My last Seed column is online. Print media feels a little weird — it’s like I wrote that one long ago, the one I finished earlier in July is going to print right now (and will be out in mid-August), and I’m already working on the column after that. It’s like looking at old history for me.
It’s also an old story for you subscribers. It’s just those who haven’t subscribed yet who are months behind the times. So when are you people going to join the rest of us…in the future?
That’s GOT to be a first– a skeptic quoting Criswell!
Thank you! Giraffe necks are among the better refutations of creationism and intelligent design, and you’ve plumbed depths of developmental biology I had no clue about. Great stuff.
The seven bones of the giraffe have to be so heavy that the poor giraffe can’t get a drink easily, and older individuals put their lives on the line every time they splay their hooves out (they can’t bend down to the water otherwise) and lower their necks. If anything goes wrong, if they can’t get back up, they suffer from panic heart attacks, or they drown. Predators of giraffes know this, but creationists don’t.
Care to probe the vagus nerve of the giraffe in an essay sometime?
Call Parade magazine. They need you on their masthead. (If you haven’t seen my comments in the Parade magazine thread, go see ’em now.)
I think I like that last sentence in the final paragraph: very poetic.
It’s nice to see the concept of constraint (in the evolutionary sense)teased apart to show what developmental and other factors might underly a concept that would be so easy for us to treat as a “black box”.
PZ, when you say ‘last‘ do you mean ‘latest‘ or do you mean that you’re not going to write any more SEED columns?
One correction to the article, though: while typical sauropods had 12 or so cervicals, diplodocids had 15 or 16, and the long-necked Chinese genera Omeisaurus, Mamenchisaurus, and Euhelopus had 17.
Off-topic: The banner ad at the moment is from monster.com, promising “free career horoscopes.” Umm…dudes?
Dude, I’ve been there and back. I just finished reading an interview of Alister McGrath in the August 5-11 National Catholic Register. He still says atheism is in decline. I also read an editorial, Answering Atheism in the same August 5-11 NCR. They say atheism is in resurgence. Maybe it’s a resurgent decline.
Latest. I think I get to keep doing it.
Goo. You had me worried there. I enjoy reading those columns of yours.
Will somebody make some t-shirts for sale that say “This is what an atheist looks like?” I think that would be a lot better than this A logo thing.
We’re putting the finishing touches on the Dec/Jan issue of the magazine for which I work right now. Very strange to have sugarplums dancing in one’s head when it’s eighty-plus outside and the kids are begging to go to the swimming pool.
What Kristjan said. Goo.
:)
This has nothing to do with anything. Its about music. I recently heard a band and I couldn’t help but think of PZ and the crew here. The band is The Phenomenauts and they remind me of if They Might Be Giants tried to cover Devo and the Stray Cats at the same time, with a slight punk edge.
PZ recently had a post for TMBG are sorta similar but the Phenomenauts tag line is “Science and Honor.” I think some of you guys will like them, those who don’t oh well its just music.
Have a good one everybody!
“Before an organism as a whole can compete in the world outside, its cells and tissues and organs have to learn to dance together, to be a coordinated unit …” – PZ
poetry in motion …
Sublime imagery.
So we are inflexible stiff-necked bastards among the vertebrates? Good to know, must stay in character.
Ooh, are you talking to me? “I dance, therefore I am.”
So we are inflexible stiff-necked bastards among the vertebrates? Good to know, must stay in character.
Ooh, are you talking to me? “I dance, therefore I am.”
How far back in ancestral species did the 7 vertebras get set into the mammal’s body plan? Did the lineage of the current outliers (sloths/manatees) branch out before the body plan was fixed or did they evolve to a different number despite the problems associated with varying the plan?
Wonderful article, PZ. The relationship between the number of vertebrae and mortality in mammals sounds very fascinating. I really like the way you can make the science understandable for the lay person like myself.