Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
October 30, 2009
A phylogeny is a statement about the evolutionary history of organisms. Cladograms give branching order only, but phylograms include branch lengths as well. They inform us about diversification of lineages, patterns and rates of trait evolution, and the ages of taxa and timing of radiations.
The…
October 30, 2009
Lander began by saying he wasn't an evolutionist — an interestingly narrow definition of the term. He's a fan of the research, but considers himself a biomedical geneticist, as if that was something different.
Having entire genomes of many species available for quantitative analysis is going to…
October 30, 2009
Earlier today, Jerry mentioned to me that he noticed my earlier blog posts on the meeting, and thought I wasn't being critical enough. So I think that means I'm supposed to let my inner beast out for this one. (Nah, actually, it's because I'm in note-taking transcription mode while listening to…
October 30, 2009
There are two parallel sessions going on here at the Chicago Darwin meetings, so I can only attend half…and I'm focusing on the biology sessions. There's a whole 'nother track of philosophy and history talks that I've been neglecting! Science Life is hitting up those, as is Skip Evans of Wisconsin…
October 30, 2009
How do we distinguish bacterial species? Cohan shows us some nice diagrams of phenotypic and molecular clusters, and they show groups separated by gaps — therefore, species. Unfortunately the species defined thereby are big and contain considerable diversity within them. Darwin defined species as…
October 30, 2009
Oops, missed the first part of this talk due to the distractions of Lunch. Walked in as he was talking about tree vs. ladder thinking (people have a hard time conceptualizing trees) and history as a chronicle — barebones description of events — or a narrative — events linked by causal explanations…
October 30, 2009
How do different varieties become species? Darwin credited selection. What are the details of this process? Speciation is a booming topic in the science literature, with 25,000 titles last year. Need to define a species to begin. Uses Mayr's biological species concept, which focuses on the…
October 30, 2009
How do we explain the diversity of species in the world? The core process is speciation, a splitting of a lineage into two divergent lines that at the end, cannot interbreed. What do we know about speciation in Darwin's finches?
They evolved from a common ancestor in 2-3 million years into 14…
October 30, 2009
I have wireless access in the lecture hall today, so I'm going to try liveblogging these talks. This may get choppy! What it will lack in editing will be compensated for by more timely and regular updates. I hope. At least I'll be able to dump something to the site every 40-60 minutes.
He…
October 30, 2009
Whoa. This was a data-rich talk, and my ability to transcribe it was over-whelmed by all the stuff Hauser was tossing out. Unfortunately, I think the talk also suffered from excess and a lack of a good overview of the material. But it was thought-provoking anyway.
One of the themes was how people…
October 30, 2009
Yes. Yes we are.
(Photo by August Berkshire; if you squint, you might notice Ron Numbers caught in the background between me and Neil Shubin, too.)
October 30, 2009
That's kind of how I feel at this meeting today.
(via Flickr)
October 29, 2009
Ron Numbers gave a brief history of creationism, reminding us that perhaps a majority of the people in the world reject Darwin, and he also emphasized a few facts in that history that many would find surprising.
There was no organized opposition to evolution until the 1920s, when it was marshalled…
October 29, 2009
It was a fine evening here in Chicago, with all these superstars of evolutionary biology in attendance. It was also an information-dense evening — I tried to keep up on my little laptop, but I know I missed a lot. Fortunately, I'm not alone: Rob Mitchum and Jeremy Manier were also covering the…
October 29, 2009
Here's part of an explanation I've liked for a long time: they're a product of developing cognitive processes that bias the brain to model the world with supernatural shortcuts.
(Moved below the fold because the silly video defaults to autoplay.)
October 28, 2009
Bill Donohue has put me on his mailing list, so I get these 'alerts' from the Catholic League several times a day. Here's the latest (the colors are as sent to me: I guess it was very important!)
On Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 8:45 am ET, Catholic League President Bill Donohue will appear on Fox…
October 28, 2009
It's rather pathetic when banned loons like "help ma boab" come crawling back, begging to be released from the dungeon…especially when their apologies are this insincere. It just reaffirms why he got tossed in there in the first place.
I'm Sorry
I'm sorry that I trod on someone's arrogant, over-…
October 28, 2009
I'm liking these CreatureCast videos from Casey Dunn — I showed the first in this series, now here's the second. It uses very simple animation to illustrate basic concepts…like the evolution of multicellularity in this one.
CreatureCast Episode 2 from Casey Dunn on Vimeo.
October 28, 2009
Every once in a while, this administration gives me a tiny bit of hope. They've just come out against the anti-free speech activities of Islamic nations in the UN.
The Obama administration on Monday came out strongly against efforts by Islamic nations to bar the defamation of religions, saying the…
October 28, 2009
Answers in Genesis, that site that tries to promote an alternative view to natural origins, has put up an article to answer that question that I'm sure is pressing on everyone's mind as we get close to Halloween: Are demons real?. You won't be surprised to learn that AiG's answer is that yes, they…
October 27, 2009
Someone tell him that that is no status to which one should aspire. He's just written a brief, cranky complaint about Dawkins' righteous smackdown of the Catholic church. Here's the totality of it.
Richard Dawkins's latest attack on the Catholic Church is worthy of a dribbling loony on the top of a…
October 27, 2009
A story on NPR reports that there's a bit of a tiff between the White House and Fox News: spokespersons for the administration and media have basically stated that Fox is a conservative propaganda outlet, deeply hurting Fox's dewicate widdle feewings. And they have a poll! It looks like the right-…
October 27, 2009
Why? Because Jerry Coyne can mention this amazing conference, I can take a look at the luminaries speaking at it, and decide at the drop of a hat that I'm going. So this weekend, I'll be spending my Halloween at a major conference on evolution. Yay!
Look forward to lots of liveblogging (I hope…if…
October 27, 2009
That trinity stuff is bewildering even to the trinity!
October 27, 2009
Peter Irons sent this little comment to Stuart Pivar on receiving the news about his failed lawsuit.
Hi Stu,
Good news! The story is already up on Pharyngula (PZ didn't waste a
minute) and the mocking has begun. Enjoy!
By the way, what pissed me off the most about you was not the PZ suit, but…
October 27, 2009
I'm going to be in this silly debate on "Should Intelligent Design Be Taught In The Schools?" with creationist kook Jerry Bergman on 16 November, sponsored by CASH and the local Kook Central. The latest hangup, though, is that the creationists want to have a pre- and post-debate survey, and they…
October 27, 2009
In August, Stuart Pivar once again threatened to resolve a scientific dispute by waving a team of lawyers at it, when he tried to sue a scientist, Robert Hazen, for daring to insist that Pivar stop using his name to promote Pivar's pseudo-science of balloon animals. I just heard from Peter Irons…