evolution
gregladen | February 27, 2009 This barking dog is not very smart. But it could make a good Republican. The only thing harder to understand than Michele Bachmann is the Republican Party. Bachmann is hard to understand in this way: How can a person with her mind be an elected member of congress?!?!??? The Republican party is hard to understand in this way: How can a party that is trying to become more rather than less relevant keep putting Michele Bachmann on the podium in places like the National Party Convention and, most recently, at CEPAC??!?!?!?
I can't explain any of this, but I can at least redescribe the…
pharyngula | February 27, 2009
Isn't that beautiful? It's an ancient footprint in some lumpy rocks in Kenya…but it is 1½ million years old. It comes from the Koobi Fora formation, familiar to anyone who follows human evolution, and is probably from Homo ergaster. There aren't a lot of them; one series of three hominin trails containing 2-7 prints, and a stratigraphically separate section with one trail of 2 prints and an isolated single print. But there they are, a preserved record of a trivial event — a few of our remote relatives taking a walk across a mudflat by a river — rendered awesome by their rarity and the…
sa smith | February 26, 2009So these past couple of weeks Ive been writing my masters paper. The topic is basically 'What you gonna do to get your PhD?'-- Its my game-plan for the next 2-3 years.
So just out of curiosity, since Myth #7 is "Modern medicine would collapse without evolution", I wondered how many times I used 'evolution' in my paper. Excluding figures, only 12 times.
But I used 'fitness' 89 times, 'random' 8 times, 'selection' 17 times, 'recombination' 4 times, 'competition' 12 times, 'quasispecies' 45 times, 'escape'/'resistance' 16 times, and variations of 'population bottleneck' 32 times.
Oh, and '…
razib | February 26, 2009I just got pointed to Confronting Evolution's Racists Roots via my RSS. This is a common tactic. And it might work for unsophisticated people on the margins. Just like a tract like "Christianity's racist past" would also sell. Or, "Socialism's white supremacist heritage." But intellectually it's a rather low-brow tactic. The real question is: Is It True? The racism of European intellectuals and the racialist inferences made from evolutionary theory are of historical interest, but not of scientific ones. It isn't as if a tract with the title "Jesus Christ, Semitic Supremacist," would…
pharyngula | February 26, 2009
The media is getting another science story wrong. I keep seeing this discovery of an array of fossil placoderms as revealing the origins of sex, and that's not right. Sex is much, much older, and arose in single-celled organisms. Come on, plants reproduce sexually. A fish is so far removed from the time of origin of sexual reproduction that it can't tell us much about its origins.
Let's get it right. These fossils tells us about the origin of fu…uh, errm, mating in vertebrates.
What we have are a set of placoderm fossils from the Devonian (380 million years ago) of Western Australia (The…
clock | February 24, 2009Genetic Manipulation of Pest Species: Ecological and Social Challenges:
In the past 10 years major advances have been made in our ability to build transgenic pest strains that are conditionally sterile, harbor selfish genetic elements, and express anti-pathogen genes. Strategies are being developed that involve release into the environment of transgenic pest strains with such characteristics. These releases could provide more environmentally benign pest management and save endangered species, but steps must be taken to insure that this is the case and that there are no significant health or…
razib | February 24, 2009New Safety, New Concerns In Tests for Down Syndrome:
The new tests take advantage of techniques that can isolate and analyze tiny bits of genetic information from the fetus that circulate in a woman's bloodstream, in this case from cells or free-floating snippets of DNA or the related molecule RNA.
At least four companies are developing such tests, including Sequenom of San Diego, which plans to be the first on the market in June. The other companies hope to have their versions on the market within a year.
"For 50 years, folks have been working to develop a noninvasive genetic test for Down…
scientificactivist | February 22, 2009Recently, I wrote about how raising the specter of "Darwinism" as a reason for people's lack of acceptance of evolution is totally irrelevant. But, Faith in Honest Doubt now has a much more entertaining (and quantitative) metaphorical smack down of the idea. Check it out.
mikethemadbiologist | February 20, 2009One of the more promising trends I've seen is that the various forms of denialism that scientists regularly decry (including those of us here at ScienceBlogs) are starting to be recognized by non-scientists. I don't know if there's a direct cause-and-effect here, or if like-minded people are coming up with the same idea (the most depressing cause would be if this got started with a stupid blog comment...). Anyway, I bring you public policy professor Mark Kleiman (italics mine):
One largely unremarked aspect of global-warming denialism (as exemplified by George Will and demolished by Mike…
evolvingthoughts | February 20, 2009This myth says a lot about the default views of western thinking, rather like the issue of teleology.
One of the constant and incessant complaints made against Darwin by theists in particular, is that he introduced chance and purposelessness into our worldview. I don't believe in such entities as worldviews, but leave that for now: did he introduce chance, and if so, does it imply a general lack of purpose in the world?
