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The concept was commonly used for centuries to represent order in nature, but it is dying.  Except in school, where your kid is forced to learn it. From Nathalie Gontier’s “Depicting the Tree of Life: the Philosophical and Historical Roots of Evolutionary Tree Diagrams” (Evolution: Education and Outreach, 19 August, 2011 ), we learn, It is a popularly held view that Darwin was the first author to draw a phylogenetic tree diagram. However, as is the case with most popular beliefs, this one also does not hold true. Firstly, Darwin never called his diagram of common descent a tree. Secondly, even before Darwin, tree diagrams were used by a variety of philosophical, religious, and secular scholars to depict phenomena such Read More ›

Here johnnyb talks about “Intelligent Design and the Education Crisis,” assuring us, “No I’m Not Talking About Evolution Today”. No need, johnnyb. I used to work in educational publishing, and heartily agree with this: Want to start a revolution in education? Start by looking at what motivates kids to love learning. Money can motivate kids to *do* the work, but that’s not what education is. Loving learning is what will make kids educated, whether they go through college or not. None of the standardized tests will tell you if your child loves learning. None of them will say, “this person wants to get to the bottom of things, and won’t stop until he finds it.” But here are some problems: Read More ›

At BBC News (August 27, 2011), Pallab Ghosh reports “LHC results put supersymmetry theory ‘on the spot’” : Results from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have all but killed the simplest version of an enticing theory of sub-atomic physics. Researchers failed to find evidence of so-called “supersymmetric” particles, which many physicists had hoped would plug holes in the current theory. Promising: “The fact that we haven’t seen any evidence of it tells us that either our understanding of it is incomplete, or it’s a little different to what we thought – or maybe it doesn’t exist at all,” he said. Relax, Nash. If you’re willing to admit that maybe it doesn’t exist at all, you know you are doing physics. Read More ›

From “Mysterious Fossils Provide New Clues to Insect Evolution” (ScienceDaily, Aug. 15, 2011) , we learn: Scientists at the Stuttgart Natural History Museum and colleagues have discovered a new insect order from the Lower Cretaceous of South America. Though thought to be mayflies, Coxoplectoptera, however, significantly differ from both mayflies and all other known insects in anatomy and mode of life. The peculiar larvae, however, are reminiscent of freshwater shrimps. Their lifestyle turned out to be a major enigma: their mode of embedding and certain other characteristics clearly suggest a fluvial habitat. Their unique anatomy indicates that these animals were ambush predators living partly dug in the river bed. If so, all this raises another evolution conundrum: Darwinism (natural selection Read More ›