Category: History
In a famous skit, Wayne and Schuster had Calpurnia, Caesar's wife, saying "Julie, don't go! It's the Ides of March!" Now we can see why Julie went. He was old, and worried...
This is a bust of Julius Caesar in his "old age" (old age be damned. He looks younger than I am) that has recently been found in the sediment of the Rhône River next to the Roman city of Arles, which Caesar founded. It is thought to be from life, and is the oldest bust of J. C. known.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:12 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V scene 1, Miranda says
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!
The third line gave Aldous Huxley the title of his future dystopia, Brave New World. Somewhere between Miranda's naive optimism and Huxley's sardonic pessimism lies What sorts of people should there be? a venture by Canadian academics to investigate the effects of the modern world on our sense of self and "to address concerns around human variation, normalcy, and enhancement". They also have a blog. It is run by the illustrious and lustrously hirsute Rob Wilson, an Australian philosopher in exile at the University of Alberta.
Since we're discussing philosophical blogging, go check out the 69th Philosophers' Carnival at Possibly Philosophy. And Sciblings Jason Rosenhouse and James Hrynyshyn get stuck into the incoherent blatherings of David Brooks in the New York Times, in which he seems to argue that we are abandoning the "materialist" view of the mind in favour of a new respect for "spiritual" states (an assertion contrary to all the research I know, at any rate).
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:26 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
There's this:
But spiderman is fiction, of course.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:02 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
No, not the use of Java to archive his music. This presence: A trapdoor spider named after him.
This cute fellow:
Hat tip: David Williams
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:17 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Design
Some things, I really should have thought of myself. Like this:
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:12 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
From Wiley:
And while we're on the topic...
Read on »
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:50 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Administrative
So much has been happening in the world while I was giving a talk on the adaptiveness of religion in Sydney. The Platypus thing was one item I'd have blogged on if the rest of the blogosphere hadn't beaten me to it. All I can say is that no matter how many bloggers write on the mosaic nature of the platypus genome, at least I got to hold one. And I would never have used the meaningless term "reptile".
And although I have only been to NYC twice, I can say I have a favourite store there, and I saw it on CSI: NY recently (although they obviously tidied up the counter for the shoot).
And there's a paper out debunking the latest version of the Internodal Species Concept. This is what happens when people take set theory as a useful guide to doing taxonomy. It's an object lesson, folks.
Finally, there's a paper that tries, one more time, to defend evolutionary systematics against cladistics, in the form of an argument that Hennig is being incoherent logically. I will get back to that one.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:33 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Administrative
Sometime over tonight, this blog will pass the half a million visits mark. Say it out loud with me: half...a...million!
Now I know this is because the six regular readers routinely and obsessively visit me every fifteen seconds, and there are drugs being developed to cure that, but...
half... a... million! Visits!
I'm a friggin' philosopher, dudes. We're supposed to be obscure and irrelevant. Unless we're French, of course. Then it's double the obscurity but a million times the relevance, at least in coffee shops and fashionable magazines.
So, thank you all. I apologise for the recent dearth of posts, due to Actual Work Being Done (don't worry, I won't do it again for a while). Also, I apologise the the Australian spelling. Damn it, no I don't! Suffer, Americans!
[Now, if only I'd thought, when PZ outed me a couple of years back, to charge 5 cents per visit, I'd actually have money. Oh well, I'd only waste it on books...]
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 5:49 AM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: General Science
... is a blogger on the paranormal and skeptical stuff. She has some nice posts on
Women and superstition (parts one and two)
and
Skeptical Books for Children (parts one, two, three and four).
Go check them and her out.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:33 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
