Thar she blows!

All my life I've wanted to see a blue whale. They are one of the ultimate superlatives of the natural world, the largest animal - and one of the largest organisms of any kind - that has ever existed. Every school child has heard all the relevant stats. They weigh as much as 200 tons and grow to over 100 feet in length, larger than any dinosaur currently known. Their tongue weighs as much as an elephant, the heaviest animal on land. Even newborn calves are larger than most animals (and are in fact larger than the adults of many other whale species). Simply put, there is not now, nor has there ever been, anything quite like a blue whale on this planet, and with my taste for the sublime, it should come as no surprise that I've always wanted to see one. Today, I got my wish. Blue whales are, of course, quite rare, but for whatever reason they congregate in Santa Barbara Channel each summer. I took advantage of our first two-day break of the course to go on a whale-watching trip this morning, and while the price was steep, it turned out to be well worth it. We saw at least two blue whales, and it's true: they really are massive (and they really are blue, too). The picture above does not, I'm afraid, do them any justice at all, but I can now say with authority that watching a blue whale dive is one of nature's greatest spectacles. The trip would have been worthwhile if we had only seen the whales, but there was even more. We also saw a pod of Risso's dolphins feeding around our boat, a school of ocean sunfish (the largest bony fish, though these were just juveniles), lots of sea lions, and Painted Cave (a massive sea cave beneath Santa Cruz Island, one of the Channel Islands). I like to flatter myself that I've seen several examples of nature at its most spectacular (the Victorian coast in Australia, the redwoods of Northern California, and of course the volcanoes of the Northwest, to name a few), and I can confidently say that today's trip ranked among those. The only downside will be returning to class tomorrow: with apologies to Hans, the world of data analysis just isn't quite exhilarating as that of giant whales and cloud-shrouded island wildernesses...

Los Angeles

Growing up anywhere on the West Coast, you are raised to hate everything about Los Angeles. It's portrayed as an ugly, sprawling, polluted, hedonistic cultural wasteland, a stereotype to which I have always wholeheartedly subscribed. However, since I've been enjoying life in Santa Barbara so much, my outlook on Southern California has improved remarkably, and I was even beginning to worry that I might find myself feeling kindly disposed towards LA. I put that to the test yesterday when we made a trip into town, and I'm proud to say that those fears were unjustified: I still hate Los Angeles. It's still ugly (with a few admittedly nice areas like 3rd Street in Santa Monica and Beverley Hills), it's sprawling more than ever, its skies are still gray with smog, and it's still rife with self-indulgence (though some of this hedonism takes an almost pathetically banal form, most glaringly evident in Hollywood, which is shockingly seedy and seems to have more strip clubs and porn stores than movie theaters).
This all may sound very negative, but I do have a few good things to say about LA. First off, it's the only city that I know of that has a fossil site of international importance within its borders (the La Brea Tar Pits). Being paleontologists as we are, the entire purpose of our trip was to see the tar pits, and it was time well-spent (I especially like the wall of dire wolf skulls pictured at right, one of the cooler fossil displays I've ever seen). The park in which the tar pits are located is an experience in and of itself, especially when you come across a spot where an asphalt seep is bubbling up in the middle of a lawn; it's not the best place for a nap. You can also get good food at almost any hour in LA, which was very nice after our previous night's experience of trying to find somewhere to get food after 9:00 in Goleta.
Those last couple of items might sound like platitudes, but LA does have one thing that no other city in the world can match: the Getty Center. The center is an art museum and institute sitting on a crag of the Santa Monica Mountains above Beverley Hills, and I can honestly say it is one of the most amazing places I've ever been. The art is very nice, of course, but the structure is the real reason to visit. It's an acropolis of white travertine accessible only by train and surrounded by fantastic gardens. Needless to say, the views are outstanding as well. I'm fairly certain that my words can't do it justice, and my photos fall well short of capturing the full effect too. Suffice it to say, it's worth going out of your way to see if you ever get the chance. If nothing else, it proves that even if LA is still ugly, sprawling, polluted, and hedonistic, it at least can't be considered a complete cultural wasteland anymore. So there you go, something positive about LA. Maybe I am getting soft after all...

