evolution on S Anand

SciAm gives up

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 12:00:00 +0000

In retrospect, this magazine’s coverage of socalled evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it.

Moreover, we shamefully mistreated the Intelligent Design (ID) theorists by lumping them in with creationists. Creationists believe that God designed all life, and that’s a somewhat religious idea. But ID theorists think that at unspecified times some unnamed superpowerful entity designed life, or maybe just some species, or maybe just some of the stuff in cells. That’s what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn’t get bogged down in details.

Get ready for a new Scientific American. This magazine will be dedicated purely to science, fair and balanced science, and not just the science that scientists say is science. And it will start on April Fools’ Day.

I didn’t notice the last bit about the April Fool’s joke until now.

Final Frontier of Science

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 12:00:00 +0000

We are the final frontier. The Guardian asks leading scientists what they think will be the next revolution in science. (It’s almost a trend, spawning books like The Next Fifty Years.)

First came the Copernican revolution in the 16th century. The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus argued that the Earth was not at the centre of the solar system. Charles Darwin got personal more than 300 years later by implying that humans weren’t special either. With the publication of On the Origin of Species, Darwin promoted his theory of evolution via natural selection. Nearly a century later, two Cambridge-based scientists, James Watson and Francis Crick, unravelled the structure of DNA. So what’s next? What will be the fourth revolution?

‘We will invent our successors’ – Seth Shostak
‘We will understand the human mind’ – John Sulston
‘The existence of parallel universes’ – Michio Kaku
‘We will change our genetic makeup’ – Norbert Gleicher
‘We will find out if we are alone’ – Colin Pillinger
‘Humans become a collective intelligence’ – John Barrow
‘We’ll understand thoughts and feelings’ – Steven Pinker
‘The end of the individual’ – Susan Greenfield
‘What if God lives in a part of our brain?’ – Nancy Rothwell
‘What it means to be a person’ – V S Ramachandran
‘Conscious machines’ – Igor Aleksander
‘Higher dimensions’ – Lisa Randall
‘Humans are less miraculous than we thought’ – Stephen Wolfram

Darwin Awards

Wed, 14 May 2003 12:00:00 +0000

The Darwin Awards honor thouse who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it. (Tales of silly deaths.) via Abheek

Uniforms of airline stewardesses

Sat, 14 Dec 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Interesting site on uniforms of airline stewardesses. via boing boing

Evolution does not contradict the Second Law

Wed, 15 Aug 2001 12:00:00 +0000

A simple and detailed explanation for why evolution does not contradict the second law of thermodynamics.

Machiavellian Intelligence

Sat, 21 Jul 2001 12:00:00 +0000

The Machiavellian Intelligence hypothesis says that the brain evolved more for its social purpose, than for finding food and things like that. Incidentally, Google’s collection on evolution is as comprehensive as ever.