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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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As an active Humanist for almost fifty years, I am astonished at the wild statements of LaHaye and Wine. Humanists have unfortunately remained a minority in the United States. The American Humanist Association has never had more than 6,000 members, and that number at present is approximately 3,000. The AHA has no more than half a hundred small chapters throughout the country. Of course, there is quite a large number of Humanists who do not belong to the AHA, and multitudes more who do not realize they are Humanists and multitudes more who do not even know the word. Our philosophy (or religion) does wield considerable does wield considerable influence throughout the civilized world; Humanists would indeed rejoice if it possessed the powers ascribed to it by the Moral Majority.

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Another timeline

Category: Science
Posted on: April 17, 2006 7:12 AM, by PZ Myers

Here's an interactive timeline that has it all: animated critters go strolling across the screen, there is a graph of oxygen concentration, and you can watch the continents slip and slide around the globe as you drag an arrow around the timeline. You'll want a big monitor to display this on—it gets cluttered at times.

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Comments

Posted by: apalazzo | April 17, 2006 7:23 AM

I've always wanted one of these.

Posted by: coturnix | April 17, 2006 7:33 AM

Ooooh! This is so nicely done!

Posted by: Mike Fox | April 17, 2006 8:02 AM

Someone hasn't heard of logrithmic scales... (yeah, I'm a cynic - but it's Monday)

Posted by: Scott Belyea | April 17, 2006 8:20 AM

Very nice. However, I notice that it uses labels such as "Age of Mammals." I'd thought that such labels had fallen out of fashion these days as being overly simplistic and potentially (or actually) misleading.

Posted by: Kristjan Wager | April 17, 2006 9:20 AM

It doesn't work for me. Annoying. I will see if I can get it to work when I'm at work tomorrow.

Posted by: Manson's Cellmate | April 17, 2006 9:26 AM

Nice idea, but the microscopic text is unreadable.

Posted by: PZ Myers | April 17, 2006 9:33 AM

Like I said -- you need a BIG monitor for it to look good.

Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | April 17, 2006 9:34 AM

The link given produces only a black page with a small gray bar and no options for clicking, scrolling, etc, using any of three browsers (Firefox, Opera, Safari) on my Mac. :-P

Posted by: Alon Levy | April 17, 2006 9:39 AM

I got the same thing Pierce did. I got a little bit of activity by right-clicking and repeatedly pressing "Forward," but then I only got the animated critters and the map, without the text, arrow, or oxygen concentrations.

#10

Posted by: antid_oto | April 17, 2006 9:47 AM

Only one quibble: it claims the "first fossils" appear at the beginning of the Cambrian. What are we supposed to call the pre-Cambrian impressions in rock left by soft-bodied organisms? There are filaments of blue-green algae preserved in rock from 3.5 billion years ago.

#11

Posted by: skblllzzzz | April 17, 2006 10:19 AM

Safari is cool here (latest OSX on PB17").

#12

Posted by: Tim | April 17, 2006 10:37 AM

If you like this you will love John Kyrk's other bio-animations.
http://www.johnkyrk.com/

#13

Posted by: Jason | April 17, 2006 10:51 AM

I've heard from others that have had trouble with this particular flash video that updating to the latest version manually at Macromedia's site may help.
That being said, it didn't help me. I still just see the same black screen that Pierce describes (Ubuntu/Firefox)

#14

Posted by: Roy S | April 17, 2006 11:14 AM

Your problem may be that the latest version of Flash (8) is later than the latest version of Flash for Linux (7) - and in general Flash 7 will open Flash 8 files but may not render them correctly. I don't know that this site is such an offender, but I wouldn't be surprised.

#15

Posted by: ben | April 17, 2006 11:52 AM

There's a little red arrow slider on the left side of the screen. You can drag it with the mouse. It's easy to miss if you don't have a BIG monitor; that's probably the trouble most of you are having.

#16

Posted by: TheSquire | April 17, 2006 12:57 PM

It claims mitochondria developed from chloroplasts. Ugh.

It also goes by the false prokaryote/eukaryote division, rather than deal with the early origins of the three domains.

#17

Posted by: dAVE | April 17, 2006 3:44 PM

I think the atmospheric oxygen concentration graph may be out of date as well. A couple of months ago I read in Science News that said that it had been as high as 30 something percent during the Permian? (I think) anyway when there were big-ass dragonflies.

#18

Posted by: dbpitt | April 17, 2006 8:27 PM

Wow. It educates and gives children ADD at the same time.

#19

Posted by: James R | April 18, 2006 1:02 AM

I downloaded an activex and it works. Beautiful work. Great job.