laelaps | August 29, 2008
A horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus), photographed at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
laelaps | August 28, 2008If there is any author associated with the book title On the Origin of Species it is most certainly Charles Darwin, yet Darwin was not the only person to pen a book beginning with those words. The full title of Darwin's first edition was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, but about two decades later another On the Origin of Species would be published bearing Thomas Henry Huxley's name. With the full title On the Origin of Species: Or, the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature, the book was a compilation…
laelaps | August 28, 2008Have you ever wondered where Bora does all his prolific blogging and masterminds PLoS initiatives? A North Carolina news crew caught up with him in his office.
laelaps | August 28, 2008I'm not really a fan of the Templeton Foundation. In the past they've contributed quite a bit of money to the intelligent design crowd and folks who want to foster a teleological view of evolution, and the work resulting from the funded projects appears to be generally unimpressive. When John Templeton, the figure that started the foundation, died last month Nature ran an article about the foundation and what Templeton set out to achieve. Discussing Templeton's aims, the article reads;
He believed institutional religion to be antiquated, and hoped a dialogue with researchers might bring about…
laelaps | August 27, 2008
An immature herring gull (Larus argentatus), photographed at Ocean Grove, New Jersey.
laelaps | August 27, 2008
The famous fold-out plate that accompanied Pre-Adamite Man. Not the "dividing line" between ancient life and modern humans formed by the glaciers.
There is more to understanding the history of science than memorizing the dates when seminal books were published or knowing the names of the founders of particular disciplines. Science must be understood in context, and given the present public arguments about evolution it can be profitable to look back and see how science was being popularized circa 1859. While there were some books by scientists that were accessible to the public, many non-…
laelaps | August 27, 2008Today Sb is all shook up. The guys from DSN just announced that they'll be setting sail for the Discovery Channel blog network, but I am happy to announce that one of my most favorite bloggers (and commentors), Blake Stacey, is now in the Sb fold. Go check out his new digs and say "Hello!"
laelaps | August 27, 2008Although fluff pieces about football practice at Rutgers have flooded the newswires over the past few weeks, the university is still suffering from reports of shady financial practices that have favored football over academics. (See this post for the last update and summary.) In order to combat the bad press, university officials are trying to allay fear that Rutgers is in financial distress (as if we didn't already know because of the 8.5% tuition hike). In an article released last week, it was reported that this year over $121 million was donated to Rutgers, making it a record-breaking year…
laelaps | August 27, 2008The last time the 100 book meme came around I decided to step out of the vein and create a list of 100 books that I liked or have had a significant influence on me. Most of the them were non-fiction books about science, and I was glad to see the Jennifer has created a list of 75 popular science books to share.
As with the last survey, though, I've read almost nothing on this new list. I've read On the Origin of Species, The Demon-Haunted World, and Wonderful Life, but that's it.
As with the last meme, I'm considering going through my library and making a list of my favorite 75 popular science…
laelaps | August 27, 2008The guys over at Deep Sea News have been mercilessly teasing their readers for quite a while now, promising that they're got some absolutely astounding news to report sometime today. Amongst all the teasers they provided one hint; footage of a space shuttle lifting off.
What could the clue mean? I think that the DSN guys have arranged for the first space flight piloted entirely by super-intelligent squid. You knew it would have to happen eventually. I could be wrong, though, so I guess we will all just have to wait until the announcement is made.
Update: As promised, all has been revealed...
laelaps | August 27, 2008There's going to be a lot of talk about Darwin in the coming year. It's practically impossible to talk about evolution without tipping our hat to him in some way, but as Carl Zimmer recently pointed out during a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution (which he was kind enough to post) what we know about evolution does not begin and end with Darwin. The point is familiar but it still deserves reiteration, particularly since many efforts to communicate evolutionary science to the public fixate on Darwin and Darwin alone. As Carl himself said;
Darwin deserves celebrating, but that doesn't mean we…
laelaps | August 27, 2008
A sandpiper, photographed at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge, Delaware.
laelaps | August 26, 2008When I was growing up, dinosaurs were almost always on television for one reason or another. From movies to commercials, from cartoons to documentaries, there was always some ancient creature on the screen. Among the panoply of prehistoric programming the documentaries featuring Eric Boardman and Gary Owens were among the ones I remember most fondly, and I just happened to stumble across a few of the old shows on YouTube. Here's one from a series the two hosted, "More Dinosaurs," that was one of my favorites (although the ending gave me nightmares);
laelaps | August 26, 2008
From Garfield Minus Garfield
I did it. The whale chapter has been put on the editorial chopping block three times, and I'm going to move on to other things for a while before coming back for the final cut. I'm particularly vexed by the last section of the chapter, which focuses on the evolution of cetacean intelligence due to sociality. The topic is contentious, and being that I'm not an expert on cetacean neuroanatomy or cognition I want to tread carefully. I've asked for professional help so I can make sure what I have written is accurate, but even so I still have mixed feelings about…
laelaps | August 25, 2008The Boneyard #23 will appear on September 2 at When Pigs Fly Returns. Get your paleo-posts from the last month to me or Zach if you want in on the next edition!
laelaps | August 25, 2008In a week I'll be headed back into the dusty, faded-pastel halls of higher learning for the fall semester, and given that I expect many of you will be doing the same I thought I would open up a thread about evolution education. As I have said multiple times, just because creationism isn't being taught doesn't mean that students are receiving a firm grounding in evolutionary biology. In my own experience, during high school evolution was a quick sub-unit that was paired with population genetics toward the end of the spring. Even in college courses I attended, evolution was relegated to the…
laelaps | August 25, 2008This is a truly sad story. Last week a baby humpback whale, informally dubbed "Colette," was found alone in the waters off Sydney, Australia. The baby was in desperate need of fat-rich mother's milk, nuzzling boats in its attempts to find sustenance, but no surrogate mother came to the rescue. Force-feeding the young whale was not attempted and efforts to lead it out to sea (where there would at least the chance of a mother whale passing by) failed, and Colette was euthanized on Friday.
Many people were outraged, but it seems that euthanization was the only viable option. Colette was…
laelaps | August 25, 2008
A laughing gull (Leucophaeus atricilla), photographed at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
laelaps | August 24, 2008It's funny how editing is such a different process from the construction of a chapter. When I began writing the chapter on whales the more pages I could add, the better. When my wife asked me about my progress I would say "I wrote [x] more pages today." Now that I'm editing I usually reply "I pared it down by another page or two."
At present I've gone through the whale chapter twice and it is 29 pages long, but I'm going to go through it one more time. At that point I'm going to give it a rest and work on another chapter, as taking a step back and working on something else might help me come…