Brian Switek
Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
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Posts by this author
June 30, 2008
I'm not much one for beauty tips or fashion gossip. Give me a t-shirt with something geeky on it and a pair of jeans and I'm happy, but delving into the depths of fashion history can have its rewards. At least that's what my cousin-in-law Bonnie Downing found and she amassed a collection of strange…
June 30, 2008
Of the few courses of value I have enrolled in while at Rutgers, one of my most favorite was the paleontology class taught by William Gallagher from the NJ State Museum (which, coincidentally, has just re-opened!). Much of the course dealt with invertebrates, the lectures being more oriented…
June 30, 2008
A few months ago I was enjoying a pleasant evening with a few friends when the topic of evolution came up, more specifically the work of Stephen Jay Gould. One of the people in the room asked "Who's he?" and before I could respond someone else did, commenting "Well, he showed that Darwin was wrong…
June 30, 2008
An Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), photographed in the summer of 2007 at the Bronx zoo.
June 29, 2008
Over at the Other 95% Kevin Z picks up where I left off on high school science education, publishing science books, and the barriers that he and I both face in our quest to become science writers (among other things). Most interesting, though, is his response to a somewhat off-the-cuff remark I…
June 29, 2008
To put it mildly, this summer's crop of films has been a disappointment. Out of the handful of films I've seen I leave most going "Eh, it was alright," picking over the story I just saw to find something that made the $10 ticket price worthwhile. Not so with Wall-E. Even though there is almost…
June 29, 2008
The picked-over remains of a horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus), the tracks around it being a dead giveaway as to who enjoyed a breakfast of rotting chelicerate. Photographed on May 17, 2008 at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
June 28, 2008
When I think of many of the robots that appear in Hollywood films and occasionally pop up in segments on news magazines I can't help but notice how many of them look like people. There seems to be some expectation that when we all have personal helper droids they'll look more like us than R2-D2…
June 28, 2008
The other night I finally picked up Adrian Desmond & James Moore's Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist and I have found it to be one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read (even though I am only about 130 pages in). I would have proceeded much further already but I started…
June 28, 2008
A laughing gull (Larus atricilla). Photographed on May 17, 2008 at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
June 27, 2008
I've got my second precalc exam tonight so I'll be hitting the books, but I won't leave you hanging. Here are some pictures of the numerous kittens that have come through the apartment during the past week;
This is June; she was adopted last Saturday.
These are the little bottle-feeders that…
June 27, 2008
A female lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) photographed at the Bronx zoo in 2007.
According to Reuters the Spanish Congress is set to extend legal rights to apes in captivity, ending cruel experiments, isolation in circuses, and other forms of mistreatment. (Zoos will still be allowed to keep…
June 27, 2008
The remains of a horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) that didn't make it back into the surf. Photographed on May 17, 2008 at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
June 26, 2008
Through the magic of the intertubes, Blake has a dump-truck full of reflection on the current state of science blogging and what science blogs can't do. The question at the center of the post is "Can someone get a fair science education from reading science blogs?" and Blake says no, citing the…
June 26, 2008
If you like bad b-movies featuring clunky cgi dinosaurs it has been a good summer so far. First there was gratuitous silliness of Aztec Rex;
Close on it's tail, though, is 100 Million B.C. (not to be confused with the recent big-screen cheese fest 10,000 B.C. or the classic One Million Years B.C…
June 26, 2008
This is Chase, the first cat I adopted about two years ago. He actually belonged to some friends of mine, but when they got a poodle Chase was so stressed out that he would do little more than hide in the laundry room. Being that he warmed up to me while still at his old home I agreed to take him…
June 25, 2008
For those of you who love sauropods, you'll definitely want to check out the latest issue of Paleobiology. I don't have enough time right now to give each a full treatment, but here's a brief summary of each;
"Modeling growth rates for sauropod dinosaurs" (Thomas M. Lehman and Holly N. Woodward…
June 25, 2008
I still have to upload the last photos I took of her onto the computer, but last Saturday June was adopted. I had a feeling she would be; lots of people had been asking about her, even one who wondering if June could be shipped for free...
After June was adopted my wife and I watched a trio of tiny…
June 25, 2008
I'm not much of a fan of the Walking With... series/Dinosaur Planet/When Dinosaurs Roamed America documentary format. (And don't get me started on the Chased by... and Prehistoric Park stuff.) The visuals are ok and it's hard to say no to reconstructions of some of my favorite prehistoric…
June 25, 2008
Mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia), photographed in New York on June 14 2008.
June 24, 2008
The American Museum of Natural History Research Library has recently put up a website ("Picturing the Museum") containing hundreds of black & white photos of museum exhibits, dioramas, and behind the scenes prep. It is a treasure trove of photographic information; I just wish I could have seen…
June 24, 2008
In an essay called "The Reception of the 'Origin of Species'" printed in Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (and reprinted in Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley), "Darwin's Bulldog" T.H. Huxley described the intellectual shock of understanding Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection…
June 24, 2008
By the time I leave work at the end of the day I feel like I've been run over. I don't do anything particularly stressful or demanding while sitting at my desk but by 3:00 I feel utterly drained. For the past several years my workspace has been a grey cubicle piled high with so many documents that…
June 24, 2008
The backside of a Grevy's zebra (Equus grevyi) at the Bronx Zoo. This particular species is the largest of the living species of zebra and can be easily identified by its smaller stripes. Photographed in May 2007.
June 23, 2008
On April 19th Philadelphia marked the beginning of it's "Year of Evolution," a year-long celebration of the science that, to paraphrase Dobzhansky, makes sense of biology. Jon Hurdle has an article about the festivities in today's New York Times, but right out of the gate what could have been a…
June 23, 2008
Everyone seems to be talking about Nicholas Carr's recent article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" (see here, here, and here) and I'm not one to buck the trend, although there is one aspect of Carr's piece that I find a bit frustrating. It is way too long! I would probably fare better with the print…
June 23, 2008
If you liked last week's post about the creation of The Whale at the AMNH you will definitely want to check out the new issue of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture. The theme for the present issue is "rogue taxidermy," and it includes pieces on strange amalgamations of stuffed…
June 23, 2008
A female Western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) photographed last year at the Bronx Zoo.
That's the question posed in the cover story of the latest issue of National Geographic. On July 22, 2007 five mountain gorillas (Gorilla berengei berengei) were murdered at Virunga, the population made famous by…
June 23, 2008
I knew I would have to bite the bullet and get to Charles Darwin eventually. I have mentioned Darwin here and there as I have gradually expanded my other chapters, but up until last night I did not have any section specifically addressing how the idea of evolution by natural selection came about. (…
June 23, 2008
Two grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) playing in their pool at the Bronx Zoo. Photographed in May 2007.