Life Without a Net
evolution
Design and Transitional Fossils
This is Tiktaalik. It was discovered by Neil Shubin and several of his colleagues, who had been looking for it for over a decade. In many ways, Tiktaalik is the scientific equivalent of the Crocoduck. It really is a transition between two modern forms of life — fish and amphibians. The details of Tiktaalik‘s “transitional … Continue reading
The Tree of Life is very big
http://www.zo.utexas.edu/faculty/antisense/tree.pdf You’ll have to zoom in for quite a while before this PDF starts to make any sense to you. Look in the upper left quadrant for “You Are Here.” This is from the laboratory of Hills and Bull at the University of Texas. I am led to believe that this is part of an … Continue reading
Oldie But a Goodie
I’ve been going back to some of my older posts and re-evaluating them, and I think today, in lieu of a new post, I’m going to encourage you to read one of my old ones that I think is particularly important. I’ve got a lot more followers now than I did when I wrote it. … Continue reading
Ardi and the Beginnings of Human Monogamy
National Geographic has an interesting article concerning the puzzle of Ardi. If you’re not familiar with Ardi, it’s a member of the long extinct species Ardipithecus ramidus, and dates to around a million years before the now famous Lucy fossil. What’s puzzling to scientists is that Ardi is bipedal before pre-humans are supposed to be … Continue reading
Evolution T-Shirt Pulled From School
The Sedalia Democrat reports that a local high school band had to turn in their band shirts because — horror of horrors — they had the well known evolution of man image on them. The image was meant to go along with the theme of the band’s performance, Brass Evolution, in which the band would … Continue reading
Science and Religion are Incompatible. Again.
PZ Myers has brought the case of Carlos Cerna and his quest for a PhD in molecular biology to the center stage. In a nutshell, Carlos attends La Sierra University — a Seventh Day Adventist school — and is a Young Earth Creationist. The church, which funds the university and dictates policy, has somehow acquired … Continue reading
Dating, Mating, Sex, and Reproduction Part II: What Men Want
It’s easy to joke about men’s taste in women. Women do it all the time. It’s the staple of most comedians’ repertoires. For all the jokes men tell about “dumb blondes” there are at least an equal number of jokes about “dumb jocks” or men who “think with the little head instead of the big … Continue reading
Dating, Mating, Sex, and Reproduction Part 1: What do Women Want?
Describing Humans The science of human nature lagged behind other hard sciences for most of the 20th century. There were several reasons for this. There was considerable resistance from the religious, who were still reeling from the widespread acceptance of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution through Natural Selection. To them, quantifying human animals as if they … Continue reading
DNA is Not a Code
Ok, yes it is… sort of. There’s been a rather tired argument making its way around the theist blogosphere of late, arguing that DNA is a code, and codes are designed things. The very fact of it being a code proves that there must have been someone who designed the code. As usual, this argument … Continue reading
Whoops! Another Nail in the ID Coffin
We all knew it was just a matter of time, right? For years now, one of the last strongholds of Intelligent Design proponents has been science’s inability to explain how RNA came to exist in the first place. IDers have held to the final “irreducible complexity” argument. RNA itself must have been created by an … Continue reading
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