Analytical Paleobiology

Hans' comment on my last post made me realize not only that I probably sounded like I was complaining about my coursework this summer, but that I never did a very thorough job of explaining exactly why I'm spending my summer in Southern California to begin with. My (almost) all-expenses-paid trip to Santa Barbara is courtesy of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, a think-tank affiliated with UC Santa Barbara that each summer offers what I believe is the only course in analytical paleobiology in the world. The subject matter may sound less than thrilling, but it is extremely relevant. For decades, paleontology - and in particular vertebrate paleontology - has languished in the realm of observational science: people would go out to the field, collect some fossils, describe them, and leave it at that. Even the so-called "Dinosaur Renaissance" of the late 20th Century consisted mainly of an increase in discovery and description rather than being marked by a shift in analytical techniques (and for all you smart-asses out there, yes, I realize this is an oversimplification and that researchers such as G.G. Simpson were outstanding theoretical paleontologists long before the modern era; still, on the whole, I think my assertion stands). Fortunately, in recent years a greater emphasis has been placed upon interpretation of data in an effort to discern large-scale trends in ecology and evolution. Of course, any such effort requires statistics, and lots of them (though, as always, quality is much more important than quantity). Such methods are anathema to many of the old guard in paleontology (partly, I expect, because they lack the glamor of field work), but they are essential in detecting patterns in the fossil record (which, as I've argued before, really is the point of science). The purpose of this course is to give us all a baptism by fire into the the world of analytical paleobiology. Several paleontologists from across the country are flown in to teach five-day modules, each focusing on a particular field. This week's topic, for example, is morphometrics, the quantitative study of fossil shape. It's a field I came into the course knowing very little about, and even a couple of lectures have made it clear to me that it's far more complex than I had ever realized (the highlight so far has been making silhouettes of rodent jaws for analysis, such as the one above). In later sessions we start delving into the far more convoluted world of ecology and evolution. It will no doubt get very confusing, but don't for a minute get fooled into thinking I hate the experience. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Santa Barbara

Here's a fun thought experiment: take the old phrase "heaven on Earth" and imagine for a moment what exactly that would look like. Have you conjured up perfect temperatures, sea breezes, beautiful buildings, abundant wildlife, and a horizon punctuated by mountains? If so, you've just imagined Santa Barbara, my home for the next month. It is very hard for any Northwesterner to admit that anywhere in Southern California could possibly be nice, let alone idyllic, but I have to confess that in this case it's true. It's not perfect, of course, but if you don't mind the occasional threat of earthquakes and have the money to survive in the opulent world of Santa Barbara, you'd be hard-pressed to find much better. Several of us spent today exploring the city, from the old Spanish mission down to the harbor and its massive wharf, and I'm sure that all of us could supply a long list of glowing adjectives to describe the experience. Incidentally, for those of you who think I'm making up that bit above about "abundant wildlife," in the last day I've seen lizards, a skunk, bats, dolphins, a bluebird, hummingbirds, pelicans, scrub jays (the last three birds aren't particularly rare, but they're all among my favorites, so I figured I'd list them anyway), and swallows galore, to say nothing of the floral extravaganza that is Santa Barbara. The only downside to spending a month in paradise? Most of that time will be spent indoors crunching numbers (tomorrow we begin morphometrics, hardly the most inspiring topic in paleontology). On the other hand, if it weren't for this all-expenses-paid course, I wouldn't be here to begin with, so it would be awfully stupid and ungracious of me to complain. Besides, it's hard to get too upset about anything in Santa Barbara...

