The latest Carnival of Evolution is up over at Bob O’Hara This Scientific Life!
I’ve recently been asked to join the CoE as a contributor, which is great, I’m honored to be asked. Unfortunately I didn’t have anything to contribute to this particular issue, which is not so great. Still, you should all go check it out for lots of interesting evolution related blogging.
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Defending evolution, Evolution, Misc., Science | Tagged: Blogging, Carnival of Evolution, evolution, Science | 
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Posted by Troy Britain
Well sort of. I’ve just been informed that my humble blog has been named one of the “Top Evolution Blogs” for 2010 by a site called Online Biology Degree:
Hurray!
While I’m afraid I’ve never heard of the Online Biology Degree site, I am still more than happy to accept this honor (see the badge in the sidebar) for a couple reasons.
First while there are a few sites in their list of honorees that I may find questionable, the majority of them are quite respectable evolution/science oriented blogs; many of which I myself read on a regular basis.
Second, I am always desperate for validation from where ever I can get it. 
More awards please!
3 Comments | Biology, Education, Evolution, Personal | Tagged: awards, Biology, education, evolution, honors | Permalink
Posted by Troy Britain
This last week I had the misfortune to hear Rush Limbaugh flapping his yap attempting to defend Christine O’Donnell’s ignorant comments about evolution. Unsurprisingly his comment were a grab bag of typical creationist nonsense. Here is the audio of the beginning of his diatribe:
Paraphrasing from the audio: “If humans evolved from monkeys then why are there still monkeys?”
This is logically exactly the same thing as asking “if my cousin and I are actually related, then why does my cousin still exist?”
2 Comments | Antievolution, Creationism, Defending evolution, Evolution, History of Science, Intelligent design, Natural selection, Politics | Tagged: appeal to nature, Arguments creationists should not use, Creation Ministries International, creation science, Darwinism, evolution, faith, naturalistic fallacy, predictions, retrodiction, Rush Limbaugh, speciation, tautology | Permalink
Posted by Troy Britain
OK, it took me a while to get to it but I am, as promised, responding to creationist Arthur Biele’s lengthy comments left in response to my criticisms of his writings on horse evolution. For those interested I suggest you go back and read Mr. Biele’s article and my original critique first. Those that do I think will find that his response didn’t really answer any of my original criticisms. Instead what he did was dump a new load of barely coherent nonsense on me.
A warning though, this goes on for quite a bit (it sure felt like it while I wrote it), which is of course due to the well known fact that accurately and substantially responding to horseshit takes considerably more time and effort than it does to spewing it.
Biele: With regard to Eohippus, If you knew anything about the actual fossil record, Eohippus finds are many and that category has been a dumping ground for certain archaic partial skulls that defy any specific classification, nor are they known to be ancestors of any known ‘evolved’ descendants, and they are mostly from Europe.
While apparently attempting to impugn my knowledge of the “the actual fossil record” Mr. Biele clearly demonstrates his own ignorance of the subject at hand. Let’s break this down in order:
8 Comments | Antievolution, Biology, Creationism, Defending evolution, Evolution, Genetics, History of Science, Natural selection, Paleontology, Systematics, Zoology | Tagged: Answers in Genesis, Antievolution, Arthur Biele, Creationism, Eldredge, Eohippus, Equidae, equids, evolution, fossils, Gould, horses, Hyracotherium, Mayr, Paleontology, punctuated equilibrium, quote-mining, Simpson, Wistar Symposium | Permalink
Posted by Troy Britain
Though I doubt there are many evolution defenders who would be that ignorant of basic Judeo/Christian theology.
[Via Pharyngula]
3 Comments | Antievolution, Creationism, Defending evolution, Evolution, Humor | Tagged: Creationism, debate, evolution, Humor | Permalink
Posted by Troy Britain
Leave a Comment » | Biology, Education, Evolution, Genetics, Humor, Natural selection, Science, The Arts | Tagged: Darwin, evolution, Galápagos, music, rap | Permalink
Posted by Troy Britain
Another classic from the folks at The Onion:
Makes perfect sense to me…
Leave a Comment » | Antievolution, Creationism, Evolution, Humor | Tagged: Creationism, evolution, Humor | Permalink
Posted by Troy Britain
2 Comments | Antievolution, Defending evolution, Evolution, History of Science, Science, Science in the media | Tagged: BBC, Darwin, David Attenborough, documentary, evolution, Nature | Permalink
Posted by Troy Britain
Dr. John Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research, just can’t seem to stop himself from saying ignorant things. And saying them about things for which there is no reason to be ignorant about even for a young earth creationist.
In the October issue of Acts & Facts, in yet another of a seemingly endless parade of snarks about the Cambrian radiation (Morris 2008a) he throws out this little nugget about the famous mid-Cambrian Burgess Shale fossil locality:
Morris: In 1940, fossils of amazing clarity and diversity were found in Canada’s Burgess Shale. The extremely fine-grained shale preserved intricate details of previously unknown invertebrates.
The problem is the Burgess Shale was discovered by Charles Walcott in 1909 and quarried for fossils for decades before 1940. And as far as I know nothing significant regarding the Burgess Shale happened in 1940 either. But why get this wrong? Never mind bothering to crack a book on the subject, if Morris had bothered to Google the Burgess Shale the very first thing to pop up would have been the Wikipedia entry on the fossil locality which in a matter of seconds would have given him the correct date for its discovery.
It’s like he’s not even pretending to care about getting even the most basic and noncontroversial facts straight.
7 Comments | Antievolution, Comparative anatomy, Creationism, Defending evolution, Evolution, Paleontology, Systematics | Tagged: bivalves, bivalvia, chordates, clams, Creationism, evolution, fossils, gastropods, John Morris, mollusca, mollusks, mussels, oysters, Paleontology, rudist, scallops | Permalink
Posted by Troy Britain
Hi all,
Times are kind of tough for my wife and me, as I am sure it has been for many of you. My place of employment (a small print shop in So Cal) has been very, very, slow due to the economy so I haven’t been getting full time hours and the prospect of getting a new job in the printing business doesn’t seem very good either.
One thing I am doing to attempt to supplement my income is to try and boost business at my online T-shirt shop “Evo-T’s” and this brings me to the point of this post.
I am making available add banners in various sizes and colors (similar to the one on the right side of this blog) and would like to request that anyone with a MySpace page, a personal web-page or blog, please consider placing one of these banners on your site. The more traffic I get the more likely I’ll sell a few shirts and then maybe I won’t have to think about canceling my internet connection (one of the few luxuries we have left).
Examples:
Small Evo-T's banner
Medium Evo-T's banner
I would of course be willing to reciprocate, and I am also always looking for new shirt ideas. Also if you haven’t already please consider adding Evo-T’s as a MySpace friend.
Evo-T’s site.
Evo-T’s add banners.
Thanks for your time and sorry for the slightly off-topic begging.
Update: Things just got worse. The boss officially informed me that my hours will be cut to a maximum of 24 (three days) a week. A new or additional job is a must now.
2 Comments | Creationism, Defending evolution, Evolution, Intelligent design, Personal | Tagged: business, Creationism, evolution, T-shirts | Permalink
Posted by Troy Britain
"Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory."
- Scott D. Weitzenhoffer
