We should form a club: the Evolution Teacher’s Club. We seem to share a lot of experiences. James Krupa has written an article on teaching evolution at the University of Kentuck, and it is so familiar (except for the bit about teaching classes of 300 students — my largest class at UMM is about 50 students).
Over on Telliamed Revisited, Richard Lenski is talking about his favorite examples of evolution, and mentioned this figure from a paper on hybrid monkeyflowers. Cross-species breeding produces interesting results!
Jonathan Marks doesn’t seem to care much for evolutionary psychology, and he has a short list of objections.
It’s the Foodbabe opining on body chemistry.
For several years, I’ve started my day with warm lemon water and cayenne pepper. Lemon water is very alkaline and can stimulate the liver. It can change your taste buds so you don’t crave sugary foods, and instead crave alkaline ones like fruits and vegetables. The cayenne pepper has been proven to boost your metabolism. But both of those ingredients together strengthen the immune system. I’ve gotten fewer colds because of following this habit. An acidic body promotes disease and inflammation. I try to make my diet mostly alkaline. And with water, you want to make sure it’s not contaminated. Unfortunately, our water is contaminated with everything from chlorine to fluoride.
The NY Times has a response to responses to Carl Zimmer’s article on junk DNA, and there I am, the first citation. One thing that’s interesting is that it mentions that there were mixed reactions from readers, with some pushback to the idea…but all the scientists they quote on the subject have no problem at all with the concept of junk in our genome. I looked hard for a link to someone levying a solid criticism, and it ain’t there.
Maybe they don’t exist?
We have an exciting press release from the University of Texas! Human evolution has been demonstrated by psychologists! It’s titled Men’s Preference for Certain Body Types Has Evolutionary Roots. Try reading it critically, though, and you discover it’s yet another set of bad studies overinterpreted by evolutionary psychologists.
The New York Times has responded to all the criticisms of their stupid article on the health dangers of the Apple Watch. And they have done a terrible job.
Three things bothered me about this reply.
Y’all come on out! Come early — we’ve been having packed houses every month this year.
