those nasty toxins…

Thankfully, the antivaccination lobby is (so far!) relatively small & quiet in New Zealand. It’s another story in the US, where various celebrities lend their names to the anti- voices. A couple of days ago Orac posted another in his series on what’s wrong with the US anti-vax groupings, & I thought I’d talk about some of the […]

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the consequences of vision

You learn something new every day. One of the big talking points in palaeontology is the ‘Cambrian explosion’ – the seemingly rapid appearance (over ‘just’ a few million years!) of complex animal life, which occurred around 490-540 million years ago. Discussion ranges over the causes of this diversification and whether the apparent ‘explosion’ really happened […]

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hard to explain? more creationist straw men

It seems the silly season is beginning early – I’m expecting a rash of ‘letters to the editor’ as the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth gets closer (what are you doing for Darwin Day?), but this seems a little premature. The writer begins: We’ve weathered a fair few scientific broadcasts lately authenticating Charles Darwin’s findings. Effectively they […]

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