evolution
gregladen | January 12, 2009Homeschool Showcase (Formerly The Carnival of Cool Homeschoolers) #15 is up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. I've got an item listed in the carnival, which is typical (I often send potentially useful science content material to the homeschooling carnivals.)
While you're studying Earth science, you may want to check out Nature's Evolutionary Gems posted by Greg Laden at Greg Laden's Blog. It's up to you whether you use it to teach evolution as fact or as a teachable moment as you discuss God's creation. I know how we'll be using it. ;-)
Wink wink indeed!
jwhitfield | January 12, 2009
Man, this guy didn't know anything.
I don't mean that as an insult. Darwin, as he admits, knew almost nothing about inheritance, about how variation is produced, or about the origins and history of domesticated plants and animals. You'd think that would be a handicap in using domestication as an analogy for evolution.
And yet, in chapter 1 of the Origin, 'Variation Under Domestication', Darwin uses what little knowledge he has so deftly that nowhere do you feel his conclusions are outstripping his data. This, believe me, is quite a skill, both in a scientist and a writer. What, he asks, is…
gregladen | January 11, 2009One of the most interesting and exciting stories in science is that of the Younger Dryas. The Younger Dryas was a climate event that had important effects on human history, and that has been reasonably linked to some of our most important cultural changes, and ultimately some evolutionary changes as well. That is one reason why it is interesting. In addition, the Younger Dryas was a pretty big deal ... a climate change or something like a climate change that caused massive changes all around the earth, and fairly recently. But the cause of the Younger Dryas is at present unknown, although…
pharyngula | January 11, 2009
We're one step closer to self-sustaining chemical replicators, similar to what would have existed a few billion years ago, before true cells evolved. Lincoln and Joyce have created a couple of relatively simple molecules that assemble themselves from even simpler precursors in a test tube.
It's not as straightforward as the simplest scheme one might imagine. The simplest model would be for a single enzyme, E, to catalyze its own assembly from two smaller precursors, A and B. This formula would lead to a test tube full of A and B to be quickly converted to a test tube full of nearly nothing…
grrlscientist | January 11, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and enjoyment. Below the fold is this week's issue of The Birdbooker Report which…
jwhitfield | January 9, 2009Among the small thrills of encountering canonical works for the first time - Homer, say, or the King James Bible, or Star Wars - are the moments when you come across some turn of phrase so well-used it has been worn flat into the surface of everyday speech and think: so that's where that comes from. I'm thinking that the same might be true of the Origin, but in a different way.
For example, what's the first living thing that Darwin names? Turns out it's "the woodpecker, with its feet, tail, beak and tongue so admirably adapted to catch insects under the bark of trees".
This got me thinking…
jwhitfield | January 7, 2009Hi! My name is John. I've got a PhD in evolutionary biology, and I've spent much of the past decade writing about evolutionary ideas, as applied to everything from literary criticism, to language, to anti-terror policy, and even on occasion to biology. And I've got a confession - I've never read the Origin of Species.
Do I shock you? Good.
I am not proud of this (really, I'm not), but if my professional life has been less stellar than it might have been, it's not for want of reading Darwin. Here's why. Darwin was working at the dawn of biology. He had none of the specialist knowledge and…
razib | January 7, 2009The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, has a website up, http://the10000yearexplosion.com. If there is an accelerating wave of media coverage that would probably be the place to track it....
clock | January 7, 2009
From Blog For Darwin:
February 12th-15th, 2009 participating bloggers around the world will be celebrating the bicentenary of Charles Darwin's birth (February 12th, 1809) with a BLOG SWARM, in which posts will be aggregated on BLOG FOR DARWIN to be kept as a resource for educators, students, and others.
CLICK HERE or read below to learn how you can participate!
Yes, there's a month left, but I hope you participate.
razib | January 7, 2009Over at Gene Expression Classic there has been discussion of a new paper elucidating exactly how blind cavefish become depigmented. Please read the comments, as there's a lot of good discussion on evolutionary genetic parameters....
evolvingthoughts | January 7, 2009I'm away from what serves as my computer these days for a while - off to Sydney to find a place to live. Also, the Seed Masters (whom I for one welcome) are upgrading Moveable Type from 3 to 4, so we can't blog for a few days anyway. But I would like to announce that my paper with Gareth J. Nelson on a possible precursor to punctuated equilibrium and the biological species concept, Pierre Trémaux, has been published in the journal History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences. The full details are:
Wilkins, John S., and Gareth J. Nelson. 2008. Trémaux on species: A theory of allopatric…
evolvingthoughts | January 6, 2009I make no secret that I admire Darwin as a historical figure very much, but I recently submitted a paper for an open access journal for science teachers at secondary level named Resonance, entitled "Not Saint Darwin". I was motivated by some of the rather uncritical, unhistorical and unnecessary examples of Darwin worship, and its obverse, Darwin demonisation. Here are some examples.
Darwin worship:
Charles Darwin was crazy about dinosaurs (MSNBC) [He also liked roast beef]
Yale Center for British Art to Present Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts (Artdaily.org…
gregladen | January 6, 2009It turns out that a recently discovered population of land iguanas on the Galapagos is probably a new species that represents the basal (original) form of Galapagos land iguana. Moreover, this iguana is found in an unexpected place, according to a paper just coming out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
And it's pink.
In 1984, Hickmann and Lipps said the following about the various pieces of evidence giving age estimates for the Galapagos islands:
... all are less than about 2 million years old. This age, together with independently determined geologic ages,…
pharyngula | January 6, 2009Those Brits keep showing us up by unashamedly trumpeting good science on television and radio. The BBC has a whole collection of media on Darwin right now, most of it good.
Most. One thing I simply do not get is the infatuation with the idea that evolution has stopped for humans. I am baffled at how anyone can take such an idea seriously, yet there's Steven Jones again making this peculiar claim.
jlynch | January 5, 2009
Ed reports on a putative new species of iguana that has been found on the Galapagos archipelago. Darwin saw two species (one marine and one land). We now have two additional land species, the Barrington land iguana Conolophus pallidus and this new one which is found only Volcan Wolf, the northernmost volcano of Isabela Island.
Paper is in press with PNAS (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0806339106).
edyong | January 5, 2009
One hundred and seventy-four years ago, Charles Darwin first set foot on the Galapagos Islands aboard the Beagle. Since then, the islands and the unique species they house have been a source of inspiration for many an evolutionary biologist. Even so, it is gratifying to see that even now, on the bicentennial of Darwin's birth, the Galapagos have not yet finished yielding their secrets.
During Darwin's five-week stint on the Galapagos, he observed two types of iguana. One was a marine version that, uniquely for lizards, swam and fed in the ocean, and the other was a cactus-eating landlubber…
clock | January 4, 20092009 is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species, so a lot of organizations are going full steam in promoting science, evolution and the history of science this year. Here are some of the examples:
The New Scientist has published Darwin's dangerous idea: Top 10 evolution articles (see Larry for some commentary).
Nature is ready for the celebration with a special page - Darwin 200 - collecting all the articles. Check out the most recent one - 15 evolutionary gems (pdf)
Over on The Loom - a three-part interview with Ken Miller…
grrlscientist | January 4, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and enjoyment. Below the fold is this week's issue of The Birdbooker Report which…