evolution
loom | January 5, 2006
As the proud owner of a fine cat, Tino, I'm happy to join the ritual of cat-blogging. I was inspired after reading a new study that sorts out Tino's kinship with other cats. Now I know that a cheetah is more closely related to Tino than it is to a leopard (right and left, respectively).
The evolution of cats has been a tough nut to crack. While it's no great mental feat to tell the difference between Tino and a tiger, it's not so easy to figure out exactly which species are most closely related to domesticated cats and which are more distant relatives. The oldest cat-like fossils date…
loom | January 2, 2006I have an article in tomorrow's New York Times on a provocative theory about our origins. Humans, other animals, plants, fungi, and protozoans are all eukaryotes. We all share a distinctive genome compared to other organisms (prokaryotes, which include bacteria and archaea). Our genes are more versatile: they can be switched on an off in more complex patterns than in prokaryotes, and one gene can make many different proteins, depending on which parts of the gene our cells look at. Some scientists would like to say that this distinctiveness must be the product of natural selection. But Michael…
loom | January 1, 2006I'll be in Ann Arbor for a talk on January 14 at the natural history museum in conjunction with the opening of the "Explore Evolution" exhibit there. I'll talk about reporting on new research in evolutionary biology. Here are the details.
stcynic | December 28, 2005James Q. Wilson has a terrific op-ed piece about evolution, ID and the nature of science in the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps the most important part of the column is a section about the meaning of the word "theory". This is by no means a revolutionary passage, but the colloquial meaning of the word is so pervasive that it cannot be repeated often enough:
Some people will disagree with his view, arguing that evolution is a "theory" and intelligent design is a "theory," so students should look at both theories.
But this view confuses the meaning of the word "theory." In science, a theory states…
loom | December 28, 2005Why is it that politicians who say they want to strengthen science teaching standards can sound so post-modern about science? Two examples:
1. John McCain grooving with the kids on MTV about evolution:
"I see no reason why students should not be exposed to all theories, recognizing that Darwin's theory's certainly one that is generally accepted in most of the scientific community. I think it's not inappropriate to say there are also people who believe this. Let the student decide." [Emphasis mine]
Okay students, we've spent our science class this year learning all theories about the universe…
loom | December 25, 2005If you could travel back to Spain about ten million years ago, you'd have no end of animals to watch, from apes to bear-dogs to saber-tooth tigers. With so many creatures jockeying for your attention (and perhaps chasing you down for lunch), you might well miss the creature shown here. Simocyon batalleri was roughly the size and shape of a puma, although its face looked more like a raccoon's. If anything were to draw your attention to Simocyon, it would probably be the animal's gift for climbing trees. Most big carnivorous mammals of the time were restricted to the ground; some may have been…
kvicklund | December 21, 2005In looking for reactions to yesterday's ruling from legal scholars, I found this post on a Federalist Society blog by someone named P.A. Madison. The arguments, which run the gamut from the false to the downright silly, would make a great exam answer for my buddy Dan Ray to grade. I can almost see him shaking his head and getting out his red pen. He begins:
I cannot say I am surprised by the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District ruling handed down by U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III, but as always, surprised how such cases are so easily seen as a federal issue. The ruling as usual is…
loom | December 21, 2005In October I wrote about the latest ideas about the evolution of autumn colors. The paper is now out.
loom | December 21, 2005When Judge John E. Jones III issued his decision in the Dover creationism trial on Tuesday, I downloaded the document with a vague sense of dread. It wasn't just that the decision was 139 pages long. I knew that Judge Jones had ruled that teaching intelligent design was unconstitutional, but I was worried that he might have accepted that it was anything but a warmed-over form of creationism.
Months of media coverage of the trial had nurtured my dread. Again and again, reporters felt an obligation to give "equal time" to intelligent design advocates, without feeling an equal obligation to…
loom | December 20, 2005Judge Rules Against 'Intelligent Design'
Initial reaction: what a relief. Once I have a chance to read the decision, I'll have something vaguely more insightful to say...
Update: Oy. The decision turns out to be 139 pages. PDF here.
