A New Method of Determining Age From Teeth: One From The Archives

This is one from my old blog and was originally published on 9/16/05. I am republishing it because it bears on some recently published research, which I will get around to blogging about after I have read the recently published article a few more times.

Oh Hell, What Next: One from the Archives

I wrote this back in January 2006. Apparently it is still relevent to today’s news…
Homeland Security opening private mail:

In the 50 years that Grant Goodman has known and corresponded with a colleague in the Philippines he never had any reason to suspect that their friendship was anything but spectacularly ordinary.
But now he believes that the relationship has somehow sparked the interest of the Department of Homeland Security and led the agency to place him under surveillance.
Last month Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words “by Border Protection” and carrying the official Homeland Security seal.

Friday Know Your Primate: Special Edition

This is one from the archives. Although there are a number of resources that answer the question presented below, I decided to give my own response (the more resources the merrier).
Creationism/ID is something of a hobby of mine. I try to keep track of current arguments and have had several “discussions” with proponents of creationism/ID. One of the arguments that occasionally crops up is “If humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” For example, one of the people speaking in favor of the Minority Report of the Kansas BOE used that argument.

Australopithecus afarensis and Apes: One from the Archives

I’m currently trying to get through a rather lengthy book – which I will be reviewing in a later post – so in the meantime here is one from the archives… I wrote it back in April of 2005 and think I would write it somewhat differently today. I’ve toyed with doing a similar post on the post-crania …
One of the most aggravating things one can hear, if one has any training in paleoanthropology, is that the australopithicines were nothing but glorified apes. So let’s study the issue (hey, I have to justify the name of this blog, okay! Which means more hominids.) The first set of pictures below is a frontal view of A. afarensis, a chimp, an orang and a gorilla.

Defending Christmas: Dwarf Mistletoe Joins War on Christmas, Attacks Christmas Trees

Some of my Sciblings are reporting on their role in the “War on Christmas”. I think this is heinous. So I am reposting this piece I wrote last year detailing my plans to defend Christmas by burning Christmas trees…

Dinosaurs in Hollywood

This is one from May 2005

My Cousin Vinny, The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, and “Bitch-Slapping” Behe: One from the Archives

One from 2/12/05 (which explains the reference to Darwin’s birthday)…with typos corrected…
I just finished watching “My Cousin Vinny” wherein we learn such anthropological tidbits as what “utes” are (that’s an anthropology joke for those of you unacquainted with Native American tribes).
But what I really want to blog about is Charles Darwin. Today is his birthday.

Bone Eating Sea Worms: One From the Archives

This is a combination of two posts from the archives…

God Bless America: I am Sick of that Infernal Song

I was idly watching the Mets beat the Dodgers when the seventh inning rolled around and of course they had to sing “God Bless America” so here is one from the archives….

Mammoth Nuclear DNA says African Elephant, Mitochondrial DNA Says Asian: One From the Archives

One from the archives, in which I think out loud and try to solve a conundrum…
Okay, now I’m confused! I have posted on the Mammoth DNA study several times. One of the articles I read stated that Mammoths are more closely related to Asian elephants than African. Yet the story linked to above claims the exact opposite:

A mammoth was chosen for the study, in part, because of its close evolutionary relationship to the African elephant, whose nuclear DNA sequence has been made publicly available by the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA). Using comparisons with elephant DNA, the researchers identified 13-million base pairs as being nuclear DNA from the mammoth, which they showed to be 98.5 percent identical to nuclear DNA from an African elephant.