Death Is The Ultimate Enemy - And

... Each With Its Own Beauty, And Each With A Story To Tell.

True Majorities, In A Tv-dominated And Anti-intellectual Age, May Need Sound Bites And Flashing Lights And I Am Not Against Supplying Such Lures If They Draw Children Into Even A Transient Concern With Science. But Every Classroom Has One [oliver] Sacks , One [eric] Korn, Or One [jonathan] Miller , Usually A Lonely Child With A Passionate Curiosity About Nature, And A Zeal That Overcomes Pressures For Conformity. Do Not The One In Fifty Deserve Their Institutions As Well Magic Places, Like Cabinet Museums, That Can Spark The Rare Flames Of Genius?

The Extreme Rarity Of Transitional Forms In The Fossil Record Persists As A Trade Secret Of Paleontology. Evolutionary Trees That Adorn Our Textbooks Have Data Only At The Tips And Nodes Of Their Branches; The Rest Is Inference, However Reasonable, Not The Evidence Of Fossils.

If You Defend A Behavior By Arguing That People Are Programmed Directly For It, Then How Do You Continue To Defend It If Your Speculation Is Wrong, For The Behavior Then Becomes Unnatural And Worthy Of Condemnation. Better To Stick Resolutely To A Philosophical Position On Human Liberty: What Free Adults Do With Each Other In Their Own Private Lives Is Their Business Alone. It Need Not Be Vindicated And Must Not Be Condemned By Genetic Speculation.

Mary Anning [is] Probably The Most Important Unsung (or Inadequately Sung) Collecting Force In The History Of Paleontology.