Pink Spandex, the Human Epigenome and Apostasy

Workout notes
Yoga with Ms. Vickie:

No, we didn’t do this, and no, there was no awesome pink spandex in the class. What we have is not so much a true yoga class as an exercise class in which the moves are inspired by yoga poses. The goal is to get stronger and more flexible rather than better at yoga.

Then I ran 6 miles:

(click the small photo for the full sized one)

No, I didn’t see this….this time.
It was a cool, dry day. I jogged 1 mile to the gooseloop. Then I did 9 laps (3.24 miles) in 29:59 (9:55, 10:13, 9:51) where I ran .5 miles reasonably hard, then .22 miles (to make 2 loops) easy and repeated this; the only exception is that the last “hard” part was one full loop (.36 miles). Then I walked and then tried to jog two miles; that was hard. In fact, I had to walk twice during my super slow cooldown jog.

I did better two and three weeks ago (in terms of total time), but this time, I ran the interval bits harder and really slowly shuffled my recovery.

This workout reminds me of some in the book Running Tough by Michael Sandrock. One of my favorites is one that Robert de Castella used to do: he would warm up and do 8 x 400 m at 5K race pace. But he would recover 200 meters at something like a 6 minute per mile pace (which was about 20 percent slower than his marathon race pace!). You’d end up with 5K and he’d time the whole thing. The temptation is to take a bit off of the 400 meter interval part; that is a mistake. One way a mortal could do this: 400 meters at 5K pace, with a marathon pace recovery (since we tend to race marathons at a proportionally slower pace than the pros do); perhaps we could add 1 minute to the marathon pace. That workout is a killer.

Fun
Find the Kitten in the photo; you’ll see that house cats have amazing camouflage characteristics!

Films
You can see just a short clip of a film and, from the colors, determine if the film is from yesteryear or from the present day. Why is that? Mano Singham talks about this and links to a couple of interesting sources.

Example: watch the first two minutes of this; notice the colors:

Yes, you can tell it was late 1960′s-early 1970′s era (even if you didn’t recognize a still-young Roger Moore; yes this was the last film he made prior to assuming the James Bond role).

In a nutshell: producers in those days didn’t have the option of changing color by computer; hence they paid more attention to color quality while filming. Now-a-days, producers digitally alter the color to give a flatter, somewhat bluish effect.

Science
this is a two part interview with Richard Dawkins. If you like evolution and science, you’ll like this interview. He discusses things like punctuated equilibrium. He doesn’t come across as strident at all, at least not to me.

More science: Europe will attempt to map the human epigenome (roughly speaking: the chemicals that allow for gene expression):

DNA-modification studies get a multi-million euro boost.

The health-research division of the European Commission launches its largest-ever project next week with a €30-million (US$41-million) investment in understanding the human epigenome, the constellation of DNA modifications that shape how genes are expressed.

With the project, called BLUEPRINT, Europe intends to become a major player in the International Human Epigenome Consortium (IHEC), set up last year to help biologists understand how the epigenome influences health and disease.

All the cells that make up an individual originate from the same fertilized egg and share the same genome. But during development, cells acquire epigenetic changes — such as chemical modifications to DNA, and changes in the shape of its tightly coiled three-dimensional structure — that affect which genes will be active in which cells at a given time and which will be silent.

The epigenome then remains largely stable, so that a liver, for example, remains a liver throughout life. But small parts of the epigenome change constantly as the cell responds to environmental changes. The epigenome also changes in diseases, including cancer.

The importance of the epigenome in health and disease is becoming increasingly clear. But researchers studying it have faced a big hurdle: the lack of a reliable library of high-quality, quantitative reference epigenomes against which new data can be compared. Little is known, even, about how much the epigenome normally varies between individuals, or between the different cells in an individual.

Enter BLUEPRINT, which unites 41 institutions and more than 50 principal investigators across Europe who will contribute a further €10 million to the project. BLUEPRINT will provide at least 100 reference epigenomes toward the IHEC’s goal of amassing 1,000 reference epigenomes by 2020.

BLUEPRINT has chosen to focus on the blood system. This should help move discoveries quickly into the clinic, as many diagnostic tests rely on blood samples. “Blood is also what gets stored in biobanks and used for genome analysis,” says BLUEPRINT coordinator Henk Stunnenberg at the Nijmegen Center for Molecular Life Sciences in the Netherlands.[...]

Religion/Philosophy
This is an attempt to respond to a “defense of naturalism”. Meh. If there are other ways of “discovering” or “knowing” truth (other than by naturalism), then please present such a result. That is all.

Why I have no automatic respect for religion or religious belief
Ok, let me be clear about what I am saying: many religious are genuinely nice, intelligent people. And yes, many beliefs and practices ARE commendable. For example, there is one organization that I have given money to and they are religious; they get out there and feed and house the hungry and homeless.

But the beliefs that I respect get my respect because the beliefs and commendable and because they lead to good actions; I do NOT automatically respect a belief because it is “religious”. If I encounter a belief or an idea that catches my interest, I critique the same way I critique any other idea (science, social, political, etc.)

So, here is an action that is being taken in the name of religion that I find horrific:

The Foreign Secretary and the Archbishop of Canterbury intervened last night to try to save a Christian pastor in Iran who has refused to renounce his faith to escape a death sentence.

An Iranian court gave Youcef Nadarkhani, 34, a third and final chance to avoid hanging, but he replied: “I am resolute in my faith and Christianity and have no wish to recant.”

The panel of five judges will decide within a week whether to confirm his execution for apostasy, Mohammed Ali Dadkhah, his lawyer, told The Times.

William Hague said he “deplored” Pastor Nadarkhani’s plight, and a senior Foreign and Commonwealth Office diplomat telephoned the Iranian chargé d’affaires in London to protest.

“This demonstrates the Iranian regime’s continued unwillingness to abide by its constitutional and international obligations to respect religious freedom,” Mr Hague said. “I pay tribute to the courage shown by Pastor Nadarkhani, who has no case to answer, and call on the Iranian authorities to overturn his sentence.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, broke his silence to express “deep concern” at the sentence faced by Pastor Nadarkhani, and at the persecution of religious minorities in Iran generally.

Sources said that Christian clerics and advisers had been working hard behind the scenes to save the pastor’s life, but had sought to avoid “megaphone diplomacy” in case it did more harm than good.

The US Department of State has also condemned the Iranian judiciary for demanding that Pastor Nadarkhani renounce his faith or face execution.

Yes, a few hundred years ago, Christian authorities did exactly the same thing, and the Jewish Bible describes the same thing being done to others.

This is a case of a nonsensical, downright evil religious belief. Yes, “the State” would do the execution, but this would be required by their form of clergy.

I challenge anyone to claim that they respect this religious belief, idea or practice.

And no, the irony is NOT lost on me (that one is being killed by one follower of an imaginary entity because the soon-to-be victim believes in some other imaginary entity…or professes a different way of worshiping the said fictional character.)

And I’ll say this: anyone who finds this sort of religious conduct to be acceptable or even tolerable does not belong in the United States.