Evolution, creationism and the law

Titan at Promethus Retold has an interesting analysis of Jana McCreary published in the Southwestern University Law Review. McCreary makes the argument that evolution is a creation story for atheism (disputable, but beside the point), thus teaching evolution fails the Lemon Test - that the teaching of evolution advances on religion (atheism). According [...]

Plasmid addiction

In the off chance that anyone reads this blog who doesn’t already read ERV - go read this!  It’s one of the coolest systems I have ever heard of.

Bt cotton and the evolution of resistance

Over the last decade, genetically modified crops have become widespread in agriculture. One of the more successful of these are Bt crops - transgenic plants that express genes derived from Bacillus thuringensis. These genes allow the plants to produce toxins which specifically affect certain groups of insects. Since these plants do not [...]

Creationism in Florida

The St Petersburg Times ran a fascinating article last week on the issue of evolution education.  Mike the Mad Biologist already commented on one point that really jumps out at you - when asked what evolution is, 45% of the Floridians they surveyed picked “Human beings were created directly by God”.  Is this what they [...]

Florida Science Standards

Mike O’Risal of Hyphoid Logic has a great post on the upcoming decision by the Florida Board of Education regarding the state’s science standards.  He really puts things in perspective, especially with regards to how a lack of science education affects not only the undergrads he teaches, but also the people arguing against the inclusion [...]

Darwin Day 2008

The Center for Inquiry at the University of Oklahoma sponsors a Darwin Day Forum. There were three distinguished panelists (OU Zoology professors Ola Fincke and Richard Broughton, and internationally renowned blogger Abbie Smith) and me. We had a crowd of thirty-some people, mostly pro-evolution. We introduced ourselves, and then fielded questions.
It was [...]

Plastid evolution

A forthcoming paper in the Annual Review of Plant Biology looks really interesting: Plastid Evolution. Written by Sven Gould, Ross Waller and Geoffrey McFadden of the University of Melbourne, it looks really promising. From the abstract:
We review the origins, integration, and functions of the different plastid types with special emphasis on their biochemical [...]

Recovering from the Permian mass extinction

The mass extinction at the end of the Permian was by far the biggest mass extinction event.  Greg Laden has a post about a recent paper which deals with the ecological recovery from this extinction event.  Taxonomic recovery is far quicker than ecological recovery.  That makes sense to me - after all, there’s far more [...]

Cultural constructs and science

Having mocked the idea of evolution as a social construct and the idea that the evolution-creation war is nothing more than a “social power struggle for control of biology departments and curricula“, I feel the need to point to a more balanced treatment of the idea. Over the last several weeks John Pieret has [...]

Visting Lucy in Houston

We took a trip down to Houston this weekend to visit the Lucy exhibition. There had been controversy over the tour, given the irreplaceable nature of the skeleton and its frailty, I figured that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Regardless of whether I thought it a good idea for her to travel or [...]