Phyllis Schlafly has suddenly become interested in evolution! She has written the most staggering display of buffoonery on the subject that I’ve read in a long time. She can’t even tell the difference between Darwin and Lamarck–seriously. At least Steve Reuland at Panda’s Thumb candismantle this ignorant nonsense while retaining his sense of humor.
Category: Blog
Size matters. At least that’s the result of some recent research on long-term evolutionary trends that I’ll be reporting in tomorrow’s New York Times. Here are the first few paragraphs…
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.
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.