Learn more about Charles Darwin and his work.
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Lean more about lions
A few must read posts from nearby points in the blogosphere:
Elitism vs Anti-elitism at Corpus Callosum- In politics, there is a long history of us-versus-them-ism. In the 2004 elections, this was used effectively, when certain persons got everyone all riled up about the spectre of gay marriage, which was sold to the public as a threat to heterosexual marriage. It worked; it got people to vote, and it may have swung the election. This year, it is illegal immigration.
- Orgel's Second Rule and "unbeatable" predation tactics at Genomicron
- Leslie Orgel, who passed away a few weeks ago, was an accomplished thinker who explored some of the biggest questions in biology, including the origin of life itself. He was also a co-author, with Francis Crick, of one of the two key "selfish DNA" papers that critiqued the tendency among many authors to assume without evidence that all non-coding DNA is functional at the organismal level. But he is perhaps best remembered for Orgel's Rules.
The modern Stone Age family at Very Remote- The Boston Globe has a feature entitled 'Stone Age Feminism?' (I have to wonder if they had a contest with CNN for the lamest spin on Stone Age news) which talks about how recent discoveries about Neanderthals (FOXP2, 'red hair', extension of their range to Siberia, etc.) may articulate with the argument put forth last year by Kuhn & Stiner (2006) that sexual division of labor was largely absent among Neanderthals. Some people have blogged about this (here and here), just as other have offered more thoughts about the 'spin' or 'framing' put on some of the recent genetic papers (here for FOXP2, here for MC1R). I'm not an anthropological geneticist, so I won't talk about those studies any more than I already have.
- Weekly WTF: \u201cA spider made me kidnap you\u201d at Bug Girl
- A weird (and despicable) version of the "Twinkie Defense": A guy kidnaps and rapes a women, and claims that a funnel-web spider bite made him sick enough to do it.
- Strong female role models do little girls no favor a Pharyngula
- Hey, you -- you look really stupid with your jaw gaping open like that.... That was a little preemptive scorn to get you to prep yourself for this link: it's a fellow complaining about women working as astronauts (and even commanders of the space shuttle!) inspiring little girls to emulate them and ending up throwing pampers and pepper (?) at each other.