California Dreaming

Ah, California. If nothing else, it's a complex place. Even under ideal conditions it would be difficult to do the week or so I've spent here so far justice, and since I've spent that week alternating between mile-a-minute touring and mind-numbing classwork, I really haven't had time to try. Rather than attempting to sum it all up (I'll save that for future posts when my thoughts are more collected), I'll take the old saw that a picture is worth a thousand words at face value. Fortunately, since California is among the most photogenic states, I have several pictures to put into the slideshow above and I can keep my words to a minimum (check out my Picasa site of you want to see the still versions). Stay tuned for updates; there will be many as this long, strange trip continues...

On the Road Again

I'm writing this entry as I wait for everyone else to wake up on a perfect morning in Oakland, California. Today is the third day of summer, which means my summer as a nomad is well underway. Last week it was Seattle and Lopez, this week I'm en route to Santa Barbara by way of the Bay Area. I'll be in California for the next month and a half before heading back north the eastern Oregon, as close to the middle of nowhere as you'd ever hope to find. Living on the road like this is a new experience for me, but I'm looking forward to it. After all, there's nothing I enjoy more than travel, and for all intents and purposes I'll be traveling nonstop for the next month. Should be fun, especially if the California weather lives up to its reputation (living in a consistently sunny and warm climate will also be a new experience for me after Seattle, Chicago, Bristol, and Oregon)...

Feathered dinosaurs invade Seattle!

Today I paid a visit to my old stomping grounds, the Pacific Science Center, and after doing so I feel obliged to put in a plug for them. If any of you have an interest in paleontology and are in the Seattle area, I heartily recommend their current exhibit on dinosaurs. There are several skeletons and casts of large Chinese dinosaurs (Mamenchisaurus, Tsintaosaurus, and the like) as well as a nice display on dinosaur eggs, but the real reason to go is for the several specimens from Liaoning. Liaoning, for those of you outside the paleontological loop, is a region in northeastern China that first came to international attention in the early 1990s. It's a lagerstätte (a site of exceptional fossil preservation) that has yielded, among other things, many exquisitely preserved birds and feathered dinosaurs. It was these specimens, in fact, that effectively ended the debate over whether birds evolved from dinosaurs (to say nothing of the fact that they're some of the most beautiful fossils you'll ever see). The exhibit at PSC runs the gamut from the dinosaur Sinosauropteryx to the true birds Sapeornis (one of the most primitive birds known), Confuciusornis, and Yixianornis. Considering their scientific, monetary, and even cultural value (paleontology is very closely tied to nationalism in China), it is rare for the Chinese government to allow Liaoning fossils out of the country, and it may be a long time before they make their appearance in the Great Northwest again. So, for those of you with the time and inclination, a trip would be well worth your while.

England Revisited

I was doing a little spring cleaning and organization of my iPhoto library today, and I came across several pictures from Britain that I had completely forgotten about, including these gems. If you like them, there's lots more where they came from on my Flickr site. Incidentally, I think it's quite a testament to the English climate that these two pictures were taken on the same day.

The Godfather of Oregon Paleontology

Our department had its annual end of the year picnic and awards ceremony yesterday and I was (somewhat unexpectedly) the recipient of the Thomas Condon Fellowship for the work I'll be doing in eastern Oregon the latter half of the summer. The money is nice, of course, but it's also an honor just to have my name associated with Thomas Condon. He's a figure who hasn't ever gotten much press outside of Oregon, but he was an excellent vertebrate paleontologist and a complex individual. He was born in Ireland in 1822, but spent most of his life in the US as a minister and scientist (he purchased an early copy of Darwin's On the Origin of Species and rumor has it that it was the only book other than the Bible that he always carried with him). Condon saw no conflict between faith and science, considering (correctly, in my opinion) that each represented its own distinct sphere. After moving to Oregon in 1852 as a missionary, he began to make a special study of the state's paleontology, eventually becoming the first professor of geology at the University of Oregon and a hugely important figure in this state's scientific history. He collaborated in his research with several of the biggest names in 19th Century paleontology (most notably March and Cope of "Bone Wars" fame). Condon's name is most often associated with the John Day region in central Oregon, where he collected huge numbers of fossils that still form the core of the university's collection. Appropriately enough, the fellowship I just received will go towards funding the preliminary work I'll be doing on my dissertation project in those very same John Day Fossil Beds. Besides just proving that there are very few degrees of separation between any two figures in paleontology, receiving this fellowship is certainly a bit of good news, and as clichéd as it may sound, I do look forward to following in Thomas Condon's footsteps.

