This little guy is a crustacean which has its molting synthesis activated by Halloween genes (as do insects because, gasp!, they share a relatively close lineage). Some of the names of these genes are Spo, Spok, Spookiest, Phantom, Disembodied, Shadow, and Shade.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: common ancestory, crustaceans, halloween, Halloween genes, insects | Leave a Comment »
Seed has an article about How We Evolve. It’s a fantastic read that I won’t try to break down since it’s already written in an enormously friendly manner. I do, however, want to focus on one part. “Intelligence builds on top of intelligence,” says Lahn. “[Culture] creates a stringent selection regime for enhanced intelligence. This [...]
Filed under: Evolution | Tagged: Evolution, How We Evolve, natural selection, Seed, selection pressure, steve jones | Leave a Comment »
The competition gets tougher every year.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: beards | Leave a Comment »
I try to make it a habit to not use much of anything I find on PZ Myers blog. It’s not because I don’t like his blog – I do, it’s great – but I’d rather not be stealing the man’s ideas or topics (there’s enough science to go around). But he recently made a [...]
Filed under: Creationism | Tagged: Christine Comer, creationists, Discovery Institute, dishonest, intelligent design, mcleroy, tea, texans for better science education, texas education agency | 10 Comments »
This is a bit much astronomy for a primarily biology blog, I know. Unless something great pops up, this will be the last astronomy post for at least a little while. Some new research into the tidal forces of stars and their planets has yielded some interesting results. Planets around small mass stars may only [...]
Filed under: Astronomy/Cosmology/Physics | Tagged: astrobiology, Astronomy, Earth, Gaia, life abiogenesis, space, space.com | 1 Comment »
For anyone wondering, it’s pretty conclusive that Mars once had water on it. Here we have a new sign that ancient Mars was wet more recently. “This is an exciting discovery because it extends the time range for liquid water on Mars, and the places where it might have supported life,” said CRISM principal investigator [...]
Filed under: Astronomy/Cosmology/Physics | Tagged: hydrated silica, Mars, NASA, opal, opaline silica, Reconnaissance Orbiter, space, space.com, water | Leave a Comment »
Apparently, some people think science can be either conservative or liberal. Well, it can’t. So why do the nuts over at Conservapedia think otherwise? What’s more, why do they think creationists tend to win debates with ‘evolutionists’? Morris also said regarding the creation scientist Duane Gish (who had over 300 formal debates): “At least in [...]
Filed under: Creationism | Tagged: conservapedia, conservative, creationists, Evolution, henry morris, institute for creation research, liberal, McCain, Obama, wikipedia | 1 Comment »
Evidence found of solar system around nearby star WASHINGTON — For the first time, astronomers think that they’ve found evidence of an alien solar system around a star close enough to Earth to be visible to the naked eye. They say that at least one and probably three or more planets are orbiting the star [...]
Filed under: Astronomy/Cosmology/Physics, News | Tagged: Astronomy, constellation Eridanus, Epislon Eridani, SETI, solar system, space | 3 Comments »
This is apparently some confusion over my post about why natural selection is not random. It’s a fairly elementary issue at hand, but it evidently needs to be addressed. One reader mentions, Natural selection is a product of selective pressures. Those selective pressures are random in that they do not try to produce anything specific [...]
Filed under: Evolution | Tagged: basic, Bettawrekonize, creationist, easy, Evolution, genetic drift, mutation, natural selection, nonrandom, random, silly | 34 Comments »
This is apparently some confusion over my post about why natural selection is not random. It’s a fairly elementary issue at hand, but it evidently needs to be addressed. One reader mentions, Natural selection is a product of selective pressures. Those selective pressures are random in that they do not try to produce anything specific [...]
Filed under: Evolution | Tagged: basic, Bettawrekonize, creationist, easy, Evolution, genetic drift, mutation, natural selection, nonrandom, random, silly | 34 Comments »
