Tales from the Genome

Check out my new course overview page and enroll! It's a class that has something for everyone and promises to be a lot of fun.

The Return

It's been far too long. I'm breaking the silence with an update about a new course I'm working on through Udacity. It's called Tales from the Genome and it's going to be an awesome adventure into the biology of DNA, identity, and health. Below is a reprint of a post about the course that I wrote for the Udacity blog earlier today.

(DNA, the genetic code of life)

DNA is the organic software of almost all living things, and each individual cell is the hardware on which this genetic software is run. This amazing code, DNA, is the subject of one of Udacity’s newest courses launching this fall, Tales from the Genome: Adventures in DNA, Identity, and Health. This is an introductory course that will teach you basic genetic principles, regardless of your academic background. Together with the personal genetics service 23andMe, we will explore the biology of the most important code in your life: the human genome.

Most Udacity fans already appreciate the beauty of code, and most of you are likely to be far more expert at understanding and manipulating computer code than I am! (Although I am pleased with my progress so far in CS101). Still, I am continually surprised by how unfamiliar people are with their own personal genetic code wrapped up inside every cell of their body. Long before transistors, binary code, or the Internet, mother nature built her own coding system for all life on our planet. This code of life, billions of years in the making (Carl Sagan would be proud), is far messier, more dynamic, exceedingly more robust, amazingly more efficient, and absolutely more imperfect than man-made code.

Tales from the Genome will give you a taste of this complexity and begin to reveal exactly how much code is necessary to run a whole human body:

• Just as there are two possible values in binary code (0 and 1), DNA (the code of our genomes) has four possible values (A, T, G, or C).
• A single line of DNA code is always paired with another that can be inferred from the first: you may have heard of this before, DNA is almost always two strands that pair together in a regular way (the double helix).
• One copy of the human genome is 3 billion pairs of code letters, so 6 billion actual code letters total; and each cell has two copies of the genome, so that’s 12 billion letters per cell.
• Approximately 50 trillion cells in the human body means that you have approximately 1 yotta of DNA code letters. That’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 letters of code! If we think of one letter of DNA code representing one bit of information in computer code, then that’s equivalent to about 100 zettabytes of hard disk space. That’s more than 10 billion times more information available on today’s 2 Terabyte hard drives!

Somehow all of the DNA you have is wrapped up and organized inside your cells (and it doesn’t just sit there)! It is actively read all the time, even while you eat, sleep, and poop; every cell is reading different parts of the code, which makes that cell unique and allows it to do its job as a skin, stomach, blood, or brain cell. There are thousands of different cell types working together to make up who you are: one conscious being with specific traits and desires, a singular intelligence and personality.

But at the root of it all, you are a giant conglomeration of cells all meticulously reading the genetic code to keep you alive and functioning, forming the basis of all of your traits. Tales from the Genome will show you how to connect your genome to your traits and reveal what it really means to be human. We will explore the personal stories of people living with a variety of traits, from lactose intolerance to dwarfism to breast cancer to bipolar disorder. We will learn about how the genetic code controls these traits and what impact these traits have on individuals, their personal relationships, and society at large.

When you sign up for Tales from the Genome you will acquire a basic understanding of how this organic code of your genome is turned into flesh and blood. To hear more about the course and get updates on its launch in the fall, visit the overview page and click “Take the Class” to enroll. I hope you will join us on the adventure, and maybe you will find out the secrets your genome holds.

Hitchslapped!

As I've said in other places, I'm an agnostic because of science, an atheist because of probability, and an anti-theist because of religion. No one affirms my last position more clearly than Christopher Hitchens:

Mr. Deity's Opposition

My how the Deity has grown ... grown to be despised.  See how Lucy Fair Angel gets sucked into the narrative as the bad "guy" - it even has references to all the skeptical brouhaha about sexism that has been going on recently!

Theodicy*

From wiki: 

Theodicy is a theological or philosophical study which attempts to justify God's (largely in the monotheistic or Abrahamic sense) intrinsic (or foundational) nature of omni-benevolence (all loving), omniscience (all knowing) and omnipotence (all powerful), despite the existence of evil which, in the view of some, would otherwise stand to refute one or more of these qualities or God's existence altogether.

SMBC posted this fantastic illustration of how most people are satisfied with these justification attempts and suggests why a more reality-based alternative to belief in god just doesn't fly with most people:

New podcast episode up!

The latest episode of our podcast is up!  Give us a listen and tell us what you think.  Also, if you have some interesting news stories to submit, or ideas for segments, drop us a line.

