I received one complaint recently (probably from my mother) about my lack of Caturday posts. So here’s a Caturday and Book Review (see below).
Stephen Jay Gould cat helps me read in the tub. (What? It's 100 degrees out and the tub is so cool.)
Next week I’ll respond to one reader’s questions about evolution and common ancestry.
OMG, get off my case, mom!
Last week I paused while reading The Satanic Verses to invade a Borders bookstore that was going out of business. I picked up a sale copy of The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing, by Evan Marshall, and read it in a day. Marshall is a novelists, literary agent, and editor. I don’t usually read these books (though see my past reviews of The First Five Pages and Self-editing for Fiction Writers), but I found that it actually had some good advice, especially concerning the structure of novels. However, the Marshall plan also relies on tips and tricks from commercial mysteries and thrillers that won’t work for all novels. But being someone who enjoys outlines and structure, I thought the Marshall plan had a lot to offer. Continue reading
One common misconception about evolution is that the processes that produce phenotypic change between species (macroevolution) are different from those that produce phenotypic variation within species (microevolution). For example, creationists might accept microevolution, since this can easily be observed in a lab, but would argue that since macroevolution is difficult to observe over the span of one human lifetime, there is no evidence for it and that large-scale differences must be the result of some designer. In reality, however, there is no real distinction between microevolutionary and macroevolutionary changes: the same microevolutionary processes that result in variation within species give rise to macroevolutionary differences between species. And this afternoon, evolutionary biologists from the University of Maryland and Syracuse University published a study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that nicely illustrates this link between microevolution and macroevolution. Their study, titled “Craniofacial divergence and ongoing adaptation via the hedgehog pathway“, highlights the genetic basis of within and between species variation in jaw shape in African cichlid fishes. Continue reading
The other week I finished reading Going After Cacciato, by Tim O’Brien. Cacciato is O’Brien’s fourth book. Like his other famous books, The Things They Carried and If I Die in a Combat Zone, it details the experiences of a young enlisted man during the Vietnam War. And like these other books, Cacciato is terrific, written in a way that blurs the distinction between fact and fiction, reality and dream. It is a surreal reflection on the realities of war and the dream of leaving it, written in a way that is believable and engrossing. It is no wonder, then, that in 1979, Going After Cacciato was awarded the National Book Award for Fiction. Continue reading
I’m a bad blogger — I’ve been too swamped collecting data and writing grants to post about the amazing science (microevolution vs. macroevolution) and books (Going After Cacciato, The Satanic Verses) I’ve been reading. What’s more, today I’m going to repost old stuff. I know, terrible. But at least there’s an interesting story behind this one: Continue reading
Stephen Jay Gould Cat (photo by Claire).
One thing that always frightens me when I turn on the TV is the sheer volume of commercials for prescription drugs. The commercials are usually highly-polished, with nice-looking actors and gentle piano music in the background. They’re so common that you can probably think of a few right now: Cymbalta, Advair, Ambien, Latisse. Although it’s certainly bothersome that drug companies market drugs to people who cannot purchase them directly (without a prescription), the thing that bothers me most is that they used highly polished adds to gloss-over some very serious side effects. This just seems so dangerous. Should we allow drug companies to market powerful prescription drugs to the masses? Continue reading
A few weeks ago I finished reading Rabbit is Rich, by John Updike. Rabbit is Rich is the third of four novels that Updike wrote about the life of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. Each novel, written in approximately 10-year intervals, explores some upheaval in Rabbit’s life. In the first, Rabbit, Run, a twenty-six year-old Harry runs out on his wife and their two-year old son; in the second, Rabbit Redux, Harry’s wife runs out on him. Now, in the third novel, it is not Harry that is running but his grown son, Nelson. The novel is rich in voyeuristic detail, complete with scandal and sex. If you haven’t already read any of the Rabbit novels, you had better get started. Continue reading
If you’re like me, the first thing you read when you open Sunday’s newspaper is the comics. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in twenty years of reading the comics, it’s that being featured in the funny pages is usually an ignoble privilege at best. Well, this Sunday, cartoonist Garry Trudeau lampooned Louisiana’s Science Education Act (LSEA) in his famous comic strip Doonsbury.
A reader recently asked me to post about the evolution of homosexuality. Given that homosexuality can be a socially contentious issue, it seems reasonable to review what objective scientific research says about it. So this week I thought I would present a well-known study on the topic, “The Evolution of Human Homosexual Behavior” by anthropologist R. C. Kirkpatrick. Instead of presenting a complete review of the paper, I’ll summarize and quote from those parts that help answer three common questions: Is homosexuality natural?; What causes homosexuality?; and Why did homosexuality evolve?
Is homosexuality natural?
darwinbookcats 