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Studying for finals has kept me pretty busy lately, but during a break from stressing myself out over trig I stumbled across something interesting. Presented below is a short interview in which Robert Sapolsky discusses religion, particularly why people might believe the things they do. You'll have to turn your speakers up because he is very soft-spoken, but it is certainly worth a look;
If you haven't heard of Sapolsky before, I can't recommend his writings enough. A Primate's Memoir, in particular, is one of the best books I have ever read (as well as making me more fond of baboons…
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Petal, the female African elephant, photographed in September 2007.
In September, 2007, my wife and I made one of our semi-annual trips to the Philadelphia Zoo, mostly to see the little Amur tiger cubs. While there I photographed this elephant, Petal, fiddling with a chain in the shade of her all-too-small enclosure that she shared with several other elephants.
At one time, there had been plans for a $20 million project to create a new elephant habitat at the zoo (almost anything would have been an improvement over the dirt yard). In 2005, however, the zoo decided to build a new aviary and…
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One of the most frustrating factors in studying early descriptions of apes is the multiple meanings of words like "baboon," "Jocko," "Pongo," "mandrill," and "Orang-Outang." Even though we now know apes are our closest living relatives, it has only been recently (within the last 250 years or so) that we have come to know very much about them. Even after they receiving scientific names and the distinct varieties were figured out, there was more myth, legend, and hearsay about them than fact until the latter half of the 20th century!
The confusion over apes in descriptions from the 18th and…
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Up until about three years ago, I had never even heard of creationism or intelligent design. I thought that, for as long as I could remember, evolution had been agreed upon as the way in which life on earth came to exist in its present form. I was wrong, and at my first introduction to creationism I dove into the literature of groups like Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research to find out why they believed what they did. I didn't agree with them, but at least it was interesting.
It didn't take long for me to get bored, and the more I learn about the history of creationism…
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This is what I call that "Finals feeling." From Garfield Minus Garfield.
Slowly, but surely, I have been editing the human evolution chapter. The difficult part is simply finding the time to do it! Classes come first, then I have to keep the material coming here and on Dinosaur Tracking, and then I work on the book during whatever time I have left. The chaotic semester schedule certainly doesn't make things easy. When I write, I like to sit down and keep going for as long as I can. Stealing 20 minutes to edit a paragraph here and there isn't the way I like to do things, and sometimes it's…
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All the cool kids were doing it, so I had to join in, too. [For those playing the home game, select the first sentence from the first post of each month and post the lot. I decided to include the first photo of each month, too.]
January - "I have a secret"
I got some good news last night that I'd love to share, but I think I'm going to keep my lips sealed for until the official announcement is up elsewhere.
February - "Got another one!"
Apparently Sb has been snapping up quality science bloggers at an extraordinary rate, and the latest member of the collective is Maria of Green Gabbro.…
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An Ichthyosaurus, from Buckland's Geology and Mineralogy.
Researchers have often made the accumulation of scientific understanding analogous to the construction of a building (Darwin, for instance, did it in the conclusion of Animals and Plants Under Domestication), and William Buckland was no exception. In discussing objections to knowledge gleaned from geology in his contribution to the Bridgewater Treatises, Buckland wrote;
It must be candidly admitted that the season has not yet arrived when a perfect theory of the whole earth can be fixedly and finally established, since we have not…
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In conversations about the sad state of science literacy in America, Sputnik usually comes up. (It's not at Godwin's Law status yet, but it's close.) The argument is that we either are in a "Sputnik moment" that researchers can use to make the case for greater investment in science, or that we need such an event to reinforce the importance of science in this country.
The problem is, as David Goldston pointed out in this week's issue of Nature, that the story isn't so simple. America was not a scientific backwater at the time of the launch of Sputnik, and (as is often the case with events said…
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Around this time last year the New York Times listed 100 "Notable Books of 2007." Chad was upset that there were no science books on the list, and so was I. I penned a rant about this sad state of affairs, but Carl Zimmer (an occasional contributor to the NYT) made a point that made me eat my words.
This subject has come up once again now that the 2008 list from the NYT is out, which Chad still feels is sorely lacking in science titles despite there being several science books on this year's list;
I firmly believe that this is a big part of why we're messed up as a society-- the most…