Sarah Palin and Botryotinia fuckeliana

Enormous hat-tip to Jonathan Eisen for uncovering the evolutionary connection between Sarah Palin (or, more correctly, the peptide SARAHPALIN) and a hypothetical protein from -- wait for it -- B. fuckeliana. You could almost say that it looks intelligently designed... Link to Jonathan's blog post at Tree of Life here.

Olivia Judson on reading "Origin of Species"

The column (link) is an easy read; the book, less so.