Old Weblog Archive - December 2001

A Touching Tribute #
The Friends of Charles Darwin have received a mention in the Touching Base section of the December 2001 edition of Nature Genetics magazine (yes, that's right, the Nature Genetics magazine).
Friends of Charles Darwin: 31-Dec-01

DNA pioneer is honoured #
James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, is to receive an honorary knighthood.
BBC News: 31-Dec-01

The word made flesh #
Richard Dawkins in a characteristically optimistic and reductionist piece about the advances in genetics he expects us to see in the next few decades.
Guardian: 27-Dec-01

27th December, 2001 #
170 years ago today, on 27th December, 1831, Charles Darwin set sail aboard HMS Beagle on a five-year circumnavigation of the world.

Education Bill Featured Darwinism Side Show #
The recently passed education bill in the U.S. Congress became a stage for the on-going debate over whether schools should teach alternative theories about the origin of life on earth. It started with an amendment offered by Sen. Rick Santorum calling for school curriculum to "help students understand the full range of scientific views ... where topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution)."CNSNews.com: 26-Dec-01

Evolutionary Road #
Reviews of two books about Alfred Russel Wallace: Alfred Russel Wallace: a Life by Peter Raby and The Alfred Russel Wallace Reader: a Selection of Writings From the Field edited by (the aptly named) Jane R Field.
Washington Post: 23-Dec-01

'Mystery' squid delights scientists #
A new and bizarre type of squid has been reported by marine biologists. The cephalopod, which has spidery, seven-metre-long (20 feet) arms, is detailed in the journal Science.
BBC News: 21-Dec-01
Beautiful photos! Like something out of the film The Abyss.

Life's sweet start #
Sugar from space may have helped life to begin on planet Earth billions of years ago. The suggestion is based on the discovery of sugar in two meteorites that are billions of years old.
BBC News: 20-Dec-01
For a more detailed account, see Sweet Meteorites [Nasa, 20-Dec-01]
So, Earth might not have been visited by ETs, but it appears to have been visited by sweeties.

Third genetic 'chapter' published #
Another chapter in the human book of life has been published. Scientists have deciphered the complete genetic instructions of a third chromosome, chromosome 20.
BBC News: 20-Dec-01

Prison reformer makes new £5 note #
The nineteenth century prison reformer Elizabeth Fry is to become only the second woman to appear on the back of an English banknote.
BBC News: 18-Dec-01
See also: Bank of England press release.
Bloody typical! We get all sorts of grief when we try (ultimately successfully) to get Darwin celebrated on a bank note, then, the next thing you know, they go and do exactly the same for some token woman who nobody's ever heard of. It's Sir John Houblon all over again!

Warmth puts penguins under pressure #
New research suggests Adelie penguins may abandon the Antarctic Peninsula if temperatures continue to increase. Scientists studying fossilised penguin remains near Britain's Antarctic base at Rothera say there were far fewer Adelie penguins there during warmer periods in the past.
BBC News: 18-Dec-01
But let's not forget that not all penguins live in the cold: there are penguins on the Galapagos Islands, which are on the equator!

How Do You Miss a Whole Elephant Species? #
How do you miss a whole species of elephant? They are, after all, the largest living terrestrial mammals on Earth, with male African elephants reaching an astounding 6,500 kilograms (14,330 pounds). But that's just what has happened.
National Geographic: 17-Dec-01
Although I've never heard an entirely satisfactory definition of the word species.

'What Evolution Is': A Friendly Textbook #
[Requires (free) registration]
Review of Ernst Mayr's new book. Mayr has been called ''the greatest living evolutionary biologist'' by his colleague Stephen Jay Gould. He has held that honorary title for more than half a century: one of his most important contributions came in 1942, when he published Systematics and the Origin of Species, which incorporated genetics, ecology and paleontology into what has become the modern view of evolution.
New York Times: 16-Dec-01

A Darwin at art #
Though she may not be the most immediately recognisable figure of her generation, Gwen Raverat made a truly remarkable hub. Frances Spalding's authoritative biography, Gwen Raverat: Friends, Family and Affections, has little difficulty locating Raverat at the centre of the Cambridge intellectual aristocracy. She corresponds with Virginia Woolf, studies at the Slade with Stanley Spencer, acts in a collegiate production of Milton's Comus alongside Rupert Brooke, tours Italy with André Gide, discusses the poems of her cousin Frances Cornford with Siegfried Sassoon, and the music of her second cousin Ralph Vaughan Williams with Eric Gill. Behind all this looms the massive, dominating presence of her grandfather, Charles Darwin.
Guardian: 15-Dec-01

The political scientist #
The son of a Jewish activist in the East End of London, one of his earliest memories was a violent demonstration by Blackshirts. Science and socialism inspired him and today, as a radical biochemist, he is an opponent of Darwinian fundamentalism. Andrew Brown on Steven Rose, the combative 'Professor Jekyll and Comrade Hyde'.
Guardian: 15-Dec-01
Unlike some of his day-old chicks', Steven Rose's head is firmly attached to his shoulders. A very clever man.

