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gregladen | February 12, 2011I became acquainted with an Englishman who was going to visit his estate ... more than a hundred miles [north] of Cape Frio. As I was quite unused to travelling, I gladly accepted his kind offer of allowing me to accompany him.
And so was the case with a number of Darwin's excursions into the bush.
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gregladen | February 12, 2011The first time I read the following passage from The Voyage, I was reminded of my own first experience in a rain forest (in Zaire). Evident in this passage is at least a glimmering of Darwin's appreciation for the complexity of ecosystems. Darwin could be considered the first scientific ecologist. Enough of my commentary ... this passage very much stands on it's own ...
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gregladen | February 12, 2011Behold this humble passage by Darwin, which is what immediately follows his discussion of the octopus. This passage is a touchstone to several important aspects of what Darwin was doing and thinking, and is a poignant link to what Darwin did not know:
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gregladen | February 12, 2011Of his time on the Beagle (1832 - 1836), Darwin wrote, "The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career." Of the manuscript describing that voyage, he wrote, "The success of this my first literary child always tickles my vanity more than that of any of my other books."
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gregladen | February 12, 2011... by not having a blog that gets lots of spam.
The following items were trapped in my spam filter over a period of several minutes, this morning. Each from a different IP address, each signed by a different author, each has a different fake email (provided), each points to a different web site (not provided) and each has a slightly different set of grammatical mistakes but all of the messages are of the same form.
rubber mulch [Frierson147506@yahoo.com] says:
Can I just say what a reduction to find someone who actually knows what theyre talking about on the internet. You positively know…
gregladen | February 12, 2011In 1833, Darwin spent a fair amount of time on the East Coast of South America, including in the Pampas, where he had access to abundant fossil material. Here I'd like to examine his writings about some of the megafauna, including Toxodon, Mastodon, and horses, and his further considerations of biogeography and evolution.
In the vicinity of Rio Tercero...
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mikethemadbiologist | February 11, 2011Links for you. Science:
Species, not arbitrary, but not clear & distinct
'Zombie ants' controlled by parasitic fungus for 48m years
Exposure to pesticides in womb linked to learning disabilities
Is it time to refer to mitochondria as bacteria?
Other:
What will "home computers" look like in the year 2004?
Criticism Intensifies of New Mexico's Climate Denying Energy Secretary, Harrison Schmitt (as a scientist, Schmitt was always a minor hero to me; too bad he's a crackpot)
The State of Working America
The Egyptian Army: The Unknown Factor
I Hope HuffPo's Merger With AOL Works Out Better…
gregladen | February 10, 2011And I have proof:
The Idaho Press Tribune has an abysmally stupid editorial for you to read and discuss. Do you know what "Tribune" means. Clearly, they don't at the Idaho Press Tribune.
Why is there so much hype about finding "life-friendly planets" (Page A7, Feb. 3)? Because evolutionists want support for their theory. If life evolved here, it surely evolved elsewhere in the millions and billions of years of the universe's existence.
Not only does scientific evidence abound showing there must be an intelligent creator of everything, but our solar system cannot be billions of years old.…
krandall | February 10, 2011By Dr. Ignacio Mosqueira, an astrophysicist at the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute, and Gail Jacobs
Ignacio Mosqueira works with Paul Estrada to piece together the way in which giant planets - such as Jupiter and Saturn -- and their moons and rings formed. Ignacio notes that making moons is similar to forming planets. Understanding moons may have something to tell us about the possible habitats for life, since large moons could, in principle, have both the liquid water and atmosphere necessary for the kind of diverse biology we see on planet Earth.…
lborkowski | February 10, 2011Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic blogs: On Labor ("My son is the joy of my life. But the work of ushering him into the world nearly killed his mother.")
Scicurious at Neurotic Physiology: Dieting, Stress, and the Changing Brain.
Robert Reich's Blog at the Christian Science Monitor: US Chamber of Commerce: Obama makes a bargain
Jon R. Luoma at Yale Environment 360: Why Does Energy Efficiency's Promise Remain Unfulfilled?
Alice Bell at The Guardian's Notes & Theories blog: Sexual discrimination against women in science may be institutional -- and also one of the pieces she links to, Kathy…
gregladen | February 9, 2011As a member of MNCSE I object to Steven Newton gratuitous opening statement but otherwise you might find this useful.
gregladen | February 7, 2011Why Does the Superbowl Hate America?
Watch the girl sing while you follow the ... revisions below:
Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming reaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming? Oh so proudly we washed at the twilight's last reaming
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our a flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of…
gregladen | February 6, 2011He is the author of NM House Bill 302 which is designed to protect teachers who want to teach anti-evolution or climate change denialism. This is not too different than the bill Michele Bachmann, who is also an idiot, introduced when she was a Republican member of the State legislature in Minnesota some years ago.
House Bill 302, as it's called, states that public school teachers who want to teach "scientific weaknesses" about "controversial scientific topics" including evolution, climate change, human cloning and -- ambiguously -- "other scientific topics" may do so without fear of…
j7uy5 | February 3, 2011This is decidedly ironic:
Rolling outages affect most chilly Texans all day
By ANGELA K. BROWN Associated Press
FORT WORTH, Texas -- A high power demand in the wake of a massive ice storm caused rolling outages for more than eight hours Wednesday across most of Texas, resulting in signal-less intersections, coffee houses with no morning java and some people stuck in elevators.
The temporary outages started about 5:30 a.m. and ended in the afternoon, but "there is a strong possibility that they will be required again this evening or tomorrow, depending on how quickly the disabled generation…
esiegel | February 3, 2011Teacher Writes on Blackboard: "The Method of Guessing"
Student: "What! There's a method???????"
Teacher: "Yeah, there's even a proof!" -overheard in a physics grad school
As a physics professor, one of the challenges I face is how to advise young students nearing the end of their undergraduate career on how to succeed in graduate school in physics.
The best I can do is tell them about what I've done myself that's worked for me, and what pitfalls I've seen others fall victim to.
As an undergraduate, my grades were all over the place. I'd take an advanced astrophysics course I was really…