Here’s the open thread for comments about the Evolve episode on the History Channel-or anything else you’d like to chat about.
And here’s a classic post by PZ on the subject of vertebrate jaw evolution, just to get you warmed up. Enjoy!
~Danio
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Also, don’t forget about Part 2 of Dawkins’ “The Genius of Charles Darwin“.
Ooh, I hope they talk about the evolution of the jawbone of an ass, ya know, like in the Bible. In the mean time we could debate Jesus versus Spider Man.
I know, atheism is simply a breath of fresh air. I can kill someone and shouldn’t give a damn, rules don’t apply to atheists, especially ones that have God like origins.
Who cares about the ten commandments, “Thy shall not kill” lol…this is all just creationist non-sense.
psssst! Ixnay on eedingfay the olltray…
Who cares about the ten commandments Not I!
“Thy shall not kill” lol…this is all just creationist non-sense. How so? Morality is as applicable to atheists as any other person. The only question is the ontological status of morality.
psssst! Ixnay on eedingfay the olltray… D’oh! Sorry.
pssssssst!
psssssssssssssst!!!!!!!
Any expectations for tonight’s episode? I haven’t seen any of the trailers for this one. (Steve said, ignoring the babbling troll)
“I can kill someone and shouldn’t give a damn, rules don’t apply to atheists, especially ones that have God like origins.”
Well, as an atheist, you won’t burn in Hell for eternity – but then not murdering people doesn’t get you eternal life in Heaven either. When you die, you’re gone, all done
So atheists, who commonly don’t go around murdering their fellow human beings, must be able to find a joy in life without the intimidating presence in their minds of an imaginary deity. It’s a darn decent life, in every sense.
Sorry, Sven. My imaginary sky fairy told me I had to respond and I didn’t want to toast in heck for ignoring him.
One thing I like about this show…most of the experts aren’t grey-haired, white guys. It shouldn’t matter, but I think that kind of thing helps with public education.
I wonder if John A. Davison ever got his pizza.
Blake #14:
That was hilarious.
Have you been following Michele Bachmann’s latest lunacy? Our Lady of the Exurban All-White Megachurches is on a roll this week:
http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/12/the-environment-is-not-a-truck-michele-bachmann-right-wing-loon-of-the-week/
I know Expelled was a flop and no one cares about it anymore, but while poking around I discovered something I found just shocking.
From an article by Peter McKnight in the Vancouver Sun, entitled No intelligence allowed in Stein’s film (http://tinyurl.com/ADL-Stein):
I love science, I’m a science junkie, BUT was anyone else horrified and disturbed by the cow with the rubber plug in its side? (in the “Guts” episode)
so…I guess nobody watched the program?
yeah…me neither.
I caught the first half, the aquatic part, and thought it was well done. A nice balance of ‘here’s the theory, here’s the evidence we’ve collected thus far, here are some cool computer models, and here are some direct observations of current species’ … I found it interesting, though not compelling. But then, biology isn’t my thing.
“So atheists, who commonly don’t go around murdering their fellow human beings, must be able to find a joy in life without the intimidating presence in their minds of an imaginary deity. It’s a darn decent life, in every sense.”
I don’t see it as such, you assume its a decent life, “in every sense”.
This is complete non-sense, why shouldn’t murdering people not be considered something enjoyable?
Is there a law that tells me a decent life comes from being a decent person? That is completely false in the atheist sense, and I think you need to open up your mind a bit more. Your idea of Atheism hasn’t evolved yet to the point it should.
If the only reason you don’t go on a killing spree is because your imaginary friend wouldn’t like it, seek psychiatric help now.
Evolve was good, but, like the first two, they jumped to dinosaurs as soon as they could. I would have rather heard more about those early land dwellers. Also, what are lampreys, chopped liver?
PZ would have loved the Nature on the Seattle PBS franchise that was all about cuttlefish. Amazing little critters. Smarter than Dembski and cuter than kittens.
“If the only reason you don’t go on a killing spree is because your imaginary friend wouldn’t like it, seek psychiatric help now.”
