mcdspot

Ardi, pictured above, is my new hero.

By replacing Lucy as the earliest known skeleton from the human branch of the primate family tree, the scientists said, Ardi opened a window to “the early evolutionary steps that our ancestors took after we diverged from our common ancestor with chimpanzees.”

PZ Myers, biologist and professor at the University of Minnesota, takes on the five “best” arguments for creationism.

This is how it all went down.

It’s sort of a monument to scientific illiteracy, isn’t it?

– Jerry Lipps, professor of geology, paleontology and evolution at University of California, Berkeley, on a visit to the Creation Museum

The religious reaction to the stunning discovery of a 47-million-year-old fossilised skeleton — which could be the “missing link” evolutionists have been seeking — is in. According to this guy, the whole thing is bunk because “a missing link would be something that is almost completely human, but not.” Oh really? Is that how evolutionary science works? Of course, the article could be another example of Poe’s law at work.

via kottke.

PZ Myers, the “leading American evolutionary biologist,” has been asked to write a monthly science column for U.K.’s The Guardian.

Watch all 7 parts of BBC’s The Voyage of Charles Darwin.

“This complete series of the old BBC film depicts the life of Charles Darwin in the 1800s, as well as how Darwin came about formulating his theory of evolution and natural selection. There are seven episodes in this series and the titles are as followed: Chapter I: I was considered a very ordinary boy. Chapter II: My mind was a chaos of delight. Chapter III: How wide was the distance between savage and civilised man. Chapter IV: Can any mountains, any continent, withstand such waste? Chapter V: I felt myself brought within reach of that great fact, that mystery of mysteries. Chapter VI: Suppose that all animals and all plants are represented by the branches of a tree – the tree of life. Chapter VII: In the distant future, light will be thrown on the origin of man, and his history. Enjoy this wonderful classic and don’t forget to keep searching for the answers to the bigger questions in life.”

Mike Rosulek has made some memetastic artwork commemorating Darwin’s birthday. Via Boing Boing.

Let us celebrate the life of this extraordinary man. There is grandeur in his view of life, indeed. Here is the last paragraph of his book, The Origin of Species (1909 version):

“It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”

According to a recent study conducted by the National Science Foundation, one in eight U.S. high school biology teachers presents creationism or intelligent design in a positive light in the classroom, despite a federal court’s recent ban against it.

According to one study conducted by the National Geographic Society, America’s population shares views towards evolution with Latvia, Cyprus, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Romania, among others. Sweden, France, Japan, UK, and Denmark of course are at the opposite end of the spectrum.

It appears that our creationist and intelligent design friends have found a new forum: Texas. Ars Technica reports that last week the Texas Education Agency’s Director of Science was forced out of her job for allegedly not “remaining neutral” over the teaching of evolution in schools. Christine Comer, a former science teacher, had her nine-year stint as Director of Science ended as a result of an e-mail she sent to colleagues, notifying them of an upcoming talk being given by Barbara Forrest. Forrest is the author of Inside Creationism’s Trojan Horse, a book that details the movement to have intelligent design taught as science in America’s schools.

This bothers me because it is of course absurb to permit the teaching of creationism in our schools, but it also bothers me because the creationists just won’t shut up and go away. And Alabama is probably next. Alabama schools already allow disclaimers in biology textbooks that describe evolution as “a controversial theory” and recently the state became the first in the union to approve a textbook for a course about the Bible in its public schools. What’s next, another monument in the Supreme Court?

Best picture ever from the recently-opened Creation Museum in Kentucky.

And in other news, Intelligent Design tries rebranding.

A recent Gallup poll has confirmed that the GOP has been effectively appropriated by the religious right. The poll found that the majority of Republicans in the United States do not believe the theory of evolution is true and do not believe that humans evolved over millions of years from less advanced forms of life.

sigh.

from the Creationist Museum.

Jesus! vs Darwin!
Originally uploaded by The Searcher.

Go Kansas go. You’ve certainly come a long way. But there’s still a very long road ahead for all of us.