Links of Interest

Science Fiction and Evolution:
At io9, The 10 Totally Awesome Rules of Evolution in Science Fiction. Hilarious and astute discussion of how science fiction worlds make fascinating leaps of logic in imagining evolution. Many of these seem like evolutionary theory has been distorted to allow sci fi books and movies to embrace the conventions of the genre, for instance the rule that a change in one gene can give you superpowers or # 9, "Genetically-engineered organisms will look like hot women." Other rules, however, make me think that some of these tropes are revealing rather than creating these misconceptions.  For example: "There is a 'next stage' of evolution and experts know what it's going to be" (#1) is a pretty clear example of the way evolution is sometimes viewed as a linear kind of "progress," which is, in simple terms, a big no-no, at least according to evolutionary biologists, philosophers of science, and various others who have noted the many terrible things the fallacious concept of "evolution as progress" has encouraged.  For similar reasons, the discussion of "Humanity is the pinnacle of evolution" (#10) is especially interesting; we assume that being more "human" is to be more "evolved," an idea that has a lot more to do with Aristotle's "Great chain of being" than the actual processes of natural and sexual selection, diversification, and so on.


Why Success Stories Aren't Useful Models (or at least not as often as we think):
At You Are Not So Smart, a discussion of survivor bias and how it can skew rational thinking. It has very interesting examples, from the obvious (why celebrity guides to success tell you little) to a surprisingly compelling story of how avoiding success bias helped win WWII (and this is from someone who is not usually all that compelled by aeronautics or military history).

Cool Graphic:
Here's what Pangea would look like if you mapped modern political borders onto it.

Art School
From At the Interface: Where Art and Science Meet, art students are asked to explore scientific work and integrate their scientific curiosity into their art in order to produce more innovative work.  The site also includes some very cool examples of the art that results.