What imaginary friend are you referring too? I hold to no such delusions.
Pharyngulites: HALP!
Debating evolution/creation with some friends on facebook. On the subject of the eye, I’m familiar with the explanation of light sensitive cell -> patch -> cup -> lens and so on, but what about the nervous system side of the equation? How and why do you get that hooked up to a nervous system in a useful way? Any help would rock, thanks!
-DC
Because we have empathy and compassion, something that demented religious fuckwits get trained out of them (or beaten out) at an early age. We’re saddened that you can’t understand this, and hope you get over your mental blocks and learn to think for yourself.
Dah! I forgot about it! I only watched the last 5 minutes of it. Fortunately, though, there was a better program on bird and feather evolution in the Science Channel. It was more relevant to evolution, arguing for theories of how birds evolved, and describing how they took the development of feathers to see how it evolved. There were stuffs on evo devo, sonic hedgehog and other molecules which regulated feather formation, and other gems (they weren’t very detailed, after all, it is for the general audience. Unfortunately, I had to really go to the bathroom and by the time I got back, my parents were using the T.V.
Blake #14: thanks for the link. A past pizza is undeniable, but a present pizza is undemonstrable!
“Debating evolution/creation with some friends on facebook. On the subject of the eye, I’m familiar with the explanation of light sensitive cell -> patch -> cup -> lens and so on, but what about the nervous system side of the equation? How and why do you get that hooked up to a nervous system in a useful way? Any help would rock, thanks!”
Yes, that is a problem isn’t it. The fact that the eye is part of a vastly larger complex system leaves us little but to suspect Darwinian Evolution must have done it. This includes the brain to invert the signal back to its original intended state otherwise if your eye did all the processing you would see an image upside down. This upside down image again tells us the designer must have done a bad job since he could have done it many other more efficient ways.
DC, #26, light-sensitive cells evolved from neurons. So they were always hooked up to the nervous system.
Thanks everyone.
-DC
Evolve: The Jaw, Synopsis. Teasers featuring animals eating animals. Stock footage of sharks eating things. Stock footage of dinosaurs eating dinosaurs. Stock footage of some crocodiles eating various water buffalo & wildebeests. This show plays far more to the LCD, “Trials of Life” crowd than it does anyone actually interested in the mechanisms of evolution. Yawn.
Zaxter-
Do you mean this “Trials of Life”? Because it was part of Attenborough’s Life “trilogy” (as it was at the time), and specifically dealt with animal behaviour. “Life on Earth” charted the history of life, and “The Living Planet” looked at how animals survive in different habitats.
Being in the UK I haven’t seen the “Evolve” series yet, but I agree, if you’re going to call a show “Evolve” it helps to discuss the evolution of the structure and not just leap to bloody dinosaurs again.
There was a programme (who’s name I sadly forget) which looked at the evolution of mollusc, arthropods and chordates, and how each group took it in turns to be “Top Predator”, so it discussed the Cambrian Explosion and the dominance of arthropods compared to Pikaia and co. Then the cephalopods take over, before fishes evolve jaws and placoderms dominated the seas. At which point the arthropods are already on the land and doing very nicely. It ended up looking at the evolution of tetrapods, and only mentioned dinosaurs in passing.
Observations on Evolve: Jaws:
Almost exclusively dealt with predation. Now, I work on carnivores, but there are a lot of interesting herbivorous stories (see below).
Almost exclusively dealt with vertebrates, except for discussion of anomalocaridids (Cambrian trilobite-eaters) at the beginning. On the one hand that is okay, because vertebrate jaws are not homologous to those of arrow worms or the various arthropods or cephalopod beaks. On the other hand, a nice discussion of convergence and exaptation (what becomes jaws? gill arches vs. limbs, etc.) using those other examples would have been pretty useful (and they had nice footage of spiders and scorpions eating).
Individual story elements were pretty good: anomalocaridids; Dunkleosteus and placoderm jaws; shark jaws; jaws of crossopterygians; T. rex (face it, people: EVERY episode is going to have the Big Guy); sabrecats; humans. But the transitions from segment to segment were less good.
