Official Comment Count: 1,031,864

Evolving Thoughts

One man's struggle against impermanence

Search this blog

Profile

Snowflake Grumpafudamus 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 a position as a Sessional Lecturer 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 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...

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Blogroll


Search old and new blogs



Other Information

My personal page is here:

John Wilkins' personal page

The previous instantiation of this blog is accessible here.

Add to Technorati Favorites: Technorati Profile Wikio - Top of the Blogs - Sciences Blog Directory - Blogged

July 30, 2008

Spencer was no social Darwinian

Category: Evolution

For a while now, and in particular since I read Robert Bannister's Social Darwinism and then actually read Herbert Spencer's own work, I have been unable to reconcile the mythology about social Darwinism with the actual writings of Spencer...

Read on »

July 29, 2008

Picoeukaryotes

Category: Biodiversity

Electron cryotomographic reconstruction of a C. merolae cell. n = nucleus; c = chloroplast; p = peroxisome; er = endoplasmic reticulum. Source Elio Schaechter has a typically informative and informed post on the smallest eukaryotes, a kind of algae...

Read on »

More on humanities

Category: Logic and philosophy

From PhD Comics:...

Read on »

The stupidity of ISP filtering no barrier to its implementation

Category: Politics

The Labor government has a policy to force ISPs to filter web requests to prevent child pornography. Sounds nice in theory, but I've been using a filtered ISP at my university (they're running a trial) and what I can...

Read on »

July 28, 2008

Newsgroup worries

Category: Administrative

Those who are getting very agitated, missing out on their Usenet fix of the group talk.origins, which has been dormant for the past few days, should know that Steps Are Being Taken. Stop emailing me. I don't know any...

Read on »

What philosophy of science and "postmodernism" have in common

Category: General Science

Lately there has been a rediscovery on the blogia of C. P. Snow's Two Cultures - which initially was the divide between those who understood the Second Law of Thermodynamics and those who don't, but is now, it appears,...

Read on »

July 27, 2008

Vagabonds in taxonomy

Category: Evolution

A new genus name for water mites, from a recent paper in Zootaxa: Vagabundia comes from the Spanish word ‘vagabundo’ that means ‘wanderer’. It is a feminine substantive; sci refers to Science Citation Index. We pointed out some time...

Read on »

July 26, 2008

What is a basic concept?

Category: Basic Concepts

In the process of maintaining the Basic Concepts in Science list I often have to make a judgement call about whether or not something is a basic enough post. For example I have a slew of rather good but...

Read on »

July 25, 2008

Look, up in the sky, it's... Supertree

Category: Evolution

Strange cladogram from another method, able to leap large evolutionary distances in a single bound, faster than a speeding parsimony analysis... oh, you get the idea. A supertree is what you get when you add a number of possibly...

Read on »

The Latest from the "Discovery" Institute

Category: Humor

Now it's against gravity... “Too many scientists have been afraid to speak out against the powerful gravity lobby,” said Crowther. “With Intelligent Motion, we are looking forward to imposing balance on yet another heavy-handed field of science.”...

Read on »

July 24, 2008

The vista from an apple

Category: Sermon

I spent three days trying to reinstall Vista on my son's Dell Inspiron laptop; three solid days. Using Dell's supplied disks and instructions, no less. Each time it would fail for some unknown reason. We lost everything on the...

Read on »

July 23, 2008

Busy, busy, busy

Category: Administrative

I've been uncommonly productive in the last few days - first the book went off (and then I find that one chapter needs a complete rewrite, but hey), then I sent off a paper based on the talk I...

Read on »

Why are there still monkeys?

Category: Creationism

Once upon a time, a Roman author named Quintus Ennius wrote: "how like us is that very ugly beast, the ape!" It was quoted by Cicero, and from him Bacon, Montaigne and various others. But always it was thought...

Read on »

July 22, 2008

Fish can walk!

Category: Creationism

A Floridan neighborhood was surprised yesterday when after heavy rain, catfish started walking around their street. Of course, the fish were quick to point out that this doesn't prove evolution is possible, as they all went to the local...