The PhD Movie

Brought to you by Jorge Cham, creator and illustrator of Piled Higher and Deeper.


PHD Movie Trailer from PHD Comics on Vimeo.


Looking forward to seeing this ... something's got to vindicate my decision to continue the grad student life as a postdoc ....

What feels better?

I love my mom.  In part because I already show great promise of growing up to be like her.  Even though she has a Droid and not an iPhone, autocorrect has been as cruel to her as it has been to me, though she's less adept at correcting bad autocorrect mistakes before sending out the final text.  That moment before you figure out that autocorrect is to blame for the very disturbing feeling that your mom just gave you is quite funny, but only after the fact.  I give you, yesterday's autocorrect slip up of the day:

In case you can't figure it out, I'm pretty sure that she meant, "Good...makes me feel better."  Once she realized the mistake she informed me that she actually did not type "nakedness feel better" and then promptly admitted that it was still true though.

STORM: By Tim Minchin

For everyone who knows me but has never understood how or why I feel the way I currently do about life, science, religion, politics, philosophy ... watch this.  This animated short is based on a performance by the talented comedian, musician, and skeptic Tim Minchin.  His poem is phenomenal and the illustrations are right on point.  Sit back, relax, and think for a change:

Now this might be something I could worship

In all his glory ... RAPTOR JESUS!

The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger

I think more nature videos should be narrated by this guy:

Yoga for Black People

Enjoy:



It's funny because Asians can make these jokes but white people can't (as indicated by one of the commenters).

Red Riding Hood

I intend to forgive Catherine Hardwicke, the director of the movie Twilight, for redeeming herself by directing the upcoming movie, Red Riding Hood:

The Unseen Sea

One of the novelties of living in San Francisco is that it is foggy much of the time here.  While being in the middle of the fog is not so special, the many vantage points from high up in the city give you spectacular views of the fog rolling in or out of the bay area.

Simon Christen has produced a stop-motion video of the foggy city at different times of day and different seasons of the year.  Check it out - it's pretty amazing:

The Unseen Sea from Simon Christen on Vimeo.

________________________________________________

UPDATE: One of the commenters has correctly pointed out that this is *not* a stop-motion but a time-lapse video.  Thanks, Mors!

You Can't Explain That!

Many of you might know that conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly made a fool of himself when interviewing president of the American Atheists, David Silverman, by trying to explain the existence of god by saying, "Tide comes in, tide goes out.  No miscommunication.  You can't explain that".  Justifiably, Bill'O has become a laughing stock of the internet.  Again.

Now there's a fun meme going round that puts similarly stupid phrases above a picture of Bill O'Reilly as arguments that you just can't explain, so it must be true!  Joel shared this via Google reader.  So in the spirit of lampooning foolish TV figures that use terrible reasoning skills, I've made one of my own with the meme generator:

Help Balance the NC Budget!

I love transparency in government!  While we'll probably never be at a level that I totally approve of, any attempt to actually use the internet to engage the public with government decisions and processes is really a positive attribute in my book.  Check out this new website by Governor Beverly Perdue of North Carolina (my home state!).

You can actually go through all of the different options to decide what funding gets cut and what revenues get raised to balance the NC deficit.  Give it a try!  I cut 1.265 billion dollars of spending and raised 1.5 billion dollars in new revenue to give NC a surplus of 0.340 billion dollars.  Of course, realistically, these decisions are much more complicated, but it's nice to see the options and have an idea of what sorts of financial cuts and gains are plausible.  What can you do to fix the deficit?

Free Will(y)

Thank goodness for Mr. Deity!  I've now found the perfect response to show the next baptist or evangelical that explains to me that the reason an omniscient and omnipotent god can allow evil is because of free will.  What a terrible reason!  In other words, a god would be choosing evil and suffering so we can have free will?  Doesn't sound like a trade off that a merciful and compassionate god who wants us to be with him/her one day would do.  Let's see how Mr. Deity gets through this:

Episode 21 is up!

Hey!  We've just uploaded our 21st episode of Pascal's Bettors - the best way to be happy without god!  Take a listen and join in the conversation and fun.

Allah's the demolition guy, right?

Mr. Deity is back with the latest episode about how to create matter.  Will he go with the 6-7 day model, or will he favor the organic model?  Watch and find out:

Converting Dicks into Organic Compounds

Here's an oldie but a goodie. This should be used in the classroom just to make sure the students are awake.