Saint Petersburg

Here are some photos of Saint Petersburg. I was happy to visit the cruiser Aurora in the Neva river. I first read about its role in the Russian revolution when I was in high school.

The fourth photo shows a typical street scene in the city. You should be able to translate the sign (СТОП) under the stop lights if you were paying attention to my post from a few weeks ago.

Saint Petersburg: Hermitage Museum

The highlight of our Baltic cruise was the visit to Saint Petersburg, Russia. We hired a guide and driver to take us around to the various sites in Saint Petersburg and the outskirts. The Hermitage (Зрмитаж) museum is located on the banks of one of the main channels of the Neva river (Болъшая Нева). The first photo shows a view form across the river.

This is the old winter palace of the Russian Czars so the building itself is part of the history—like the Louvre in Paris.

The second photo is one of the spectacular views from inside the museum. Everyone says that you really need three days to see everything and I agree. However, our guide took us on a brief tour of the major highlights so we got a good impression in just three hours.

The last photo shows us getting into our van at the end of the visit. If you look closely, you’ll see the name of Ms. Sandwalk’s blog on the dashboard (click to embiggen).

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A Rainy Day in Helsinki

We visited Helsinki, Finland, a few days ago (August 14, 2013). It was a rainy day. We spent most of our time shopping and walking around the old town.

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Stockholm: Old Town

We visited Stockholm yesterday and toured the city with my cousin Sharon and her husband Dennis. (That’s them with Ms. Sandwalk in the third photo.) Here are some photos of the Old Town including one of the Swedish Academy where I tried to put in a good word for all my readers.

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45 Years Ago

We're celebrating our 45th wedding anniversary by taking a cruise in the Baltic. We were in Oslo, Norway on our anniversary day (August 9) where we met our friends Dag and Robin from graduate student days. They are als0 marride 45 years so we celebrated with champagne at their house. More about that later.

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University of Rostock

The University of Rostock was founded in 1419. It’s said to be the oldest university in the Baltic Sea area. The main university building is a prominent landmark in Rostock but I was more interested in the Zoology building off to the side.

Looks like I just missed an important conference. Does everyone know who Willi Hennig is?

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Warnemünde and Rostock

Yesterday our boat stopped at the habor in Warnemünde, Germany. There was a lot of activity of the quay in Warnemünde because a number of tall ships were in the harbor.

We took the train to the medieval town of Rostock—a key port in the Hansiatic League (Hansa=guilds). The architecture was similar to that in other leading cities of the Hansiatic League, notably Bruges.

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Cruising

We've been on this boat for three days and we'll be on it for another 8 days as we cruise the Baltic Sea. Internet access costs 70 cents ($0.75 US) per minute so posts will be short and infrequent.

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Copenhagen Canals

We were in Copenhagen a few days ago. Here are some pictures of the canals.

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Carnival of Evolution #62: The Whig History

The latest issue of Carnival of Evolution is hosted by Joachim D, an evolutionary ecologist who blogs at Ecology and Evolution Footnotes. Read: Carnival of Evolution 62: The Whig History .

When it comes to the history of evolutionary theory, a whiggish image could look something like [the figure below]

I leave it to the readers to come up with a female version (including, for example, Maria Sibylla Merian, Rosalind Franklin, Barbara McClintock, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard).

Arranging July's posts that I found interesting or entertaining as well as the few submitted by others according to a Whig history of evolutionary theory in the following is purely ornamental and does, of course, not imply any whiggishness on the side of the contributors.

If you want to host a Carnival of Evolution please contact Bjørn Østman. Bjørn is always looking for someone to host the Carnival of Evolution. He would prefer someone who has not hosted before but repeat hosts are more than welcome right now! Bjørn is threatening to name YOU as host even if you don't volunteer! Contact him at the Carnival of Evolution blog. You can send articles directly to him or you can submit your articles at Carnival of Evolution although you now have to register to post a submission. Please alert Bjørn or the upcoming host if you see an article that should be included in next month's. You don't have to be the author to nominate a post.

