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John Wilkins is an eternal student, who thinks philosophy of biology is at least as interesting as politics or sport and twice as important. He has a PhD from the University of Melbourne and worked at the University of Queensland, in Australia, before taking up a research fellowship at the University of Sydney. After a varied career, involving factories, gardening, civil service, publishing, graphics, public relations but not, unfortunately for the CV, driving a truck, John finally completed his thesis on species concepts in 2004, which he has worked into two books.
This blog is designed evolved to host any random thoughts that happen to be passing through my forebrain at a given moment. So there will be errors...
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April 28, 2007
Category: Humor
Setting up ideas as competitors in the market place is correct in one sense, but there is a very large distinction between an idea that states "all ideologies should be given room to breath, so long as they do not impose their views on others by force or coercion", and an idea that says "all people must adhere to our standards".... Shouldn't all rational believers recognise that even if they could make America or wherever a Christian (Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Atheist) state, they had better not for their own good?
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:18 PM • 18 Comments •
Category: General Science
This is a wonderful piece about a man in his late 50s learning to read. Medlar Comfits delivers again.
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:15 AM • •
April 27, 2007
Category: Humor
Following Scientific American's blog's description of Shelley at Retrospectacle, in the context of the the Wiley situation, as "seems to be attractive and avian-friendly", I now want it to be known henceforth that your favourite albino silverback is "obviously witty, attractive and good with children and pets". See Zuska's post for more on this.
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:39 PM • 13 Comments •
Category: General Science
Until the current todo started up, I had merely heard the term used in the context of Lakoff, whose book I tried once to read but got too annoyed and moved on. But one thing I do think I know a bit about, based on experience in public relations, publishing, journalism (a miniscule and amateur bit, to be sure) and public debates, is communication.... I would think it very unlikely any mass medium could teach one how to do, say, differential calculus on its own (open university experiments act solely as one-time lectures do, and I don't happen to think lectures are all that good at imparting content either).
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:13 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Politics
It hit me: Pell, like all conservatives, thinks that social cohesion is paramount to political activity (of course, like most, but not all conservatives, it is his form of cohesion that he wants to the exclusion of all others).... They'd add to the cohesion of society if they'd just stop attacking their opponents as terrorist sympathisers, climate nancies, and marriage destroyers, and shut up.
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:38 AM • 6 Comments •
April 26, 2007
Category: History
The BBC is reporting that the parchment manuscript that had a palimpsest of Archimedes' treatise on floating bodies, also turns out to have two other lost works: a text by Hyperides, a 4thC BCE politician of Athens, but much more excitingly, a 3rdC CE commentary on Aristotle's Categories, in which modern logic was first defined (along with other works by Aristotle), by Alexander of Aphrodisias. Some, for instance Calamus, are critical of the Christian monks that, in the 13thC CE, scraped these works off the parchment to reuse it for a prayer book.
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:00 AM • 14 Comments •
Category: Evolution
Some phrases no science or other journalist should ever write about science: "could rewrite theories about evolution" "medical breakthrough" "scientific breakthrough Any suggestions (with links, please)?
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:17 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Administrative
I'll be in London (the one in the UK, not any American knockoff) on Sunday 22nd and Monday 23rd July. I'm meeting someone at University College London, but I'll be free in the evenings if anyone wants to meet up (and offer a couch I can sleep on, if possible).
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:21 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Biodiversity
http://earthportal.org is the result of 650 of the world's top scientists in 49 countries (so far) coming together to produce the highest quality, non-commercial, non-profit resource for information about our planet anywhere in the World.... Tomorrow, we will webcast, the press conference in Washington DC at the Press Club beginning at 1 p.m. featuring Jane Goodall, Robert Corell, and Ambassador Richard Benedick among others.
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:18 AM • •
April 25, 2007
Category: General Science
If an author publishes work and I copy it for my own purpose, then I have stolen something from the author (and publisher, if the copyright is held by both). But if I quote something of the author's for the purposes of discussion, then I have committed no theft, in pretty well every jurisdiction that is cosignatory to the Berne Convention on Copyright.
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:36 PM • 1 Comments •
