Sky pilot
Category: Humor
Anyone else read this and immediately think of Eric Burdon singing "sky pilot"?...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:05 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Evolving Thoughts
One man's struggle against impermanence
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Profile
John Wilkins is an aged, 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 a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Queensland, in Australia. 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, which he is working into two books. One has been accepted for publication, and will come out in 2008; the other may be contracted soon. He is also interested in cultural evolution, philosophy of religion, Macintosh computers and his kids (they sort of make it a necessity, you know?).
If anyone knows of a tenurable, or even medium term, job in philosophy of biology, let me know. Have library, will travel. The contract runs out soon...
This blog is designed to host any random thoughts that happen to be passing through my forebrain at a given moment. So there will be errors...
Recent Posts
- Render Caesar
- What sorts of people
- Speaking of spiders...
- Neil Young gets his own web presence
- Russell's teapot
- Pastorale
- Short takes
- A meaningless numerical coincidence, w00t!
- Podblack Cat
- The name has been changed...
Recent Comments
- Ribozyme on Render Caesar
- Pubcat on What sorts of people
- t on Speaking of spiders...
- Christopher Taylor on Render Caesar
- George W. Caesar on Render Caesar
- Ian on Render Caesar
- csrster on Render Caesar
- fvngvs on Render Caesar
- Thinker on Render Caesar
- Thony C. on Render Caesar
Archives
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Blogroll
- Aetiology
- Afarensis
- Brooke McEldowney's blog
- Darwin Central
- De Rerum Natura
- Deanne Taylor's Blog at Nature
- Dienekes' Anthropology Blog
- Dispatches from the Culture Wars
- Galactic Interactions
- Ideas of Imperfection
- John Hawks Anthropology Weblog
- Laelaps
- Malfunction Junction
- Musgrave's Astroblogger
- National Center for Science Education
- Pharyngula
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- Scott Page's All-too-common dissent
- Small Things Considered
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- The Lippard Blog
- The Loom
- The Panda's Thumb
- The Questionable Authority
- The Thinking Meat Project
- Thoughts in a Haystack
- Unruled Notebook
- Unscrewing The Inscrutable
Books I'm reading
Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion
Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons: Evolution and Christianity from Darwin to Intelligent Design (New Histories of Science, Technology, and Medicine)
Foundations of Systematics and Biogeography
Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality
Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World (Evolution and Cognition Series)
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Other Information
My personal page is here:
The previous instantiation of this blog is accessible here.
January 30, 2008
Vale Chesh
Category: Administrative
For a long time, I thought that animals were pretty much as Descartes thought - largely unreasoning organic machines. This morning, my teacher on animal communications died. Her name was Chesh, and she was 17 and a half. She...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:23 PM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 27, 2008
Who should be president?
Category: Politics
And why would an Australian care? It's another country, so what business is it of mine? Well, apart from the fact that whoever is US president affects the rest of the world (and historically the best party for Australian...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:06 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
If evolution were a religion...
Category: Humor
Given that the antievotees often declare evolution a religion (because after all, their view is purely based on wishful thinking and so they want to claim that everybody's views are), I got to thinking. What would the books of...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:07 AM • 31 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 26, 2008
Nature makes no leaps...
Category: History
Reacting to Jerry Coyne's guest blog on The Loom, Brian Switek at Laelaps discusses, among other things, the objection to Darwin's theories that Huxley put forward, both in personal correspondence and in print: The only objections that have occurred...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:54 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 25, 2008
Why wasn't I told?
Category: Administrative
A passing reference to Language Log has introduced me to an excellent blog. For instance, this well-balanced post on hate speech. Why didn't someone notify me of it before?...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 5:08 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 24, 2008
Del.icio.us Evolving Thoughts
Category: Administrative
We got delicioused, for the Basic Concepts Post, and wow, scores of links and (I hope) new readers. Some of the referrals [UPDATED]:...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:55 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Measuring extinctions
Category: Biodiversity
In 1972, David Raup published an influential paper on taxonomic diversity during the Phanerozoic. In that paper, he estimated extinction rates based on the number of fossil families and genera for the period and before and after. The idea...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:37 AM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 23, 2008
Research blogging goes live
Category: General Science
You'll recall that we had a new logo and link for Blogging Peer Reviewed Research. This is now rebadged and has become Research Blogging. It will aggregate and feed the posts on peer reviewed research....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 4:56 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 21, 2008
Happenings
Category: Administrative
So, I just found out that I'm teaching this semester, which is a comfort (money will come in, and we can eat) and a pain (I am going to Arizona in March, so we will have to sort out...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:42 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 19, 2008
On, well, everything
Category: Humor
This conjoins a number of themes of late: poetry, postmodernism, and no doubt popery (Latin anyway)... Two poems by A. D. Godley:...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:49 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A lucky man
Category: Fiction
... sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler – Robert Frost It was a typical hot and humid summer's day, so I entered a nice dark bluestone pub, hoping the dark would offer some cool and...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:29 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 18, 2008
Funny philosophers
Category: Humor
It is widely understood that philosophers aren't as a rule, intentionally funny. Partly this is because we are often old fogies whose sense of humour was formed in the early Jurassic. Mostly it's because when you deal with the...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:02 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 17, 2008
Images on evolution outreach
Category: Creationism
Colin Purrington has a nice set of publicly available images for use in pro-science talks. Go check 'em out....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:00 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Why not information?