When Worlds Collide

Ever since widespread consensus was reached last decade that a meteorite was at least partially responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs (among other organisms) at the end of the Cretaceous, it's been en vogue to try to show that meteorite or comet collisions can be linked to all the major mass extinctions. I'm usually very skeptical of such studies, which are often highly speculative and smack more of self-promotion than of good science. That said, it's never worth shooting such hypotheses down without having first heard the evidence used to formulate them. With that in mind, I went to a talk last Friday given by two professors from the anthropology department here at Oregon. It was, in effect, a practice talk in advance of the official presentation of their findings this week at the Geological Society of America's meeting in Acapulco. The research group - which consists of 26 (!) members from representing many different fields - had come across several lines of evidence that seem to suggest that a small meteorite, or more likely a comet, smashed into Michigan 13,000 years ago. These lines of evidence included such things as an iridium spike and nannodiamonds, both of which are generally associated with some type of extraterrestrial impact. I was ready to be a skeptic, but I have to admit, their argument was very compelling. While the impact itself would have been relatively minor, the authors suggest that such an event in an area that was then covered by glaciers would shatter ice dams holding back massive glacial lakes, wreaking havoc on ocean circulation and, by extension, climate.
As anthropologists, the presenters I saw were most interested in how the impact might have affected North American paleoindian society. I was more interested in a topic they touched upon only briefly. For several years, one of the most contentious debates in paleontology has been the argument over whether humans are responsible for the extinction of large "Ice Age" mammals (megafauna). It's been a particularly vitriolic debate, with each side having its share of convincing arguments, bad science, and flat-out name-calling. This comet hypothesis will no doubt light an entirely new fire under a cauldron that's already been boiling for some time. As such, I have no doubt that the findings of this will be debated and subjected to several rigorous geological, anthropological, and paleontological test, and I for one look forward with great interest to seeing how well they hold up under scrutiny.

My Own Private Deer Park

Eugene is Oregon's Second City, and it likes to bill itself as the "World's Greatest City of the Arts and Outdoors" (whatever that means). It has an acclaimed symphony orchestra, beautiful parks, a major university, and in general is far more urban and cosmopolitan than a city its size should be. That said, it's still very much part of Oregon, and no matter where you go in this state, nature is never very far away. Case in point: when I came home from the university today, I looked out my kitchen window and saw the scene at left. Deer are hardly anything remarkable, but the seeing wild animals - fairly large ones, at that - in your backyard is always a novelty when you live in a city. Even more memorable was watching the many neighborhood cats try to stalk the deer (without much success, as you might imagine, though one did manage to get close enough to bat at a tail).

Happy ACD-Day!

