Brian Switek
Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
laelaps
Posts by this author
A turkey vulture (Cathartes aura), photographed at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
I normally don't care when I miss television documentaries, but I'm going to have to find some way to see this when it airs in three weeks;
So... freakin'... cool... And remember some of those exclusive clips (which are not associated with the Discovery Channel program) that I told you about a…
An Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
As it stands now, I have the first 15 (of 31) pages of the whale chapter edited to my content, but the second half poses more of a challenge. Much of the first half is historical narrative, which pretty much writes itself. I can get creative with my prose but I generally don't have to "think" about…
Western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
Here it is, at long last, my take on the first part of The Genius of Charles Darwin. I've included each of the parts available on YouTube and recorded the running time to which each of my comments applies. This may require some scrolling if you're playing the home game. Now that I think of it, it…
I know I have been promising it for a while, but tonight I will finally be getting around to liveblogging my reactions to the recently-aired series The Genius of Charles Darwin, hosted by Richard Dawkins. The title of this post should already give you an impression of what I thought of the series,…
Update: Today a new report was issued with more details about the way Rutgers is shelling out big bucks for football and underestimating the repercussions. I urge you to read it if you are interested in this controversy.
Over the past few weeks I have been covering the controversy surrounding…
Greg Laden already beat me to it, but the alleged Bigfoot in a freezer has (as predicted) turned out to be a hoax. The three men involved in the hoax, Matt Whitton, Rick Dyer, and "professional Bigfoot hunter" (i.e. B.S. artist) Tom Biscardi, have admitted as much, although both Whitton and Dyer…
An Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis), photographed at the Philadelphia zoo.
Right now the website BigThink is involved in a DonorsChoose program where the company Pfizer has agreed to donate $1 (up to $10,000) for every vote the videos on the BigThink page receive. There are two weeks left and the tally so far stands at about $6,000, but I'm sure that they can hit the $10,…
I think I have finally reached the point where all of my arguments about whale evolution are finally in place. It has taken a long time to get to this point, particularly since every time I thought I had constructed a solid foundation I discovered some new fact or observation that was too exciting…
An Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), photographed at the Bronx zoo.
I haven't had much time to sit down and watch any movies lately, but this past weekend I did make a little time to watch at least some of the Jurassic Park films. There's a lot I could complain about in each installment, but I have to admit that it's nice to just sit down and watch what almost…
I typically don't pay attention to Dinesh D'Souza. As far as I can tell he is little more than a pundit, someone who manages to write books so full of various orders of fallacies that my head would probably explode if I tried to read any of his titles cover-to-cover (in fact, such a tragedy nearly…
A black and rufous sengi (Rhynchocyon petersi), photographed at the Philadelphia zoo.
Say what you like about the new History Channel series Jurassic Fight Club, but I have to give the network credit for putting up the full episodes for free viewing.
Sure, you have to wait a few weeks, but at least you don't have to worry about missing it. From what I heard this week's installment…
At this point it is clear that I am not going to finish the whale chapter by the end of the weekend. Had I only the information previously at my disposal, the books and articles cluttering the apartment and my hard drive, I might have succeeded, but a boon of new information has caused me to go…
A male cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), photographed at the Philadelphia zoo.
I'm hard at work on my book today (I intend to finish the chapter on whales by the end of the weekend) but I won't leave you hanging. Here's a Charlie Rose episode from 1994 featuring both Stephen Jay Gould (starting at the 29:10 mark) and Donald Johanson (starting at 45:25, with a rather…
Two Amur tigers (Panthera tigris altaica), photographed at the Philadelphia zoo. They are brothers, two of three males born there last year.
Remember that freezer chock full o' Bigfoot I mentioned yesterday? Well today the men who claim to have found the body of the sought after mythical beast held a press conference in which the results from the first round of DNA testing were presented. Of the three samples tested one came back…
Olivia Judson has a short column in the opinion section of the New York Times about the importance of teaching evolution in public schools. Like Judson, I am frustrated that evolution is often taught as a distinct biological phenomena at the end of the year, hardly presented as the concept that…
Two nesting American flamingoes (Phoenicopterus ruber), photographed at the Philadelphia zoo.
Leave it to Faux (oops, I mean FOX) News to be the first to get on the cryptozoological bandwagon. According to the media outlet the body of Bigfoot has been revealed and is awaiting a battery of tests to confirm it's authenticity. It looks like a hoax to me, but here's the credulous "news"…
Now this is pretty damn cool. Peter McGrath of the Beagle Project Blog liveblogged the airing of the 2nd episode of Richard Dawkins' The Genius of Charles Darwin (I posted a few thoughts last week here). Michael Barton and Richard Carter show up, too, and it's definitely some interesting commentary…
I never quite know what to say when people call me a scientist. I take it as a compliment, certainly, but I'm usually unsure as to whether I can apply the word to myself or not. Is a scientist defined by their journey through the academic meat grinder? By expert knowledge? By skeptical thought? The…
Grace the lion (Panthera leo) rolling over, photographed at the Bronx zoo.