually reflect a very accurate way of knowing.

Pseudoscientist Michael Behe is a relatively famous creationist who suggests that irreducible complexity on the molecular level implies intelligent design. He has a veneer of credibility because he’s a biochemist. Anyway, he recently misinterpreted scientist Joe Thornton’s work, and Thornton took the time to to clarify things. Great response, very educational, and it discusses interesting aspects of evolution I didn’t fully appreciate before (like genetic drift). I like this bit:

Behe erroneously equates “evolving non-deterministically” with “impossible to evolve.” He supposes that if each of a set of specific evolutionary outcomes has a low probability, then none will evolve. This is like saying that, because the probability was vanishingly small that the 1996 Yankees would finish 92-70 with 871 runs scored and 787 allowed and then win the World Series in six games over Atlanta, the fact that all this occurred means it must have been willed by God.

Roger Ebert, accused of not reviewing Ben Stein’s movie Expelled because he (Ebert) believes in evolution, responds by crushing Stein like a bug. Love his take on “Premise” Media.

Funny, came across two fun, completely unrelated "Teach the Controversy" links this week: one on Barack Obama, and the other to these intelligently designed t-shirts.

Fantastic essay on Intelligent Design titled Malevolent Design that underscores some of the troubling religious implications of ID.

Kansas school board says teach Intelligent Design. On the bright side, we'll soon have a Pastafarian Bible. As amused as I am by that, it's still cold comfort.

You gotta love a post on Intelligent Design that begins with the stage direction "scientist pulls out baseball bat" and whose discussion ends when the blog owner invokes Godwin's law.