Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Book Review: Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

Mr. Mercedes reads more like a novella than a novel, or a good two-part TV show, perhaps. It's a typical crime story but Stephen King shows his masterful writing in the pacing and suspense throughout (as well as the plot convolutions needed to involve a retired detective rather than an active one). The most amazing character, as usual, is the (all too human) monster, very much evil and very much human at the same time. King completely explains his character's evil without excusing it, and you can easily see how this guy got to be so messed up that you're almost sad for him. Almost. This is too "normal" of story to reach the heights of Joyland or 11-22-63, but it's very well done and a master class in writing.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Book Review: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Second time through on this (and second time reviewed on this blog). This time the story was read aloud to a 10 and 11-year-old. The second half was read in the car on a long drive and it pulled in the 43-year-old mother of those two as well, especially with its themes of growing up and finding, then leaving, home. To anyone turned off by the book's dark beginning, I'd say, read it through to the end, see where it's going. The pacing and storytelling of the long climactic chapter seven is a writer's workshop of skill, and then chapter eight is a melancholy coda that brings it all home. This is simply a good book, as good in its way as its inspiration (Kipling's Jungle Book). For a book about ghosts it has more humanity in it than many books about the living. It deserves the Newbery it won.

Monday, August 18, 2014

Does a Contingent Foundation Imply an Unpredictable House?

Fascinating new paper in Nature by Joseph Thornton's lab titled "Historical contingency and its biophysical basis in glucocorticoid receptor evolution." In my opinion, Thornton's one of the best scientists out there and this paper shows why. It looks at the history of evolution with a biochemist's eye for detail and also speaks to the big-picture questions. This paper is going to require some repeat reading and digestion, and for now, I'll start at the end, with big-picture thoughts. I find the experiments illuminating and important -- but I disagree with some of the interpretations of the experiments.

The experiments leave no doubt that, for this hormone binding this receptor, there are only a few small roads through the forest of possibilities that led from the original, less-picky receptor to the later, more-picky receptor. Also, there were no signs leading to those roads, that is, no evolutionary pressure that could have helped pick these rare mutations out of the crowd of possible mutations. This is similar to how DNA can change randomly if a water molecule hits it the wrong way. The specific hormone-receptor interaction we have is shaped by randomness and it very well may have a different shape if the tape of life was run again. (The surprise for me is the tight relationship between overall protein structure and the specific hormone structure, which is more intense than I thought it would be -- in other words, I expected proteins to be able to do more with the multitude of shapes they could adopt.)

But, as Simon Conway Morris might say, so what?

The key to the interpretation of this study is that the evolution we're talking about is the specific arrangement of oxygens around a constant, central 4-carbon-ring sterol core. What separates cortisol from the other hormones is the placement of an oxygen over here and not over there. In a dance of co-evolution, this specific arrangement of cortisol's oxygens was chosen out of a welter of possible arrangements and the protein changed alongside, taking a very limited number of roads to do so.

But if those improbable permissive mutations for our cortisol system never happened, then a different arrangement of oxygens on the same carbon core could easily send the same cortisol signal. The specific molecular structures may be unpredictable and contingent, but the fact that some specific arrangment of oxygens will send a specific signal like cortisol can be predicted and repeated. Presumably that's why we have so many signals built around 4-carbon-ring cores decorated with oxygens at different places. The variation in the oxygens isn't as interesting as the constancy in the carbon core, and the fact that all these hormones sending very different signals follow this same, predictable pattern.

Also, the fact that there are only a few roads (2 out of thousands or even millions) that can develop into this specific system doesn't account for the variable speed with which the system can develop to explore those roads. If mutations can be accelerated by stress, could they be accelerated enough to make this improbable path probable? After all, there are only a handful of mutations that are required to change the specificity, and if the rate of mutation for this receptor gene speeds up, the improbable becomes more probable.

Other carbon-based, water-loving organisms on other planets therefore probably have a very different cortisol shape. But although the oxygens may be differently placed in their cortisol, I would predict that there would still be oxygens placed around a carbon-ring core.

The oxygens can flit around the central carbon core and the receptors can mold themselves to those oxygens in many different ways, reshaping the circuitry of the hormone system. But from a more distant perspective, where the exact placement of oxygens can't be seen, the system would adopt much the same shape, using oxygen and carbon in much the same way to send much the same signal. The shape of the foundation is contingent, but the overall style of the house is predictable.

What this paper does is that it clearly places hormone-receptor interactions (within the sterol class of hormones) in the "contingent" category, but I maintain that the chemistry of the signaling system would remain much the same, whichever path the hormone-receptor interactions took. The hormone may be contingent, but the overall shape and chemistry of hormone system is predictable.

All A-Twitter

I finally broke down and opened a Twitter account. You'll find me there at @BenJMcFarland. Still learning the rules of etiquette there, but it seems to be a great format for passing around science news and quick conversations. I'll focus on science and books on Twitter, while here I have the space to hold forth at more length. From this starting point, let's see what evolves ...

Thursday, August 14, 2014

The Art of Eden

Check out this article about an exhibition at the Museum of Biblical Art build around the theme of the first three chapters of Genesis. Most of the pieces are very interesting and gain a lot from the synergism between faith and science. I especially like the Explosion picture at the top of the article. However, the "Serpent Before the Fall" sculpture seems underwhelming to me. It's like I always envisioned and doesn't seem to add anything. Perhaps it's different for someone who imagined the serpent in a different way. The artist and I may simply see the world in ways that are too similar.

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Book Review: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Read this aloud to my 11 and 10 year olds and it worked surprisingly well for that age. (Had to do far less verbal "editing" than with Ender's Game, for example. If this was a movie it'd be a solid PG.) The first chapter was funnier than I remembered, and the next quarter of a book was less funny than I remembered -- it's hard to make light of the destruction of the Earth when you're reading out loud to children -- and then once we got to the Babel Fish it picked up again. My favorite part still must involve the sperm whale and pot of petunias, which even made it into the movie.

If you want evidence for how the Dawkins/Adams/Doctor Who crowd is a mirror of the Young-Earth/Ken Ham crowd, this little book actually provides it. There's even a literal young earth involved in the plot! Also, bits about the proof of God show that the reasonings of the two groups run in parallel. The difference is that Adams is intentially hilarious, and he never takes himself too seriously.

When I was in high school and still of the young earth persuasion, this book actually didn't challenge me at all, and may have even reinforced my erroneous belief that old earth implies an disordered and irrational universe. The humor that bothers me the most is the humor that verges on nihilistic and pessimistic, not the humor that takes on religion. But when it's all taken lightly enough -- when you fall and forget to hit the ground, as from later books in this "trilogy" -- it works overall and may turn into one of the best uses of humor. And there's something kenotic about that.

In fact, I would argue that there's more depth and compassion in this book than in all of Dawkins' writing. Behind all the truck about probabilities and irrationality is a yearning for the certain and rational, wrapped up in a human narrative. The theme of falling and humanity that runs throughout the trilogy is one example of a strand that could provide some interesting literary analysis. But no time for that -- for today, I just enjoyed having a laugh with my boys.