Forget “all internet traditions” – there’s a new blog meme in town this week, and it’s a lot more fun.

A few weeks ago, Michigan State professor Richard Lenski announced that a long-term experiment in bacterial evolution had yielded a strain of E. coli capable of metabolizing citrate, a chemical found in their growth medium. This is significant because no strain of E. coli has previously been known to be able to do that. In fact, the inability of the E. coli to metabolize citrate is one primary identifying characteristics biology uses to classify the bacteria. Lenski’s research is a big chunk of steaming proof that, yes, evolution really is the mechanism whereby life forms and changes on Planet Earth. But some people, of course, are really pissed about that, so they decided to slander Lenski for no reason:

The denizens of Conservapedia were not amused. They apparently subscribe to the belief that acceptance of some scientific data goes against conservative values. The site tends to present the views of mainstream science and “creation science” as equally valid scientific perspectives, as evidenced by their discussion of kangaroo origins (which is actually much improved since we first checked). The site’s relevant sympathies with creationism can be seen in its discussion of information, which uncritically repeats William Dembski’s claim that “information cannot be created by natural (nonintelligent) causes.” Despite never defining how to measure biological information, Dembski has used this claim to rule out evolutionary origins for new biological capacities.

Clearly, Lenski’s bacteria appear to have evolved a significant new capacity. Fortunately, the residents of Conservapedia found a way out of this logical conundrum: Lenski was either misinterpreting his data, or he faked it. In an open letter to Lenski, Conservapedia’s Andy Schlafly (an attorney with an engineering background) wrote, “skepticism has been expressed on Conservapedia about your claims, and the significance of your claims, that E. Coli [sic] bacteria had an evolutionary beneficial mutation in your study.” Their solution? Show them the data: “Please post the data supporting your remarkable claims so that we can review it, and note where in the data you find justification for your conclusions.”

Boneheads sent letter to Lenski. Lenski replied, politely. Boneheads replied again, revealing breathtaking ignorance as well as an unfortunate willingness to sling mud without really knowing anything. Lenski replies back, this time with the gloves totally off.

And now…kaboom. Technorati lists 280 posts about “lenski,” almost all of which deal with this controversy. And almost none of those in the way that the creationists would like.

Big day for humankind – Space.com is reporting that we’ve found water ice on Mars:

Despite recent glitches with NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander on the arctic plains of the red planet, the mission became a resounding success when it found signs of water ice on Thursday.

Four days ago Phoenix photographed dice-sized crumbs of bright material in a trench informally called "Dodo-Goldilocks." When the probe recently went back to look at the trench, they had vanished. The disappearing act convinced scientists the material was frozen water that vaporized after digging exposed it.

As one commenter mentions, no word yet on why they think that it’s water ice and not something else – like CO₂ – but either way you could potentially use the ice as a resource in a future mission to the Red Planet.

What are we to make of this?

I just have to wonder how hot FB really is if the VP of product management wants to leave. I mean maybe it’s just me talking from the worm’s eye view here, but if I were VP of product management for a company that people think is just super hot-and-sexy, I don’t think I’d want to give that up for a gig at a VC firm. Maybe I’m wrong — maybe it’s more fun to help pump $$ to marginally useful seeds in the rocky soil startups and drink lots of free drinks than it is to preside over the directionless morass that is Facebook’s product “strategy.”

SMS Spam

So David Pogue has this piece on his blog about cell phone spam. I clicked on it and learned something cool — you can turn off text message spam by disallowing SMS the originates from the internet.

But whither Twitter and Orbitz? And other cool stuff that depends on the ability of IMAP to send SMS? You can apparently give your phone an alias, which you only make public to the services you want to have it. Pogue heard about the possibility of doing this stuff from an AT&T rep, but it turns out that other carriers have it as well.

As it turns out, Verizon Wireless offers these features, too. Sprint and T-Mobile don’t go quite as far, but they do offer some text-spam filtering options. Here’s how you find the controls for each company:

• AT&T: Log in at mymessages.wireless.att.com. Under Preferences, you’ll see the text-blocking and alias options. Here’s also where you can block messages from specific e-mail addresses or Web sites.
• Verizon Wireless: Log in at vtext.com. Under Text Messaging, click Preferences. Click Text Blocking. You’re offered choices to block text messages from e-mail or from the Web. Here again, you can block specific addresses or Web sites. (Here’s where you set up your aliases, too.)
• Sprint: No auto-blocking is available at all, but you can block specific phone numbers and addresses. To get started, log in at www.sprint.com. On the top navigation bar, click My Online Tools. Under Communication Tools, click Text Messaging. On the Compose a Text Message page, under Text Messaging Options, click Settings & Preferences. In the text box, you can enter a phone number, email address or domain (such as Comcast.net) that you want to block.
• T-Mobile: T-Mobile doesn’t yet offer a “block text messages from the Internet” option. You can block all messages sent by e-mail, though, or permit only messages sent to your phone’s e-mail address or alias, or create filters that block text messages containing certain phrases. It’s all waiting when you log into www.t-mobile.com and click Communication Tools.

But what about call spam?

I’m not referring to it as “telemarketing,” because the thing I’m dealing with isn’t actually a person trying to get me to buy/do something like normal telemarketing. It’s just a scam. And they call my line and my wife’s a lot — at this point we’ve each gotten the call 4 or 5 times. How do you get rid of this? Where do they get my number?

I’m worried about this phenomenon because it has no obvious solution like the SMS thing above does. You would never want to limit your contact via phone number to people who had it already, but with SMS you can see why that makes sense. Honestly, what’s to prevent this from becoming as prevalent as spam? Low ROI? Sure… for now. But with advances in telephony tech, you could see it becoming a big problem eventually.

Hopefully this is one of those things I make a semi-prediction on that turns out to just be completely wrong. This is one instance in which I’d welcome having that happen to me…

w00t! w00t w00t! w00t!