Talking origins

[drdoug]

For bedtime story tonight, **FIXME wanted me to tell him about how people came to be. From start of life, through to mammals, then monkeys and chimpanzees, then humans. (His choice of waypoints, although originally he wanted mammals between chimps and people and had to be renegotiated.) So I told him, and he listened with interest (he has heard

Comments

[valkyriekaren]

First Life's amazing, isn't it? Plus, I could listen to David Attenborough's soft, measured tones all day.

He keeps on saying he's going to retire (and I notice they have him doing a lot less being winched into rainforest treetops and wandering around dark caves these days) but I can't believe he'll ever really give up wanting to tell us all how 'quite remarkable' the world is.

[drdoug]

He is amazing. I noticed he was obviously struggling for breath up on the Burgess Shale - which is understandable since I think it's about 2500 m/8000 ft up. But impressive he was there at all - hope I can be that active in my 80s.

Inordinate fondness for prokaryotes

[uon]

I feel similarly boggled whenever I see a copy of the Tree of Life, both at the fact we can now attempt to construct such a thing, and for the scale of what it represents..

Re: Inordinate fondness for prokaryotes

[drdoug]

I do think we're only at the start of the whole molecular phylogeny business.

If you like pretty (but less detailed) Trees of Life, there's this one that was made by a bunch of my mates:
http://www.open2.net/darwin/poster.html

[memevector]

It occurs to me that First Life is possibly something you could find on iPlayer (or if not that, then DVD later) and show to **FIXME. ? Offspring loves watching that kind of thing.

[drdoug]

It most certainly is on iPlayer, that's how I was watching it! (Hardly ever watch broadcast TV these days.) And yes, I did think **FIXME might love it. And better fare than Chuggington or Octonauts.