Mon 2008-04-07 Went for a walk round the Reading University lakes with Zoe this evening. Just as we were walking past Foxhill House there was a frantic fluttering in the bushes at ground level and then a dark grey bird flew up and away. On the ground there was a circular patch of grey feathers and a pigeon limping off to hide in the bushes. I reckon that we had disturbed a sparrowhawk in the process of trying to kill the pigeon.
Sat 2008-04-05 Sun 2008-03-30 I have just been reading a few posts at the Quintessence of Dust and DarwinCatholic blogs on how to deal with creationist lies. The tone of the discussion its rather different from that at ScienceBlogs. Take, for example, this exchange:
'Darwin':
My own favorite anecdote in this regard (and my apologies if I've trotted this out here before -- I fear I may well have) dates from my time at Steubenville, when I found myself in debate with a part time Classics lecturer who'd written several articles for Catholic magazines advocating Intelligent Design theory. (He's since gone on to become a fellow at the Discovery Institute and a prolific writer.) He asserted that the fossil record contained absolutely no evidence for evolution, and referred, if memory serves, to gaps like that between whales and their land-dwelling ancestors. Species were always so different, he asserted, it was impossible to imagine one was descended from another.
I pointed out that in less exciting (and far more frequently preserved) species such as mollusks, the sequential species in the fossil record were so closely and clearly similar that the species divisions seemed almost arbitrary. Without missing a beat he responded, "Maybe, but no one cares about mollusks."
CMinor:
"...no one cares about mollusks."
Priceless.
I'm tempted to do it up in cross-stitch.
'Darwin':
"I'm tempted to do it up in cross-stitch."
Oh! With a little mollusk in one corner with a tear?
That would indeed be priceless. Is there any way I can beg or bribe you to do it
I, somehow, can't see that fitting in very well in the customary flame-fests at Pharyngula.
Sun 2008-03-30 Brian Switek got his wife to help him decapitate a dead deer. He then asked on his blog for advice on how to remove the brains and clean up the skull. If you are interested in this sort of thing then the comments are well worth reading. If you are not, or if you are at all squeamish, then steer well clear.
Wed 2008-03-26 Several decades ago, well before the internet and the current craze for genealogy, a great uncle of mine traced a line in our family tree back to Edward Plantagent, King Edward I of England. This must have involved him in quite a lot of effort, travelling and inspecting registers of births, deaths and marriages. Over the years I have often wondered how accurate this line actually was. Well, today I got round to comparing the earlier parts against records available on the Web.
The main discrepancies were in the spellings of the names: "de Courtney" vs "de Courtenay", "Emeline Downey" vs "Emmeline Dawnay", "Trethwiffe" vs "Trethurffe", and so on. Some of these may be misreadings, some may be just the natural variability in spelling that existed in the Middle Ages. In one case I think my great uncle merged two consecutive Sir Hugh de Courtenay's into one. However, in general I was pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of his work. So, here is my slightly corrected version [with a few extra dates and details from the web and some corrections suggested by Jenny Barnett in the comments]:
By the way, the great uncle was George Thornhill, brother of Patrick Thornhill in the above list.
