Brian Switek
Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
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Posts by this author
June 22, 2008
Reflecting upon my high school science education, there isn't very much I can remember. Physics and chemistry are largely a blur (vague recollections of Avogadro's number and the time when my experiment exploded are all that remain) and the hours I spent in biology were largely a waste. For all the…
June 22, 2008
A rather large bit of driftwood. Photographed at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge, Delaware on May 17, 2008.
June 21, 2008
I stopped by the Cranbury Bookworm this afternoon to indulge myself in a minor book-buying binge (or at least a smaller one than the last time I went during their 1/2 off sale). Here's what I picked up for $21;
People of the Lake - Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin
The Emergence of Man - John E…
June 21, 2008
Here's my first Spore critter, "Anomalonychus." I'll have more on the Spore Creature Creator (and why it's so damn fun to play with) soon;
June 21, 2008
Photographed in New York on June 14, 2008.
June 20, 2008
As I was skimming through Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies (1863), a book that injects a fair amount of Lamarckian evolution into a children's moral fable (the character Mother Carey "make[s] creatures make themselves."), I came across a section that made me grin.
During the course of the story…
June 20, 2008
AO-4, from the Marine Mammal Science announcement. (arrow added)
On October 28, 2006, fisherman that were capturing individuals of a group of 118 bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) near Taiji, Japan for exploitation in aquaria noticed something peculiar about one of the captured individuals…
June 20, 2008
During my first visits to the American Museum of Natural History in New York the only thing that impressed me more than the skeletons of the dinosaurs was the sculpture of the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), posed in a dive above the Hall of Ocean Life. I had seen pictures of blue whales in…
June 20, 2008
For those of you who subscribe to Natural History there is an excellent article (featuring the always astounding artwork of Mauricio Anton) about the evolution of canids in the new issue. If such a short article on ancient dogs and their relatives isn't enough for you, though, you're in luck. Dogs…
June 20, 2008
After many long nights of scribbling down potential titles for the book I think I've finally got one that fits. Beyond the content itself I wanted to choose something that reflected the changes my thinking went through during the writing process (and the changing of my expected date of completion…
June 20, 2008
Eastern skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus), photographed in New York on June 14, 2008.
June 19, 2008
Today 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…
June 18, 2008
There 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…
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…
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…
June 18, 2008
If 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…
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.
June 17, 2008
It 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…
June 17, 2008
An Eastern chipmunk (Tamias striatus), photographed in New York on June 14, 2008.
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…
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…
June 16, 2008
If 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…
June 16, 2008
With 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…
June 16, 2008
I 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…
June 16, 2008
During 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…
June 16, 2008
Mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia), photographed in New York on June 14, 2008.
June 15, 2008
As 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…
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).
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…