"CHARLES DARWIN AND THE TREE OF LIFE"

Courtesy of my noble colleague Madhu, here is a link to all six parts of the new BBC special, featuring the justly-renowned David Attenborough!

Enjoy the show!

By the way, Madhu is giving a talk on Darwin's finches on Thursday evening as part of a "Dinner with CVASS". I can't attend, but I am sure it will be better-informed that almost any other offering in the Fresno area on Feb. 12th. Details here!

YES!

SOUTHERN CROSSING

My Mom and Dad are in New Zealand as I write this, following my father's love affair with antique motorcycles and biking tours. They left Dallas yesterday, had a layover in LAX around 8:00 PST and are now nineteen hours ahead of me. Sometime early this morning my time, if they look out the window, they may have that experience that Steven Stills wrote about:

When you see the Southern Cross for the first time

You understand now why you came this way.

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST . . .

Did you know that Paul is dead?

Wait...not the guy who actually invented Christianity, the tent-maker. I'm talking about the guy who was in another band before he was in Wings.

No, not the situation comedy.

Well, look, I happen to own a copy of the magazine shown above. I found it rummaging around in the bottom of a shortly-to-be-condemned theatre in downtown Fresno back in the early 80's, in a pile of ridiculous skin mags from the 1960's. I took it, still have it. In retrospect, there were probably a bunch of Bette Pages in the pile that would be worth a lot more money, but I like my grim Beatle mag. It's a hoot if you don't think about it too much, and entirely sobering if you do. The fact is that there was a 'Paul is dead' meme that gained incredibly wide circulation in a very short time, and the more it was denied, the more people believed it.

Anyway, the fascinating Ken Cope left a comment over at Pharyngula got me thinking about this by linking to this presentation by Brian Moriarty. Believe it or not, I knew a lot of this 'lore' already just by osmosis, and I was in second grade when all this happened. Who woulda thunk?
PAUL IS DEAD DEAD DEAD I SAY BWA HAHAHAHAHAHA