Yet more proof I should move to Denmark

The Economist: How people in various countries view the theory of evolution

The image from this article depresses me (Click to see a larger version)



Even worse is this stat from the article:

In 2008 14% of people polled by Gallup agreed that “man evolved over millions of years”, up from 9% in 1982.

I have a long, angry post about how completely insane this is and some comments about people thinking that fossils were put there by the devil, but I'm too tired to type it all out. Fill in your own angry thoughts here.

Real Evolution in a Lab

Biology was always my worst science subject (physics for the win!). But this was just too interesting not to post:

arstechnica.com : Tracking adaptation as bacteria evolve

A scientist with way more patience then I could ever muster has been tracking the evolution of 12 strains of E. Coli in his lab since 1988. He has now had over 44,000 generations play out.

The most fascinating thing was a change in one of the cell lines at around 33,000 generations:

The bacteria are growth-constrained by low levels of glucose, and most lines have evolved so that they burn through the glucose as quickly as possible, then wait for the next daily infusion. About 33,000 generations in, however, one line of bacteria did something else entirely: it began to digest the large amounts of citrate present in the media. This is more startling than it sounds, as E. coli is sometimes defined by its inability to metabolize citrate.

So now we have real scientific proof that a trait can evolve in a organism that wasn't present before through only mutation. That's a HUGE deal for the evolution camp.

Makes me want to run out and buy this shirt from xkcd.com: