As the faith versus science wars first exploded across the western world, altering forever the place of religion in society, he was one of the most visible and powerful speakers in favour of evolution. But in his haste to popularise this new scientific idea, the ‘Darwin of the continent’ was to perpetuate a fraud that would come to overshadow all his other achievements.
Continue reading...Friday, June 26, 2009
As the founder of three awesome sites in the shape of WebUrbanist, WebEcoist and Dornob, Kurt Kohlstedt knows where it's at when it comes to making the web a place full of interesting and insightful content. Here Kurt gives the backstory on himself and his endeavours, talks about the common threads and differences between his sites, reveals what he's up to now and more. Oh, and man is this guy articulate.
Continue reading...Tuesday, June 16, 2009
They are a dash of colour on the high seas, bringing both beauty and death wherever they go. Largely ignored by science for decades these poorly-understood creatures have recently been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Scientists have begun asking questions about jellyfish, and the answers may just undermine what we think we know about the origins of diversity on earth...
Continue reading...Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Darwin himself might have raised a bushy eyebrow at the idea that monkeys and apes have a sense of morality and the capacity to tell right from wrong. Such moral qualities have been widely held to be part and parcel of what distinguishes us from our furrier simian relatives – but fresh research implies otherwise.
Continue reading...Tuesday, October 28, 2008
It is one of the most sought after answers in modern science: where did life come from? How did those first molecules put themselves together in such a way as to form molecular machinery capable of reproducing itself and thereby fueling the creation of the vast and amazing diversity we see on this planet today?
Continue reading...Friday, September 12, 2008
Nearly 200 years after his birth, the ideas that Charles Darwin came to embody are still nearly as controversial today as they were when he published Origin of Species. The Natural History Museum in London, however, has decided to ignore the controversy for the most part and focus on the great contributions Darwin made to the field of biology.
Continue reading...Thursday, June 5, 2008
The Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy was the world’s first ever primate testing centre, revolutionary in its medical discoveries and responsible for sending monkeys into outer space. The institute which was once the envy of the West, is now a dilapidated shell of its former glory. [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, April 23, 2008
It’s always been a cornerstone of Darwinian theory that evolution moves at an achingly slow pace. So slow in fact, that us humans can’t notice it and have to examine the archaeological record to confirm it. Image from estelucy Recently, however, there have been some high-profile exceptions to that, [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, April 17, 2008
Thanks to some very complex research and a computer synthesizer, scientists have obtained a rough estimation of what a Neanderthal voice must have sounded like. OOG! Image from Flickr That’s a very basic building block, and perhaps the only one we’ll ever obtain, towards figuring out the language [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, March 25, 2008
A recent study has found that the tuatara, a “living dinosaur” found in New Zealand, is the fastest evolving animal in the world. The tuatara is an ecological oddity. While it resembles a lizard, it’s equally related to both lizards and snakes. This has made
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Wednesday, July 22, 2009
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