evolutiongeek's blog

I know I shouldn't be glad about this, but I won't lie. Creationist mouthpiece Kent "Dr. Dino" Hovind has been found guilty on various counts relating to his shenanigans involving tax evasion, adding up to 58 charges and failure to pay $845,000 in taxes, claiming himself and his employees are in fact employees of God and have no actual income. I've followed the developments with some interest, wondering what, if anything, Mr. (his "doctorate" came from a degree-mill, and his thesis had more spelling and grammatical errors than a 2nd grade student) Hovind had to say for himself, but he's been silent on the matter. Today, however, he was found guilty by the jury with the possibility of getting 288 years in prison, although the actual sentencing has yet to be done.  Read More »

I vaugely remember tuning in to Captain Planet every Saturday morning as a kid (followed by Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures, of course), and the little "Knowing is half the battle"-esque public service message statements at the end. One of them, of course, was global warming, which seemed like a very abstract problem during my childhood. In fact I remember much hubub being made over holes in the ozone layer and sea-levels rising. Even so, beyond banning certain chemicals from being used in aerosol cans, the threat of global warming seemed distant. Even in recent years, there's been a push to pollute less, but the average person didn't seem to have much of an opinion about global warming until Al Gore's film came out. Afterwards a flood of scientific papers were brought to attention, some supporting global warming and others suggesting that this warming trend is part of the earth's natural cycles. In fact, the climate that we have enjoyed as a species throughout our run has been surprisingly mild compared to ones in the past, and it could be that we're simply due for a change. Even so, I don't think it's that simple at all.  Read More »

Last night I got most of the way through the book The Octopus and the Orangutan by Eugene Linden, and it's proven to be rather fertle food for thought. How smart are animals anyway? Are they self aware? Can they psychologically adapt or is everyting pre-programmed? The book actually raises more questions than answers, but it seems to me we need to re-evaluate various aspects of animal psychology. Throughout most of our history, we've looked at the other creatures inhabiting the planet and branded them inferior, going so far as to make hierarchies based upon perceived intelligence. Of course squirrels are not in the same league intellectually (althought a human vs squirrel chess match would be quite amusing to see), but that does not mean they are devoid of any intelligence whatsoever. Could you bury hundreds of nuts and then remember where you put them several months later? I can barely remember where my keys are if I put them somewhere other than hanging on the doorknob after 10 minutes. The truth of the matter is, some life on this planet is a lot more intelligent than we ever gave it credit for.  Read More »

It seems to have been a big week for geological sciences, at least in one aspect or another. I missed GSA, but I heard about the new ideas surrounding the Cretaceous extinction, and in this weeks issue of Nature (the one with the honeybee genome and hox gene articles-very exciting stuff) there's articles about Miocene "Birds of Terror" being more terrible than previously thought, as well as an early lamprey that is so encephalized that it looks like a blood-sucking dustbuster. Add to that the article in LiveScience I saw today about the PNAS article involving possible human-neanderthal hybridization, which could have some interesting impacts upon our family tree if true.  Read More »

Last Thursday I was on my way to my Evolution in Geologic Time course when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. It was a beat-up white truck with a graphic depiction of an aborted fetus on the side with the verse "God is angry with the Wicked every day" (the 2nd half of Psalm 7:11 from the King James Version). I was a bit shocked by this and wondered if it was just passing through or what exactly was going on. As I walked out onto the pavement fronting the Rutgers Student Center, I was shocked to find various depictions of mutilated fetuses with the word "Choice" emblazoned above them being pointed in all directions, with people aged 8 through 50 holding them. I immediately ran back to my apartment (a mere 2 blocks away) and picked up my camera to get pictures of this, not sure why this was taking place or what was going to happen once enough college students saw the same signs.  Read More »

Is anyone else a little bit disturbed by the rampant selling-out of the film Over the Hedge? When I first saw the trailers for the movie, I have to say I was a excited to see it. I loved the comic strip and as an ecology major, I was glad to see some satire about issues involving suburban sprawl and raging consumerism (even moreso because I live in NJ, which is just one huge suburb of Philly and NYC). When the film finally arrived to theaters, I loved it, and it had one of my favorite under-appreciated musical artists (Ben Folds) featured throughout much of the film. Then, for some reason, my wife dragged me to Wal-Mart and I saw Over the Hedge characters promoting items all over the store. I couldn't believe it.  Read More »

Glancing over the main msn.com webpage today, I saw a link to a new ecological footprint study suggesting that by 2050, we'll need the resources of 2 earths to maintain the ever-growing human population. In fact WWF Directior-General James Leape said "If everyone around the world lived as those in America, we would need five planets to support us." Now, I do not put very much stock in statistics, but I would be a certifiable loony if I ignored the fact that the earth can't sustain the demands people are putting upon it. Recycling soda cans isn't enough anymore, that is, if you do it at all. I grew up here in New Jersey when in-between Satuday morning cartoons on ABC, a commercial would often play suggesting that I plant a tree, remember not to litter, and recycle. I assumed every state recycled, as it made good sense, but I am still shocked to know that many states don't. Even in New York City, the most populous place in the country, there is no recycling. I have been trying to track a list of which states do and don't recycle, but I haven't been able to locate one as yet (I'll update this post if I do), but it's hard for me to believe that in 2006 there are some people still throwing away aluminum cans.  Read More »

Comdedian Lewis Black once postulated that aneurisms are caused when you hear something stupid (i.e. "If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college") and it becomes lodged in your brain, preventing any other logical thought. After I received the book Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome by John Sanford late last week, I nearly suffered from a situation akin to what Lewis described during his routine. I had heard many of the arguments from creationists involving paleontology, geology, faked human footprints in dinosaur trackways, decaying basking sharks mistaken for plesiosaurs, etc., but this was a new one. Although I do not know much about genetics, I found I knew enough about them for this book to hurt really, really bad. Ugh.  Read More »