Brian Switek
Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
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Posts by this author
Happy Caturday! Here are a few pictures of the cats that have visited over the past two months. Feel free to suggest captions in the comments;
Dublin
Todd (white & grey) playing with Charlotte.
Spooky (left) and Dublin (right)
Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
When the topic of creationism in science classrooms comes up these days, the 2005 Dover trial inevitably comes up, but earlier that same year everyone was worrying about science standards in Kansas. This earlier confrontation is the focus of a documentary film released onto DVD, Kansas vs Darwin,…
A keel-billed toucan (Ramphastos sulfuratus), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
Many science bloggers, myself included, have plans to write a book. Of that creative pool few actually bind their ideas in a volume and get it onto shelves, but new self-publishing services like lulu.com have made it easier for writers to publish and sell their books. This service allowed Ed to…
A polar bear (Ursus maritimus), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
I haven't written any book reviews in a while, primarily because I have not had the time, but when I was offered a review copy of Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True I couldn't resist. It is slated to be one of the first titles out of the gate in 2009, the Year of Evolution, and many similar books…
A Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
A California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
I'll soon be off to take my math exam (at least I get it over with early...), so in honor of the occasion, here are a two snippets of comedic confusion over arithmetic;
And in a similar vein;
A red panda (Ailurus fulgens), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
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…
A polar bear (Ursus maritimus), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
A California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
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…
A harbor seal (Phoca vitulina), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
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)…
A cormorant (Phalacrocorax sp.), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
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…
A California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
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…
A young Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
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…
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…
A California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
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…
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…