Back to Reality

Darwin Lake on Isabela Island, Galapagos. Check out my whole Galapagos photo gallery!
Copyright (c) 2007 Wendee Holtcamp

Love just needs a witness and a little forgiveness
And a halo of patience and a less sporadic pace and
I'm learning to be brave in my beautiful mistakes.
- Pink, Crystal Ball

I chose the Galapagos image because I'm working in a Powerpoint and a talk for Sam's school which I'm giving next week on the Galapagos Islands and evolution.

Someone just passed along this interesting, must-read blog for anyone interested in science, Back to Reality, President-elect Obama already has a long to-do list. But here’s another item for it: to restore science in government -- an entry in Olivia Judson's New York Times blog. Particularly interesting are the books mentioned at the end of her column - The Republican War on Science (which I've read some of), Undermining Science, and A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives. Judson is an evolutionary biologist and author of Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex - which looks hilarious! It's a faux sex column advice from "Dr. Tatiana" to creatures from manatees to slime molds. I have to get a copy from the library. It's quite relevant because I'm writing an article in the next couple months on the evolution of sex. Why do we need it? Why don't we all just clone, like bacteria? Why did sex evolve? The answer is reserved for those students of evolutionary biology who are in the know...

On another note, did anyone else see the cool triangle made in the sky from the crescent moon, and Jupiter and Venus? It was most pronounced on Monday, but I saw it also yesterday with the two planets quite a bit "further away" from the moon, but still in a triangle. Cool stuff! Check out this article, The "Venus & Jupiter" Show, in Sky & Telescope for a diagram.