I discovered the usenet news groups circa 1983. In those days there was no big 8 hierarchy; everything was net.this and net.that. One of the hot groups was net.origins, now talk.origins, the designated dumping grounds for creationism/evolution flame fests.
Some usenet newsgroups are models of decorum, where specialists in sundry topics urbanely discuss their specialties. Some are havens of nattering wherein recipes and small talk are exchanged. Such newsgroups represent usenet at its best as a civilized expression of the electronic personal free press. How boring.
There are newsgroups which are open cockpits wherein all and sundry engage in electonic eye-gouging, leaving bodies scattered about the floor, bodies which miraculously arise to gouge and rabbit punch in return. Much more entertaining. Unfortunately such entertainments pall after a while. The same things are said by the same people endlessly. When one flamer departs he or she is replaced by a clone, another mindless dweeb screaming invective into the electronic night air. There is no content, merely an exchange of prejudices and emotion.
The talk.origins group is, to my taste, a happy combination of meat and sauce. To be sure there are no end of flames. However there is much content also. It all has to do with the subject matter. Talk.origins is supposed to be the arena where creationism and evolution are debated. That happens. However it is a happy hunting grounds for cranks and crackpots who come to be told that they are idiots. They revel in it for, finally, someone is listening to them.
The nifty thing about talk.origins is that you can get a real education by reading the group — the crackpots are not only told that they are idiots, people cite chapter and verse to show where they are in error. Biologists, archaeologists, paleontologists, and the like post there. There is also a good deal of offbeat humor. For your delectation I have prepared a potpourri of essays and materials drawn from talk.origins.
Book Reviews
How to build a dinosaur, a review
Serious Articles
Not So Serious Articles
Larry Moran’s Evolution page – an excellent starting point
Chris Colby’s Introduction to Evolutionary Biology
The talk.origins archive – an amazing source of information
An excellent introduction to radiometric dating
Acanthostega,
the fish
with feet (and eight little piggies)
The tree of life – life’s family tree on the web
Creation vs. Evolution – a Discussion/Debate Site Especially for Teens
An Introductory Overview of Human Evolution
The Alfred Russel Wallace Page
Mark Isaak’s “Index to Creationist Claims”
Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science (on line book)
National Center for Science Education
Primer on molecular genetics.
Reading the message in the genes.
Principles of biochemistry
Human mitochondrial genome
The Zoological Institute of the University of Bergen, maintains a page created by Brage Forland which contains links to some classic papers on evolution from Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Here are links to the individual papers.
People who are interested in a really excellent overview of evolution should check out the white paper entitled “Evolution, Science, and Society: a “white paper” on behalf of the field of evolutionary biology” from which I quote the following definition of evolution:
Biological evolution consists of change in the hereditary characteristics of groups of organisms over the course of generations. In a long-term perspective, evolution is the descent, with modification, of different lineages from common ancestors. Thus the history of evolution has two major components: branching of lineages and change within lineages. The evidence that all organisms have descended, with modification, from common ancestors is so overwhelming that most biologists consider evolution a fact, not a theory.
This page was last updated January 9, 2011 |