Here are some classic examples of that complaint. From Is Darwin Right? Or, The Origin of Man in 1877, William Denton wrote:
... it has been said that those who advocate…
razib | February 19, 2009Sheril's post, Chimpanzees Are NOT Pets!, is good. She notes:
1 Chimpanzees are wild animals. Animals that make good PETS like dogs and cats, have been domesticated for [thousands] of years. There has been selection on them against aggression, which is why a dog, unlike a wolf, will not automatically tear you to pieces. Anyone who has a pet chimpanzee for long enough will eventually no longer be able to control them and will either get a body part bitten off or will have to use extreme force to control them. Chimps live to be 50 years old and grow almost as big as a human male. They have…
palmd | February 19, 2009I don't link to Pharyngula very often---our content just doesn't intersect that much, but I followed a link from today's post and had a good laugh.
You see, some comedian creationist cult leader put out a new book, and the reviews on Amazon are a real hoot. From one review:
My only disappointment with the proofs provided in this book is that my favorite, Eve, isn't listed among them. Evolution could have made her look like anything at all--like Rush Limbaugh, a big hairy wookie, or a naked mole rat for example. There's no way Adam would have tapped that. Instead, God chose to fashion one…
gregladen | February 19, 2009Diatoms are algae with hard parts. They make up a major part of the plankton found in fresh and salt water environments. Usually, diatoms exist as single celled free floating organisms, but they can also be colonies of several single cells. Their tiny little 'shells' are made up of silica (these shells are called "fustules").
The fustules have a characteristic shape that goes with each species, and since these are hard (essentially, made of glass) they are often well preserved in sediments. Thus, diatoms actually provide an excellent, even if very tiny, fossil record. In addition, since…
oracknows | February 19, 2009Unfortunately, as we have been dreading for the last four months or so since her relapse was diagnosed, my mother-in-law passed away from breast cancer in hospice. She died peacefully, with my wife and the rest of her family at her side. As you might expect, I do not much feel like blogging, and even if I did my wife needs me more. Because I foresaw this coming, however, I do have a series of "Best of" reposts lined up. If you've been reading less than a year or two, they're new to you. If not, I hope you enjoy them again. I don't know when I'll be back, other than maybe a brief update or two…
evolvingthoughts | February 19, 2009This myth has more to do with what people thought their own views contrasted to, than anything Darwin said, but like all myths, there's a hint of truth underlying it.
The problem with this myth is the ambiguity of the term "gradual". It is a weasel word, which can mean one thing at one point and another when the first meaning has no purchase. This is referred to the fallacy of ambiguity in logic: when attacking terms in science, one must make sure the terms stay the same form beginning to end.
"Gradual" can mean one or more of the following things:
Steady: the rate of change is constant…
hrynyshyn | February 18, 2009There's bound to be some fuss over a new film scheduled for release later this year. Creation follows Charles Darwin as he ponders whether to write On the Origin of Species. Sounds like a great subject, but there are some worrying signs. PZ Myers, for example, doesn't like the producers' decision to include the ghost of Darwin's daughter, unless it's just as a hallucination. I'm more concerned about the main theme, which, according to the film's Facebook page is:
What happens when a world-renowned scientist, crushed by the loss of his eldest daughter, conceives a book which will prove the non…
pharyngula | February 18, 2009When a milestone in the Neandertal genome project was announced last week, I was a little underwhelmed. Too much PR and too little information, I thought. Anyway, John Hawks has a summary, and if it's a little thin on specifics right now, at least he does a better job of explaining why this work is potentially very exciting.
pharyngula | February 18, 2009I've never liked this stereotypical portrayal of evolution.
It implies that evolution is linear, that it is going somewhere, and of course, that it is all about people — all the wrong messages. Yet it is ubiquitous, and probably the most common rendering you'll find anywhere. Try googling for images of evolution, and you will turn it up, or variants on it, or jokes built on it…it's a bit annoying and trite.
(Although, when I googled to find that image — which was easy — I also found this one.
(Click for larger image)
Very nice. I like it.)
This is actually a problem. When we're trying to get…
evolvingthoughts | February 17, 2009Once upon a time, I made mention, simply a mention, of a paper by one Matts Envall, which I said I would later comment on. I did so because a friend of mine, Malte Ebach, told me about him and the paper. I have yet to appropriately thank Malte. My gratitude involves a water balloon, I think.
This alone was the trigger for Envall to come along to my blog and start comment bombing. I have in my spam folder over 350 comments, most of which are cut and paste. Independently of his views, of which more anon, his behaviour - spamming, using fake email addresses and changing IP numbers to avoid bans…
evolvingthoughts | February 16, 2009I finally have internet - only took Primus three weeks to install and get working my internet and phone - and that was with an existing account and line!
Tonight I went to the opening of a Thomas Henry Huxley exhibit at the Macleay Museum, and Michael Ruse gave an excellent talk on Tom and his Sydney connection (his wife Nettie came from Sydney and THH himself spent a fair bit of time here and up north on the HMS Rattlesnake). Then a nice Thai dinner and talk, although (you may be surprised to learn) I spent a lot of time just listening. Ruse and Paul Griffiths at the same table made for…