by Greg Mayer Jerry has recently noted a forthcoming book on the Cambrian by the infamous Stephen Meyer. There is a brand new book, The Cambrian Explosion, by the famous Douglas Erwin of the USNM and even more famous James Valentine of UC-Berkeley, that you might want to read if you really want to learn […]
This Gallup poll is about ten months old, but I don’t think I’ve posted it before, and I like to update the statistics since the same poll is given every year. The question, too, is always the same (see below) and deals specifically with human evolution. Here are the overall data: Gallup’s summary is this: […]
This Thursday I’m giving a talk at Oakland University in Michigan on the evidence for evolution and the reason why Americans reject it. Drop by if you live in the area, and I’ll be glad to sign copies of WEIT (books will be on sale there). There will also be a secret word, announced later, […]
by Greg Mayer A new paper in Current Biology by Charles & Mary Brown with the folksy title, “Where has all the road kill gone?“ reports evidence for rapid evolution of wing length in cliff swallows (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) nesting on highway overpasses in Nebraska. (See also this news piece on Science‘s website.) For those evolution-deniers […]
Just for the record, here’s an interview with Smadar Reisfeld in Haaretz, Israel’s oldest daily newspaper, and, I’m told, an influential one. The interview, timed to coincide with the launch of my book in Hebrew, is behind a paywall, but you can see it if you can sign in free for 10 articles per month, […]
I have received an email from an Orthodox Jew in Israel who questions evolution. He’s asked me five questions, which I’ve put below along with his email. I wrote him back several times, trying to ascertain if he was simply trying to waste my time by giving me “stumpers,”, or was really interested in the […]
The BBC News reports that a collection of 1400 letters between Charles Darwin and his pal and colleague Joseph Hooker, many of them personal and intimate (no, not that way!), will soon be published by The Darwin Correspondence Project. This site, set up by people at Cambridge University, is a gold mine for Darwiniana: you […]
by Greg Mayer The evidence from biogeography is arguably the most important evidence for evolution. P.J. Darlington, perhaps the greatest zoogeographer of the 20th century, said that zoogeography showed Darwin evolution. And Jerry has long insisted that biogeography is at least among, if not the, most persuasive evidence for evolution. It was thus with great […]
Remember that 2013 is Wallace Year—the centenary of Alfred Russel Wallace’s death. If you don’t know who he is—and you must—read the Wikipedia article. We’ll be featuring Wallaceiana throughout the year. At the moment (it’s early!) I’m listening to a show on the man, the co-discoverer of natural selection, live on BBC Radio 4. It’s […]
The estimable Matthew Cobb called my attention to this post on The Featured Creature, which he found via the Facebook page of “Spider” Dave Penney, a freelance scientist (!) with his own publishing company. Have a look at this moth. If you saw it in the wild, would you have any idea what the wing pattern […]
