Tuesday, August 30, 2011

The evolution of biblical manuscripts

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In an ironic twist of fate that might infuriate creationist fundamentalist Christians, evolutionary thinking dominates scholarly studies of ...
Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Some Darwinian poetry to make you smile

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Charles Darwin's grandfather Eramus Darwin was a brilliant but seriously bonkers chap--a kind of 18th Century English Rasta. You can re...
Thursday, August 11, 2011

Mary Anning: Fossil hunter extraordinaire

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Anyone off to Lyme Regis for their holidays should spare a thought for Mary Anning (1799-1847), who hailed from this English coastal town....

Galton or Weismann first to continuity of the germ-plasm?

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While researching the previous post, my curiosity was piqued over a comment by Frank Darwin about his relative Francis Galton (who BTW was...

Darwin: serial plagiarizer or revolutionary genius?

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Stephen Jay Gould once joked that “precursoritis" (or should it be " precursorism ") is the bane of historiography. Nonethe...
Monday, August 8, 2011

Minimum requirements for a PhD thesis

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I am getting tired of having to examine sub-standard PhD theses and then having to write the same old comments in the report on the thesis, ...
Thursday, July 28, 2011

Survival of the aptest: evolutionary turns of phrase

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The terms adaptation and evolution pre-date Darwin. The term “adapt” comes from the Latin adaptare, to make fit. William Paley used the term...

Darwin’s captain: Robert FitzRoy

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Robert FitzRoy (1805–65) entered the Royal Navy at age thirteen and, after passing exams with full marks, moved quickly up the ranks. In 18...
Friday, July 22, 2011

Don't let Rough Guides let The Rough Guide to Evolution go out of print!

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Is it possible to be very happy and very disappointed at the same time? That is about how I am feeling right now!! Why am I happy? Well, as ...
Thursday, July 21, 2011

Another five star review

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5.0 out of 5 stars A Grand and Glorious Guide to Evolution , By John Kwok (New York, NY USA) Why is evolution one of the most important ide...
Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Charles Darwin senior: cause of death and place of burial

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Following up from on my previous post , a picture is now available of Charles Darwin senior's last resting place, thanks to Kim Traynor ...
Sunday, July 17, 2011

Last resting place of Charles Darwin rediscovered

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OK, so you are wondering what I am going on about with that title, as we all know that Charles Darwin (1809-1882), the famous naturalist and...

A five-star review

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This from Howard Kornberg via the Amazon.co.uk site: 5.0 out of 5 stars Everything Evolutionary , 6 May 2009 By Howard Kornstein (UK) - Se...
Tuesday, July 5, 2011

The phoenix rises from the ashes, the coelacanth from the ocean!

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Apologies, dear reader. This blog has been dormant for over a year... There were a couple of reasons for this I felt the need to re-focus my...
Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Rap Guides to Aquatic Biology

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Here are two biological takes on Lonely Island's "I'm on a Boat" ( on YouTube ) that might amuse you. The first parodies ...