evolution
gregladen | February 9, 2008After the Sunday service in Westminster Chapel, where worshippers were exhorted to wage "the culture war" in the Second World World War spirit of Sir Winston Churchill, cabbie James McLean delivered his verdict on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
"Evolution is a lie, and it's being taught in schools as fact, and it's leading our kids in the wrong direction," said McLean, chatting outside the chapel. "But now people like Ken Ham are tearing evolution to pieces."
This is a short piece in the Barrie Examiner updating the growing American-like trend of creationism in Britain.
gregladen | February 9, 2008... is a book by Charles Darwin. But it is also a web page at The Guardian (UK).
150 years ago, Charles Darwin unveiled his theory of natural selection. To mark this anniversary we bring you the definitive guide to the naturalist's great book, with extracts from key chapters and essays from leading scientists and thinkers
Here
clock | February 9, 2008Karen is excited this morning, reading the enormous Guardian edition full of good Darwiny goodness, chockful of articles by Dawkins and many others, as well as extracts from Darwin's works.
The only part I find a little too narrow is The best Darwinian sites on the web which mentions only a small handfull of such sites, e.g., Darwin Online, Darwin Correspondence Project, Darwin Day Celebration, AboutDarwin.com and Darwin Today (the last one yet to launch next month). I know, I know, these are the biggest and bestest, but there are so many others that I feel are snubbed by being left out -…
gregladen | February 9, 2008Bad News: It's a Big Lizard!!
According to a report noted in Evolving in Kansas, Komodo Dragons have been hatched in Sedgwick County without fertilization by a male.
There are two of them, both males. (Isn't that interesting?) ...
I think they should name them Jesus and Brian.
laelaps | February 9, 2008Tomorrow is Evolution Sunday and I'll be presenting a lecture called "Unlikely Humans" to the Congregation for Humanistic Judaism of Morris County. Regular readers of this blog probably already know what I'm going to say, but I've tried to combine some old material and some things that I've only just learned, so I'm hoping that it'll be an interesting look at the evolutionary changes that have have resulted in our species attaining its present form.
Given that it's a ppt lecture there there isn't a good way to directly transfer what I'm going to say to this blog afterwards, but it might…
gregladen | February 9, 2008What do you eat when you are traveling the world in search of truth about the natural world? Most of the time Darwin ate pretty well...
While traveling through the interior near Rio, Darwin makes note of some of the agricultural practices of the region. He is visiting farms ... plantations .. carved out of the forest.
The chief produce of this part of the country is coffee. Each tree is supposed to yield annually, on an average, two pounds; but some give as much as eight. Mandioca or cassada is likewise cultivated in great quantity.
... that would be Manihot, or cassava, also known as…
gregladen | February 9, 2008Marshall Helberger writes an interesting editorial in the Timberjay, a northern Minnesota newspaper, about creationist tactics.
As editor of the Timberjay's editorial pages, there are few things that have been more frustrating over the years than determining how to handle this perennial debate over evolution, prompted for the most part by a single, local proponent of creationism.
While I inherently believe in the free exchange of ideas, the purpose of the editorial pages is to discuss ideas and viewpoints that can affect the world in which we live. To a large degree, the debate over…
evolvingthoughts | February 8, 2008
By Matt Ridley, in Time:
... by the end of this century, if not sooner, biotechnology may have reached the point where it can take just about any DNA recipe and read off a passable 3-D interpretation of the animal it would create.
So long as you also know the developmental machinery, the necessary ecological conditions, the structure of the cells, the maternal investment involved... in other words, if you know the facts about the structure and biology of the organism, you'll be able to read off the structure and biology of the organism, just from the DNA. Err....
gregladen | February 8, 2008The Texas Acadamy of Science has come out with a statement about creationism in Texas schools science classes, called "Texas Academy of Science Position Against the Inclusion of Creationism and Design Concepts in the Science Curricula in Texas Schools"
You can get the PDF here.
