Geological Quote of the Week

This next quote comes from a paper that first illustrated a very famous evolutionary theory called the "Red Queen Hypothesis". This theory stated that two groups of animals evolved together both changing but not changing in relation to one another (i.e. the cheetah and the gazelle both evolving to be faster, although one does not outpace the other). The paper though is very poorly written and apparently the author could not find any place to publish is so he set up his own journal to publish this. The quote comes from the acknowledgements section of the paper.

"I thank the National Science Foundation for regularly rejecting my (honest) grant applications for work on real organisms (cf. Szent-Gyorgyi, 1972), thus forcing me into theoretical work."

Apparently he was a bitter person. You can check out the source of the Red Queen Hypothesis HERE.

You can also check out all of the previous Geological Literature Quotes at my newly redesigned website page.


van Valen, L., 1973, A new evolutionary law: Evolutionary Theory, v. 1, p. 1-30.

Turbidite Panorama - Part 2

I had posted a picture previously of one of my field areas in Zumaia, Spain. Well this is the counter point image of that shot:

http://jazinator.blogspot.com/2011/12/geology-photo-of-day-part-4.html

This image was taken from the far left of the first image mostly pointing back towards that first image. Here we are entirely in Eocene deep marine turbidites. The P-E boundary is approximately towards the center of the image. I love the folds in the close up rocks on this shot.

GeoJeopardy! Fridays #82

Time for GeoJeopardy! Fridays, because it has been a little while so I will do another one.

- The Earth -

An atoll is a circular one of these that has grown around a sunken volcanic island

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  It's believed the Earth is over 4.5 billion yrs. old, based on 4.6 billion yr. old rocks found on this neighbor

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 Dolomitization is the process by which this rock, including its fossils, turns into dolomite

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Term given to the tundra's always-frozen soil layer


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Until this 19th century French scientist, no one had proved the Earth rotated

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All the answers as well as any other previous GeoJeopardy! questions can be found over at my website by clicking the link.

And if you enjoy this post as well as others, please consider subscribing to my blog via Google Reader or some other RSS feed so that way I better know my readership. Thank you.

Questions, images, and videos courtesy of j-archive.com

Evolution in Politics - Why it matters (to me)

I have mentioned to people at times that I will not ever, ever, ever, vote for a candidate that doesn't "believe"* in evolution. Most of my friends agree because we are scientists, this is one thing we agree upon. But I have gotten the comment before:

Why? Where does evolution play into politics? They are separate issues. Evolution is not going to reduce the deficit. It is not going to employ millions of Americans. It is not going to get you cheaper health care. Why should you care?

And originally, I cared because it mattered to me. I was told once to pick a couple of issues you are passionate about and vote for a candidate based on those, not on everything else. Because you're never going to find the perfect candidate. Are you passionate about reducing taxes? Vote for someone that will do that. Are you a strong pro-choice or pro-life supporter? Vote for someone who believes as you do. It all made sense. So one of my things was evolution. Do you "believe" in evolution?

Then this Republican campaign (2012) has gotten me thinking about things. There is so much anti-science rhetoric and scientific dismissal out there now that it has even spurred a "movement" of people posting stuff about how they are scientists and how scientists are real people. We are not aloof people who do things just to piss off the masses. We are not amoral or immoral. We are all different. We have the same diversity as non-scientists. Anyway, that is a different topic. Back to my point.

Why is "belief" in evolution so important to me as a candidate then? I see it this way. The president I would like elected is one that can take a whole lot of ideas coming from many different people and be able to assimilate them, and choose the one, or few, that best helps solve the problem at hand. This basically works for anything, ideas on whether to go to war or not, how to increase employment, how to just make the lives of Americans better. So if they can do that, why can't they take the insurmountable evidence for evolution and proclaim that it is a valid hypothesis and that it is occurring. It is basically as much "fact" as you can get in the scientific arena. If you can't do that, then I don't trust you with whether we should go to war based on assumptions you don't know how to understand.

This post was going to be written earlier when there were much more "wackoes" in the political race than there is now (Bachmann and Perry anyone?). But there is still at least one. Santorum. He has made it a goal of his to be anti-science (and anti-non-christian) at every step of the way. So, he has spurred my publishing of this. I'm not sure what Romney's stance on evolution is. I believe he has no official stance on it. Paul as well does not have a stance on it (he feels he doesn't understand it and it isn't a big deal to him) and Gingrich is pro-evolution (although I have some problems with his other political stances).

So, take this as you will. These are my thoughts on how a political leader should think. Not just on what their beliefs are.

* I do not use the term "belief" as in religious belief or taking things on faith. I use it just generally as do you think that evolution is a valid scientific hypothesis. Please do not take my use of the word "belief" out of context.

Geological Quote of the Week

It has been a little while but here is another geological quote of the week. This one shows that apparently my thesis work is done. This sentence states it all.

"We know that closely related species are similar among themselves, and they differ in many ways from other less closely related species"

Check out the previous incarnations over at my site.



Harvey, P.H., & Nee, S., 1997, The phylogenetic foundations of behavioural ecology, in Krebs, J.R., and Davies, N.B., Eds., Behavioural ecology; an evolutionary approach: Malden, MA, Blackwell Publishing, p. 334-3349.