Update, 11:30 am: Okay, I've had a chance to give it a quick read, and while I'm not a lawyer, it seems to me like a pretty overwhelming decision. It didn't just focus on the school board's activities but demolished the entire project of intelligent design. For a legal document, it had some quite stirring passages, which I've excerpted here:
p 24: we conclude that…
loom | December 15, 2005Blunt talk from L. Lynn Hogue, conservative law professor from Georgia via law.com. Hogue has signed an amicus brief in the Georgia textbook sticker case supporting the removal of the anti-evolution disclaimers. "I'm not religiously sympathetic to anti-evolutionists, who I think are lunatics." Professor Hogue, please drop a line to the President.
loom | December 12, 2005There are few things as fascinating to me as the question of how our ancestors evolved from small-brained, tree-dwelling apes. But sometimes it all can feel a bit abstract. After all, we're talking about things that happened six million years ago. Recently, though, I had a weird experience that brought our evolutionary history smack into my face. Some Yale psychologists came to my daughter Charlotte's pre-school looking for volunteers for a study that would compare how children and young chimpanzees learn. It turns out that chimpanzees can be a lot more logical than children, Charlotte…
jlynch | December 6, 2005Michael Rose has been working on the problem of senescence (why organisms age) since the 1970’s. Today’s NYT Science Times carries an interview with him.
Q. You are an evolutionary biologist by profession. As a researcher trained mostly in Canada and England, are you astonished by the American battles over Darwinism?
A. Not since coming to California. In 1987, the first day I ever gave a class at Irvine, there was a riot in my classroom. I was introducing the basic principles of evolution, and pandemonium broke out - yelling, students pounding the tables. That was the day I learned about…
loom | December 6, 2005Over the weekend I was part of a panel at the American Anthropology Association, the topic of which was "Updating Human Evolution." I got to listen to ten presentations by scientists, each offering a look at how our understanding of our ancestry is changing with new research. While they were all interesting, I was particularly eager to hear one: Alan Templeton of Washington University. Templeton. Having just finished a book about human evolution, I knew that Templeton has been doing some groundbreaking work to figure out what our DNA has to say about our evolutionary history. I was looking…
loom | December 1, 2005I've been asked to review a couple books about global warming. Climate change and evolution, which I mainly write about, are intimately related, since life is a potent source of greenhouse gases (methane from bacteria, etc.) and abrupt climate change has triggered profound changes in the biosphere. This assignment has me taking a particularly close look to all the new research and political news emerging these days.
And I'm getting a funny sense of deja vu.
Those who pay close attention to the work of creationists know that they have a penchant for quote mining--for snipping out a passage…
loom | December 1, 2005Light blogging this week is due to my frantic fragment of a week, returning from Thanksgiving and preparing to head down to DC to participate on a panel at the American Anthropological Association. The panel is called "Updating Human Evolution: Bringing Anthropological and Public Coneceptions into Contemporary Perspective," and will take place Saturday afternoon starting at 1:45 pm. Ten anthropologists are going to talk about new advances in our understanding of human evolution, from humans as prey to the evolution of the sexes. (You can find the full line up here. Search the pdf for the…
loom | November 29, 2005Writing about paleontology without illustrations is like directing a movie without a camera. When I wrote my first book, At the Water's Edge, I had the good fortune to join forces with Carl Buell, who brought walking whales and fish with fingers to life. Now he has come to the other side, with a blog of his own, complete with pictures. Check it out.
loom | November 27, 2005Natural selection is not natural perfection. Time and again, biologists have discovered traits that are both beneficial and harmful. Perhaps the most famous example is the devastating disorder known as sickle-cell anemia. To get sickle-cell anemia, you have to inherit two faulty copies of a gene that helps build hemoglobin, the molecule that traps oxygen in red blood cells. In this condition, hemoglobin can't hold its shape if it's not clamped around oxygen. Without it, the defective hemoglobin collapses into needle-shaped clumps, which then turn the cell itself into a sickle shape. The…
loom | November 21, 2005Back in February I discovered the remarkable work of Australian biologist Bryan Grieg Fry, who has been tracing the evolution of venom. As I wrote in the New York Times, he searched the genomes of snakes for venom genes. He discovered that even non-venomous snakes produce venom. By drawing an evolutionary tree of the venom genes, Fry showed that the common ancestor of living snakes had several kinds of venom, which had evolved through accidental "borrowing" of proteins produced in other parts of the body. Later, these genes duplicated to create a sophisticated cocktail of venoms--a cocktail…
stcynic | November 18, 2005Here's an unusual couple of stories, coincidentally brought to my attention within days of each other but apparently unrelated. The first is that a brewing company in Utah, irritated by Sen. Buttars' attempts to weaken science education in that state by attacking evolution, has renamed one of its brews "Evolution Amber Ale":
Wasatch Beers is changing the label on its 2002 Unofficial Amber Ale -- a title that once raised a ruckus with Olympic officials -- to "Evolution Amber Ale."
The company says the change is inspired by Utah legislators and the debate here and nationally over whether public…