A few weeks back, I posted to commemorate T.H. Huxley's birthday. This week, I want to acknowledge the birthday of another great Victorian, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Besides Charles Dickens, no author has ever been so adept at conjuring up images of Industrial Era Britain, from the foggy streets of London in its glory days, to the eerie tors of Dartmoor, to the fading elegance of a ducal mansion. Conan Doyle's gift for evocative description was most frequently put to use to enliven the adventures of his most famous creations, Dr. John H. Watson and Sherlock Holmes (The Sign of Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles, for example, each have settings that are every bit as compelling as the characters themselves). Conan Doyle was also a well-educated man with a keen understanding of science (though he lapsed into mysticism and quackery towards the end of his life - the Sherlock Holmes story The Creeping Man is a particularly embarrassing product of this stage). He wrote The Lost World, the first and still the best dinosaur novel out there; it's significantly more exciting, engaging, and creepy than any of Michael Crichton's efforts. Its plot is simple: a group of explorers find an isolated plateau in South America that preserves a primeval world of dinosaurs and ape-men. Tenuous as this segue may seem, Conan Doyle's writing has always appealed to me because it itself paints a picture of the lost world: the Victorian Era, a world which was unexplored enough and still rife enough with possibility to engender The Lost World but which was also coming to terms with its increasingly prevalent dark side so familiar to the world's greatest detective. I may never really understand why I have such a fascination with Industrial Britain, but I know that Conan Doyle's vivid depiction of it is largely responsible. And for that, I am eternally grateful.

How to Make a Good Nature Documentary

Today, the Discovery Channel has been airing the BBC series Planet Earth. I had heard about the series before, but I'd been skeptical: it couldn't really be as good as everyone claimed it was, could it? Turns out that yes, it is. Here's why:

• As the narrator is never tired of reminding you, the cinematography in the series is nothing short of stunning. There are gorgeous landscape shots (like a top-down view of Angel Falls and a flyby of a fog-shrouded coastal forest right here in the Northwest), close-ups catching animal behavior "in the act" (like macaques diving for food in Indonesia or the mating display of a bird of paradise), or - best of all - combinations of the two (the most spectacular example being a snow leopard hunt on a sheer cliff face in the Himalayas). The producers also do a great job of using slow-motion footage (of a great white shark leaping to catch a seal, for example) and stop-motion (to show a sunflower sea star chasing brittle stars across the California seafloor).
• Many nature documentaries focus on one individual or group. While this might make for a good story-line, it also opens the door for anthropomorphism and presents logistical problems (one documentary on baboons is notorious for having used five or six other individuals stand-ins for the "main character," of which they just didn't have enough footage). Planet Earth takes a much more holistic approach, with each episode focusing on an entire biome. While much of the documentary is still devoted to animals, other organisms get plenty if air time as well, as does the physical environment itself.
• The producers aren't afraid to show "nature, red in tooth an claw." It's always annoyed me that most documentaries will show only the appealing bits of the natural world, cutting away from footage hunts just before the kill, for example. Planet Earth, on the other hand, doesn't skimp on the carnage, whether it's a chimp cannibalizing an infant from another troop or a parasitic fungus erupting out of the head of an ant (in stop-motion, no less). It may be gruesome to some people's eyes, but a documentary that shows only those aspects of the natural world that they think viewers will want to see are, at best, telling only half the story.
  
• Many nature documentaries also like to drive home their conservation message with a sledgehammer. I'm as pro-conservation as the next guy, but finger-pointing and guilt-mongering are annoying at best, and more commonly are entirely counterproductive. Planet Earth most certainly has the same goal, but it is much more nuanced and subtle about it. One of the producers stated that the aim of the program was to show people that there are still places out there worth saving, and there can be no doubt that Planet Earth does so masterfully. It would take a truly hard-hearted person to watch this and not be moved on some level, and to paraphrase the old adage, there is no better way to inspire conservation efforts than to first inspire appreciation.
  

Happy Darwin's Bulldog Day!