For instance: in talking about why placoderms failed but sharks were successful, the forgot a) to make any discussion of the Late Devonian mass extinction which decimated the placoderms and b) made it sound as if modern shark jaws have any relevance to the issue. What wasn’t apparent to the audience is that the kind of shark jaws discussed do not show up until well into the Mesozoic. Popular comments to the contrary, modern-style sharks are not “unchanged since long before the age of the dinosaurs”; they in fact are younger than mammals and birds!
Missed opportunities: while they showed some nice physical biomechanical models of Dunkleosteus, Tyrannosaurus teeth, and Smilodon, they did not discuss the excellent work being done using Finite Element Analysis in bite studies. They missed a chance to talk about some interesting non-flesh-rending stories: evolution of durophagy (crushing bites); evolution of herbivorous adaptations of the jaws (such as hypsodonty in mammals or pleurokinesis and dental batteries in various dinosaur groups); the evolution of the really unique feature of mammalian jaw (although they might deal with that when they get to ears…).
Just plain sloppiness: showing the African hunting dog Lycaeon while talking about hyenas…; and the word “canine” in terms of teeth does indeed refer only to “dog” and not to “carnivorous mammals in general”.
I caught the last half of that, myself. The ‘walking’ cuttlefish at the end was amazing and disturbing. No land-invading cephalopod armies, plzkthx.
“Evolve” was just too dumb to hold my attention; the pointlessly wrong comment about “canine” not referring to dogs was as far as I got. Apparently jaws evolved in order to provide something scary and gross for the entertainment of the lightly educated.
The cuttlefish show rocked, however.
I caught the end of the show last night, and they raised an hypothesis that sorta confused me.
They were talking about the human jaw shrinking and no longer having room for wisdom teeth. Then they stated that some scientists think that eventually wisdom teeth will disappear from the species and the remainder of our teeth will get smaller. We were then treated to film showing humans eating soft foods, and someone mentioned that we could survive on nutrients out of a straw.
Well I understand the point that we don’t need wisdom teeth and could happily evolve even smaller jaws, but doesn’t there have to a reason to favor individuals with no (or smaller) wisdom teeth in order for the species to drop them? If wisdom teeth caused us to die or those without wisdom teeth were more attractive I could see a reason the species would drop them. Instead we have the technology to cut them out and I see no reason why individuals who do not grow any wisdom teeth would be favored to pass their genes onto the species.
What am I missing?
re: #38 “What am I missing?”
You are not missing anything. The show missed a chance to get it right. I am reminded of the science-oriented articles and cartoons that depict humans of the future with huge brains. Where is the evolutionary pressure that would lead to that? In fact, now that we have reached the technological point that we can keep almost anyone alive through child-bearing age, I suspect that we will devolve to some extent. If we do become a bigger brained species it will most likely be due to genetic engineering not natural selection. And while we are at it, we may just engineer out the wisdom teeth.
Eat well, stay fit, Die Anyway.
#18
Yes
The show unapologetically promoted evolution throughout and probably had a decent viewership. It’s far from perfect, but it’s a start. The subsequent show about lion predation of humans was also a winner.
If soft food allowed us to survive with smaller jaws, those individuals that ‘diverted’ energy from growing jaws and teeth to something else had a fitness benefit. Impacted wisdom teeth can become infected, and there could have been a selective pressure against them before modern dentistry. Less teeth allows a more gracile face which was possibly favored by sexual selection. But you’re right, the show handled this stupidly and implied some sort of Lamarckian trend that would persist independently into the future. The Guts episode did this much better (but not perfectly) – why not mention Wrangham’s theory again?
Was it presented in the context of a board game or something? I remember seeing a show like that years ago…
BlueMako #43, I think so, (either that or a race) played as though a human, a snail and an insect were the counters.
“The show unapologetically promoted evolution throughout and probably had a decent viewership. It’s far from perfect, but it’s a start.”
The name of the series is also a start. They could have entitled it, “EVOLUTION.”