Cool links Michaelangelicea!
I've been busy this week, so I haven't scoured for much stuff since around Darwin Day on the 12th. Don't be fooled though, this is Darwin's year, and the bicentennial of the Origin of Species doesn't come around until the 24th of November, so........
Science authors Carl Zimmer and John Horgan discussed the recent Darwin mania and some other issues in modern evolutionary theory:
Bloggingheads.tv - diavlogs
There are quite a few neat articles over at Discover magazine
on Darwin, here are a few highlights:
DNA Agrees With All the Other Science: Darwin Was Right | Evolution | DISCOVER Magazine
Darwin's Dystopias: Ghastly Visions Inspired by Evolution | Evolution | DISCOVER Magazine (this one is artwork inspired by the concept of "survival of the fittest"! super weird/cool stuff!)
Six Sites That Are the Galapagos For Modern Darwins | Evolution | DISCOVER Magazine
In a letter co-authored NewScientist,
PZ Myers,
Dan Dennett,
Jerry Coyne, and
Richard Dawkins chided the magazine for a misleading cover graphic(from the
Jan 24 2009 issue), and set the record straight about Darwin and evolution:
Quote:
Darwin was right - 18 February 2009 - New Scientist
What on earth were you thinking when you produced a garish cover proclaiming that "Darwin was wrong" (24 January)?
First, it's false, and second, it's inflammatory. And, as you surely know, many readers will interpret the cover not as being about Darwin, the historical figure, but about evolution.
Nothing in the article showed that the concept of the tree of life is unsound; only that it is more complicated than was realised before the advent of molecular genetics. It is still true that all of life arose from "a few forms or... one", as Darwin concluded in The Origin of Species. It is still true that it diversified by descent with modification via natural selection and other factors.
Of course there's a tree; it's just more of a banyan than an oak at its single-celled-organism base. The problem of horizontal gene-transfer in most non-bacterial species is not serious enough to obscure the branches we find by sequencing their DNA.
click to continue reading...
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NewScientist has published some silly stuff like
this before, but this one was definitely
a new low for them.
Project Steve has officially reached 1000 Steves.... and the 1000th Steve was a Darwin!:
Quote:
Count On Steves to Defend Darwin: Scientific American Podcast
The National Center for Science Education initiated Project Steve in 2003 to count scientists named Steve (or Stephanie) who accept evolution, in response to lists of anti-evolution PhDs. The long-running effort, also a tribute to Stephen Jay Gould, crowned its thousandth Steve, a proxy for approximately 100,000 scientists, at last week's AAAS meeting. Steve Mirsky reports
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These Darwin posters are incredibly cool/clever... click
here if you somehow miss the reference:
mikero.com - blog
via
PZ
