Job redux: Loss and the glory of the world meet in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life
Sean Penn as Jack in Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life. Penn works his world-weary visage to great effect in the film Don’t worry, there are no spoilers here. In fact, I’m having a hard time even imagining a spoiler for this film. I could tell you the whole thing and it wouldn’t change its [...]
Big Head Todd and the mass extinction problem
Todd Park Mohr of Big Head Todd and the Monsters recording at Ardent Studios in Memphis. I missed BHTM back in the 1990′s when they had their major-scale success; I blame graduate school for this. But a good friend introduced them to me several years ago and to this day I am grateful to him [...]
The wages of sin is plate tectonics
Here’s a nice elevation map of our poor fractured home planet. Click on the image for a detailed look. Notice in particular (1) the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the S-shaped mountain range running from the extreme South Atlantic all the way up to Iceland and beyond, and opening up at an average rate of 2.5 cm per [...]
Dinosaurs in church? We’re for that
Photos by Andrea Tintori. The small inset box is not in the correct location; it should be under the rail on the far right side. The measuring rod and the fossil itself are visible in the larger photo. The image was taken from discovery.com; this is obviously not Mr. Tintori’s mistake A small-town cathedral in [...]
Beware the cosmic charlatan
Joseph Graham, William Newman, and John Stacy, The Geologic Time Spiral, 2008. We at psnt.net are guessing that the little galaxy-looking thing in the lower left is the protosun and its protoplanetary disk. Image source: Wikimedia Commons. The image was produced by the United States Geological Survey and thus is a shining example of your [...]
Science envy is alive and well in old Kentucky
A trilobite, Ceraurus milleranus, found in Maysville, Kentucky. Whence this delight? There are two options here: (1) Ceraurus milleranus lived during the Ordovician, a period that lasted from about 488 to 444 million years ago and all its trilobyie cousins went extinct by the end of the Permian (250 million years ago); or (2) Ceraurus [...]
Two by two came the epidexipteryxes and vulcanodons
Noah and his family loading up the menagerie as their neighbors stare in disbelief. I don’t know who created the original image or who doctored it up so nicely with velociraptors, tyrannosaurs, pterodactyls, and whatever that weird black-and-white thing is on the left. If you do know, please advise. I try pretty hard to get [...]
Evolution and the art of dying well
They died out, sure. But did they die out well? Apatosaurus lived about 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period (Kimmeridgian and Tithonian ages). It was one of the largest land animals that ever existed, with an average length of 23 m (75 ft). Yet it, like every other form of life on our fair planet, [...]
The surprising joys of the late Precambrian
Beauty etched in stone: A fossil of Spriggina floundensi, discovered in the Flinders Range of South Australia. This animal, which may have been a precursor to the trilobites, lived during the Ediacaran Period, the last of the Precambrian Eon. The fossil shown is about 3 cm long. Image source: Wikimedia Commons In today’s New York [...]
In praise of nature’s grace
Phoenicopterus ruber, the Greater Flamingo. J.J. Audubon, 1827-1838. Source: Wikimedia Commons Last year while sitting in a waiting room I read an article written by a fellow who was both a biologist and skeptic on matters of religion. I don’t remember what magazine the piece was in or the author’s name. Let’s call him Dr. [...]