Among other things, the document states:
Texas science teachers have a finite amount of class time and textbook space in which to teach the many valid and foundational scientific concepts that enable students to become knowledgeable consumers, decision makers and voters. Inclusion of creationist or intelligent design…
evolvingthoughts | February 8, 2008
So, it seems that 44 is the median age of depression. Old news, or at least it is for me. Although for 44 to be the median age of depression for me, I'd have to live until my late 70s. Right now, after a week of working on a grant application and dealing with my son returning to school, I'm not a happy camper, let me tell you. So blogging has been a low priority, and is likely to remain so.
But this caught my eye. Some researchers have reconstructed the ancestral DNA of bacteria and worked out that it is (physically) adapted to higher temperatures. Or have they?
There is a mathematical…
grrlscientist | February 8, 2008tags: Evolution: Education and Outreach, evolution journal, open access evolution, teaching, education
There is a new journal about teaching evolution that is now available and it appears to be completely open access, too! This journal, Evolution: Education and Outreach focuses on promoting accurate understanding and comprehensive teaching of evolutionary theory for a wide audience, although it specifically targets K-16 students, teachers and scientists. This journal is actively seeking contributions of (1) peer reviewed evolutionary science; (2) peer-reviewed educational papers on curricula…
laelaps | February 8, 2008
The American mastodon (Mammut americanum), illustrated in one of Cuvier's memoirs.
When I taking biology in high school science seemed so simple. Lyell was a uniformitarian hero, Cuvier was a brillant anatomist (but sadly a narrow-minded catastrophist), Charles Darwin was the hero of all biology, and Lamarck was the official whipping boy of evolutionary science, the deconstruction of his ideas receiving more time than Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection! In the years following my graduation in 2001 I didn't think too much about the issue, the work of naturalists who lived…
sheril | February 8, 2008Okay, so it's Fashion Week in New York. But there's something I just don't get. Sure, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, yadda, yadda, yadda...and yes, everyone is beautiful in their own way, but uh, will someone please explain to me what's going on with the male models?
"Where the masculine ideal of as recently as 2000 was a buff 6-footer with six-pack abs, the man of the moment is an urchin, a wraith or an underfed runt."
I couldn't make this stuff up folks, that's straight from my own NYTimes!
Now we're used to hearing everyone complain about the women on runways being too thin and…
gregladen | February 7, 2008I became acquainted with an Englishman who was going to visit his estate ... more than a hundred miles [north] of Cape Frio. As I was quite unused to travelling, I gladly accepted his kind offer of allowing me to accompany him.
And so was the case with a number of Darwin's excursions into the bush.
Although he organized expeditions to the interior, he also took advantage of individuals or groups traveling one place or another, such as this Englishman, in order to carry out random acts of geologizing and opportunistic biologizing.
And thus seven men, including Darwin and his Englishman,…
razib | February 6, 2008Extraordinary Sex Ratios is the paper that William D. Hamilton seems most proud of if the effusive self-praise in the biographical preface can be trusted. In it Hamilton claims his theoretical insight peaked, and it was within this paper that his ideas exhibited the most pluralism of purpose as he began to perceive the shape of his future research. Extraordinary Sex Ratios also marks the beginning of Hamilton's long utilization of computer simulations to push through the impasses of analytic intractability and empirical unverifiability. On occasion he even claims that in this particular area…
gregladen | February 6, 2008The nefarious Discovery Institute, the Creation Science think tank, is often secretive about its activities. It has not been entirely clear that they have been involved in the recent fight in Florida over the use of the word "evolution" and the teaching of mainstream, scientifically informed evolutionary biology, in public schools. Going with the interpretation of The Gradebook, the Discover Institute ...
acknowledged on its Evolution News & Views blog today that it provided information to Fred Cutting, the member of the standards-writing committee who recently submitted a minority…
razib | February 5, 2008The moulding of senescence by natural selection is not one of William D. Hamilton's favorite papers. In the biographical introduction he notes that both Peter Medawar & George C. Williams covered the same ground in the 1950s; a fact that he was not aware of by the time he had already invested a great deal of thought on the topic at hand. The general mathematical treatment within this paper extends the arguments of Williams in particular; but Hamilton admits that his value-add is on the margins and likely not worth the mathematical formalism which he spun out to converge upon insights…