Hello Florida! Please Teach Us About Life

The Florida Department of Education will be voting soon on a science curriculum that teaches evolution in schools. Nine of Florida's counties, Baker, Clay, Hamilton, Holmes, Jackson, Madison, St. Johns, Taylor and Washington have lodged formal complaints against the proposed curriculum claiming that the theologically based story of creationism should be taught along with the scientifically based theory of evolution. For those of you not familiar with Florida, those are the exact counties you would expect to have a problem with science.

Anyway, Florida has 64 counties, one would think the protests 9 of the more sparsely populated wouldn't have much of an effect on the school board. But, two of the board members have spoken out against evolution in the past. That's right, two of the people of the state of Florida education board may not believe in evolution!

On a related not I hear a number of other counties will soon be teaching that wine does not come from grapes but rather magic water, people can live for hundreds of years, incest does not result in serious genetic mutations in offspring, and you can easily live inside a whale, for a while at least.

Evolution vs. Creation

In the on-going skunking tet-a-tet between scientists and creationists (the score, by the way, is now scientists 1,444,880,666 creationists 0) a new study has come out that may demonstrate one of the reasons bipedalism evolved from quadrupedal knucklewalking. There are at least two well known theories as to why this happen. First, the ability to carry hunting implements for scavenging purposes, this way food could be carried back to groups instead of eaten immediately upon finding the food. The second reason is safety, walking upright allowed for a longer line of sight so that big cats wouldn't bite their heads.

The University of Arizona study cites energy efficiency as another, more empirical reason. The study looked at data from a handful of chimps and a handful of adult humans as they walked on a treadmill. The chimp with the longest stride, therefore longest legs, was the most efficient upright walker. Study of fossil record of early hominins demonstrate the biological adaptation of longer hind legs which, in turn, would mean they would be efficient upright walkers. From the article,

"We and many others have found these adaptations [such as slight increases in hindlimb extension or length] in early hominins, which tells us that energetics played a pretty large role in the evolution of bipedalism.”