(Re: In the continued debate over high school science textbooks in Louisiana, whereby a local opponent of evolution, Judge Darrell White, insisted on connecting the Columbine High School massacre to the teaching of evolution through the phrase “survival of the fittest.”) – – – When we summarize things we have to be careful that we don’t lose meaning or invite misinterpretation, for instance the phrase “survival of the fittest.” This was first used as a summary of natural selection, which is one of the mechanisms of evolution, but today it is mistakenly and inaccurately used to summarize the entire theory…
The Science Creative Quarterly
By Michael L. Ferro
Michael L. Ferro is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Louisiana State University where he is studying faunal succession of saproxylic Coleoptera in coarse woody debris. He has a broad interest in scientific and social issues and has been a teaching assistant for the freshman level class Science and Society for 8 semesters.
BOILING LOBSTERS AND OTHER THINGS PEOPLE DO
Is it OK to boil a lobster? Short answer: Yes, of course it is. Long answer: Let’s consider the life, or rather the death, of a lobster. In nature lobsters begin very small and die a million horrible deaths in a million horrible ways. As they get older the death rate drops. We have ample evidence that lobsters do not go gentle into that good night, dying peacefully in their sleep at a ripe old age. Instead, once mature, a lobster that doesn’t go into the pot might face off with cod, flounder, an eel or two, or one of…
SEXTING: THE “PERFECT STORM” OF EVOLUTION, CULTURE, AND TECHNOLOGY (SOME THOUGHTS)
The “modern” human is the product of evolution, a natural process that operates on scales ranging from millions, to hundreds-of-thousands, to tens-of-thousands of years. The average individual of today is little changed from the average individual 30,000 years ago. We are literally prehistoric when we are born. Culture, our ability to pass information, artifacts, and other non-genetic material from one generation to the next, operates on much smaller time scales: millennia, centuries, even decades. The larger cultural landscape consists of religion, language, governments, laws, etc. and many of these change so quickly that they have only been in their present…
PROFESSOR J. BLUCHER AND THE PROBLEM OF THE CLASSROOM
I thought I would share a funny story of what recently happened to a colleague of mine. The fellow in question, Professor J. Blucher, was recently trying to schedule a room for his undergraduate class, Mastering Sextants. This year, the class, which usually numbers only a handful of students, had nearly 150 sign up. Initially he surmised that perhaps people were finally taking global warming seriously and had decided to brush up on their nautical skills. However, it was later discovered that, due to certain constraints in the new course offerings software, the class was listed as: MASTERING SEX. So…
WHAT COLOUR IS A UNICORN?
What color is a unicorn? Well, let’s think about this for a second. There are paintings of unicorns. And there are movies about them. Also unicorns have shown up on tapestries, in novels, poems, songs, video games, tattoos, little sculptures made of plastic that children play with, etc. In fact there are many, many depictions and descriptions of unicorns out there, but are these real unicorns? No, not at all. So, with this realization I should like to amend my question to read: What color is a REAL unicorn? This is more difficult to answer isn’t it? To answer the…
THE ELEVATION OF MAN
The tour guide stood at the base of the structure and waited for people to catch up and shut up. This was a twice a day activity and it was hot. The structure was a tower 100 stories tall built more than a thousand years ago by an unknown civilization in the heart of the Amazon. The tour guide was a human about 160 cm tall built not quite 30 years ago by Ted and Irene Clark in the heart of Minnesota. An overly elongate sign stood to the tour guide’s left with a cartoonish representation of the tower and…