Today is the 182nd birthday Thomas Henry Huxley, the man known as "Darwin's Bulldog" and one of my personal heroes. I've been taken to task a few times for my hero-worship, because it's certainly true that not everyone out there is a big T.H. Huxley fan. He was very much a product of his time and his culture (Victorian England), and almost any historical figure starts showing flaws when viewed from a modern perspective. So yes, he did have a running feud with the Salvation Army because he didn't like the idea of handouts to people who didn't work for them, but I would argue that any such non-PC idiosyncrasies are more than counterbalanced by the good he did. There are two things for which I particularly admire Huxley. First, every one of us out there who considers ourself to be a scientist owes the man an enormous debt of gratitude, because in many ways he was the first professional scientist. Pre-Victorian scientists were largely independently wealthy aristocrats and clergymen that indulged in "natural philosophy" as a hobby, while Huxley was a "common" Londoner who relied on science as a career. More importantly, he was famous as a teacher, educating a generation of students in the newly-emerging fields of biology and geology (and in the intersection of those two fields, paleontology). The second thing I admire about Huxley is his eloquence. There have been many great scientists, but many of them have been terrible at communicating their research to the rest of the world. To be able to explain one's ideas in a way that both instructs and engages is a very rare gift, and it was a skill that Huxley had in spades. He was able to take a commonplace object, such as a crayfish or a piece of chalk, and use use these as means of introducing much larger-scale topics; he was so good at this that his lectures were regularly packed to the gills not just by fellow scientists, but by the general public as well. I have read the transcripts of some of his lectures, as well as some of his essays, and even now, almost two centuries after the fact, they remain works of stunning rhetorical beauty. Of course, his golden tongue is best remembered for its defense of Darwin's then-new theory of evolution by natural selection. Huxley was far and away the most successful promoter, defender, and teacher of evolution of his time, and it is doubtful that natural selection would not have become recognized as the fundamental theory of biology as quickly as it did if not for his efforts. So, Happy Birthday, T.H. Huxley; here's hoping that there are a few more out there like you...

John Orcutt, Oregonian

After seven months of living in Eugene, it's finally official: I'm a certified Oregonian now. Yesterday, I finally had the requisite documents and the necessary funds to license my car here and, more importantly, to get an Oregon driver's license (for those of you out there who don't happen to live stateside, driver's licenses effectively double as national IDs here; the fact that it's a license rather than a voter registration card that identifies you in the US probably tells you a lot about American priorities). Up until now, I'd always officially remained a Washington citizen, a residency that I proudly - if impractically - maintained even when I was living eight out of twelve months of the year in Illinois. While the thought of officially being from a place as cold and flat as Chicago gives me the chills, I was raised by an Oregonian to believe that this is the best state out there, and as such had no qualms about settling in here. So far, life as a resident of Oregon has been uneventful but good, all in all. If nothing else, I get one very tangible benefit: not only is there no sales tax in the state, but I'm not taxed for anything I buy online either. It may not be quite as cushy a deal as Alaskans - who get paid just for living in the state - have, but as a starving student, I certainly am not going to complain.

Paleo futures are up!

Maybe this makes me crazy (or, more likely, marks me as a Chicago alumnus), but I sometimes find myself thinking of my paleontological career as a Wall Street-style stock and wondering how the market for that would look. The years between Chicago and Bristol would have been a good time for a canny investor to buy low, and there were a couple of times when PhD rejections nearly drove me to bankruptcy. While I'm still not claiming that my stock is the most valuable out there (I'm no Microsoft), I do think it's fair to say that's it's steadily risen in value this last year and a half or so. While you never know how long these things are going to last, I am happy to report that my paleo futures market took a noticeable jump this last week. First, I've finally narrowed down the topic for my dissertation project to a reasonable scale: I'm going to be correlating ecological changes in the John Day Fossil Beds with the that site's extremely well-documented paleoenvironmental data. There are all sorts of advantages to this project (not the least of which is that it's the one I really wanted to do). I'll be heading out that way early next month to nail down the specifics with the park's resident paleontologist. Not only am I happy with this turn of events, but the department here has just announced the hiring of two new paleontologists rather than the one we were expecting (I'd say who, but the hiring is still unofficial and I don't want to break any departmental taboos). This is outstanding news for all of us in the program, but I am doubly lucky because both study Cenozoic paleoecology, which I now know is exactly what I'll be doing as well.
Perhaps the biggest news of all, though, is that I was just accepted to attend an Analytical Paleobiology class this summer in Santa Barbara. As far as I'm aware, it's the only class of its kind in the world, and given that they only take 12 people, I feel extremely lucky and privileged to have gotten in. I'm excited about the class, of course, but I'll confess I'm also looking forward to living (albeit briefly) in a warm climate for the first time in my life. Now, if only I could get all this imaginary stock to translate into real money...

