Call Off The Corpse Dogs! Daniel's Alive!

That's right, Irradiatus of the always stellar Biochemical Soul blog is back in the world of the virtual after a many month soul (and job) searching hiatus. I was beginning to wonder if the Darwin Beard Challenge boys had extremely eliminated him from the running.

Phew!

And in an attempt to curry favor with the cool ocean science blogosphere hordes, he goes and lands a sweet new gig researching echinoderm development at Carnegie Mellon. Witness his blatant effort at bribing his way into the hearts of the few, the proud, the marine biologists with his artistic rendering of an echinoderm cladogram (above).

Sorry Daniel, it's not that easy! Sure, your beautiful echinoderm genealogy now graces my desktop wallpaper. Sure, I'm tickled at the prospect of regular echinoderm evolution posts. But it's gonna take a whole lot of alcohol peddling and shanty-singing at ScienceOnline'10 to earn your pirate's cap.

PS: Welcome back!