Why did evolution of a large brain happen only once (among mammals/primates?)
Larger brains have evolved a number of times. It seems that there has been a trend over several tens of millions of years of evolution of larger brains in various clades, such as carnivores and primates. There is probably a kind of arms […]

Learn about the “Gay Republican Underground Video” …
Four and a half minutes of liberal bliss, a follow up on this:

I always liked peanut butter. Until now.

Between 20 March 2007 and 20 March 2008 (the fifth year of the war), we will attempt to sign up One Million Blogs for Peace. By signing up, a blogger is stating his or her agreement with The Pledge below. They will then be able to participate in various challenges launched by One Million Blogs […]

Corporeal Matt Sanchez, no relation to the guy from The West Wing, that’s “Matt Santos”) is a right-wing activist depicted here with Ann Coulter. He has appeared in various interviews, and righty-hang outs, standing in as a kind of poster-boy for the right wing drone against liberals who, the right wing feels, are anti-troop […]

From a report by Elizabeth Pennisi in ScienceNOW:
Lawrence Small, the controversial head of the Smithsonian Institution, resigned over the weekend in the wake of reports that he inappropriately spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of the organization’s money. The uproar has put in jeopardy Congressional support for the Smithsonian….
… an internal Smithsonian auditing report…. claimed […]

10,000 birds: A tale of misogyny:
It seems that Kathy Sierra, prominent tech blogger, co-creator of the Head First computer books and founder of the JavaRanch programmer site, has placed her blog on what may be permenant hiatus. She’s also afraid to leave her home. The reason is a barrage of vile, sexist threats.
read […]

… is here at Afarensis.

Gookins.dot has written an extensive post responding to my post on “Home Schooling …. The Good,” which in turn leads me to make a few comments and ask a few questions (as usual).
First, I want to say how much I appreciate this post and it’s tenor. It is nice to not be accused […]

New Version of OpenOffice.org:
OpenOffice.org is an office suite that rivals (meaning, is better than in many ways) Microsoft Office.
Aside from basic functionality, there are two things that make OpenOffice.org better:
1) It does not cost anything to install or use it. It is free. It is not freeware. It simply does not […]

My student, Marta, exploded the other day.
She was sitting there in class two weeks ago and exploded. She does not know that I know this, but I noticed it happen. Since she was sitting, as usual, in the front row, and it was all in her face, the other students did […]

A very important and truly wonderful paper just out in Nature describes a tour-de-force analysis of the Mammalian Evolutionary Record, and draws the following two important conclusions:

The diversification of the major groups of mammals occurred millions of years prior to the KT boundary event; and
The further diversification of these groups into the modern pattern of […]

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Henry Waxman, examined evidence and allegations of political interference with the work of government climate change scientists under the current Administration. You can see the related documents as well as a video of the hearing here.
The following are exerpts from Waxman’s opening statement for […]

Daniel at Get Busy Livin’ or Get Busy Bloggin’ has an interesting post on the Establishment Clause, pointing to two legal analyses of it’s “True Meaning.”
Concerns … and interesting facts … about ecological problems related to the Niger River at Life Cycle Analysis:
The Niger River is a source of water […]