Wheat-dogg’s world
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Biologist Stephen Matheson has an elegant discussion on his blog, Quintessence of Dust, about the evolution of corn from its wild ancestor, teosinte, a Mexican grass that looks nothing like its domesticated descendent.

As Matheson notes, IDists argue that evolution proceeds by adding no new genetic information; instead it removes genetic information. So organisms could not become more complex than their progenitors. IDists also contend that since evolution occurs through “random,” rare mutations, mere chance could not possibly explain the complexity of modern day organisms, like people. Ergo, Godidit.

Genetic analysis of teosinte and corn, on the other hand, refutes both contentions, Matheson says. Although corn is a product of 9,000 to 10,000 years of genetic manipulation by humans, its evolution from a humble, unappealing wild grass clearly demonstrates the validity of our current understanding of how evolution in nature works.

Check out the full story on Matheson’s blog.

A week after his antagonizing racial remarks in a newspaper interview, Nobel-prize-winner James D. Watson, 79, has stepped down as chancellor of the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories on Long Island.

Watson had told a London Times reporter that people of African descent are not as intelligent as those of European descent. The resulting furor led to Watson cancelling many of his scheduled book-tour engagements, including one here in Louisville this week.

While later stating that there was no scientific evidence linking race with intelligence, Watson has neither apologized for his remark nor recanted it, suggesting that he might at some level believe he is correct.

The CSH Labs, which for decades have pioneered research in genetics and produced several Nobel prize winners, relieved Watson of his duties as chancellor soon after the Times published the interview, but stopped short of dismissing him. Bruce Stillman, the president of the Labs, told The New York Times today that the decision to step down formally was entirely Watson’s. One wonders.

Watson had been associated with the Labs since 1968, and was president from 1994 to 2003. As chancellor. he also served on the Labs’ board of directors.

In 1962, he and Francis Crick shared a Nobel Prize in Biology for describing the double-helix structure of DNA. Some scientists since then have contended that Rosalind Franklin, a co-worker, should have shared the award with the two men.

In a prepared statement, Watson said he was “overdue” to surrender his leadership positions at the Labs.

My otherwise trustworthy Geo Metro has been sidelined for a month, because I suspected terribly expensive repairs were needed. Instead the problem was something very simple, and I feel damned foolish.

We were driving the short distance to the local Jay C supermarket one day when the Geo just quit running less than a mile from our house. It had done this before, and would usually start right up again after sitting for a while. So we got a lift to the market and back home, and let the Geo sit alongside the road to cool off.

After waiting a reasonable length of time, we walked back to the car, started it up and drove it home.

The next day, it refused to start. With a shot of starter fluid, the motor would run a bit, then die. OK, I said to myself, it’s gotta be something in the fuel injection system: bad pump, bad injector, bad electrical relay. The next chance I got, I checked the car for the obvious, John-can-fix-it items in the fuel system.

Yes, you read that right. If he were alive today, James Watson Wheaton would be 150 years old. Needless to say, perhaps, I never met him. He died long before I was a glimmer in my parents’ eyes. Over the years, however, I have pieced together enough information to give me a fair picture of the man, which I will try to impart publicly here.

I am the product of two “generation stretchers,” my grandfather and my parents. Jim Wheaton married twice, once as a teenager and second as a middle-aged man. His second son, my father, and my mother married when they were each 38 and I was born when my mother was almost 42. As it turned out, I met none of my grandparents.

Jim Wheaton’s father, John Wheaton, was born in Atlantic County, in southern New Jersey. His family farmed there, but John headed for the big city, New York, which even then was a magnet for opportunity. By 1850 he was gainfully employed as a wholesale grocer and living in a boarding house in what is now the Tribeca section of Manhattan. The owners of the boarding house were Chauncey and Anna Watson, who were important to my grandfather’s later life.