Category: Evolution
OK, so by now a number of you are either quite puzzled or are up in arms about this notion of mine that genes aren't information. First I'll recap and then make some general philosophical and historical points....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:48 PM • 29 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A poem to remember - meme
Category: Logic and philosophy
Shelley at Restrospectacle gives a poem she learned in school, an excellent piece by A. E. Housman, So I got to thinking - what poem sticks with me? Is it the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by Eliot,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:13 AM • 41 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A plea for the pope
Category: History
This isn't something I would often write, but I think that the recent protest against the Pope speaking at the secular university La Sapienza in Rome is misplaced. Critics say that the Pope, when he was of more humble...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:47 AM • 59 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 16, 2008
Is information essential for life? No.
Category: General Science
A recent New Scientist article poses the often-posed question in the title. The answer is mine. Forgive me as I rant and rave on a bugbear topic......
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:45 PM • 25 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 15, 2008
ROUS's? I don't believe they exist.
Category: Evolution
Anyone who knows the film The Princess Bride knows what happens next. Westley gets hit hard by a rodent about the size of a pitbull. However, it seems that ROUS's (Rodents of Unusual Size) actually may have existed, in...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:19 PM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Harry Potter, you see, is the wrong kind of magician
Category: History
In an article on the Catholic or otherwise virtues of Harry Potter (didn't we do all this a while back), L'Osservatore Romano has an article claiming that Harry Potter is the wrong kind of hero. Why is that? Not,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 4:53 AM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 13, 2008
Students publishing
Category: General Science
TR Gregory at Scientific Blogging asks why advisors would encourage their students to publish. One of the reasons is: Most of the graduate and undergraduate students with whom I have worked directly have been quite excited by the possibility...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:02 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Censureship
Category: Politics
Lawyers shouldn't determine who gets to read what. Religions shouldn't determine who gets to think what. But the worst combination is when religions use lawyers to stop criticism of their actions and beliefs. Scientology, the money making scam purveyed...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:33 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 12, 2008
Slowing down
Category: Administrative
I am blogging lightly while I write madly in Real World™ conditions - some deadlines approach, such as grant deadlines, paper deadlines, book review deadlines and editing deadlines. That said, I will pop up for a bit occasionally, but...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:08 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 10, 2008
Verily, who is in the primary position
Category: Humor
A classic Abbott and Costello skit, done in Elizabethan English. Video below the fold....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:40 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Is there a physicist in the house?
Category: General Science
One of my colleagues just raised a point I hadn't thought of vis á vis Special Relativity. I had always thought that an observer on a photon would not experience time. My colleague suggests that each frame of reference...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:24 PM • 36 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 8, 2008
Stuff, not nonsense
Category: Evolution
Some things I spotted today.....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:50 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 7, 2008
Is postmodernism retreating?
Category: Creationism
Rob Helpy at Big Monkey, Helpy Chalk, has a post on what postmodernism was and why it came about. In it, he says he thinks it is a dying fad. Is this true?...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:23 PM • 43 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
In the news
Category: Politics
Let's see... what's happening in the world today? Kenya is in turmoil and thousands are displaced and in danger of death by disease, starvation or tribal feuds. Religious moneymaking scam Scientology is accused of threatening those who leave it...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:54 AM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 6, 2008
On evolved morality
Category: Logic and philosophy
Larry Arnhart has a post up on how Huck Finn's moral quandary about turning in Jim, the escaped slave, as good religion said he should (at the time), when he has come to know and admire Jim as a...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:25 AM • 36 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I hate a barnacle...
Category: Evolution
...said Charles Darwin, more than any man ever has. He should have, too - he spent seven years of his life working up the first encyclopedic monograph on the group. But that pales into insignificance compared to Alan Southward,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:39 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 4, 2008
Nice genetics quip
Category: General Science
Microsoft Word’s “Track Changes” and Endnote are synthetic lethals. From The Futile Cycle. "A synthetic pair of genes are two gene variants that alone are fine, but when combined into the same organism, cause it to die." Why? When...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:07 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 3, 2008
Elvis is still dead. Oh, and evolution is a fact.
Category: Creationism
Some press releases get the right money quote: "The bottom line is that the world is round, humans evolved from an extinct species and Elvis is dead," Weissmann said. "This survey is a wake-up call for anyone who supports...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:27 PM • 22 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Roundup
Category: Evolution
Some bloggable items not worth a post on their own:...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:12 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
What must a citizen know?
Category: Politics
The previous Australian junta introduced a "citizenship test" for those wanting to become naturalised Aussies. It includes such gems as who Don Bradman was, who wrote a song that isn't even officially our anthem (Waltzing Matilda - Tom Wait's...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:38 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 2, 2008
Darwinian gardening
Category: Humor
For some time now I have told anyone who didn't get away fast enough that I am a Darwinian Gardener: any plant that survives my total lack of care deserves to be there until it gets in my way....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:05 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Australia to impose "opt-out" filtering
Category: Politics
I'm going to have to start a "freedom watch" thread, I can see. Australia, under the ALP government, is to impose an "opt-out" internet filtering system on all lSPs, leading to the question asked by IT-Wire: what happens if...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:00 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Are you being watched?
Category: Politics
Since I am divesting myself of the occasional political whine, here's another. The US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and the UK-based Privacy International have assessed over 70 countries for their protection of privacy, both online and generally. The worst...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:31 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 1, 2008
COSMOS - a cool magazine
Category: Administrative
Today I received my copy of COSMOS (not Cosmo, you perves!) in which my article appeared. I have to say (and not just because they showed the good taste to print me) that this is one of the better...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:42 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Changing minds
Category: Evolution
The Grauniad has a puff piece on what has changed the minds of "the intellectual elite". It seems Alan Alda is one of them in virtue of his screen roles... still I have to like his comment: Until I...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:46 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
NYE: the aftermath
Category: Creationism
OK, so the next door party finished about 1.30, but the family disputes finished about 5 am, so instead of thinking, I'm going to let others think for me, and round up a few New Years Day links......
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:28 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
