Tag Archives: Evolution

Homeschooling Carnival Up

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Homeschool Showcase (Formerly The Carnival of Cool Homeschoolers) #15 is up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. I’ve got an item listed in the carnival, which is typical (I often send potentially useful science content material to the homeschooling carnivals.)

While you’re studying Earth science, you may want to check out Nature’s Evolutionary Gems posted by Greg Laden at Greg Laden’s Blog. It’s up to you whether you use it to teach evolution as fact or as a teachable moment as you discuss God’s creation. I know how we’ll be using it. 😉

Wink wink indeed!

The Fantastic Mystery of the Younger Dryas

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One of the most interesting and exciting stories in science is that of the Younger Dryas. The Younger Dryas was a climate event that had important effects on human history, and that has been reasonably linked to some of our most important cultural changes, and ultimately some evolutionary changes as well. That is one reason why it is interesting. In addition, the Younger Dryas was a pretty big deal … a climate change or something like a climate change that caused massive changes all around the earth, and fairly recently. But the cause of the Younger Dryas is at present unknown, although a series of explanations have been advanced, each as convincing as the next depending on one’s point of view. The Younger Dryas itself is interesting, and the story of how scientists have studied it and the changing explanations emerging from that research is just as interesting.

The latest science is beginning to suggest that it is all even more interesting and exciting (and scary) than previously thought.

Continue reading The Fantastic Mystery of the Younger Dryas →

Pink Iguanas and Disappearing Islands

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It turns out that a recently discovered population of land iguanas on the Galapagos is probably a new species that represents the basal (original) form of Galapagos land iguana. Moreover, this iguana is found in an unexpected place, according to a paper just coming out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

And it’s pink.
Continue reading Pink Iguanas and Disappearing Islands →

Nature’s Evolutionary Gems

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The following announcement is from Nature.

About a year ago, an Editorial in these pages urged scientists and their institutions to ‘spread the word’ and highlight reasons why scientists can treat evolution by natural selection as, in effect, an established fact (see Nature 451, 108; 2008).

This week we are following our own prescription. Readers will find at http://www.nature.com/evolutiongems a freely accessible resource for biologists and others who wish to explain to students, friends or loved ones just what is the evidence for evolution by natural selection. Entitled ’15 evolutionary gems’, the document summarizes 15 lines of evidence from papers published in Nature over the past 10 years. The evidence is drawn from the fossil record, from studies of natural and artificial habitats, and from research on molecular biological processes.

In a year in which Darwin is being celebrated amid uncertainty and hostility about his ideas among citizens, being aware of the cumulatively incontrovertible evidence for those ideas is all the more important. We trust that this document will help.

The Perfect Bird Family Tree…

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… is certainly still in the future. But we have seen a step in that direction in a new paper, coming out this week in Science. This research applies intensive and extensive genomic analysis to the avian phylogenetic tree. The results are interesting.ResearchBlogging.orgThis paper is summarized in a number of locations, most notably here on Living the Scientific Life. Here, I will summarize it only very briefly. However, there are two observations I would like to make about this paper and its apparent meaning. One has to do with the nature of science, and the other has to do with the nature of evolution in particular. I’ll argue that we can quantify (almost non-trivially) the number of times science is wrong. I’ll also argue that Stephen Jay Gould was wrong (not totally, but not trivially) about one of his most important assertions (other than his musings about the myth of vaginal orgasms … we’ll talk about that another time). Continue reading The Perfect Bird Family Tree… →

Drs Myers and Decker: Advice on Teaching Evolution

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i-68efa548cdb44e33126c5936c96fe3ed-evolution_2008.jpgContinuing with our discussion of the Evolution 2008 conference … many things have been going on and I have more to report than time to report it. But I will get to all of it, I assure you. Tonight, I just want to cover part of today’s Education Symposium (moderated by your’s truly) … not all of it at once, thought, as it is kind of complex.If you happen to work for the University of Minnesota or know anyone who does, best to not read this or let anyone know about it. This is a little to heavy to be spoken of openly. (Since there are only 11 of you who read my blog, I think we’ll be safe.)I want to comment briefly on two of the talks, one by PZ Myers and one by Mark Decker. The other talks in the symposium were excellent, but I want to address them separately.First, to dispel rumors that PZ Myers passed out on he lawn in the middle of the campus; This is simply not true. It is true that he had slept only four hours over the previous two and a half days, and had just flown in that morning from Vegas, but he did not pass out on the lawn. In fact, we were able to wire him up quite nicely. Here are before and after photos of a little treatment we applied to get him through the afternoon (This is me on the right and our techie in the middle, in the first photo).BEFORE:i-c8cfc6454ec454c5288df0e8b8bf56ae-PZ_Myers_Fixing_Up.jpgAFTER: Continue reading Drs Myers and Decker: Advice on Teaching Evolution →

