laelaps | June 20, 2008
Eastern skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus), photographed in New York on June 14, 2008.
laelaps | June 19, 2008Today I'm going to be working hard on my book, but I submit for your viewing pleasure the first episode of the PBS Evolution special (in twelve parts). Not everything is exactly right (so keep your thinking caps on), but I still think it's a good mix of the old & new (I especially was impressed by the section on the evolution of the eye).
laelaps | June 18, 2008There is no student of nature in all of history who is as well-documented as Charles Darwin. While the paper trail that chronicles the private thoughts of important researchers like Georges Cuvier and Richard Owen is often frustratingly thin, reading the entirety of Darwin's books, papers, and correspondence could easily become a full-time job. Beyond the importance of his ideas we celebrate Darwin because his life is open for us to examine, the story of how a young believer in Creation set sail for a journey around the world that would ultimately spark a scientific revolution. There is…
laelaps | June 18, 2008
An illustration of Koch's reconstructed "Missourium."
On January 12, 1839, an interesting article appeared in the pages of pages of the Philadelphia paper the Presbyterian. Written by Albert Koch (although it appeared in the paper as unsigned), the article made the bold claim that the remains of a mammoth had been discovered along with stone tools in Gasconade country, Missouri, proving that Native Americans had lived alongside the extinct animals. Looking at vestiges of the ancient hunt, Koch proposed that the mammoth had sunk into mud or some other trap and keeled over at which point the…
laelaps | June 18, 2008
I haven't read Ken Miller's new book, Only a Theory, as yet, but the magic of the intertubes has allowed me to see his recent appearance on "The Colbert Report." Like PZ already noted I think Miller steamrolled over Colbert to make sure he got his talking points across (which is practically a necessity if you feel you need to get all your statements in before the 6 minutes is up) but what I found most interesting was Colbert's last question about what we would do if creationists co-opted the language of evolution. Although the question was posed as a hypothetical it is something that is…
laelaps | June 18, 2008If Opabiniahad left descendants, what would they have looked like? That was the question on my mind as I fiddled around with the new Spore Creature-Creator last Friday night, tweaking my virtual creation this way and that in a bit of speculative biology. I admit that the end result has more to do with what I think looks cool than anything scientific, but the demo for the upcoming "Sim Life" game Spore sure is a lot of fun to play with.
I'll take some snapshots and video to share if I can (along with my thoughts on the demo), but if you really want to know you don't have to wait for me. The…
laelaps | June 18, 2008
I forgot to upload a new photograph this morning so I had to rifle through my old stuff to find something that I hadn't posted before. This is a male cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), photographed at the Philadelphia zoo in February 2007.
laelaps | June 17, 2008It baffles me how quickly my writing days go by. I usually wake up by 8 AM, get myself together (shower, check the blogs, etc.), and return from my morning walk by 10 AM, but even if I work constantly for the next few hours I can never seem to get as much done as I would like. I'm sure this will always be the case but there never seems to be quite enough time for me to feel pleased about what I've written in a day.
Although I was hoping to write more about whales, evo devo, and Albert Koch's contentious (but often forgotten) contribution to the debate over the antiquity of man, most of my…
laelaps | June 17, 2008
An Eastern chipmunk (Tamias striatus), photographed in New York on June 14, 2008.
laelaps | June 16, 2008
Behind-the-scenes footage of Stan Winston Studios during the making of Jurassic Park III. You can see Stan here and there throughout.
With Indiana Jones IV completed and out in theaters, I started to wonder when Jurassic Park IV might appear (it's presently slated to be released next year). The special effects in the original film look just as good to me now as they did when I first saw the film in a Florida movie theater, and the work of Stan Winston's studio on all the Jurassic Park films has kept me going back to watch the movies even when the storylines and acting started to get a bit…
laelaps | June 16, 2008
Aw, man. Just when I promised myself I'd cut down on the meta stuff along comes the latest "Ask a ScienceBlogger" question;
There are many, many academic bloggers out there feverishly blogging about their areas of interest. Still, there are many, many more academics who don't. So, why do you blog and how does blogging help with your research?
I should probably make it clear at the outset that I would not consider myself an academic, a scientist, or ascribe any other title to myself that makes me sound like a professional. I have no ongoing scientific research project that this blog feeds off…
laelaps | June 16, 2008If you were to ask someone walking along the street what a fossil is, they'd probably tell you that fossils are the bones of ancient creatures that have turned into stone (or something similar). This isn't wrong, prehistoric bones that have been replaced by minerals are certainly fossils, but bones are not the only kind of fossils. Fossils are any trace of prehistoric life found in the strata of the earth, from the bones of vertebrates to the shells of brachiopods to body impressions. Within the last category footprints and trackways are abundant trace fossils, and a new paper published in…
laelaps | June 16, 2008With all that's been going on lately I completely forgot that Ken Miller's new book Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul (not to be confused with Richard Dawkins' upcoming book, Only a Theory?) came out last week. I probably won't get to it for a long time (I'm still engrossed in Endless Forms Most Beautiful and have to finish In the Shadow of Man), but I am curious if anyone has picked it up yet.
Although I am not disinterested in the new book the is present a glut of books about evolution & creationism has somewhat dampened my enthusiasm for such titles, a…
laelaps | June 16, 2008I was intending to sit down and write about whale limbs yesterday afternoon (homology, hyperphalangy, and other neat stuff), but by the time I was ready to do it I was feeling so restless that I had to get out of the house. My wife and I headed out to catch a showing of The Incredible Hulk (which was actually pretty good), but I was thankfully still primed to write when we returned to the apartment. What I ended up writing just took a different course than I had expected.
As I thought about whale evolution on the way home from the theater I reflected upon the ways different lineages became…
laelaps | June 16, 2008During a promotional interview for the creationist propaganda piece Expelled, Ben Stein asserted that "science leads to killing people." In the new film The Happening, by contrast, toxins released by plants cause people to off themselves in any number of stomach-turning ways, but the M. Night Shyamalan film might have more in common with Expelled than can be surmised from the previews.
There's a bit of discussion about some statements that actor Mark Wahlberg makes at the beginning of the film (Marky Mark plays a science teacher) having to do with evolution. The case the some anti-evolution…
laelaps | June 16, 2008
Mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia), photographed in New York on June 14, 2008.
laelaps | June 15, 2008As regular readers of this blog know, many (if not most) of my "Photos of the Day" come from my regular trips to local zoos, primarily the Bronx and Philadelphia parks. I haven't been back to any of them since I got my new camera, but this summer I've got a few trips planned to replace some of my lost photographs.
Zeff the Amur tiger, photographed in February 2007 at the Bronx Zoo.
Sometime after June 20th I'll be headed back to the WCS-run Bronx zoo, the park finally opening a new exhibit all about Madagascar. There will be lemurs and cave-dwelling crocs, but the creatures I most want…
laelaps | June 15, 2008
One of the many millipedes I saw on yesterday's hike in New York. (I think it belongs to the genus Apheloria, although I'm not sure of the species).
laelaps | June 14, 2008
Although I have no interest whatsoever in seeing The Happening and I'm not particularly enthused about the new Incredible Hulk, I couldn't help but observe this years' (so-far mediocre) crop of summer movies features a few scientists as heroes. First there was archaeologist Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and yesterday audiences could see Edward Norton take up the role of fictional scientist Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk ("Doc Bruce Banner, Pelted by gamma rays, Turned into the Hulk. Ain't he unglamorous!"). While not featuring a heroic scientist…