Yoda has died. May he be the first of many four-year olds, and lead the way to two-hundred year old people.

[Via Phil Bowermaster]

I’ve always been fascinated by how quickly the flora can change in just a short distance. Driving to Phoenix from LA on Thursday, I shot this picture of a saguaro–the first one I saw on the trip (forgive the quality–I shot it from a moving car, and cropped it from a much larger photo). It was just a few miles east of the California/Arizona border (and accordingly just a few miles east of the Colorado River). I’ve never seen a saguaro in California–they seem to know where the state border is, at least at this latitude.

This is the transition region from the desolate Colorado Desert (the low desert south of the Mojave that encompasses much of non-coastal non-mountainous southern California) and the beautiful and cactus-filled Sonoran Desert, of which the saguaro cactus is emblematic. It doesn’t seem to be the river itself that demarks it–you don’t see the cactus until you start to climb up into the hills just east of it, out of Blythe. Apparently it’s a combination of longitude and altitude, though as you get farther east and south, toward Tucson where the national monuments are, the suitable altitude can vary considerably.

I’m still going to post on the conference itself, but this is the only picture that came out well, other than one of Jim Muncy. I didn’t have enough light from the distance I was at with my little two megapixel Nikon.

I don’t know whether or not Heather does, but apparently Mickey has two mommies.

Kono, in an email, said the procedure might be useful with animals for agricultural and scientific purposes. When asked if he saw any reason to produce human babies this way, he dismissed the question as “senseless.”

Some lizards and many other animals reproduce with only maternal genes, but mammals do not. Lab experiments in mice had produced embryos and fetuses, but no successful births.

Actually, for reasons stated in the article, this doesn’t mean that human parthenogenesis is just around the corner, but I suspect that it is inevitable. At some point, we’re going to have to work out the sociological implications.

Here’s some research that confirms my own empirical experience–that people become more (or less) physically attractive to you the better you get to know them, depending on other aspects. I’ve noticed that women to whom I woudn’t necessarily have given a second glance upon first exposure become quite physically appealing over time and repeated exposure, if they have other desirable characteristics–they “grow on you,” as the old expression goes (for me, intelligence is a key enhancer).

This is probably a useful evolutionary trait, assuming that monogamy is a useful evolutionary trait.

Well, not completely. They still don’t know why Saint-Exupery’s plane went down, but now they know where.

Which reminds me. I thought that there had been an expedition launched a couple years ago to go look for Amelia Earhart’s Electra, after seeing what may have been wreckage offshore from a satellite image. Does anyone know the status?

Now this is fun engineering.

Despite the date, I suspect that this is on the level. They’ve apparently discovered a link between fish and amphibians.

The fossil, a 365-million-year-old arm bone, or humerus, shares features with primitive fish fins but also has characteristics of a true limb bone. Discovered near a highway roadside in north-central Penn., the bone is the earliest of its kind from any limbed animal.

“It has long been understood that the first four-legged creatures on land arose from the lobed-finned fishes in the Devonian Period,” said Rich Lane, director of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) geology and paleontology program. “Through this work, we’ve learned that fish developed the ability to prop their bodies through modification of their fins, leading to the emergence of tetrapod limbs.”

I have the word “transitional” in quotes in the post title because it’s a meaningless, superfluous adjective. All species are transitional species, in the sense that they evolved from one and are likely (assuming they don’t go extinct) to evolve into yet others in the future. Or at least that was the case until we came along.

Despite the date, I suspect that this is on the level. They’ve apparently discovered a link between fish and amphibians.

The fossil, a 365-million-year-old arm bone, or humerus, shares features with primitive fish fins but also has characteristics of a true limb bone. Discovered near a highway roadside in north-central Penn., the bone is the earliest of its kind from any limbed animal.

“It has long been understood that the first four-legged creatures on land arose from the lobed-finned fishes in the Devonian Period,” said Rich Lane, director of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) geology and paleontology program. “Through this work, we’ve learned that fish developed the ability to prop their bodies through modification of their fins, leading to the emergence of tetrapod limbs.”

I have the word “transitional” in quotes in the post title because it’s a meaningless, superfluous adjective. All species are transitional species, in the sense that they evolved from one and are likely (assuming they don’t go extinct) to evolve into yet others in the future. Or at least that was the case until we came along.

Despite the date, I suspect that this is on the level. They’ve apparently discovered a link between fish and amphibians.

The fossil, a 365-million-year-old arm bone, or humerus, shares features with primitive fish fins but also has characteristics of a true limb bone. Discovered near a highway roadside in north-central Penn., the bone is the earliest of its kind from any limbed animal.

“It has long been understood that the first four-legged creatures on land arose from the lobed-finned fishes in the Devonian Period,” said Rich Lane, director of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) geology and paleontology program. “Through this work, we’ve learned that fish developed the ability to prop their bodies through modification of their fins, leading to the emergence of tetrapod limbs.”

I have the word “transitional” in quotes in the post title because it’s a meaningless, superfluous adjective. All species are transitional species, in the sense that they evolved from one and are likely (assuming they don’t go extinct) to evolve into yet others in the future. Or at least that was the case until we came along.

In a most disingenuous column, John West claims to be upset because federal funding is being used to “insert religion into biology classrooms.”

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is on the front lines of the battle to keep religion out of the nation’s science classrooms. A group whose self-described mission is “Defending the Teaching of Evolution in the Public Schools,” the NCSE routinely condemns anyone who wants to teach faith-based criticisms of evolutionary theory for trying to unconstitutionally mix church and state.

But in an ironic twist, it now turns out that the NCSE itself is using federal tax dollars to insert religion into biology classrooms. Earlier this year, the NCSE and the University of California Museum of Paleontology unveiled a website for teachers entitled “Understanding Evolution.” Funded in part by a nearly half-million-dollar federal grant, the website encourages teachers to use religion to promote evolution. Apparently the NCSE thinks mixing science and religion is okay after all