Drawing Out Leviathan With a Hook

I spent last weekend celebrating Easter the traditional way: by fighting and then killing and eating a giant fish. Really. On Saturday, my dad and I went fishing on the Olympic Peninsula (fishermen are a secretive bunch, so I won't give away which river) and I caught a Steelhead that I'm told was of the world-class, once-in-a-lifetime variety. This is hilarious, since I hadn't been fishing in years and anyone who saw me reel this one in could tell you that it shows. It's also funny because it was one of only two fish we caught that day, the other one being all of six inches long. Not that I would ever brag, but my fish was significantly bigger, weighing in at a hefty 17 pounds, which I'm sure we can all agree is awfully large for a trout. I was so excited about this that for pretty much the first time ever, I willingly ate fish that evening, which will no doubt come as a shock to anyone who knows my finicky eating habits. I have to admit, it was pretty tasty...

Play Ball!

Do you know why today was a great day? Because it's one of the happiest days of the year on my calendar. See if you can guess which one (this is a real toughie...):

1. Christmas Eve
2. Baseball Opening Day
3. Christmas Day

To say that Opening Day is always more fun than Christmas would be a bit of a stretch; after all, it's hard to beat a day that begins with presents and ends with roast beef. However, when - like today - your favorite team opens up the season with a win over their arch-rival that is nothing short of brilliant, it makes for a great day. Sportscasters across the nation have been bludgeoning us all over the heads today with the old cliché that the return of baseball heralds the onset of Summer and that it's an opportunity for even the most pessimistic among us to become optimists for a brief while. I won't deny that those are true, but for me it's much simpler than that: for whatever reason, I like baseball, and life just seems more fun when it's going on. Of course, a good season on the part of the Mariners never hurts (speaking of irrational optimism...).

How Science Works: Hypotheses, Theories, and Laws

As you all may or may not recall, I argued last week that observation alone does not constitute science, and that discerning patterns in the natural world is essential to both formulating and testing a hypothesis. It's a point that I would hope be obvious to anyone with any kind of education in science, but I was shocked to learn how vehemently some of the students in my ecology class disagreed with it. Today I want to touch on another controversy that arose from that class: the difference (if any) between theories and laws.
First, I ought to define my terms. When I use the word 'theory,' I am using it in the true sense of the word; that is to say, I am not using it synonymously with 'hypothesis.' A hypothesis is effectively a guess (ideally an educated guess, as per Part One of this post) that has yet to be proved. A theory is a scientific fact; in a sense, it is a hypothesis that has been tested enough times and with sufficient rigor to have been proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Again, I would hope that this would be common knowledge, but the two words have become increasingly conflated (thanks in part to the active efforts of the Discovery Institute and other supporters of "intelligent" design) to the point where most scientists I know use the phrases "in theory" and "hypothetically" interchangeably. However, this point has been made several times by people far more eloquent than me, so I won't belabor it any further here.
The real purpose of this post is to address what I consider to be a particularly irritating conceit of the physical sciences. It often seems to be assumed that the fundamental theories of physics and chemistry are somehow more valid than those of natural sciences, such as evolution or plate tectonics, and as such are often considered to be laws rather than "just" theories. However, this gulf between "hard" and "soft" sciences is merely one of degree, and does not reflect any fundamental differences. I won't for a moment deny that physical theories have much more predictive power than biological or geological ones, but this is in part because biologists and geologists deal with staggeringly complex systems, whereas physicists and chemists often consider the processes they study to be occurring in a vacuum. Of course, this is not generally the case, and as such even predictions made based on physical "laws" are often inaccurate (Think, for example, about when you took classes in chemistry: were you ever able to exactly predict the relative proportions of the products of a reaction?). My point here is more philosophical and semantic than scientific: the word 'law' implies an immutability that does not exist in science. If you were able to say beyond a shadow of a doubt that a formula could predict the outcome of a process 100% of the time, then it would be perfectly appropriate to consider that formula a law. However, how can you prove such unerringly accuracy? Even if every experiment you perform confirms the precise predictive power of your formula (which in itself would be unlikely), to assert that this predictive power was universal would, by definition, require a knowledge of the entire universe. What's more, it would require knowledge of the universe not just as it is now, but as it has been and will be. Clearly, no human has ever possessed such knowledge. As such, claiming that any scientific "law" is universally applicable is a leap of faith, and blind faith is the antithesis of science. Rather, a "law" is nothing more than a theory: a hypothesis proved beyond a reasonable doubt, but that cannot be applied universally within the framework of science. This fundamental indecisiveness may seem to cheapen science, but it in fact reflects its greatest strength: accepting nothing as dogma and always leaving room for skepticism.
Once again, I've probably well overstepped the bounds of my own knowledge in writing this post; after all, I'm only a simple paleontologist. As with my last post of this nature, I'd be very curious to know what you all think; I realize I might just be ranting here, and I'd be really curious to know where other people stand.

