New Creationism blog and miscellanea

The other day I posted a review of Paul Garner's book The New Creationism (which is now available from Amazon). Well now he's really done it. He's started a blog to further explore the themes and ideas from the book. Even more scandalous? He's allowing comments! They're moderated, but still, he's allowing comments. He's a braver man than I, or maybe he's just bored because has too much free time on his hands.

People are starting to ask about the BSG conference registration, and all I can say is that I expect to finalize the details this week. Provided there are no problems, I should have registration available by Monday. Once again, I'm sorry for the delay. Don't forget that your abstracts are due this weekend.

In other news, this is interesting:
Slater et al. 2009. Genome Sequences of Three Agrobacterium Biovars Help Elucidate the Evolution of Multichromosome Genomes in Bacteria. J. Bac. 191(8):2501-2511.

The extra chromosomes and megaplasmids of the rhizobia have always fascinated me, especially Agrobacterium. There's nothing earth-shattering in this new study, but it confirms what we already suspected: The primary chromosome of Agrobacterium is fairly stable, while the secondary chromosome is highly variable.

Finally, Rupke's new book on Richard Owen is now available for pre-order from Amazon. Other than the title (Richard Owen: Biology without Darwin), I know nothing about it, but Rupke's always worth reading.