Intelligence is no different than feathers or tentacles or petals. It’s a biological trait with both costs and benefits. It costs energy (the calories we use to build and run our brains) which we could otherwise use to keep our bodies warm, to build extra muscle, to ward off diseases. It’s also possible for the genes that enhance one trait, such as intelligence, to interfere with another one, or even cause diseases. Over the course of evolutionary time, a trait can vanish from a population if its cost is too high.
Author: admin
The folks at Real Climate have hit the ground running. They carefully demonstrate how misleading Michael Crichton’s new book State of Fear is on global warming. Let’s hope they can keep this quality up.
I just heard about Real Climate, a blog authored by some of the best climatologists in the business. The blogosphere has been flooded by awful gibberish about climate change that tries to make the most out of flimsy bits of research while making the least of the overwhelming scientific consensus. So I’ll definitely be putting this one on my daily reading list.
Imagine you’re a columnist. You decide to write something about how the National Park Service is allowing a creationist book to be sold in their Grand Canyon stores, over the protests of its own geologists, who point out that NPS has a mandate to promote sound science. Hawking a book that claims that the Grand Canyon was carved by Noah’s Flood a few thousand years ago is the polar opposite of this mandate. So what do you write? Well, if you’re Republican consultant Jay Bryant, and you’re writing for the conservative web siteTown Hall, you declare that this as a clear-cut case of Darwinist atheists censoring freedom of speech in a desperate attempt to squelch Intelligent Design.
The Australian media are doing a fantastic job of keeping up with the developments with Homo floresiensis. Here’s the first three-dimensional reconstruction I’ve seen of the little hominid, made by an Australian archaeologist. It’s published on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s web site. I’m sure that as more bones emerge, the image will improve, but this is still a wonderful first look.