The Loom has a very interesting guest post by evo-devo expert Dr. Jerry Coyne. Coyne lets off a nice diatribe against a New York Times blog post by Olivia Judson that claims recent evidence related to evo-devo corroborates with the theory that new species can arise as a result of single, small, genetic mutations that have large morphological or physiological effects. Coyne argues that the idea of macromutationism is completely wrong and that Judson’s arguments are fallacious conclusions of basic evo-devo research.

Coyne’s essay is a great read and I recommend it to everyone.

Just in case you need an evo-devo primer the New York Times has a good video by Sean B. Carroll and below is a video by 60 Second Science that does a great job of explaining the field of study.

What is Evo-Devo?

Perhaps I am a bit slow, but I finally learned a simple way to embed video into my Wordpress blog. Previously I avoided Wordpress because any time I attempted to paste the “embed” code copied from a youtube or google video page into the Wordpress editor it would delete large chunks and spit out crap. I always assumed the reason was related to security. I was wrong: the real reason is the wysiwyg editor. So, the fix is simple, just turn the damn thing off. Go to Users > Your Profile > Uncheck “Use the visual editor when writing”

The above knowledge is all thanks to a video by jdh358 found on youtube . To show my new prowess I have embedded the video below.

To better understand our natural world would you be willing to stick your tongue into a green sea anemone? No? Then do it vicariously through this weirdo (see video).

You have to love this stuff. And as a bonus, that guy is my housemate now…