New Book: The Origin of Species, Revisited #
Donald Forsdyke, FCD, has published a new book: The Origin of Species, Revisited: A Victorian who Anticipated Modern Developments in Darwin's Theory [McGill-Queen's University Press, Sept. 2001]. The book is about George Romanes (1848-1894), "The Philosopher" who became Darwin's close research associate and, after Darwin's death, was a forceful advocate of the importance of reproductive isolation, rather than classical Darwinian natural selection, in the origin of species.

Correspondence #
, FCD, would like to correspond with any other people fortunate enough to own one of Charles Darwin's letters.

Galapagos waters win Unesco heritage protection #
40 miles of ocean surrounding the Galapagos Islands have been promoted to the status of Unesco natural heritage site nearly one year after an oil spill threatened an ecological disaster in the archipelago.
Financial Times: 14-Dec-01
So has the so-called Jurassic Coast of Southern England - see Jurassic coast is world wonder (BBC News: 13-Dec-01)

Museum selling creationism #
Florence, Kentucky, USA - There is no mention of Noah's Ark in most science museums. No mention of the Tower of Babel, or the Garden of Eden, either. Instead, you get dinosaur replicas, fossils, models of spiraling DNA. And informational text promoting what millions of Americans regard as drivel: the idea that all life on Earth evolved over 4 billion years from genetic scraps. It's tantamount to brainwashing. Or so Ken Ham believes.
MyInky.com: 10-Dec-01
Ham, wasn't he one of the sons of Noah? Must be getting on a bit now.

Charles Darwin joins the Friends of Charles Darwin #
It had to happen sooner or later: the Friends of Charles Darwin finally have a Charles Darwin on their membership list.
Friends of Charles Darwin membership list: 13-Dec-01

Clever crows lean to the right #
The toolmaking preferences of Pacific crows raise doubts about how humans came to be mostly right-handed. Some researchers have suggested that the tendency towards right-handedness in humans is a result of the ability to speak, a mental activity concentrated in the half of the brain which controls the body's right side. The discovery of "right-beakedness" in crows makes it look more likely that handedness has a more general origin.
BBC News: 12-Dec-01
The article also points out that gorillas and chimps (which don't speak) also exhibit a preference for one-sidedness, so the language link was always a bit dodgy. Perhaps it has something to do with a fondness for bananas!

Study says racism can be reversed #
A new study says racism is not programmed into the brain but is, in fact, a by-product of human evolution that can be altered. The research suggests that the apparent tendency towards noticing someone's skin colour - which many scientists had thought was inevitable - is actually a changeable feature of brain mechanisms that emerged for another reason: to detect shifting coalitions and alliances.
BBC News: 11-Dec-01
No, no, no, no, no, no, no! They're assuming that just because racism is a human trait, there has to be some sort of evolutionary reason for it. There might be, but it shouldn't be assumed.

3D brain mappers scan thousands #
Scans of 7,000 healthy people around the world are being used to produce a 3D atlas of the human brain.
BBC News: 06-Dec-01

Prehistoric man was never a teenager #
Prehistoric man did not go through a period of adolescence, according to new scientific evidence published in the journal Nature. Scientists believe that one of our ancestors, Homo erectus, may have developed more like an ape and missed out on adolescence - which evolved in later humans to allow for extra learning time.
BBC News: 05-Dec-01
So, adolescence might allow extra learning time, might it? I'm not convinced. Perhaps it's nothing more than a side-effect of humans' spending relatively little time developing in the womb: human adolescence might be the equivalent of childhood in our ape cousins. Besides, do all cultures recognise the concept of adolescence?

Monkey business on mobile phones #
Mobile phones allow people to gossip freely and become ape-like in their behaviour, researchers suggest. Anthropologists at the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford, UK, in a report entitled, Evolution, Alienation and Gossip - the Role of Mobile Telecommunications in the 21st Century, say chatting on the phone is the human equivalent of social grooming among chimpanzees and gorillas.
BBC News: 05-Dec-01
Oh good grief: what utter nonsense! The things some researchers will do for a bit of sponsorship! 'vox rationis', indeed!
For more on this, see my piece, It's Good to Gossip.

Is It Time to Revise the System of Scientific Naming? #
A team of researchers led by paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey sparked a controversy among evolutionary scientists and the press alike earlier this year when they announced the discovery of a new genus and species of ape-man. They named their find Kenyanthropus platyops, the "flat-faced man of Kenya". Ordinarily, the find itself would be enough to spark a flame of controversy in the heart of any follower of human origins research. But this find also highlighted an ongoing debate within the scientific community over the adoption of a new system for naming, ranking, and classifying organisms.
National Geographic: 04-Dec-01

Medicine’s Race Problem #
To acknowledge a biological dimension to race is to risk inflammatory and often groundless accusations of racism. The public’s health is best served by a balanced portfolio that employs race as a variable in both biomedical and social health research.
Policy Review: Dec-01