South by Southwest

As any of you out there that know me can attest, I am pretty well convinced that the Pacific Northwest is the best part of the world (those of you that don't know me all that well could probably figure that out from the title of this blog). The last few days, I've been on a brief road trip that's given me cause to say that many of the best parts of the best part of the world are in Southern Oregon. Here's what we saw that led me to that conclusion:

• Ashland - Besides being a lovely town in a gorgeous setting, Ashland has always been one of my favorite places because it's where I saw my first Shakespeare play, performed by one of the world's preeminent presenters of The Bard's works, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. That was years ago, but I've returned several times since to see many excellent plays; this time, though, we saw one that tops them all. It was a production of As You Like It set in 1930s America. I was skeptical at first, but I was convinced before the first scene had ended: setting the the play in the Depression both complemented its fast-pace humor and underscored its more serious moments (particularly the "All the world's a stage" soliloquy). If you find yourself anywhere near Ashland this year, by all means go out of your way to catch this one. I can't sing its praises highly enough.
• Wineries - Not only does Oregon produce excellent Shakespeare, it produces excellent wine as well (Why even bother traveling to Europe?). We stopped at several wineries on the road between Ashland and the coast, and we tasted wine ranging from good to outstanding (and that's not just me being positive; we really didn't taste anything that was bad). The biggest surprise of all was a dry Riesling we found in a winery just outside of Eugene, something that I didn't know existed outside of Germany.
• Redwoods - Technically speaking, Redwood National Park isn't in Oregon, but we did pass through the northern corner of it en route to the coast. I mention it here because it's one of those places that everyone should see once in their lives. I'm willing to go out on a limb to say there's nothing quite like it anywhere: it's the Forest to End All Forests. There's something otherworldly about the groves of staggeringly enormous trees shrouded in fog and blanketed in a thick green carpet of ferns. I'm not the only one who thinks so: the redwoods served as a backdrop for both Endor in Star Wars and the Jurassic in Walking With Dinosaurs, and if both George Lucas and the BBC give the forest their seal of approval, then it must be a great place...
• The Coast - I've sung the praises of the Oregon Coast so many times on this blog that there really is no sense in me belaboring the point here. Suffice it to say that the southern coast is, if you can imagine, even better than its northern counterpart, and is certainly far less built-up. It also turns out you can get a great bowl of clam chowder at no less than three restaurants in Florence (we went with Mo's, which also has the best view in town).

So there you go, four great reasons to visit Southern Oregon (and Northern California). If you're still not sold on it, check out my photos from the trip, which on the whole actually turned out pretty well.