evolution
clock | February 12, 2007[Moved to the top of the page. First posted at 1:43am]
Last year, I collected the links to notable posts about Darwin Day and posted them here. That was fun, so I decided to do it again.
I checked the Technorati and Google Blogsearch and took my picks that you can see below. I will update this post several times today and move the post to the top in the evening. If you want your post to appear here, please e-mail me at: Coturnix AT gmail DOT com.
Also, later today, I will update this post with a special announcement (pending the approval by the person in question) - naming the winner of…
clock | February 12, 2007Way back when, while I was still an active grad student, I was a student representative on the departmental seminar committee for about four years (going through four faculty members rotating through the position). So, I pushed for a Darwin Day seminar - inviting someone to give a talk that is not all about data, a historian or philosopher, for instance.
So, I managed to get Bob Brandon, from the Philosophy Departament at Duke one year. He talked about multi-level selection, which was great introduction to a couple of more speakers (including David Sloan Wilson himself - that was one of my…
grrlscientist | February 12, 2007
Click for larger image in its own window.
This picture is a visualisation of the entire tree of life. The tree of life (cellular organisms) has three main branches;
The bacteria (unicellular organisms that lack a nucleus) which are in focus in this picture and represented by orange nodes.
The archaea are probably more closely related to the eukaryotes than they are to the bacteria even though they lack a cell nucleus and represent some of the most extreme forms of life on earth. They are represented by red nodes and near the top and in the background of the picture.
The eukarya (all…
neurotopia | February 12, 2007It's official! In honor of Darwin Day celebrations everywhere, the Alliance for Science is having their first annual Evolution Essay contest! This year's question: Why would you want your doctor to have studied evolution?
Pop on over for contest details, if you're a high school student. First prize is $300, Second is $200, etc. Plus there are a lot of autographed books on evolution that you can win!!! Teachers, prompt your students. If yours wins you get $250 towards lab supplies! Students, submit something! For 1000 words you can buy a semester's worth of books in college, or make a…
cmooney | February 12, 2007
It's Darwin Day, and while I'm not closely involved in any of the stuff taking place around the country this year, I do have a very strong recommendation about how to celebrate: Go and check out one of the many Flock of Dodos screenings that are occurring. And watch the trailer on YouTube to get yourself psyched up.
In Flock of Dodos, Randy Olson has produced a brilliant and funny film which highlights a critical issue that's become an increasing interest of mine: Why do scientists and their defenders, despite being so fricken smart, nevertheless fail to communicate their knowledge (on…
razib | February 12, 2007When I was in 7th grade a school psychologist tested & interviewed me for the gifted program. During the knowledge section he asked me to describe Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. I am pretty sure that my response was rather garbled, I don't personally think I really understood evolution until late in 2003, nevertheless, after repeating the standard mantra of change over time generated by the process of survival of the fittest the psychologist paused and smiled at me. He stated that "That's the first time ever that any student has responded to that question in a coherent manner…
clock | February 12, 2007 This post is a modification from two papers written for two different classes in History of Science, back in 1995 and 1998. It is a part of a four-post series on Darwin and clocks. I first posted it here on December 02, 2004 and then again here on January 06, 2005:
II. Darwin on Time
There is a season for everything
And a time for every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die:
A time to plant and a time to reap.... (Ecclesiastes)
In this section I will attempt to evaluate from Darwin's writings what he thought about the selective role of environmental periodicities…
clock | February 12, 2007OK, this is really ancient. It started as my written prelims (various answers to various questions by different committeee members) back in November 1999, and even included some graphs I drew. Then I put some of that stuff together (mix and match, copy and paste) and posted (sans graphs) as a four-part post here, here, here and here on December 2004. Then I re-posted it in January 2005 (here, here, here and here). Finally, I reposted two of the four parts here on this blog (Part 2 and Part 3) in July 2006.
This all means that all this is quite out of date. The world has moved on, more…
cmooney | February 12, 2007
I don't know if I ever disclosed this, but...back before I knew I was doing Storm World, I was seriously contemplating writing a narrative account of the Dover evolution trial for my second book. Now, well, I'm kinda glad I didn't. You see, there are not one, not two, but three books in the hopper about the subject, the first of which is already out. They are: The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything: Evolution, Intelligent Design, and a School Board in Dover, PA, by Gordy Slack; 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, Oxycontin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania,…
evolvingthoughts | February 11, 2007
One of the ironies of the history of biology is that Darwin did not really explain the origin of new species in The Origin of Species, because he didn’t know how to define a species. [Futuyma 1983: 152]
Comments like Futuyma's have been published in scores of textbooks and repeated ad nauseum. Similar criticisms go back to the 19th century, and in my view, they are totally wrong.