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Carnival of Evolution #61: Crustie Lovin; Edition

I was out of town when the last two Carnivals of Evolution were published so I'm doing a bit of catchup. The July issue of Carnival of Evolution was hosted by Marc Srour at Teaching Biology. He's the only blogger I know who is based in Cyprus. (He may have just moved to Japan.) Read: Carnival of Evolution #61: Crustie Lovin; Edition.

Hello, and welcome to the Carnival of Evolution #61. For this edition, I’ve chosen to celebrate what I perceive as an inexplicably underappreciated group of animals: the Crustacea. Of the major arthropod groups, I notice that crustaceans often get the short end of the stick. Everyone can name insects and recognise spiders, but besides seafood, crustaceans seem to be a question mark with most people. Insects and spiders have movies and songs written about them; crabs are the logo for cancer, the vernacular name for an STD, and they are an astrological sign.

Insulting. Crustaceans are awesome. There may be over a million insect species, but crustaceans take the cake when it comes to disparity, or morphological diversity, a measure in which no other taxon can match them.

If you want to host a Carnival of Evolution please contact Bjørn Østman. Bjørn is always looking for someone to host the Carnival of Evolution. He would prefer someone who has not hosted before but repeat hosts are more than welcome right now! Bjørn is threatening to name YOU as host even if you don't volunteer! Contact him at the Carnival of Evolution blog. You can send articles directly to him or you can submit your articles at Carnival of Evolution although you now have to register to post a submission. Please alert Bjørn or the upcoming host if you see an article that should be included in next month's. You don't have to be the author to nominate a post.

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Carnival of Evolution #60: Party like it’s 1953

I was out of town when the last two Carnivals of Evolution were published so I'm doing a bit of catchup. The June issue of Carnival of Evolution was hosted by Zen Faulkes at NeuroDojo. He's a invertebrate neuroethologist, whatever that is. Read: Carnival of Evolution #60: Party like it’s 1953.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a special edition of the Carnival of Evolution. It’s the big six oh!

In honor of that achievement, we shall share this carnival’s space with other events celebrating their sixtieth anniversary.

If you want to host a Carnival of Evolution please contact Bjørn Østman. Bjørn is always looking for someone to host the Carnival of Evolution. He would prefer someone who has not hosted before but repeat hosts are more than welcome right now! Bjørn is threatening to name YOU as host even if you don't volunteer! Contact him at the Carnival of Evolution blog. You can send articles directly to him or you can submit your articles at Carnival of Evolution although you now have to register to post a submission. Please alert Bjørn or the upcoming host if you see an article that should be included in next month's. You don't have to be the author to nominate a post.

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Monday's Molecule #212

Last week's molecule was a thymine dimer. The winners were Alex Ling and Matt McFarlane. [Monday's Molecule #211].

Today's molecule is an important part of a major pathway. Give the common name and identify the pathway. Explain briefly why this pathway is important.

Email your answers to me at: Monday's Molecule #212. I'll hold off posting your answers for 24 hours. The first one with the correct answer wins. I will only post the names of people with mostly correct answers to avoid embarrassment. The winner will be treated to a free lunch.

There could be two winners. If the first correct answer isn't from an undergraduate student then I'll select a second winner from those undergraduates who post the correct answer. You will need to identify yourself as an undergraduate in order to win. (Put "undergraduate" at the bottom of your email message.)

Dear Denyse, Stop Digging

You're not going to believe what Denyse O'Leary just posted on Uncommon Descent: Junk DNA: Just because information is never used, doesn’t mean it is junk.

Further to Cornelius Hunter’s “Evolutionist: We do not promote any ‘spiritual ideologies,’” (in which he recounts that recent findings about RNA structure conservation suggest that even more of the mammalian genome is functional than supposed, hence there is less “junk DNA”:

I’ve never clearly understood Darwin’s fans attachment to junk DNA. It makes a good “anti-God” statement, as long as you are certain that the stuff is not and never could be any use. But that is precisely what is now widely contested. And it was a trap they need not have fallen into.

But a simple illustration will show that even if most of the information in DNA were never used, it would still be valuable. Let us say I have a directory of members of a club I belong to. I never use most of the phone numbers. Many numbers may never be used by anyone.

Does lack of use make that proportion of the directory junk?

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Goodbye Dumpster

Jerry Coyne posted this video and I thought it was so funny I just had to put it on my website blog.

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