I recently got back the marks for my latest Open University assignment. I’m doing a general science module this year (compulsory for the Natural Sciences degree I might obtain some time this century) and last month’s topic was biology. Disturbingly, despite my background in zoology, I scored lower on this assignment than on any other so far. But hey, biology must have changed a lot over the last twenty years…
Anyway, answering all those questions on natural selection inspired me to write an article on evolution for Decoded Science, a new website featuring more ’ologies than you can throw a stick at. (You might want to check it out if you’re an “interested observer” – I have only three articles up at present, so it should be easy enough to avoid anything written by me.) Much time and effort later, I had hammered out a deathless piece of prose entitled Evolution in Action: Three Experiments Demonstrating Natural Selection. And would you believe it, within ten minutes of me uploading the article, it had been linked to from an anti-evolution site. It got me loads of page views, but maybe not the kind I want to encourage.
And people think I’m crazy. Readers of this blog, for example. Like the recent commenter who took the trouble to explain what the Bus Maths poster means. Perhaps I should display a disclaimer – I don’t really believe that the Oxford Bus Company is conspiring with aliens, or that Apollo 17 astronauts found C-3PO’s head on the Moon. I just enjoy amusing myself in a mental world that’s a little weirder, a little more outré than the one I inhabit. But I can tell the difference!
And now I’m off to draft an article on Ancient Mesopotamian astronomy – with nary a mention of Nibiru and the end of the world next December!
