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Evolving Thoughts

One man's struggle against impermanence

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Grumpy 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...

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May 14, 2008

Render Caesar

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...

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What sorts of people

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...

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May 13, 2008

Speaking of spiders...

Category: Humor

There's this: But spiderman is fiction, of course....

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Neil Young gets his own web presence

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...

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Russell's teapot

Category: Design

Some things, I really should have thought of myself. Like this:...

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May 12, 2008

Pastorale

Category: Politics

From Wiley: And while we're on the topic......

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May 9, 2008

Short takes

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...

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A meaningless numerical coincidence, w00t!

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...

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May 8, 2008

Podblack Cat

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...

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May 5, 2008

The name has been changed...

Category: Humor

Damn The Onion! They're watching me!...

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Religion and imagination

Category: Evolution

In a piece reported on in New Scientist, Maurice Bloch has proposed another basis for religion: imagination. Because we can project ourselves and imagine the "transcendental" relation in social and personal relationships, we can imagine that there are agents...

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Definitely not right about gay marriage

Category: Politics

The federal Australian government of Kevin Rudd has done its first act of pure bastardry. As I noted before, the PM thinks that marriage is reserved for heterosexuals only. He can think that. He can think that marriage ought...

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May 4, 2008

Scientific bloopers

Category: General Science

On a newsgroup that shall remain Nameless, one of the regulars, Bill Reich, just heard on the History Channel: Smilodon is the ancestor of all the modern big cats. Oy! So this thread is for egregiously* wrong statements made...

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May 3, 2008

Barcoding and classification, again

Category: Logic and philosophy

Duck and cover, folks. I'm about to upset somebody. I have previously been fairly critical of DNA barcoding, the proposal to use a small fragment of the COI gene - a mitochondrial gene cytochrome c oxidase, subunit I -...

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On the supposed bottleneck 70,000 years ago

Category: Evolution

John Hawks has a very nice post for people with basic math, explaining why a recent press release announced that 70,000 years ago the human species encountered a population bottleneck of 2000 individuals, and why it's most likely wrong....

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Another claim for priority from New Zealand

Category: Evolution

One of the enduring patterns of the history of the history of evolution is for historians to claim that their favourite individual, or their country's best and brightest, invented evolution. The most recent appears to be this guy from...

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