That interests meme again...

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snapesbabe. Comment if you want to be tagged...

Cladistics: The practice and philosophy of classifying organisms by their evolutionary relationships, rather than by morphological similarities- which may often be the result of convergent evolution (the reason why sharks and dolphins look similar). I recommend you chec out wikipedia's page on it, because its a) very good. and b) goes into significantly more detail than I would want to here. Suffice to say cladistics (especially using DNA analysis) is the reason why I find the "actually a banana is type of fish" joke funny.

 

Skewed Historical Fiction: Basically using a historical setting for your story but adding all sorts of extra bits. Putting historical characters in ficticious situations, that sort of thing. I suppose I'm specifically thinking of things like Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, where the people who founded the Royal Society are major characters, its an incredibly detailed 17th Century England, but alchemy (in some cases) does actually work. From what I gather about Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell its the same type of novel (I haven't started it yet). Its not fiction in a parallel universe where X didn't happen, so the Romans went to the moon, or whatever, (which I like too), but fiction that asks if Y were possible, but not necessarily important on a daily basis (unlike the technology in steampunk, say), how might things be different, and what would have to happen for history to follow the same path?

Demon Ducks: The Dromornithidae (Mihirungs) were a group of large and very large flightless birds (Dromornis stirtoni is a good candidate for "biggest bird evar") The smallest was about the size of a cassowary. Bullockornis "The Demon Duck of Doom" appears to have been a carnivore (how predatory is up for debate). The most recent Genyornis overlapped with the arrival of the aborigines, who probably wiped it out along with the rest of the Australian megafauna. Its not entirely clear where they fit in the birds. They're often kept with the ratites, but some people want to move them in as basal ducks and geese. Not as exciting as actual demonic ducks then. :)

Stupid Creationists: There aren't many intelligent creationists. They'd probably prefer to be called "intelligent design theorists". However one does meet an awful lot of creationists who dredge up the old discredited arguments "there are no intermediate fossils" Um. Ok. So what exactly is Morganucadon then? "I can't see how you could evolve a lung" I can. I don't understand how Pimms is made does that mean it doesn't exist? You get the picture. Arguing with them gets intensely frustrating very quickly. But you don't try to convince them, you're pointing out to the lurkers that their criticisms are nonsense and have been for a very long time.

Creationists edit Attenborough.

Via Pharyngula and the Telegraph.

A  Dutch evangelical Christian TV channel Evangelische Omroep (EO, Evangelical Broadcasting) has been translating and editing Attenborough's Life of Mammals. The translations have removed all reference to speciation, evolution, and timescales involving millions of years.

"Instead of saying "70 million years ago, something happens," they say "a very long time ago something happens". They also omit paragraphs such as: "This is inherited from my warm-blooded ancestors,"" Sir David told the Telegraph. "I would much rather they kept to the letter, as far as that is possible, of what I said."

The spoken English is replaced by a Dutch soundtrack, and judicious edits are made. The final epsiode about apes and humans was not screened at all. Unfortunately BBC Worldwide's policy is that if edits are under 5 minutes per hour then they don't get involved. Petitions have been organised and letters of complaint sent to the Director General, the head of the BBC Natural History Unit and Sir David, who is not a happy bunny:

"I am entirely on the side of the biologist in Utrecht," said Sir David. "The BBC should take steps to make sure that the minuteness of the meanings are maintained."

If I wasn't a peaceful man I'd be organising a mob with pitchforks and flaming torches and heading to the EO offices. Messing with the work of the man who has probably inspired more scientists than anyone else since Alexander von Humbolt is just not cricket.

ETA:  Attenborough's reply to the letter has a nice line in understatement.