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Quintessence of Dust

Quintessence of Dust explores science, society, and human nature, focusing on genetics, development, evolution, neuroscience, systems biology, and topics related to scientific literacy. I occasionally discuss intelligent design, creationism, science denial, and other political/social influences on scientific literacy. Additional topics: philosophy, baseball, scientific culture, and Shakespeare. My main theme is scientific explanation.
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Published
Author Stephen Matheson

Hello and welcome to the 28th edition of the genetics blog carnival known as Mendel's Garden, where we celebrate blogging on topics related to anything touching on what Mendel discovered (or thought he discovered). While reading these interesting and informative pieces, please think about work that should be featured in a future edition and/or blogs (like yours) that would serve well as future hosts. So do tomato seeds get you excited? No? Oh.

Published
Author Stephen Matheson

1. A nice new Tangled Bank went up yesterday at The Beagle Project Blog, which is a cool site worth visiting at other times, too. Last week saw the unveiling of the Evangelical Manifesto, "an open declaration of who Evangelicals are and what they stand for," which seeks "to rally and to call for reform." The document has sparked some pretty intense discussion among Christians I know.

Published
Author Stephen Matheson

Two excellent new carnivals have gone up in the last day or so. Yesterday it was Encephalon at SharpBrains. Encephalon is a neuroscience and psychology carnival that had been in hibernation for some months, and it's nice to see it back. My post on endocannabinoids is included in yesterday's edition. And just posted on Greg Laden's Blog is Tangled Bank #99. It's loaded, as usual, with excellent and varied contributions.

Published
Author Stephen Matheson

Hey! Welcome to Tangled Bank #98, and thanks for stopping by. If you've never been to Quintessence of Dust, the lobby is below and to the right. I hope you'll poke around a little. PZ didn't give me a budget for refreshments, but if you come to the house I'll make sure we at least have plenty of guacamole. Chips are here, and beer is over there.

Published
Author Stephen Matheson

This week's theme is, um, "fun with biology." Seemed apropos after all the bickering I did this week. Which I'll mention as well. So I assume you saw that Craig Venter's outfit produced the first "synthetic genome" recently. All this means is that they synthesized a very long piece of DNA, and included within it all the components known to be necessary for bacterial life.