Greg Laden's Blog

Solar Plane: First Runway Test

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:15:36 -0500

The test saw the Solar Impulse take some slow steps down the runway using four solar-powered electric motors. The plane taxied without landing gear -- just like in a normal takeoff. Now that the runway test was successful, the Solar Impulse team will taxi to takeoff speed and let the plane take off for some short "hops" in the air. Full-fledged flight tests will begin next year.

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UC Protests Cast Light on Higher Ed's Financial Woes

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:42:29 -0500

Pagel on Darwin

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:09:23 -0500

Mark Pagel, evolutionary theorist extraordinaire, has published an Insight piece in Nature on Natural selection 150 years on. Pagel, well known for myriad projects in natural selecition theory and adaptation, and for developing with Harvey the widely used statistical phylogenetic method (and for being a reader of my thesis) wishes Charles Darwin a happy 200th birthday, and assesses this question:

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"Time for Atheists to Stop It"

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:21:10 -0500

I hear the cries and the calls of the religious moderate, and they are as usual correct. We have been too uppity, and I apologize on behalf of all of us. We should have known better, of course but in our exuberance at the publication of books by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and others, we forgot to realize that even though our numbers seem to be growing we are really riding the crest of a fad. It was something we should have recognized, and we should have told all those who heard that there are other atheists just to go home and pretend that they are religious, just like Mom and Dad.

The 150th on the blogosphere

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:03:33 -0500

With ID proponents increasingly and more loudly decrying Darwin as the reason the Holocaust happened, Bogused-Up copies of The Origin being circulated by Banana Loving Christians, and attacks on real science and real science education in the US continuing as though there were no Constitution or court system telling them to take it down a notch, it is appropriate to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species with a certain amount of noise and gusto. I won't say that is the only way to do it, but it is one way. There are not a lot of other days on which one can do this. Well, zero, really.

Obviously, I'm doing it here in my own humble way with a day of mostly Origin or Darwin related posts, but here's a few other loci in the blogosphere (and elsewhere) you may visit if you just need more Darwin:

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Chin up you YouTube Atheists

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:02:24 -0500

Hat Tip: Wolverine

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Why didn't Darwin discover Mendel's laws?

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:09:23 -0500

Perhaps we are all subject to falling into the trap of what I call the Hydraulic Theory of Everything. If you eat more you will be bigger, if you eat less you will be smaller. Emotional states are the continuously varying outcome of different levels of a set of hormones, forming "happy" or "stressy" or "angry" cocktails. Your brain is a vessel into which life pours various elixirs. Too much of one thing, and there will not be enough room for something else. Even political arguments are hydraulic. The 'balanced' middle view between two arguments is like the mixture of contrasting primary colors on a pallet.

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For Your Darwin Reading and Listening Pleasure

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:09:17 -0500

A podcast from earlier in the year, celebrating Darwin's birthday.

A few essays focusing on Darwin's Voyage on The Beagle

Bon Voyage HMS Beagle

The Voyage of the Beagle

Darwin Crossing The Atlantic

Charles Darwin and the Rain Forest

Darwin Gets his Wellies Wet

South America on Five Dollars a Day

Bugs (Darwin)

Darwin South of the Tropics

Darwin and The Gauchos

Fossil Quadrupeds

Rheas and the Birth of Evolutionary Theory

Elephants and Horses

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The people who like Obama more are smarter, female, non-white, not-Southern, not 'twix poor and rich, liberal dems godless and unmarried.

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:09:51 -0500

Modally speaking of course. And those are utterly different modes so the title of this post is of course nonsense. But, we do have some interesting data.

This is from the Gallup Pole of weekly job approval by demographic groups. The main thing this poll shows is that Obama has high job approval ratings, and that his job approval ratings are high in relation to other presidents at this moment in their terms.

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Reflections on the Origin of Species

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:50:16 -0500

The The Origin Of Species by Charles Darwin was published 150 years go as I write this. At the time, several different alternative theories of the origin and history of life were being discussed in the West. Some of these theories were theological. Theological ideas included a literal translation of the bible, with the flora, the fauna, and humans created in three separate but related creation events on a freshly made earth just a few thousand years ago. Another theological idea had an Abrahamic God's hand involved in the history of life but in ways we were not likely to understand until after death. Still another idea, championed by the influential Louis Agassiz, had several God-made origins each representing a different combination of habitat, ecology, climate, and human race. Ice ages would periodically wipe everything out and then God would replace the bits, much like how a gamer re-creates a simulated landscape after system crashes or save failures in SimCity (See Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral for an excellent overview of this and related issues). Maybe the gamer does it a little differently each time, and maybe god did that too. Non theological ideas were emerging at the time as well including some like Darwin's, but it was Darwin that focused and created several of the key models that are part of Evolutionary Theory today, and it was Darwin and Wallace who advanced the specific theory of Natural Selection. These evolutionary ideas rested within a broader panoply of evolutionary ideas, some of which have faded away, others incorporated, others waiting to be reconsidered.

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Visit the NSF's Evolution of Evolution Web Site

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:09:12 -0500

Honoring the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, Evolution of Evolution: 150 Years of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" is a multi-disciplinary one-stop-shop of resources on evolution and Darwin himself that are available nowhere else--including eye-catching graphics; captivating interviews and essays by a team of international evolutionary experts; fast-read texts; a timeline that neatly summarizes major intellectual and technological achievements that advanced our understanding of evolution; and downloadable documents.

HERE

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