Plastiki  is made out of – you guessed it – plastic. Plastiki, the plastic bottle version of Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki  , was carried from San Francisco to Sydney on a conveyor belt...._{and wind}

I remember when water bottles were introduced on the Norwegian market. It was the most stupid idea I had ever heard of and could not imagine how anybody would be willing to loose their money on this bound to fail business project. Obviously I was wrong. Even in a clean country like Norway where fresh water is abundant everywhere there was a market for bottled water. Go figure.

The concept of "primitive" is one that is very often misunderstood.

Properly defined, "primitive" means "more like a particular ancestor", refers only to individual characteristics (not whole species or lineages), and is contrasted with "derived" (not "advanced" or "more evolved").

I have covered this and other misunderstandings of evolutionary concepts in various articles and I try to clarify these in my courses. But the intuitive interpretation in which one species is deemed more primitive than another is very hard to shake, including in the scientific literature.

An example:

As I have explained in various blog posts and in this paper, it is a fallacy to assume that any one character found in a so-called "primitive" species alive today was also found in the ancestral species. All living species are modern species, and "primitive" vs. "derived" refers to characters, not whole species.

Anyway, New Scientist seems to have fallen for this in their interpretation of a recent paper.

Bellyflopping frogs shed light on evolution

John Mattick, University of Queensland, is one of the leading proponents of the idea that much -- perhaps most -- of the human genome is functional. He has been making claims along these lines for at least 15 years, but seems to always present it as a new idea. Readers of this blog may also remember the Dog's Ass Plot included in one of his publications. 

Recently Elizabeth Cunningham Perkins brought us a Weedy Rumination on the Creeping Bellflower, Campanula rapunculoides. I will now tell you about a wildflower growing in my own garden, which is full of memories.