Charles Darwin was a student of some of the best geologists and naturalists in Britain at the time, when geology and natural history were regarded as being similar if not identical topics. When he set off on the…
jlynch | February 11, 2007 As most readers are no doubt aware, Charles Robert Darwin, the discover of descent with modification by means of natural selection, was born on this day in 1809. It is probably safe to say that the science blogosphere will be jam packed with posts in Darwin and his ideas and meatspace will be hosting various "Darwin Day" activities.
For my part, I will be introducing Darwin's ideas to my Origins, Evolution & Creation class this afternoon before we sit down to watch the PBS documentary "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" from the 2001 Evolution mini-series.
Rather than waxing poetically about…
mikethemadbiologist | February 10, 2007While I'm away, here's a post in the spirit of the "basic concepts in science" thingee that's been floating around ScienceBlogs.
I received an email about a recent post that asked why pesticide resistance in insects isn't an instance of artificial selection as opposed to natural selection. The difference between artificial selection and natural selection isn't that the selective agent (e.g., pesticides) is a result of human activity. The difference is in what determines what is the 'fittest': a person's decision as to what traits are preferable, or differential survival and reproduction.…
jrosenhouse | February 9, 2007American Society for Microbiology has now issued this statement in support of evolution and against intelligent design:
Knowledge of the microbial world is essential to understanding the evolution of life on Earth. The characteristics of microorganisms--small size, rapid reproduction, mobility, and facility in exchanging genetic information--allow them to adapt rapidly to environmental influences. In microbiology, the validity of evolutionary principles is supported by [1] readily demonstrated mutation, recombination and selection, which are the fundamental mechanisms of evolution; [2]…
pharyngula | February 9, 2007I'm going to have to visit the American Museum of Natural History and see the
new permanent exhibit on human origins. It sounds very good; they've done something I try to do in some of my talks on evolution, splitting it between the more easily comprehended, sexy stuff of fossils and reconstructions and the more abstract and more recent material on molecular biology and genetics. There's an oft-told myth among the creationists that evolution is dying, but it's precisely that explosion of new information we're gaining from molecular approaches that has been revitalizing the research for some…
clock | February 8, 2007I and the Bird #42 is up on Neurophilosophy blog. Beautiful rendition, formatted like Charles Darwin's diaries from the "Beagle", which - the ship, I mean - as you know (Day 8), is planned to be rebuilt and sailed again, but only if you help.
neurotopia | February 8, 2007Darwin Day is fast approaching! In honor of Charles Darwin's birthday and his intellectual achievements, the Alliance for Science is starting an annual Darwin Day essay contest geared at high school students. We will be accepting essays from the 50 states, submissions sent by email. There will be cash prizes for the top entries, magazine subscriptions, and numerous signed books on evolution, creationism, or other relevant topics in biology available as prizes. Teachers, if your student is the winner then we will also kick in some money for your science labs.
Now here's the kicker: we don…
loom | February 7, 2007The latest joy from the Discovery Institute: an attempt to make dodos look scary.
oracknows | February 7, 2007I happen to be in Phoenix today, attending the Academic Surgical Congress, where I actually have to present one of my abstracts. That means, between flying to Phoenix last night and preparing for my talk, I didn't have time to serve up a heapin' helping of that Respectful Insolence⢠you know and (hopefully) love. Fortunately, there's still a lot of stuff in the vaults of the old blog begging to be moved over to the new blog; so that's what I'll do today. I'll probably be back tomorrow, given that the conference will likely produce blog fodder. (Conferences usually do.) And, don't worry.…
loom | February 7, 2007There are six and a half billion human stomachs on this little planet of ours, and over half of them are home to a microbe called Helicobacter pylori. Scientists have known about the bacteria since the late 1800s, but it wasn't until the 1980s that Australian doctors noticed that H. pylori was in the stomachs of just about everyone with an ulcer. A swig of antibiotics turned out to be a great way to make ulcers disappear. Scientists have since demonstrated that H. pylori strikes up an uneasy truce with its human hosts. In most cases, H. pylori lives amicably in our stomachs. When the truce…
clock | February 7, 2007Two years (January 28, 2005) have passed, but I am still not sure what the correct answer to this question is:
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( Image: Sexism and Creationism , thanks All-Knowing Orac)
Previously, I have made a comparison between the challenges facing the reality-based community in politics and the challenges facing the reality-based community in science (some of it perhaps related to the underlying idea of the image above). Not everyone appeared to have liked it, as this guy who is "a mathematician, a libertarian, and a science-fiction fan" wrote this in response. I…