Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
We had a late arrival in Guayaquil two nights ago and were ferried directly to our hotel, which was quite spiffy. Here’s my room: After a restive night, I had a substantial Ecuadorian buffet breakfast (lovely tamales and fried plantains) and we were bussed to the Guayaquil airport for our 1 hour, 40-minute flight to … Continue reading I have landed (in Ecuador)
We’ve all observed National Geographic magazine going down the tubes and going soft on religion (e.g., investigating and affirming the historicity of scripture), and on woo. Apparently this issue, highlighted by fellow skeptic Phil Ferguson on his Facebook page, is about trying to validate woo, or at least about implying that there might be something … Continue reading Once more, National Geographic goes for the woo
This morning we spent a lot of time dropping food off at an Antarctic base that didn’t get its regular shipment of food because the supply ship, rife with Covid, had to head back to South America. We were told they were running short of protein, and so the ship’s food administrator put together a … Continue reading Antarctica, Day 9: Whalers Bay
UPDATE: Al added his own version of National Geographic, below: ,___________________ In the past few years I’ve posted sporadically about how National Geographic magazine, which is now owned by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Media conglomerate largely by The Walt Disney Company [since March] has been writing about religion, spirituality, and other numinous topics, and, disturbingly, in … Continue reading National Geographic appears to go all numinous again
Let’s end the work week with some animal behavior: in this case, octopus sex. I don’t even know how a male octopus determines that another individual is female! The narration is pretty twee, but if the males really compete to see who has the bigger suckers, that would be fascinating. And the arm that delivers … Continue reading Octopus sex
OMG they made a prosthetic leg for a male mallard and it works! Is there anything more satisfying than seeing a lame duck walk again? It takes Waddles a bit to learn how to walk, but we’re reassured that he’ll get better and better with time. Nerdist tells us a bit more of the story, … Continue reading Waddles the Duck gets a prosthetic leg
Please send in your wildlife photos! Yes, we have no wildlife today but we have geysers—photographed by Matt Young. Matt’s notes are indented, and you can enlarge the geyer pix by clicking on them. I had the good fortune to spend several days in Iceland in the summer of 2010 with my wife and a … Continue reading Readers’ wildlife photos
We had a 2½-hour walk on North Seymour Island this morning. The weather was lovely: not too hot, overcast (best for pictures), and with a cooling bit of wind. And the animals were all out and on display. First the ship, National Geographic’s Endeavour II, photographed from shore. It’s not large (26 staterooms), making for … Continue reading The Galápagos: North Seymour Island
It’s been a frustrating day: I spent an hour writing a critique of a Scientific American op-ed on “sex isn’t bimodal” only to discover the piece was several years old (and I probably wrote about it before). Into the trash can it went. The good news, though, is that, through meticulous photographs of duck bills … Continue reading Gutsy impala evades wild dogs, crocodiles, and angry hippos
Here from Science Advances via National Geographic, is the painting of a wild pig from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. AT 45,000 years old, it’s world’s oldest cave art, and in fact the oldest known representational art of any sort. Here’s the paper reporting it (click on screenshot), and a free pdf is here: The … Continue reading World’s oldest representational art: an Indonesian warty pig from 45,000 years ago