The Origin of Life on Earth: New Research

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A very Darwin-like god ponders what the nature of life will be like. From Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.
The origin of life presents a number of fundamental difficulties to science. One of these is the seemingly irreducible complexity of life itself. For instance, DNA codes for the molecules that are essential to life. Some of these molecules, however, are the very enzymes that help DNA code for molecules. It is difficult to imagine DNA works without these enzymes, but the enzymes exist in a cell because, in part, of the activities of DNA. Even the basic process of moving molecules into cells to use in the construction of DNA or other molecules requires molecules that are thusly constructed.What’s an evolutionary biologist to do???? Continue reading The Origin of Life on Earth: New Research →

The Earth Is Being Eaten By Bacteria!

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… But don’t panic. Apparently, this is normal.It turns out that bacteria living at the bottom of the sea are far more abundant and diverse than scientists had previously thought. These bacteria appear to be consuming the planet’s oceanic crust. This raises several interesting questions regarding the interaction and co evolution of life on Earth and the Earth itself.[UPDATED] Continue reading The Earth Is Being Eaten By Bacteria! →

Creationism”Museum”to expand, targets children

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The Answers in Genesis Creation Museum of Kentucky is planing to expand. Some of the expansion will be internal … the construction of additional kiosks. Some will be external, including the construction of a playground. All of the planned expansion efforts will be targeted towards children.Ken Ham, director of the museum, also indicated in a recent interview that the purpose of the museum was to convert people to Christianity. This is something that should be noted by any public schools planning on sending children to this facility.[source]

Resurrection of DNA Function from an Extinct Genome

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Could even this bird be reanimated, gene by gene?
When you are extinct you’re extinct. Everything about you is dead and gone. There are no more of you, every individual in your species is kaput, non existent, used up, as the Pima Indians would say, you are hokum (like a car with a flat tire). In fact, you are hohokum (like a car with no tires). Your existence is erased. You are as blotto as a budgie in Burbank.Indeed, every bit of your being, every gene in your genome, every base pair in your DNA, is no longer extant….Or is it? Continue reading Resurrection of DNA Function from an Extinct Genome →

How Society Will Accept Rational Science: The Best Way to Frame Global Warming and Evolution

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There is a point that I’ve been trying to make for the last few weeks now, off and on, and it is not working. So I’m going to try something new. Please bear with me, and consider the following three scenarios regarding the idea that the Earth is Round (or, possibly, flat): Continue reading How Society Will Accept Rational Science: The Best Way to Frame Global Warming and Evolution →

Unpatriotic Missouri Academic”Freedom”Bill Advances Through Committee

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A Missouri House Committee has just approved for consideration of the House an Academic Freedom Bill drafted with the aid of the Discovery Institute.The bill has a nice twist to it in that it prohibits the consideration of any boundary or difference between religion and non-religion in regards to what to teach or how to teach it. In other words, the bill requires that state agencies, school administrators, and teachers ignore the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America in deference to state law. Therefore, challenges to this particular form of the bill would be a challenge to state’s rights.Such a challenge would result in the bill being struck down as clearly as any with any other challenge, but it could take longer. If there are sympathetic judges in the right places, a school district that obeys the higher level Federal law (or a teacher or a particular school) could be forced into the court system for one or two rounds of slash and burn lawyering.The best way to fight this sort of thing? Probably to make sure that individual legislators who introduce such bills, and who chair the committees that approve them, and so on, are held accountable for the legal fees that will be paid by cash-strapped school districts. Of course, such elected officials can’t be held accountable in any pecuniary way, but they can be made to pay by being tossed out of office by disgruntled taxpayers.The stamp of the Discovery Institute is obvious in both the wording of the bill and the fact that not a single news outlet has coverage of this event, but it is covered on the DI web site. They really ought to be a bit more discrete as I’m sure they will later want to deny involvement in this particular effort (at about the time the legal bills come in).This is just more of the Wedge Strategy, more of the Trojan Horse approach, and more of the same attack on our public school system, it’s children, and their teachers.Here is the main text of the bill: Continue reading Unpatriotic Missouri Academic”Freedom”Bill Advances Through Committee →