Articles from THE BLOT REPORT

A taxonomist is a
person who studies organisms in part to work out their relationships and the
classificatory framework (i.e. their taxonomy) which explains those
relationships. Creationists have little understanding of taxonomy nor an
understanding of time frames. Some days ago, one creationist asked me, as if to
refute evolution ‘how come there are no humanzees?’ (presumably he meant chimpanzee-human

Time and again,
creationists have told me that ‘evolution is only a theory’. And so it is. The
problem with this assertion is not with evolution, but creationists, and their
absolutely blinding ignorance of science. Their understanding of the word ‘theory’
is based on the (very) colloquial meaning as in ‘that is my theory and I’m
sticking to it’ or alternatively ‘that is my story…’. These everyday quotes are

Someone showed me an
e-mail they received from the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA).
This organisation is the trade union for those involved in journalism, acting,
theatre and amusements. It was registered in 1992 and was formed from the
merger of the Australian Journalists Association, Actors Equity of Australia,
and the Australian Theatrical and Amusement Employees Association, with the

To explain this
properly, we need to do a bit of geology. The Permian Period is an interval of
geological time which began 298.9 million years ago and ended 251.9 million
years ago, so it lasted 47 million years1. At about the end of that
time interval, occurred the greatest mass extinction event in the history of
the planet. This extinction event wiped out an estimated 96% of all marine
species, and an estimated 70% of all terrestrial species.2