Bora has finally updated his domain name for A Blog Around the Clock.
Greg Laden has started a Skeptic-friendly (woo-eliminating) search engine.
John Dupré reviews Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini.
Anjan Chakravartty reviews Brian Ellis’ The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism.
The Obama administration hasn’t yet reversed the Republican war on science.
Crops can evolve into weeds.
The British Society for the History of Science had some Darwin-related sessions.
It’s not just Scienceblogs that is causing science bloggers trouble. Richard P. Grant, who was not in Withnail and I, is thinking about the value of being at Nature Networks.
PZ Syrem has a good summary of the role of gene networks in evolution, unfortunately repeating the “all you know about evolution is wrong” mantra.
And finally, the SolarDynamics Observatory is now working, and sending 3.5 terabytes of data per day! I love this quote from Frank Eparvier at Colorado: “Because of the sheer size of the treasure trove of data we are getting from SDO,” he says, “it will require the entire scientific community to sift though and make the connections that advance the science.” Scientists sharing data? Say it ain’t so!
Greg Laden’s search engine only seems to search a handful of blogs. What’s wrong with the Skepticator?
Let him know and he’ll add it.
No, I mean the Skepticator already does this and with over 500 skeptical blogs.
(And as I write, this post is top of the front page!)
Actually, I read PZ Syresm’s post on Bard’s Bioessays paper, and was also quite annoyed with his Evol Bio 101 level spiel.
Especially the “think populations” point, which is something no one should have missed in Evol 101.
I’m guessing that PZ Magyars directed his post against the fairly persistent misconception that evolution happens through one organism, by one gene (change), with one evident species-level phenotypic effect.
It’s very easy and tempting to think in this way, perhaps because everyone thinks of oneself as one, wrong as that may be. More realistically, one is a member and result of a family (and successively larger groups) and thus of successively longer histories. Some families/bio-groups, by their cross-generation engagement in politics, art, literature, etc. have noticeable (inter- and intra-taxon) effects on their successors (think the Medici, or Dinosauria).
Sorry for the improper mix of biology and culture, but as an introductory example on evolutionary thinking this might be better than the one cited by PZ, more in the spirit of evolution as he describes it and as it actually seems to work.
My guess is that PZ Minor set out to produce a posting showing how this more complicated picture of evolution actually makes it easier for cool stuff to evolve. But then he gave up, perhaps because doing that would take more pedagogy than would fit.
So, as a result, all he accomplishes is to confirm this caricature. Too bad.