laelaps | January 15, 2009I'm about to enter the Spring 2009 semester, a term that will probably be one of the most difficult I have ever faced. (For me, at least, the fall semester is always good and the spring is invariably wretched.) What has made it worse is the fact that I am required to shell out $60 for a course packet for one of my courses. Chad has recently written about the difficulties surrounding high-priced textbooks, but this is a little different. This is not a textbook, but a specially-selected collection of papers and articles assembled by the professors that could very easily be made available on the…
laelaps | January 14, 2009
Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
laelaps | January 14, 2009
In considering the history of science, it is easy to think of scientific discovery and debate as distinct from the rest of culture. Academics picked away at fossils and squinted at the eyepieces of microscopes in isolation, and only in exceptional cases did science jump the cultural barrier to challenge cherished beliefs. This is nonsense, and even though arguments over scientific minutiae may have been restricted to journals and learned societies, there have been many times when scientific discoveries have stirred great public interest.
One way to get at the interaction between science…
laelaps | January 13, 2009
A California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
laelaps | January 13, 2009
So this is it; the Darwin Year. From blogs to books and lectures, lots of people are going to be talking about Charles Darwin and his scientific legacy. It was the same in 1909. (Alright, they didn't have blogs, but you know what I mean.) Lectures were delivered, books were published, and monuments were erected to commemorate Darwin. You would think that some of these signs of homage would have some permanence, but while we are still talking about Darwin the tributes made to him have largely faded away.
Take, for example, the establishment of the 1909 Darwin Celebration at the American…
laelaps | January 12, 2009
Tell him you're cutting funding. (Photographed at the Bronx Zoo).
In a given year it is not unusual for me to visit the Bronx Zoo or other WCS-run parks a half dozen times or more. They are some of my favorite places to go, and I have taken thousands of photographs of the well-kept menagerie that the organization supports. Given the number of people I see at these parks during the year I know many other people enjoy them as much as I do.
That's why I was shocked to learn that New York's governor is planning to cut state funding for the zoological parks by 55% this year and eliminate state…
laelaps | January 11, 2009
A Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
laelaps | January 11, 2009Frank Peretti's book Monster was bad, but the recently-aired SciFi Channel movie Monster Ark is worse. Not that SciFi original movies inspire much hope in me in the first place (they are better for riffing on than anything else) but I simply have no words to fully convey how atrociously bad Monster Ark is. It is best left to speak for itself, as in this clip excerpted on the cable show "The Soup";
The storyline involves a team of archaeologists that find a previously unknown story about another ark Noah had built to trap an ancient evil. They find this ark and, not ones to buck convention…
laelaps | January 9, 2009
John Daniel the gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the American Museum of Natural History.
laelaps | January 8, 2009
A mass of tusks, teeth, and bones. From William Buckland's Reliquiae diluvianae.
The problem with a lot of folks tapped as "authorities" on Charles Darwin is that they don't seem to know much about history. We assume that eminent evolutionary biologists and vocal personalities in the creation/evolution public controversy have a firm grasp of the context and content of Darwin's work, but they often do not. I would much rather hear what Janet Browne, Adrian Desmond, or Martin Rudwick have to say about Victorian science than E.O. Wilson, James Watson, or Richard Dawkins. (Stephen Jay Gould…
laelaps | January 8, 2009
Just because I have not been writing much here doesn't mean I have not been writing. This week I have devoted most of my energy to tidying up the chapter of my book on human evolution, and I am pleased to say that it is now practically complete.
The chapter, as it is now, stretches about 41 pages long. I asked my wife to read it and tell me what I could cut out or compress, but she told me she could not think of anything. I will give it one more round of editing, but it is unavoidable that this will be the longest chapter in the book. It is not meant to be a summary of everything you need to…
laelaps | January 6, 2009I knew it would happen someday; someone has found one of my photographs, captioned it, and posted it to icanhascheezburger.com. I stumbled across it while flipping through the "Upcoming" section.
see more crazy cat pics
I took that photo in August of 2006 at the Animal Kingdom Pet Store & Zoo (it's about as crummy as it sounds). For anyone interested in captioning more pictures, I think some of my recent sea lion pictures are good candidates (like this one, or this one). Just don't say you "dunno source."
laelaps | January 5, 2009
A California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
laelaps | January 5, 2009
I'm a little late to the game on this tidbit, but in case you haven't heard, please welcome the newest addition to the Sb family, Rebecca Skloot! She's a (*GASP*) journalist who has written some fantastic pieces for the New York Times and she also has a new book in the works called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Her blog, Culture Dish, can be found here.
Anne-Marie Hodge, author of Pondering Pikaia, is one of my favorite science bloggers, and she has just started up a new science blog on the Nature Network. Even though Pondering Pikaia will remain active, Anne-Marie will be…
laelaps | January 4, 2009
A cast of the skull of Australopithecus africanus, photographed at the American Museum of Natural History.
laelaps | January 4, 2009
The best thing about Frank Peretti's 2005 novel Monster was that it was over quickly. I was able to zip through the 419-page yarn in about five hours, although after about five minutes I felt I had wasted too much time on this anti-evolution screed.
I was loaned the novel by a friend who thought I might enjoy it, but I already knew I was in trouble when I glanced at the Acknowledgments page;
Jonathan Wells, postdoctoral biologist and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, whose book, Icons of Evolution, first got my creative wheels turning, and who helped me clarify my main idea over a…