Read on »

July 21, 2008

Species: a history of the idea

Category: Administrative

Today I got my manuscript off to the publisher. Heaven knows what the editors will do with it; I expect a sympathetic treatment as the publisher's editorial board are quite keen. But it's like having a ten year boil...

Read on »

It was 38 39 years ago today

Category: General Science

Read on »

July 20, 2008

On blogging while tenure tracking

Category: Administrative

John Hawks has an excellent essay up (I don't know how correct it is, never having been on a tenure track) on the merits and problems of being an academic blogger. Do read it....

Read on »

July 19, 2008

The Dark Knight

Category: Fiction

Wow. Just... wow. This is not the best superhero film I have seen. This is perhaps the best film I have seen for over a decade. It is replete with moral problems, Greek tragedy, farce, some serious character development,...

Read on »

July 18, 2008

Dr Horrible

Category: Humor

I miss Buffy. I miss Mal Reynolds. I really miss Kaylee. Most of all I miss Joss Whedon's sparkling entertainment. So go watch Dr Horrible's Singalong Blog, now!...

Read on »

July 17, 2008

Species is a hard concept

Category: Humor

Stealing this one from Moselio Schachter: A guy walks at night on a beach in California and stubs his toe against an old bottle, which breaks and releases a genie. “I’ll grant you one wish, oh Master,” says the...

Read on »

I've been LOL'd!!1

Category: Humor

Courtesy James F in the "Getting Rid of Darwinism" comments...

Read on »

July 16, 2008

Getting rid of "Darwinism"

Category: Evolution

Good to see that Olivia Judson has finally caught up with me......

Read on »

History of evolution

Category: Evolution

Ryan Gregory at Genomicron has a couple of interesting posts; One on Natural Selection before Darwin, which discusses prior presentations back to Hutton. I think he's right that prior to Darwin selection was typically not thought of as a...

Read on »

July 15, 2008

Cloudy

Category: Administrative

Not the Simon and Garfunkel song, this: Just seeing if it works....

Read on »

July 14, 2008

More on black and white physics

Category: Humor

Language Log has a very nice summary of the reasons why some holes are black, and some are white....

Read on »

July 12, 2008

Online, about being online

Category: Administrative

My paper in TREE is now available as an in-press corrected proof. It is titled "The roles, reasons and restrictions of science blogs", so thanks to you guys (and Bob O'Hara in particular) for the raw material and opportunities....

Read on »

Desecration, blasphemy in public, and manners

Category: Evolution

When does a person's religious beliefs constrain someone who is not religious? What sorts of redress can a religious person expect in a secular society? These questions arise from the recent to-do about PZ Myers defense of the stealing...

Read on »

July 10, 2008

Right there in black and white

Category: Humor

If a black hole is where common sense is lost, is a white hole where we spew out absurdities? To say so seems like blackmail, which only yellow dogs employ, with a niggardly vocabulary. It's a red flag, I...

Read on »

*sigh* More Haneef farce

Category: Politics

here...

Read on »

Draws breath...

Category: Administrative

Well I have done my talk at the AAP conference, and survived with ego intact (as if there was any doubt). All I need to do now is sleep for eight straight days. Sorry but I don't have the...

Read on »

July 3, 2008

Off in the wilds of... Melbourne

Category: Administrative

Hi folks. It's conference time again, and of course we have organised to have the Australasian Association of Philosophy/Australasian Association for the History Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (AAP/AAHPSSS) conferences in the coldest place on the mainland -...

Read on »

July 1, 2008

On the "Darwin Year"

Category: Evolution

Readers may be somewhat surprised that Evolving Thoughts hasn't made much of the Darwin bicentennial and the Origin sesquicentennial so far. Well, I haven't needed to, given the number of other folk making hay from this. In particular I...

Read on »

Commander in Chief

Category: Politics

This is me commenting on American politics again. Sorry. I am somewhat amazed at the furore over Wesley Clark's comment that being a prisoner of war doesn't automatically make one qualified as Commander in Chief of the armed services,...

Read on »

Blogs in the Network

Advertisement

Top Five: Readers' Picks

Search All Blogs