First, answers to the quiz in last week's sampler.

First day of spring, 2008. Right. PZ Myers blogged about this interesting new report: examination of the genes for yolk proteins and milk proteins reveals a clear story of the evolution of proteins that nourish embryos and young in vertebrate animals. Pseudogenes figure prominently, and the explanation makes no sense without them. The article (in PLoS Biology) was accompanied by a nice lay summary, but PZ's post is very good too.

The sun came out this week and the temperature soared to almost 50. In Phoenix, such a temperature is called 'cold'; here, it inspired us to have a cookout, though it didn't happen because the snow and ice on the deck precluded access to the blessed Weber kettle. But tomorrow, we're there. And I've been back on my bike this week, dodging cell-phone-wielding buffoons driving alone in SUVs.

Sorry I'm late; busy week of grant-writing and deadline-beating, then sleep-compensating and dust-clearing. And I did get the Reasons To Believe posts done. Allan Harvey is a chemical engineer (Ph.D.) who regularly posts to the ASA listserv, and he has prepared some highly recommended materials on "Science and Nature in Christian Perspective" that he has used in adult education in his church in Boulder, Colorado.

It's snowing again. Cycling seems like a childhood memory. You'd think this would give me more opportunities to work on blog posts. Gah. My friends and colleagues, Debbie and Loren Haarsma, were the subject of a nice local news story, focusing on their work as scientists and Christians. They have a superb new book out, which I've promised to review here sometime soon. Is evolution too difficult or complicated for secondary students to grasp?

I still owe you a summary of Howard Van Till's address at the Grand Dialogue and something about Richard Colling's talk at Calvin. Plus I'm barely halfway through the "junk DNA" series, and I haven't gotten to the part where I show you just how irresponsible Hugh Ross and Reasons to Believe really are. Sorry about that;

I suppose I should report on the activities I mentioned in last week's sampler. Phil Keaggy was fun: the first set was a complete – and, I'm told, "verbatim" – rendition of the 1978 instrumental album The Master and the Musician. I'm neither an audiophile nor a musician, but I liked Keaggy's guitar and especially liked the band behind him. The second set included a little too much Christian pop for my taste.

Well, the Pats lost, and I was a little disappointed (I'm a huge fan of Tedy Bruschi, Arizona '95), although I've always loved upsets and underdogs. More importantly, I enjoyed seeing my hometown in the spotlight. (I grew up in west Phoenix, just a mile from Glendale, and 8.5 miles from the stadium.) That's all the football you'll get on this blog, though. Pitchers and catchers report in 6 days...now that's blogworthy.

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.

Junk DNA is still a-happening. Ryan Gregory's blog Genomicron is the place to learn about it. He's especially adept at driving trucks through the gaps in ID claims about non-coding DNA. My gestating posts on the subject [sigh] will focus more on Reasons To Believe. Watch for a quote from Obi-Wan! So here are some things I've been munching on this week.