Category Archives: travel

Panorama from Grandfather Mountain (and a creationist teacher)

UPDATE:  I’ve received an apologetic post from Mr. Eastman, which he tried to post on the picture page, where nobody would see it. I’ve therefore put it here for the record: Dear Jerry : I am very sorry I wrote on a blog without thinking in a reactive manner> I did not want to enter […]

I saw a salamander, and other notes from North Carolina

I’m posting a few holiday snaps from this week’s seminar trip to Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. It’s very strange for a biologist to reach his dotage without seeing a salamander in the wild, but I confess to that deficiency. But it was rectified Thursday night when my host, Howie Neufeld, along with […]

Monday felid

Reader Patrik sent me a paper he wrote on the evolution of language and then, as an addendum, enclosed a felid picture with this note: I also provide a cat photo from Manila, Philippines, where I am a resident at present (I’m Swedish). The photo is taken outside the local cat lady’s house. Please feel […]

Guest post: The most poignant episode in all of the history of science

When my friend Andrew Berry, who teaches at Harvard, told me this story two days ago,  I realized that it would be a great post for Wallace Year. (This is the centenary of the death of the great naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, aka The Man Who Also Thought of Natural Selection.) I begged Andrew, an […]

The TSA blows it again

Who is in charge of the Transportation Security Administration? Obsessed with security theater rather than real security, they’ve just made a decision to allow small knives and sporting goods like golf clubs and small baseball bats to fly with passengers in the cabin.  As CNN reports: On Tuesday, TSA Administrator John Pistole announced that small […]

Food: Charleston

Here are a few holiday snaps of the meals I had in Charleston, South Carolina—one of the loveliest cities I’ve had the privilege of visiting. I also have a bunch of pictures of the town itself, which I hope to put up later, but here’s what I ate. Upon arrival, I immediately had a late […]

Birds (and mammals) in Georgia

Here are four photos of three birds I took outside of Atlanta during my recent visit. I’ll identify one and leave the other two to readers: Great blue heron (Ardea herodias; click all photos to enlarge): What was he doing at a small man-made lake? Waiting for heron fudz!: Mystery bird 1 Mystery bird 2: […]

Peregrinations: Southern fudz

Needless to say, I ate well on my recent trip to Georgia and South Carolina.  I’ll put up two posts on the comestibles, with the first covering down-home Southern cooking and the second the fancier food I had in Charleston. Met at the airport at Atlanta, I was immediately taken to the Barbecue Kitchen of […]

Going home: talks and a debate on the road

I wrote this yesterday—Sunday afternoon, and decided to polish and post it today. ***** Today I fly back to Chicago to begin teaching evolution to undergraduates, and I’ll also begin writing the book that has immersed me so deeply in theology over the last year.  This almost certainly means that I’ll have to reduce the […]

Victory for Simon’s Cat

In a new animated Simon’s Cat video, a human learns what happens when you try to make a felid behave. Travel note: I’m lecturing in Augusta in a few hours on the incompatibility of science and religion. I’ve discovered that in this part of Georgia it is legal to openly carry a handgun in a […]

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