loom | January 17, 2006My apologies for the comment freeze over the past couple days. I've been away and have been distracted with catching up with other business. It should get resolved soon. You can always reach me directly at blog at carlzimmer dot com.
loom | January 12, 2006I've just been rejiggering my RSS to pick up all the blogs that have come together at Science Blogs. Many of my favorites, like Chris Mooney and PZ Myers, plus ones new to me. As if I didn't have enough ways to burn up my time...
loom | January 11, 2006Last year was the hottest on record, or the second hottest, depending on the records climatologists look at. The planet has warmed .8 degrees C over the past 150 years, and scientists are generally agreed that greenhouse gases have played a major part in that warming. They also agree that the warming will continue in the decades to come. Many experts are concerned that warming may make two unpleasant things more common: extinctions and diseases. In tomorrow's issue of Nature (link to come here), a team of scientists report on a case that ties these two dangers together: frogs have become…
loom | January 10, 2006Governor Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky uses his State of the Commonwealth speech last night to plug intelligent design:
As I close, let me recognize Kentucky's veterans. You have served to protect our liberty and the freedom that spurs our quality of life in this nation. Please know that this administration is committed to supporting you.
And where does this freedom come from that many have died to protect?
Our founding fathers recognized that we were endowed with this right by our creator.
So I ask, what is wrong with teaching "intelligent design" in our schools. Under KERA, our school…
loom | January 6, 2006I've updated yesterday's cat evolution post with some tough comments from an expert on cat fossils. Check it out.
loom | January 6, 2006Rick Perry's on board! And no postmodern vagueness for him. He's here to tell us that intelligent design is a "valid scientific theory." That's right, governor. Just check out all the work on intelligent design going on in the biology department at your state's fine university. Um...wait...it's there somewhere. Just let me figure out how to work this search function...
(Hat tip to Panda's Thumb.)
loom | January 5, 2006
As the proud owner of a fine cat, Tino, I'm happy to join the ritual of cat-blogging. I was inspired after reading a new study that sorts out Tino's kinship with other cats. Now I know that a cheetah is more closely related to Tino than it is to a leopard (right and left, respectively).
The evolution of cats has been a tough nut to crack. While it's no great mental feat to tell the difference between Tino and a tiger, it's not so easy to figure out exactly which species are most closely related to domesticated cats and which are more distant relatives. The oldest cat-like fossils date…
loom | January 3, 2006...to this gem I just received about my post on the Dover creationism case:
Carl,
It doesn't bother you that the judge went beyond any human capacity to attack the board members, not for their actions, not for their efforts to remove science fiction from the science classroom (that would be a realistic description of Darwinian evolution as it is fictional and not factual), but rather because he stated they were trying to introduce religion into the classroom. The fact is that he could not possibly challenge the facts of the case, the facts of Intelligent Design - yes the SCIENTIFIC FACTS are…
loom | January 3, 2006Tomorrow (Wednesday) at 4 pm EST I'll be a guest on Science and Society, an online radio show. You can listen live or visit the site later for a podcast. I'll do my best to be interesting on all things evolutionary, but fortunately I'm sandwiched between two scientists who should be definitely worth a listen: Steven Salzberg, who has sequenced the genomes of humans and flu viruses and just about everything in between, and Zach Hall, the president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which was set up to make California the world's envy in stem cell research.
loom | January 2, 2006I have an article in tomorrow's New York Times on a provocative theory about our origins. Humans, other animals, plants, fungi, and protozoans are all eukaryotes. We all share a distinctive genome compared to other organisms (prokaryotes, which include bacteria and archaea). Our genes are more versatile: they can be switched on an off in more complex patterns than in prokaryotes, and one gene can make many different proteins, depending on which parts of the gene our cells look at. Some scientists would like to say that this distinctiveness must be the product of natural selection. But Michael…
loom | January 1, 2006I'll be in Ann Arbor for a talk on January 14 at the natural history museum in conjunction with the opening of the "Explore Evolution" exhibit there. I'll talk about reporting on new research in evolutionary biology. Here are the details.
loom | December 29, 2005Wandering around Amazon.com a couple weeks ago, I discovered that they are letting authors blog. It didn't take long for me to set one up here. But once I had set it up, it occurred to me I wasn't sure what exactly I should write for it. I then belatedly discovered this article and some blog discussion of the whole venture.
I've never understood how some people manage to keep a bunch of blogs going at once, although I admire the dedication to the form. For now the Amazon blog feels like a good place to post book news and maybe respond to book-related emails (unfortunately, it doesn't seem to…
loom | December 28, 2005Why is it that politicians who say they want to strengthen science teaching standards can sound so post-modern about science? Two examples:
1. John McCain grooving with the kids on MTV about evolution:
"I see no reason why students should not be exposed to all theories, recognizing that Darwin's theory's certainly one that is generally accepted in most of the scientific community. I think it's not inappropriate to say there are also people who believe this. Let the student decide." [Emphasis mine]
Okay students, we've spent our science class this year learning all theories about the universe…
loom | December 25, 2005If you could travel back to Spain about ten million years ago, you'd have no end of animals to watch, from apes to bear-dogs to saber-tooth tigers. With so many creatures jockeying for your attention (and perhaps chasing you down for lunch), you might well miss the creature shown here. Simocyon batalleri was roughly the size and shape of a puma, although its face looked more like a raccoon's. If anything were to draw your attention to Simocyon, it would probably be the animal's gift for climbing trees. Most big carnivorous mammals of the time were restricted to the ground; some may have been…
loom | December 21, 2005In October I wrote about the latest ideas about the evolution of autumn colors. The paper is now out.
loom | December 21, 2005When Judge John E. Jones III issued his decision in the Dover creationism trial on Tuesday, I downloaded the document with a vague sense of dread. It wasn't just that the decision was 139 pages long. I knew that Judge Jones had ruled that teaching intelligent design was unconstitutional, but I was worried that he might have accepted that it was anything but a warmed-over form of creationism.
Months of media coverage of the trial had nurtured my dread. Again and again, reporters felt an obligation to give "equal time" to intelligent design advocates, without feeling an equal obligation to…
loom | December 20, 2005For the information hounds out there, Alan Templeton's paper, "Haplotype Trees and Modern Human Origins," on which I based my previous post is now published.
loom | December 20, 2005Judge Rules Against 'Intelligent Design'
Initial reaction: what a relief. Once I have a chance to read the decision, I'll have something vaguely more insightful to say...
Update: Oy. The decision turns out to be 139 pages. PDF here.
Update, 11:30 am: Okay, I've had a chance to give it a quick read, and while I'm not a lawyer, it seems to me like a pretty overwhelming decision. It didn't just focus on the school board's activities but demolished the entire project of intelligent design. For a legal document, it had some quite stirring passages, which I've excerpted here:
p 24: we conclude that…
loom | December 15, 2005Blunt talk from L. Lynn Hogue, conservative law professor from Georgia via law.com. Hogue has signed an amicus brief in the Georgia textbook sticker case supporting the removal of the anti-evolution disclaimers. "I'm not religiously sympathetic to anti-evolutionists, who I think are lunatics." Professor Hogue, please drop a line to the President.
loom | December 12, 2005There are few things as fascinating to me as the question of how our ancestors evolved from small-brained, tree-dwelling apes. But sometimes it all can feel a bit abstract. After all, we're talking about things that happened six million years ago. Recently, though, I had a weird experience that brought our evolutionary history smack into my face. Some Yale psychologists came to my daughter Charlotte's pre-school looking for volunteers for a study that would compare how children and young chimpanzees learn. It turns out that chimpanzees can be a lot more logical than children, Charlotte…