Evolving Thoughts

Well by now you are all no doubt dying to see my holiday snaps. Fifty years ago I'd be that annoying relative who insisted on holding slide nights after a vacation (I had a vacation once. I remember it well). So here is the visual diary of my (working) trip to Vancouver for the PSA/HSS conference, Seattle for the rain, and Berkeley. Out of concern for those who hate these things, it's below the fold. Professor Steve Steve came along too.

First of all, we Seed Bloggers at the conference met to discuss serious mattersdrink, of course. From left, Janet Stemwedel (who I keep calling "Jane" for some reason), John Lynch, Steve, me, David Ng and Ben Cohen. That important business out of the way, the rest of the conference was just jam, of course.

I attended a workshop after the conference on homology and evo-devo, which was interesting. I also met Marc Ereshefsky, whose work has both inspired and infuriated me. I was all set to dislike him, but he turns out to be a really nice guy whose ideas are pretty similar to mine in most respects. Rats. I still think the Phylocode is not a hot idea, but I'm wavering... I also got to meet again Gal Kober, a PhD student at Boston, who I met previously at the FDIBS in Bloomington.

Steve, of course, muscled in, and got his photo taken with me and Lisa Lloyd:

Since Lisa was a collaborator with Steve Gould, I guess that is OK.

In Seattle, Josh Hayes, whose family endured my presence for three days, took me to various places, including the famous Fremont Troll, under the Aurora Bridge, where he was wrestled into submission by Steve:

"Troll" is a name given to those who make stupid claims on the internet to attract attention, and Steve and I spend a lot of effort refuting these attention hounds, so this is somehow symbolic...

Josh also took me to the Flight Museum, which was just cool. I was a mad keen fan of aviation and spece flight as a kid, and my favourite of all time vehicle was the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. They had an actual one there, and I got to sit in a cockpit of one that had crashed. Also they had JFK's and LBJ's Airforce One across the road. That was the plane on which LBJ was sworn in after Kennedy's assassination. Here's Steve trying it on for size, despite the "do not sit here" signs:

I think Steve is having some ideas about who would make the best Presidential candidate in 2008, too. Here he is waving to his adoring fan (me) as he descends the steps, with potential Vice Presidential candidate Hayes behind him:

He might need to do something about his photogenicity, though. I'm sure the Discovery Institute's PR firm will be able to handle that.

On to San Francisco, and to Berkeley, where I gave a talk, organised by the lovely Katie Brakora, a PhD student of Kevin Padian's, to the Bay Area Systematics Group's "pizza munch" meeting. Among others who attended and tried to trip me up were Brent Mishler, Jim Griesemer, and Eli Gerson. It went pretty well for a colonial pretender, all things considered. Katie and Eli and I went out for a drink afterwards, and Steve stayed int he hotel. I think he had a headache or something.

Here are my lunch companions in Berkeley the day after the talk. This is John Harshman (left), a bird systematist who is making sense of avian taxonomy overall, and who spends too much of his time correcting my factual mistakes, and Michael Siemons (right), a semi-retired computer specialist who spends way too much of his time correcting my mistakes on Christian theology. Steve was of course correcting their mistakes.

Then a 30 hour trip back to Brisbane, where the weather is hot and I got some badly missed sleep. With luck, I'll be back at work in the next day or so... but first, the house has sold and I need to find somewhere to live. Life is... interesting.

If anyone (Josh?) has pics worth showing here, send them to me and I'll add them to this record of the latest in Wilkins' Adventures...